Haiti: food feud

Haiti's president has lowered rice prices and the Caribbean country's Senate has sacked Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis. Yet hungry Haitians who rioted over food prices want more.  Fresh protests could coincide with an international aid donors' conference, scheduled for Friday. 

Haitians complained last week that the cost of other food staples such as cooking oil, beans, flour, wheat and sugar needed to drop too. Business owners whose properties were looted or vandalised during the recent violence -- which has claimed the lives of at least six people -- said they would sue the government for failing to protect their interests.

Growing impatience for tangible results is threatening the progress made to date under President Rene Preval, who needs to decide on a new cabinet, while pressure mounts on him for decisive action on food prices. Preval's opponents accuse him of doing too little, too late to address an increasingly impatient population's everyday problems. The president has been planning methodically for the long term, with firm backing from the UN and aid donors, but may be running out of time.