
Gangs in Haiti burn beloved Gothic gingerbread hotel that rose to international fame
Hundreds of Haitians and foreigners mourned the news as it spread across social media, with the hotel manager on Monday confirming the fire in a brief comment on X. Even though gang violence had forced the hotel in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, to close in recent years, many had hoped it would reopen.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


CBS News
an hour ago
- CBS News
Royal Caribbean crew member stabs fellow employee, then dies after jumping overboard, police say
A Royal Caribbean crew member stabbed a fellow crew member on a cruise ship and then died after jumping overboard Thursday night, authorities said. The incident occurred near the Bahamas off San Salvador Island, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force. Around 7:30 p.m. local time, a 35-year-old South African man allegedly stabbed a 28-year-old South African woman multiple times, police said. The man fled the scene and jumped into the water. He was later found unresponsive and pronounced dead by onboard medical staff, police said. The woman suffered stab wounds to her upper body and was last reported to be in stable condition, police said. "Our crew immediately initiated a search and rescue operation, but unfortunately the crew member passed away," Royal Caribbean said in a statement to CBS News Friday. "We extend our condolences to the crew member's family and loved ones. To respect their privacy, we have no additional details to share." Royal Caribbean did not identify the crew members involved or provide a possible motive in the stabbing. The name of the ship was not immediately provided. The incident remains under investigation, police said, and an autopsy has been scheduled.


CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Haiti sends troops to Mexico for training as gang violence rages on
Haiti has sent 150 soldiers to train in Mexico as the Caribbean country grapples with rampant gang violence. The troops departed Port-au-Prince on Thursday and will spend the next three months on a training course in Mexico. A total of 700 Haitian soldiers will ultimately take part in the program. Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé said the initiative is part of a broader roadmap focused on restoring security, revitalizing public institutions and setting up elections. 'It illustrates the government's firm determination to restore republican order, reinstate state authority throughout the country, and ensure the protection of every citizen,' a statement from the government read. Mexico's security forces have had extensive experience battling criminal groups, particularly international drug cartels, though those efforts have failed to significantly reduce violence and homicide rates remain at near record levels. CNN has reached out to Mexico's government for more information on how it would train Haitian troops. In Haiti, gang attacks have left thousands dead and wounded in recent years. Over 80% of the capital city Port-au-Prince has been estimated to be under gang control, and nearly 1.3 million people nationwide are internally displaced because of the violence, the UN says. Haiti has repeatedly sought international help to restore security, to little effect. Last year, it welcomed hundreds of Kenyan police officers from a multinational security support mission (MSS) funded largely by the United States. At least two of the Kenyan officers have been killed and the violence has not abated. Since the MSS arrived, gangs have spread increasingly into rural areas, seizing swathes of territory in the agriculturally critical Artibonite region. Last week, armed attacks in the area uprooted an additional 15,000 people, the UN says.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
What happened to Amy Bradley? Netflix documentary raises questions that internet sleuths are scrambling to answer.
'Amy Bradley is Missing' is one of the most-watched documentaries on Netflix right now. But the case is not new to true crime fans. In the opening scene of the Netflix documentary, Amy Bradley is Missing, several interviewees share their suspicions about what happened to the 23-year-old woman who went missing while traveling with her family on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship in 1998. 'Somebody killed her,' one person suggests. Another says, 'I think she jumped or fell off,' while a third posits, 'I think she got taken as a sex slave. But I don't know that.' Bradley's unsolved disappearance has long been the subject of such theories. At around 3:40 a.m. on March 24, 1998, Bradley returned to her family's cruise cabin after dancing in the ship's club space. Her dad, Ron, said he woke up briefly around 5:30 a.m. and saw her out on the deck, but when he woke up again at 6 a.m., she was gone. A four-day search of the ship and the surrounding waters turned up no trace of Bradley. The three-part Netflix series, which came out on July 16, doesn't have concrete answers, but it does explore several theories that police pursued as well as others that true crime fans and internet sleuths have clung to about what happened that morning. Theories presented in the docuseries One of the first theories police investigated was that Bradley had either fallen overboard or taken her own life by jumping off the deck. But Bradley's family has never supported either theory, maintaining instead that they believe she is still alive. But Victor McCollum, an FBI agent who was on the case, says in the documentary that right after Bradley went missing, there was 'no direct evidence she jumped.' Other authorities who were interviewed added that, because of the ship's location and other conditions in the water surrounding it in the early morning hours of March 24, if Bradley had jumped, they would've found something. 'Because of the position of the boat, wind force, sea current, the wave height — the body would have washed up,' Henry Vrutaal, a Curaçao coast guard officer, says in the documentary. 'But she was nowhere to be found. Not even a piece of clothing, nothing.' Another theory emerged when Chris Fenwick, a video editor who was on the ship, found the last known footage of Bradley, which shows her dancing with one of the cruise ship's band members, Alister Douglas, commonly referred to by his nickname 'Yellow.' Another passenger, Lori Thompson, said she and a friend were sitting on the deck 'sometime between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m.' on March 24 when they saw Bradley and Douglas in a glass elevator together. Thompson said that about 15 minutes later, the friends saw Douglas walk across the deck alone. 'I kinda got a bad vibe,' Thompson says in the series. 'Immediately, I thought, 'Where's Amy?'' FBI agents say that Douglas was interviewed, and he had 'vehemently denied' walking around with Bradley in the early morning hours on the ship. He passed a polygraph test, and no charges were ever filed against him. Douglas, who was not interviewed for the Netflix series, spoke about the case in an interview with the 'True Crime This Week' podcast in October 2024. 'About five minutes to 1 a.m., I said [to Bradley], 'Look, I have to go, I've got to get out of [the] passenger area.' And I left,' Douglas said on the podcast. 'That was my last conversation, last time I saw her.' In the aftermath of her disappearance, some people have claimed that they've seen Bradley in Curaçao, a Dutch Caribbean island where the cruise ship was about to dock when she went missing, fueling theories that she was kidnapped or sold into sex trafficking. At the end of the first episode, David Carmichael, a Canadian scuba diver, says that he saw Bradley with two men on Curaçao in August 1998, but he did not know she was a missing person at the time. However, authorities have not confirmed any reported Bradley sightings since her disappearance. The FBI has also stated that there is no evidence that Bradley was kidnapped by someone who was on board the cruise ship, and they have not arrested or detained any of the passengers in relation to her case. Internet sleuths have been trying to solve this case for years The Netflix documentary may be bringing Bradley's case to a new audience, but internet sleuths, who are people who use online resources to investigate mysteries and crimes, have been digging into her disappearance for years. These amateur investigators tend to meet in designated Reddit threads, Facebook groups and other online forums. While internet sleuths have had some success (online sleuths were credited with helping identify people who were involved in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021), there are many cases where they made inaccurate and potentially harmful accusations. The most popular theories within these communities align with what is discussed in the Netflix series: that Bradley either fell overboard or was kidnapped and could still be alive. So far, though, neither internet sleuths nor professional investigators have been able to figure out what happened to Bradley. Solve the daily Crossword