More than 1.2 million people are in settlements, and close to 500,000 people have left Port-au-Prince for outlying regions.

A Vatican statement said that church leaders recognized the sense of “pain and anger, betrayal, scandal and shame” that the crisis provoked.

Catholic Relief Services’ anti-hunger programs during 2008 helped an estimated 49.3 million people.

Homelessness appears to be making a comeback, but not in the urban and rural communities where it persisted in past decades.

Metals found in such everyday electronic items as mobile phones are helping to fund a bloody conflict in Congo.

“Achieving our objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq has moved to the top of the institutional military’s budget priorities,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said.