PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Former President George W. Bush ambled into a steamy, fragrant mango warehouse in Haiti on Tuesday and surveyed several long tables neatly packed with the luscious fruit.

He clapped Ralph Perry, the warehouse owner, on the shoulder. He shook hands with farmers, dressed in button-down shirts and ties for the occasion. Then Bush – who is co-leading a fund to help Haiti since the Jan. 12 earthquake, along with former President Bill Clinton – talked of rebuilding.

He confidently said that mangoes will help the country “grow into prosperity” and spoke of a half-million dollar grant to help 25,000 mango farmers.

In Haiti, the mango is a symbol of both the country’s potential, and its dysfunction.

There are 10 million mango trees in Haiti, and tens of thousands of mango farmers scattered about the country. Mangoes are the Caribbean nation’s second-biggest export, behind coffee, and are a $10 million a year industry. Fruit industry leaders think they have the potential to blossom into a tasty, $90 million a year export business.

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Most of Perry’s mangoes are exported to New York and Miami, home to large Caribbean populations that grew up with the fruit. But Perry and others say there are vast untapped markets of future mango lovers elsewhere in the United States and that the fruit is also growing more popular in Europe.

“Twenty years ago, mainstream America didn’t know what a mango was,” Perry said.

Yet bruising and a lack of irrigation thwart many crops. Bad roads and the unavailability of seemingly simple tools such as plastic crates have also threatened the success of the country’s mango export in recent years. In 2009, only about 10 percent of the crop was shipped abroad.

And that was before the quake.

Click here to view photos:

Now a number of groups, businesses and people – from Bush to the Coca-Cola Co. – are trying to rebuild Haiti with the mighty mango.

Haiti grows a specific variety that is indigenous to the country. Called the “Madame Francis,” it is juicy and sweet, and a bit fibrous.

“It is most appreciated by the mango connoisseur,” said Jean Buteau, a mango exporter in Port-au-Prince.

Perry, who also has an export business that ships to stores such as Whole Foods in the United States, said there are many obstacles from getting the fruit from “tree to truck.”

Sometimes farmers sell too early, allowing it to be picked when unripe. In other cases, they lack proper pruning tools. And the fruit is often so damaged that 20 percent to 40 percent of the harvest is lost somewhere between picking and exporting. And Perry knows that customers at Whole Foods, who pay $2 a mango, don’t want bruised fruit.

Another knotty problem is transportation. Even before the earthquake, most roads were a disaster; today, piles of rubble, demolished cars and construction trucks clog traffic.

“We need to fix the roads and have better transportation conditions to the warehouses,” acknowledged Haitian Agriculture Minister Joanas Gue.

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In spite of the setbacks, Haiti actually produced a decent mango crop this year, which gives exporters hope.

“If you had asked me in January, February, after the earthquake, if we were going to have some kind of a season, I would not really think so,” Perry said. “We’re lucky and maybe next year we will get a better one.”

Perry will work closely with TechnoServe, the nonprofit group receiving the $500,000 grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

The money will go to help Haitian farmers with everything from improving their crop yields to building regional drop-off centers where they can sell the fruit to exporters.

“Right now, at every step, there are challenges,” said Bruce McNamer, president and CEO of TechnoServe. “And the crop has languished. But the beauty of this program is that there is a serious market for mangoes, and that ultimately, (the program) aspires to improve the income of 25,000 farmers.”

In March, Coca-Cola announced a similar, $7.5 million, five-year project to help mango farmers. The Atlanta-based beverage giant said it will invest $3.5 million in the project, with the Inter-American Development Bank also contributing an undisclosed amount.

Proceeds from the sale of Haiti Hope Mango Lime-Aid made by Odwalla Inc., will go toward the project.

Karen Christensen, global produce coordinator for Whole Foods Market, said the upscale grocery chain has increased sales of organic and conventionally grown Haitian mangoes by 40 percent this year, compared to last.

Christensen said they would buy more from Haiti – if more were available.

“There’s a lack of infrastructure in Haiti that makes purchasing there quite challenging,” Christensen said in an e-mail. “Bringing the fruit to market is a complex endeavor – it may involve several layers of middlemen who provide financing, transportation and resale functions.”

Still, Christensen said, Whole Foods wants to push Haiti to export more mangoes. Because so much of the countryside in Haiti has been deforested over the years, Christensen and others believe that giving farmers incentives to plant and cultivate mango trees will help reduce the impacts of deforestation and erosion – and provide much-needed cash for the Haitian people.

Mango farmer Paul Joseph Merize – who eagerly shook Bush’s hand Tuesday at the Port-au-Prince warehouse – is convinced that mangoes can lift the Haitian economy. The 33-year-old lives and works in a region that was devastated by hurricanes in 2007 and hit hard by the earthquake.

Merize, whose home was destroyed in January, isn’t surprised to hear that people pay so much for a single mango in the United States, while folks here pay about 50 cents for three.

“They are delicious mangoes,” he said.

No Child Left Behind Left Blacks Behind

Run-Down School Mentioned in Obama Speech Gets Makeover

Black College Students Selected For Elite Leadership Program

Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a man on a mission: to hear what teachers, students and parents in at least 15 states think about No Child Left Behind, the controversial education law championed by former President George W. Bush. Duncan is visiting schools in West Virginia Tuesday, the first stop in the first steps toward reviewing and reforming the program.

President Barack Obama has pledged to overhaul the law, but he has been vague about how far he would go, or whether he would scrap it altogether.

“I don’t know if `scrap’ is the word,” Duncan told reporters last week. “Where things make sense, we’re going to keep them. Where things didn’t make sense, we’re going to change them.”

Whatever the administration decides to do, it needs the approval of Congress, which passed the law with broad bipartisan support in 2001 but deadlocked over a rewrite in 2007.

Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. No Child Left Behind pushes schools to boost the performance of low-achieving students, a group that typically includes minority kids, English-language learners and kids with disabilities.

“Forevermore in our country, we can’t sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can’t sweep those under the rug ever again,” Duncan said.

Yet Duncan has many criticisms of No Child Left Behind, and he has plenty of company. Opponents insist the law’s annual reading and math tests have squeezed subjects like music and art out of the classroom and that schools were promised billions of dollars they never received.

Critics also say the law is too punitive: More than a third of schools failed to meet yearly progress goals last year, according to the Education Week newspaper.

That means millions of children are a long way from reaching the law’s ambitious goals. The law pushes schools to improve test scores each year, so that every student can read and do math on grade level by the year 2014.

No Child Left Behind Left Blacks Behind

Run-Down School Mentioned in Obama Speech Gets Makeover

Black College Students Selected For Elite Leadership Program

“What No Child Left Behind did is, they were absolutely loose on the goals,” Duncan told the Education Writers Association, meeting in Washington. “But they were very tight, very prescriptive on how you get there.

“I think that was fundamentally backwards,” he said.

Duncan said the federal government should be “tight” on the goals, insisting on more rigorous academic standards that are uniform across the states. And he said it should be “much looser” in terms of how states meet the goals.

The education community is watching closely to see just what Duncan means by “tight” and “loose.” So far, the administration has offered few clues.

But Duncan has left no doubt that he wants to change the name of the law, which is deeply unpopular, according to public opinion surveys.

“I do think the name `No Child Left Behind’ is absolutely toxic; I think we have to start over,” Duncan said. He has said he would like to hold a contest for school kids to come up with a new name.

Since the law’s passage, students have made modest gains, at least in elementary and middle school, the grades that are the focus of No Child Left Behind. The biggest gains have come among lower-achieving students, the kids who now are getting unprecedented attention.

The story is different in high school, where progress seems stalled and where the dropout rate, a dismal one in four children, has not budged.

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No Child Left Behind Left Blacks Behind

Run-Down School Mentioned in Obama Speech Gets Makeover

Black College Students Selected For Elite Leadership Program

Turns out even that one word was not necessary in the news article titled “President Bush Art Urinal”. If you found it hilarious, then vote up his news story here.

From John Kenney at The New York Times:

Shoes are the ultimate insult? Try waffles (if you’re in France.) And in Boston, they throw Yankees memorabilia. In NY, you’re lucky if anyone pays attention to you.

Click here for a story on how the shoe hurler has been celebrated.

The world consensus suggests that the iron-fisted leader has grown harmful as a political agent, and unrealistic about the solutions for disease, and sovereignty. Mugabe, now 84 years old, has ruled Zimbabwe since its independence from British Rule in 1980. The opposition leaders who oppose him are typically exiled, or threatened with police action in their homes, and at civil gatherings. 

He has repeated the declaration that he has no plans to step down, going as far as saying that “only God who appointed me will remove me.” Both Condoleezza Rice and President Bush joined the chorus of leaders who have denounced Mugabe’s scare tactics and irresponsible rule. Gordon Brown, prime minister of Britain, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy have also spoken disparaging words about the Zimbabwean leader. 

Mugabe forestalled several negotiations with the Movement for Democratic Change after a hotly contested election, in which their leader secured enough votes to sink Mugabe’s Parliament. A presidential runoff ensued, and Morgan Tsvangirai (of MDC) withdrew pending threats to his followers before the race. Jestina Mukoko, of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, has also been detained against her will by Zimbabwe police. Amnesty International has issued a call for her release.

Throughout the struggle, Mugabe has been famously obstinate about relinquishing what has been his quarter century throne. He agreed to a power-sharing deal with the MDC, but has been purposely sluggish in its execution. However, the U.N., along with more powerful Western nations who could provide medical relief for the spiking cholera epidemic, hold the key to the ouster of the dictator.

From UK’s Telegraph:

She has been in contact with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in recent days to ease tensions between the nuclear states, and this is expected to be a dominant theme in her meetings with Indian officials.

Earlier, Mr Bush called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to again offer US support and condolences for the victims and their families of the attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 200 people and injured scores more.

Five Americans were killed in the attacks in which gunmen stormed Mumbai’s top luxury hotels, its biggest railway station, a Jewish center, and several other sites in the financial capital.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Ms Rice decided to “modify” her European trip, cutting out meetings in Rome to go personally to India.

“We thought it was important to take this moment to travel to Delhi to express the condolences of the U.S. people directly to the government of India and its people and to hold face-to-face meetings,” Mr McCormack said.

“It is very sad that India has experienced this level of terrorism. There will be discussions about how to move forward.”

The Senate this week is expected to take up a bill, already passed by the House, that would extend unemployment insurance checks for up to 13 additional weeks for jobless people whose benefits have run out. The Senate vote could occur as early as Thursday evening and would require support from 60 senators to pass.

White House press secretary Dana Perino, discussing the worsening economic environment, said Bush is “always concerned” when people lose their jobs and is eager to help.

More than 1.2 million jobs have been lost so far this year and the civilian jobless rate is at a 14-year high of 6.5 percent of the labor force.

The White House earlier had threatened to veto a much broader, $61 billion stimulus bill that included aid to help states maintain Medicaid benefits and new spending for public works projects, in addition to the jobless benefit extension.

Bush’s advisers had taken no position on the stand-alone jobless benefits bill costing about $6 billion, other than to say they were firmly opposed to Democratic efforts this week to combine it with a $25 billion bailout of the auto industry that would be drawn from the financial rescue package.

Republicans blocked Senate consideration of the unemployment aid bill in October, but that was before a nearly quarter million additional layoffs that month. The Senate vote occurs at a time when the economy is taking its worst beating in a quarter century.

“The recent financial and credit crisis has slowed the economy, and it’s having an impact on job creation,” Perino said. “The president is always concerned when anybody loses their job and wants to ensure that anybody who wants to work can find employment.”

Perino’s statement came after the Labor Department reported that claims for unemployment benefits jumped last week to the highest level since July 1992 when the U.S. economy was emerging from a recession. The report provided more evidence of a rapidly weakening job market that expected to get even worse next year.

The House bill would provide seven additional weeks of payments to those who have exhausted their benefits. Those in states where the unemployment rate is above 6 percent would be entitled to an additional 13 weeks above the 26 weeks of regular benefits. The benefit checks average about $300 a week nationwide.

Without the legislation, the authors say, 1.1 million people will have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits by the end of the year.

Congress has enacted federally funded extensions seven times in the past 50 years during economic slumps — in 1958, 1961, 1972, 1975, 1982, 1991 and 2002.

The House also voted in June to extend unemployment benefits for three months, but that bill stalled in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans and a White House veto threat.

The Bush administration contends that past extensions occurred only when the unemployment rate was considerably higher and that it was fiscally irresponsible to provide extra benefits in states with low unemployment.

Unemployment insurance is a joint program between states and the federal government that is almost completely funded by employer taxes, either state or federal.

Although President-elect Barack Obama’s campaign centered around predecessor George W. Bush’s failed policies, the two men met to discuss the transition to power for the 44th president. The soon-to-be and former leaders of the Free World surely differ on policy but, a friendly tour couldn’t be too bad.

From AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) The Bushes welcomed the Obamas to the White House on Monday, visiting for nearly two hours and offering the nation a glimpse of a new first family at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

President-elect Obama and President Bush met in the Oval Office, their first substantive one-on-one session, while first lady Laura Bush and Obama’s wife, Michelle, talked in the White House residence.

The president later escorted his successor to his limousine. Obama’s wife was leaving separately after her discussions with Laura Bush.

None of the four spoke to reporters.

It was Obama’s first visit to the Oval Office. The agenda was kept private, although he and Bush were expected to discuss their transition of power and such pressing issues as the war in Iraq and the country’s economic downturn.

The Obamas arrived at the South Portico 11 minutes early with Bush and the first lady waiting for them. Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Obama greeted each other warmly while the president and his successor exchanged smiles and a handshake.

Taking a bit of prerogative, the president-elect put his left hand on Bush’s back as the two couples entered the Diplomatic Reception Room.

Bush and Obama then strolled along the Colonnade and waved for the cameras.

The president-elect’s arrival had the look of a head-of-state state visit, although there were no fife and drum bands, speeches or official pageantry.

Changes from candidate to president-elect were evident earlier, when Obama stepped off his plane and was greeted by transition manager John Podesta, the former chief of staff to President Clinton.

Obama climbed into a black limousine with tinted windows, instead of his normal SUV; the limo looked just like the one that the president rides in, without the seal or flags. The entire motorcade was upgraded from campaign mode to presidential-level, with an identical decoy limousine, a black haz-mat truck, a communications truck and the counter-assault team hanging out the back of an SUV.

Mrs. Bush was to give Mrs. Obama a tour of the first family’s living quarters, including the bedrooms used by children of past presidents. White House press secretary Dana Perino said the two women were expected to talk about living in one of the world’s most famous buildings, from family life to the help provided by executive staff.

The Obamas have two daughters: Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7. Obama started his day in Chicago, dropping the two girls at school, each with a kiss, and then going to a gym for a workout.

Obama told reporters last week that he was headed to the White House meeting with “a spirit of bipartisanship.”

He ran a campaign in which he relentlessly linked Republican opponent John McCain to Bush and presented his ideas as a fresh alternative to what he called Bush’s failed policies. Yet the tone changed almost immediately after Obama’s win last Tuesday.

Bush, who had endorsed McCain, lauded Obama’s victory as a “triumph of the American story.” He warmly invited the Obama family to the White House.

Obama, in turn, thanked Bush for being gracious. The president-elect has made clear in public that there is only one president and for now that’s Bush. Obama takes the oath of office on Jan. 20.

Josh Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff, said Bush and Obama probably each had a list of issues to discuss.

“I know the president will want to convey to President-elect Obama his sense of how to deal with some of the most important issues of the day,” said Bolten, interviewed on C-SPAN by reporters from The Associated Press and The Washington Post. “But exactly how he does that, I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody will know.”

Unlike the incoming president, Bush knew his way around the Oval Office by the time he was elected in 2000 — his father had been president. Still, like many before them, President Clinton and President-elect Bush had their own private meeting, keeping up a tradition that temporarily puts the presidency above politics.

Obama has been to the White House before, including an emergency leadership session to deal with the financial crisis in September.

But an Obama spokeswoman said the president-elect had never been in the Oval Office.

Aside from all the cordial moments, there was some tension the two tried to smooth over with plenty of physical contact and smiles for the cameras. For all their differences, the men could not be more similar in their manipulation of charisma and media.