Mexico’s Carlos Slim has topped Forbes magazine’s billionaire list, becoming the first person from outside the US to lead the rankings since 1994.

According to Forbes’ estimates, the net fortune of Slim, 70, who built a telecommunications empire after buying Mexico’s state-run phone monopoly two decades ago, rose by $18.5 billion last year to more than $53 billion.

That beat Microsoft founder Bill Gates ($53bn) into second place, with US investor Warren Buffett ($43bn) third.

The Mexican telecom giant, named the world’s new richest man on Wednesday, first showed a talent for business as a 10-year-old kid when he filled his pockets with pesos selling drinks and snacks to his family.

A spokesman for Carlos Slim refused to confirm the Forbes estimate of the Mexican tycoon’s wealth, saying they did not “waste their time” on such calculations, but he welcomed the result.

“We’re pleased that he has been considered the best businessman of the world,” spokesman Arturo Elias told the BBC. “It means there is trust among the investors.”

The total number of billionaires in 2009 rose from 793 to 1,011, Forbes said.

“The global economy is recovering. The financial markets came back, especially emerging markets,” said magazine editor-in-chief Steve Forbes.

“There’s a 50 percent increase in general global wealth compared to last year,” Forbes said.

A spokeswoman for Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon says Canada will use its G8 presidency to press for more sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

She said that Lawrence would raise the issue at a meeting of the Group of Eight industrialized countries’ foreign ministers at the end of March.

“Canada will use its G8 presidency to continue to focus international attention and action on the Iranian regime. Canada believes that further sanctions authorized by the United Nations Security Council are needed,” Reuters quoted the spokeswoman as saying without naming her.

“The G8 foreign ministers will discuss how to put pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear fuel enrichment activities and convince the Iranian regime to come back to the table,” she added.

However, Tehran has repeatedly declared that it will never relinquish the legitimate nuclear rights of the Iranian nation, no matter how much pressure the West imposes on the country.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has toured the quake-ravaged Haiti to observe the extent of destruction and to meet Haitian President Rene Preval.

Lula’s trip to Haiti took place on Thursday, according to AFP, more than a month after the deadly 7.0-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 200.000 people, including 20 Brazilians who were part of the United Nations mission in the Central American country.

To help the quake-devastated nation, Brazil has doubled its UN force in Haiti to 2,600 and dedicated 205 million dollars in aid for the country. However, much of the aid has not reached the nearly 1.2 million people left homeless in Haiti due to inefficient aid distribution efforts.

“The developed world is responsible for what happened in Haiti,” Lula said in comments a month ago.

“Perhaps now the earthquake will stir the shame of the human beings governing this planet, and we can now do what should have been done (for Haiti) 40 or 10 years ago.”

Cuba insists that the Island is quite prepared to open talks on “all” subjects with the United States under “equal” terms, Brazil’s official Estado News Agency reports.

The Cuban President Raul Castro, who was showing his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva around the port of Mariel near Havana on Wednesday, said that Cuba was ready to discuss any problem with Washington.

“We want to discuss with the government of the United States all the problems that they want to (talk about). I repeat it three times: all, all, all. But we will only accept if it is in absolute equality,” Castro said, according to the report.

In any potential dialogue, Washington “can ask about anything, but we also want to ask about all the problems of the United States,” Castro said.

Castro admitted that the island does not embrace “maximum freedom of expression,” but attributed that problem to US actions.

“Here there is not the maximum freedom of expression. That is true. But if the United States would leave us alone, there could be that maximum freedom,” he said.

Washington severed all diplomatic ties with Cuba shortly after the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro, who formally retired two years ago in favor of younger brother Raul.

Washington has so far snubbed removing its five-decade-long economic and trade embargo on Havana.

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has admitted that it has tried to assassinate Fidel Castro several times.

A Haitian judge has freed eight of the 10 Americans held in the quake-battered country over child kidnapping charges, their lawyer has said.

“Eight of my clients will be set free. The judge wants to question two of my clients because they were in Haiti before the earthquake,” said lawyer Aviol Fleurant.

Asked whether the judge in the case had already issued the release order, Fleurant said that he had, and that the eight could leave the country on Wednesday with no bail to pay.

Ten US citizens were arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after last month’s devastating earthquake.

The missionaries from the Baptist charity New Life Children’s Refuge were detained on January 29 as they attempted to cross into the Dominican Republic with a busload of children aged from two months to 12 years old.

Honduras has put the impoverished Caribbean nation’s agriculture sector on highest alert over the latest oceanic warming phenomenon, El Nino.

The Honduran government declared a state of emergency amid fears of droughts and severe weather disturbances that might happen as a result of El Nino in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, which often stretches to some areas in Latin America.

The Honduran Council of Ministers allocated USD 600,000 in aid in order to help 7,000 agriculture producers in the country and harvest thousands of tons of beans and crops before they perish in the early heat wave taking over the region, Xinhua reported.

Honduran Vice President Samuel Reyes has said, “El Nino climate phenomenon is affecting some beans and other grains harvests, and it will impact the supply. The emergency declaration aims to avoid such a problem.”

He also added that the country needed to guarantee its agricultural supplies in order to avoid an uncontrolled hike in basic grain prices in the event of a severe El Nino problem.

El Nino is characterized by the warming of surface waters in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, which is associated with floods, droughts and other atmospheric disturbances in many regions of the world.

It usually affects developing countries dependent upon agriculture and fishing, particularly those bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Hundreds of Haitians have gathered outside the country’s international airport, to show their outrage at the slow delivery of aid supplies for earthquake victims.

The demonstration took place on Wednesday, just hours after the first heavy rains since the January 12 quake.

The frustrated and weary protesters insisted aid groups are not doing enough to get supplies to the survivors.

Haitian police and American forces dispersed the crowd but many protesters parked their cars and trucks to block the entrance to the airport.

According to the government, the magnitude-7.0 earthquake killed 230,000 people and destroyed 250,000 homes.

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper says his country will use its G8 presidency to press the club of world’s richest nations for more Iran sanctions.

“Canada will use its G8 presidency to continue to focus international attention and action on the Iranian regime” and “work with its allies to find strong and viable solutions, including sanctions, to hold Iran to account,” AFP quoted Harper as saying in a statement on Wednesday.

“It is time for Iran to end its defiance of the international
community, suspend its enrichment activity and take immediate steps toward transparency and compliance by halting the construction of new enrichment sites, and fully cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” he said.

Harper’s comments come after Tehran declared that it would begin the process to enrich uranium at 20 percent for use in its research reactor after the IAEA failed to help the country buy it.

Iran needs the uranium to produce radioisotopes— which are used to treat patients — at the research reactor.

Under international law, the IAEA is obliged to provide Iran with nuclear fuel required for peaceful purposes.

The West has been exerting pressure on Iran to force the country into delivering the stores of its low-enriched uranium in exchange for 20 percent enriched uranium after a considerable delay.

Tehran on Wednesday summoned the Canadian charge d’affaires to Iran after the country’s former envoy admitted to having spied for the US against the Islamic Republic.

“The act of former Canadian envoy [Kenneth Taylor] is in violation of the Vienna Convention concerning diplomatic relations and, therefore, the Canadian government has to provide a clear explanation [to the Iranian government] on the issue,” the Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Canada’s former ambassador to Tehran, Kenneth Taylor, earlier admitted to having actively spied for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Islamic Revolution.

According to a report by The Globe and Mail, Taylor became the “de facto station chief” of the CIA in Tehran after Iranian students took control of the US embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and took some 60 US citizens hostage.

According to the paper, then-US President Jimmy Carter and Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark agreed in a secret meeting that Taylor would provide the CIA with intelligence from his position at the Canadian Embassy in Tehran.

He won praise in the US for sheltering six US Embassy staff and helping them return home on January 27, 1980.

Haiti’s government has raised the death toll figure from last month’s massive earthquake that destroyed much of its capital to at least 230,000.

Previous reports had put the toll at 212,000, but four weeks after the 7.0 magnitude quake leveled much of Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns, more bodies have been pulled out of the rubble.

However, Communications Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Tuesday that the new figures were still not definitive.

She also said that the newest tally did not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or the dead buried by their own families.

This is while Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive admitted that the Haitian government still did not have a clear plan to relocate the displaced.

“We are still in a very difficult situation,” Bellerive told the Reuters News Agency on Tuesday. “We still don’t have a clear vision of certain problems.”

He also added that it could take at least three or four years to return Haiti to its pre-quake state and up to 10 years to rebuild the 250,000 houses destroyed by the quake.

Meanwhile, at an emergency meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) in the Ecuadorian capital Quito, leaders pledged $300 million in aid for Haiti.

The summit also urged all international players in Haiti to conduct themselves with “absolute respect for [Haitian] national sovereignty and the principle of non-intervention in internal affairs.”

The Quito meeting was specifically pointing to the United States deployment of up 20,000 troops to Haiti with plans to maintain a long-term presence in the country.

The January 12 tremor has left an estimated one million people displaced in the impoverished Caribbean nation, where food and water distribution, shelter, and medical support remain major problems.

A generous world has flooded Haiti with donations, but anger and desperation are mounting as the aid stacks up inside the broken country with very inefficient distribution efforts.

This has led to daily demonstrations across the wracked capital, where Haitians warily await more misery ahead of the upcoming rainy season.

Veteran Iranian director Shahrokh Bahrololoumi is making a documentary about Cuba’s recent history starting from 1959.

Fifty-One Years of Independence covers the Latin American country’s music, as well as Cuban interest in Iranian music and traditions such as the Persian New Year (Nowruz) celebrations.

“Cuba is a byword for its dance and architecture; every corner is like a tableau,” Tehran Times quoted Bahrololumi as saying.

“All of these as well as the people’s joie de vivre will be shown in the documentary.”

The idea of making such a film developed when I visited Cuba as an assistant director to acclaimed filmmaker Masoud Kimiai ten years ago, Bahrololomi told ISNA.

He also said that they had found a rare film archive in the country, which some of its films were to be used in the documentary.

The shooting of the 90-minute Fifty-One Years of Independence is scheduled to be finished by the Persian New Year on March 21 and Bahrololumi plans to dedicate it to Kimiai.

“Cuba achieved independence 51 years ago, after which the United States has imposed sanctions against the country,” Bahrololomi said.

“The sanctions have had a negative impact on the culture and daily life of Cubans, but what encourages them to continue with life is their special spirit of struggle.”

Survivors of Haiti’s devastating earthquake have hit the streets in the country’s wrecked capital in protest against the mayor’s hoarding of aid provided by relief groups.

Hundreds of protesters thronged in a suburb of Port-au-Prince on Sunday as thousands of Haitians remain hungry and homeless one month after the earthquake registering a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale struck the impoverished Caribbean state.

Aid agencies have poured tens of millions of dollars in food aid into Haiti but distributions to the affected Haitians have been slow and sometimes chaotic.

Reports of a large amount of donated food being sold on the black market have furthered provoked furor among Haitians who blame government corruption for the slack management and sluggish distribution of goods.

The Sunday demonstrations saw crowds of protesters, mainly women, march to the city hall in the Petionville neighborhood to condemn the corruption of Mayor Lydie Parent in handling relief materials.

The protest was one of the largest since the massive January 12 earthquake plowed through the small island country, killing more than 210,000 people and leaving over a million homeless.

Haitians are desperately expecting more misery as the upcoming rainy season casts dark clouds of fear upon thousands of homeless quake victims, who are living in tents with no running water or electricity.

Amid allegations that the US is using Haiti’s earthquake to occupy the country, Washington says its military forces would stay in the Caribbean nation as long as needed.

“We are in Haiti as long as we are needed,” US Army Colonel Gregory Kane, the director of US Joint Task Force Haiti operations, said on Saturday.

This is while Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive had earlier announced that it would take about 10 years to reconstruct the country devastated by the quake.

On January 12, a deadly quake struck the capital city of Port-au-Prince, killing an estimated 212,000 people and leaving more than one million homeless.

The US has deployed 20,000 troops to the impoverished Caribbean nation to take over command of the distribution of humanitarian aid.

The Pentagon has sent one of its biggest aircraft carriers to Haiti, along with other navy and coast guard vessels.

However, the presence of the US military has infuriated some Latin American countries including, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and Ecuador.

In the latest criticism last week, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa had blasted the aid ‘imperialism’ arriving in Port-au-Prince.

“In this (aid), there is also much imperialism, donor imperialism, donate first, but recover in military ways through NGOs,” according to Correa.

Meanwhile, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and President Evo Morales of Bolivia also accused the US of seeking to occupy the country.

Washington, in the past, has been accused of interfering in Haitian internal affairs on many occasions. The US military played a role in the departure of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide before his second term was over in early 2004. Aristide described his departure as kidnapping.

Haiti was occupied by US Marines for nearly 20 years from 1915 to 1934. Former US president Bill Clinton sent troops to Haiti in 1994.

Ten Americans charged in Haiti with child kidnapping have been denied conditional release and sent to jail to await trial, their lawyer say.

“The judge did not accept the request for conditional release,” said Edwin Coq, lawyer for the group that was detained a week ago for trying to smuggle a group of 33 children out of Haiti and into the Dominican Republic.

Hearings are planned for next week, said Coq, who had petitioned for the group to be released pending their trial which could take months to prepare.

The group, from an Idaho-based charity, was formally charged with “kidnapping minors and criminal association” on Thursday.

They have denied any ill intentions, claiming that they were merely trying to help children orphaned and abandoned by the January 12 quake.

Ten US citizens arrested in Haiti for trying to take 33 children out of the country after last month’s earthquake have been charged with child kidnapping.

The ten people, most of whom are members of an Idaho-based church group, were sent back to jail on Thursday after a closed court hearing in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

They have denied any ill-intent, saying they only wanted to help those children left orphaned or abandoned by the January 12 quake which ravaged the Caribbean nation, leaving one million people homeless.

The missionaries from the Baptist charity New Life Children’s Refuge were detained on January 29 as they attempted to cross into the Dominican Republic with a busload of children aged from two months to 12 years old.

Haitian Justice Minister Paul Denis said on Wednesday that the 10 suspects should be tried in Haiti, adding that he saw “no reason” why they should be sent to the United States for trial.

Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive says the death toll from the January 12 disastrous magnitude seven quake has exceeded 200,000.

“There are more than 200,000 people who have been clearly identified as people who are dead,” he said, adding that another 300,000 are “in hospitals, in health centers and also in ambulatory care centers.”

Bellerive added that his Caribbean nation has been ravaged by “a disaster on a planetary scale.”

Citing the latest statistics on Wednesday, the premier also said that over one million people have been made homeless as a result of the devastating tremors that hit the shallow crust of the earth around the capital Port-au-Prince.

“More than 250,000 houses have been destroyed,” on top of 30,000 businesses, he went on to say.

Despite a massive aid operation, a lack of coordination and the extent of the damage have hampered food and water distribution, which has led to mounting tensions among Haitians.

Recently, there have been street protests amid public anger and frustration over the handling of the situation.

The Haitian prosecutors will decide whether to charge 10 US citizens, detained since they attempted to sneak a group of children out of the quake-hit country.

“I’ve carried out the preliminary investigations and have sent the case to the prosecution service,” Judge Isai Pierre-Louise told AFP on Wednesday.

“It will be up to the prosecutors now to decide how the case should proceed,” he added, saying the hearing had been set for Thursday.

The 10 Americans, five men and five women, were detained last week after they tried to cross into neighboring Dominican Republic with a busload of 33 children aged between two months and 12 years old.

Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive has criticized a group of Americans who allegedly abducted more than 30 children during the post-quake mayhem.

Haitian police detained 10 members of a US charity group, called ‘New Life Children’s Refuge’, when they were trying to cross into the Dominican Republic with 33 children without the proper papers.

The children, who range in age from two months to 14 years, all have family members that survived the devastating January 12 earthquake.

“It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents,” Bellerive told the Associated Press on Monday.

“And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong,” he added.

However, the head of the Idaho-based group, Laura Silsby said they were “just trying to do the right thing,” admitting she had not obtained the required passports, birth certificates and adoption certificates for the children.

Bellerive also said that Haiti is open to having the Americans tried in the US, since the quake demolished most government buildings, including Haiti’s courts.

In response, US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the case remains firmly in Haitian hands for now.

“Once we know all the facts, we will determine what the appropriate course is, but the judgment is really up to the Haitian government,” he said.

Haitian officials insist on prosecution to help deter child trafficking, which many fear will flourish in the chaos caused by the incident.

As survivors of Haiti’s killer earthquake are still trying to cope, Haitian police have charged 10 Americans with child trafficking in the tragedy-stricken country.

On Friday, police arrested 10 members of a US charity group when they were trying to take more than 30 children who had survived the quake.

The alleged abductors, five men and five women with US passports, wanted to cross into the Dominican Republic with 33 children without the proper papers.

The youngsters, who range in age from two months to 14 years, all have family members that survived the devastating incident, according to the director of the Haitian Center, Patricia Vargas.

Some of the older children had spoken to aid workers and said their parents were alive, and some had given the center their addresses and phone numbers, Vargas added.

However, the members of New Life Children’s Refuge, an Idaho-based charity, denied the charges, saying they were taking the children to temporary shelters in the Dominican Republic.

The US embassy in Port-au-Prince said the charity group was being held for “alleged violations of Haitian laws related to immigration.”

Haitian officials have warned that child traffickers might be able to take advantage of the chaos after the quake.

Meanwhile, President Rene Preval criticized a lack of coordination among countries bringing aid to Haiti nearly 20 days after the earthquake.

Preval said countries such as Germany, the US, and France are channeling their assistance through their own institutions and bypassing the Haitian government.

The Haitian police have arrested 10 US citizens after they tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the earthquake-stricken nation.

One of the suspects, who says she is the leader of an Idaho-based charity called New Life Children’s Refuge, denied they had done anything wrong.

The suspects were detained at Malpasse, Haiti’s main border crossing with the Dominican Republic, after Haitian police conducted a routine search of their vehicle.

The Haitian authorities said the 10 US citizens had no documents to prove they had cleared the adoption of the 33 children — aged 2 months to 12 years old — through any embassy and no papers showing they were made orphans by the quake in the impoverished Caribbean country.

In addition to outright trafficking in children, Haitian officials have also expressed concern that legitimate aid groups may have flown children believed to be orphans out of the country for adoption before efforts to find their parents had been exhausted.

As a result, the Haitian government halted many types of adoptions earlier this month.