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04/11/2008: "Haiti food riots ease but critics demand PM's head"

Taxis, vendors and shoppers returned to the debris-strewn streets of the Haitian capital on Thursday after the president appealed for an end to food riots, but the government came under fire from opposition politicians for not doing enough.

In a letter signed by 16 of Haiti's 27 senators, the opposition demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis after a week of violent demonstrations over the rising cost of living in which at least five people died.

The riots, which began in the south of the poorest country in the Americas and spread to Port-au-Prince on Monday, pitted tear gas- and rubber bullet-firing U.N. peacekeepers against thousands of hungry Haitians enraged over the high price of rice, beans and other food staples.

[ Global food shortages are set to get much worse yet ]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10357442.htm