PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Gunmen disrupted the final campaign rally in Haiti of a charismatic presidential contender, stoking tensions on the eve of Sunday’s elections in a nation racked by cholera and political uncertainty.

Supporters of popular musician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly ran in panic, along with the candidate and his family, when bursts of gunfire interrupted his rally late Friday in the southern city of Les Cayes, witnesses said Saturday.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Gunmen disrupted the final campaign rally in Haiti of a charismatic presidential contender, stoking tensions on the eve of Sunday’s elections in a nation racked by cholera and political uncertainty.

Supporters of popular musician Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly ran in panic, along with the candidate and his family, when bursts of gunfire interrupted his rally in the southern city of Les Cayes late on Friday, his campaign and witnesses said.

CANAAN, Haiti (Reuters) – Canaan, a 10-month-old tent and tarpaulin settlement of thousands of earthquake survivors carpeting bare hillsides north of Haiti’s capital, has a prefabricated police station, a tin-roof meeting center, tent schools and churches, and even a barber shop.

But, two days before crucial presidential and legislative elections in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation, no one in this sprawling new village founded by Haitians made homeless by the January 12 quake seems to have any idea where they will vote.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Armed Haitian police kept apart boisterous supporters of rival presidential candidates in Port-au-Prince on Thursday as the earthquake-hit Caribbean country heads for turbulent elections this weekend in the grip of a cholera epidemic.

Sporadic violence, including street clashes between protesters and U.N. peacekeepers in Port-au-Prince and the northern city of Cap-Haitien, has added the stench of burning tires and tear gas to the stink of squalor and disease from overflowing cholera hospitals and earthquake survivor camps.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Protests and campaign rallies clogged parts of Haiti’s capital on Thursday as the earthquake-battered Caribbean country headed for turbulent elections set for Sunday amid a rampant cholera epidemic.

Sporadic violence, including recent street clashes between protesters and U.N. peacekeepers in Port-au-Prince and the northern city of Cap-Haitien, have added the stench of burning tires and tear gas to the stink of squalor and disease from overflowing cholera hospitals and earthquake survivor camps.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti needs a surge of foreign nurses and doctors to stem deaths from a raging cholera epidemic that an international aid operation is struggling to control, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official said.

About 1,000 trained nurses and at least 100 more doctors were urgently needed to control the epidemic, which has struck the impoverished Caribbean nation months after a destructive earthquake.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti needs a surge of foreign nurses and doctors to stem deaths from a raging cholera epidemic that an international aid operation is struggling to control, the United Nations’ top humanitarian official said.

Around 1,000 trained nurses and at least 100 more doctors were urgently needed to control the epidemic, which has struck the impoverished Caribbean nation months after a destructive earthquake.

MIAMI (Reuters) – The Environmental Protection Agency tightened water pollution controls in recession-hit Florida on Monday, but the state’s citrus growers expressed concern the rules would cost business too much.

The final EPA standards set specific numerical limits on nutrient pollution levels allowed in lakes, rivers, streams and springs in a state which relies heavily on tourists who enjoy its waterways and the world-famous Everglades National Park.

MIAMI (Reuters) – A Republican-controlled House of Representatives can help stiffen President Barack Obama’s policies toward hostile states like Iran, the congresswoman in line to chair the House Foreign Affairs Committee said on Wednesday.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who as senior Republican on the committee is poised to take over its leadership, told Reuters she believed the House body would have an “important voice” in foreign policy, without wanting to over-inflate its role or influence.

MIAMI (Reuters) – Republican election gains may chill even modest moves by the United States to improve ties with Communist Cuba — unless President Barack Obama personally perseveres with his stated goal to recast ties with Havana.

After taking office last year with high hopes of delivering fresh U.S. policies, Obama promised a “new beginning” in half a century of U.S.-Cuban Cold War enmity and slightly eased the longstanding U.S. embargo against the cash-strapped Caribbean island still led by the aging Castro brothers.