Police in Peru say they have airlifted the last of the tourists stranded near the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu after floods destroyed road and rail links. Nearly 1,300 travellers were flown out by helicopters on Friday, a local policeman told the Associated Press. A total of nearly 4,000 tourists and local residents have now left the area following last Sunday's heavy flooding. --BBC

How do we know the truth of what is happening in Haiti - especially those of us who are in the global north and west, our perceptions shaped by a tragic history, largely unknown, in which our governments have often been complicit? As the immediate rescue effort becomes a sustained task of recovery how do we know when ideology and naked self-interest warp news accounts and recovery efforts? 

If the political is personal, so too can the technological be.

PROFAMIL Haiti has provided sexual and reproductive health services in Haiti since 1984. This organization is part of a 40 member organization network called International Planned Parenthood Federation/Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF/WHR). The program in Haiti has three clinics, but the ones in Port-au-Prince, and Jacmel were completely destroyed by the earthquake as you can see by the photo below.  

Last night a young man was pulled from the rubble in Haiti after eleven days. Eleven days. This following the rescue of a 7-year-old boy and his 10-year-old sister after eight days. If you're like me, you can barely imagine what any of them went through. All those days. In the dark. With little or nothing to eat or drink.

I've been reflecting, recently, on my birth experiences with my daughter and my son. They were difficult births - my son's, very difficult - and I've been thinking about how the challenges of those birth experiences shape my general experience as a mother, if at all. And I've been thinking about what a luxury that is, to be able to reflect on all the nuances of the how of giving birth successfully, when for many women, the question is only if. There are too many women in Haiti right now who don't know whether they'll be able to successfully birth their children.

Jean Shinoda Bolen is asking you to sign a petition for a Fifth UN World Conference on Women. Said petition would be delivered to the UN Secretary-General, to the chair of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, and to the woman who will be appointed to head the new women's "super-agency" in March 2010. Shinoda Bolen explains:

I'm not going to waste a lot of words: travelers and others want to help. Here are a bunch of resources that you can click through if you're looking for a way to put your money to work towards relief in Haiti following the quake.

When I posted about How to Help Haitian Earthquake Survivors on Tuesday evening, there wasn't much information out yet about how to help, but now there are lots of posts and articles with lists of organizations you can donate to like:

Editor's note: To find out how you can help survivors of Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti, see here. Haiti holds a romantic and tragic place in the historical imagination -- a nation birthed by a successful slave rebellion, it was the first to abolish slavery in the Western hemisphere and briefly served as a beacon of hope for American abolitionists. However, it never realized its promise, for reasons that scholars and analysts can debate ad infinitum.

Yoani Sánchez, popular Cuban blogger from "Generación Y", was forced into a car and beaten by secret police in Havana along with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo and Claudia Cadelo, who writes for OctavoCero and Global Voices.