Va. police: Rampage victims were ages 4 to 43

APPOMATTOX, Va. – The victims of a gunman's violent rampage in central Virginia included the suspect's sister and brother-in-law, as well as two other adults, three teenagers and a 4-year-old boy, according to authorities who charged the alleged shooter with first-degree murder on Wednesday.

Christopher Bryan Speight, a 39-year-old security guard, surrendered to police at daybreak after leading authorities on an 18-hour manhunt following the slayings at a house in rural central Virginia where deputies found a mortally wounded man and seven bodies.

A bomb squad discovered a multitude of explosives at Speight's home, and crews were detonating the devices into the night.

Speight had no weapons when he surrendered at the house. He was wearing a bulletproof vest over a black fleece jacket, camouflage pants and mud-caked boots. Neither the sheriff nor a state police spokeswoman would disclose what Speight said when he gave up.

Speight was charged with one count of first degree murder, but other charges are likely. He's being held at a jail in Lynchburg.

Speight co-owned and lived in the home where some of the bodies were found. David Anderson, co-owner of the Sunshine Market grocery store in Lynchburg, where Speight sometimes provided security, said Speight was worried that his sister and brother-in-law, wanted to kick him out of the house. The two recently moved in with Speight, he said.

Speight's mother deeded the house to Speight and his sister in 2006, shortly before she died of brain cancer. His mother's obitary listed the daughter as Lauralee Sipe and her husband as Dewayne Sipe.

State police identified the Sipes, both 38, as two of the victims, along with 16-year-old Ronald Scruggs; 15-year-old Emily Quarles; 43-year-old Karen and Jonathan Quarles; 15-year-old Morgan Dobyns; and 4-year-old Joshua Sipe.

Police say Speight knew all the victims, but they did not outline the victims' relationships or discuss a motive. No court date has been set.

Their bodies are at the state medical examiner's office in Roanoke, where their causes of death will be determined.

In nearby Lynchburg late Wednesday, about 100 people attended an impromptu prayer gathering at Thomas Terrace Baptist Church, where friends described Scruggs as a class clown and Emily Quarles as outgoing and friendly.

Youth minister Walt Davis said the community would need strength in the coming days and weeks. Adults were on hand for young people who wanted to talk or needed comforting.

Courtney Crews, 14, said she and Emily Quarles attended the same middle school but different high schools. They kept in touch by texting and talking on the phone.

"She was just a really good friend," Crews said, sobbing. "She was never mean to anybody."

Neighbor Monte W. Mays said Speight's mother deeded the house to Speight and his sister in 2006, shortly before she died of brain cancer.

Mays, the county's retired commissioner of accounts, said Speight was a good neighbor. They waved as they passed each other on the road and sent their dogs out to play with one another.

"All the dealings I've ever had with him have been cordial and polite," Mays said. "We got along fine."

Speight had long been a gun enthusiast and enjoyed target shooting at a range on his property, Mays said. But the shooting recently became a daily occurrence, with Speight firing what Mays said were high-powered rifles.

"Then we noticed he was doing it at nighttime," and the gunfire started going deeper into the woods, Mays said.

Mays said the entire community is devastated and wondering what triggered the slayings.

"The only one who's going to know now is Chris," he said.

Anderson said Speight never wanted to talk about his problems, but he "constantly paced the floor," Anderson said. "I thought he was going to wear a trench in it."

Clarence Reynolds, who also works at the market, said he recently discussed a personal family problem with Speight, and Speight told him "don't let your emotions get the best of you."

Reynolds said Speight was not married and had no children.

Police were alerted to the bloodbath when they found the wounded man on the side of a road. Then sheriff's deputies discovered seven more bodies — three inside the house and four just outside.

When officers converged on the area, the suspected shooter fired at a state police helicopter, rupturing its gas tank and forcing it to land.

The shots revealed his location, and more than 100 police swarmed into the woods until Speight gave up the following morning.

Police said Speight appeared to have had weapons training, but there was no information suggesting he had served in the military.

Speight's uncle, Jack Giglio of Tampa, Fla., told The Associated Press that his nephew was a deer hunter, but as far as he knew Speight did not have any specialized weapons training. Giglio said he had not seen Speight since 2006, when both attended the funeral for Speight's mother.

"We're shocked, of course," Giglio said. "I'm not aware of any problems with him. It's kind of out of the blue. We're still trying to pick up facts, too."

Appomattox County court records show a concealed weapons permit was issued to a Christopher Bryan Speight three times between 1999 and last year.

The county's four schools remained closed for the day, the high school flag at half-staff. Administrators planned to bring in grief counselors. The school system posted a notice on its Web site late Wednesday announcing a two-hour delay Thursday morning so staff would have time to "prepare to talk with their students about the tragedy."

More evacuations ordered as new storm hits Calif.

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. – A third powerful Pacific storm pounded California with heavy rain and snow Wednesday, forcing evacuations of hundreds of homes below wildfire-scarred mountains, shutting a major interstate, knocking out power to thousands and unleashing lightning strikes on two airliners.

Fierce winds howled as forecasters warned of rainfall rates as high as 1 1/2 inches an hour on soil already saturated from two days of wild weather that caused street flooding in coastal cities, spawned a tornado and toppled trees, killing two people.

Even though police officers and sheriff's deputies were making door-to-door stops, some residents refused to comply with evacuation orders in Los Angeles-area foothill communities below the steep San Gabriel Mountains where 250 square miles of forest burned in a summer wildfire.

Rick and Starr Frazier put their faith in concrete barriers and a 2-foot-high wall of sandbags on the perimeter of their home in La Canada Flintridge.

"Look at our house, we're pretty well fortified here," Starr Frazier said. "If any rain or mud or anything comes down, it'll be blocked by our barricades, and we're very well stocked with food and water."

When they said they weren't leaving, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies warned it might not be possible to rescue them and asked them to fill out forms stating they'd been advised of the danger.

While most others in the Fraziers' community appeared to be complying, officials in nearby Los Angeles reported only about 40 percent compliance by residents of 262 homes in that jurisdiction.

Police Chief Charlie Beck sternly urged the rest to go, saying: "We're not doing this because your carpet is going to get wet; we're doing it because your life is at risk."

The neighborhoods' luck was still holding at nightfall as the heaviest downpours slowly moved east. But forecasters warned of more rain Thursday into Friday with high surf battering the coast.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Millage Peaks said they were "seeing mud in the streets, a significant amount of water flowing out of the hillsides but nothing that has jeopardized any structures or life at this time."

Two Southwest Airlines aircraft were struck by lightning Wednesday morning after reaching their arrival gates at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said. Two people on one plane reported feeling numb and were taken to a hospital, he said.

The Grapevine stretch of the state's backbone Interstate 5 was closed due to snow and ice in 4,100-foot-high Tejon Pass north of Los Angeles. Vehicles were to be escorted down by the Highway Patrol.

Since the beginning of the week, more than 300,000 Southern California Edison customers had lost power. About 13,000 were being restored Wednesday.

In Northern California, 50 homes were ordered evacuated as a central coast river rose near Felton Grove in the Santa Cruz Mountains, but it began to recede late in the day. Warnings for hazardous conditions were posted around the state with extreme concern in the south, where vast areas scorched by wildfires have been denuded of vegetation that would normally capture or slow runoff.

The storms were testing months of preparations in burn-area neighborhoods from northeastern Los Angeles through La Crescenta, Glendale, La Canada Flintridge and Altadena.

County and city officials decided Tuesday to order evacuation of hundreds of homes because some of the 28 flood-control debris basins protecting the area were near capacity. County Public Works Director Gail Farber said they were continuing to function as designed but evacuations were a necessary precaution.

A recent U.S. Geological Survey assessment of the post-fire danger noted the history of tragedy in Southern California from so-called debris flows: 30 killed and 483 homes destroyed in 1934 in the Los Angeles-area foothills, and 16 killed in 2003 to the east in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said the current threat could be as bad as 1934, when "a 20-foot wall of mud came down through this area."

Despite a visit from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, homeowners remained in the Alpine Village area of Big Tujunga Canyon. Magdalena Kuehne, 37, said she and her husband would leave "when rocks start rolling down this street. Now it's only a little mud and water. That's not too dangerous."

As the mayor's caravan left the area, it had to stop when an unrelated vehicle flipped in the rain on a freeway. A firefighter driving a van at the end of convoy rendered aid until an ambulance came.

In nearby Riverwood Ranch, retiree John Brown, 68, was one of only two people at an evacuation center.

"I brought some papers and stuff to do my 2009 taxes," he said. "It will be a good way to pass the time."

Much of the concern focused on Paradise Valley, a neighborhood on the upper reaches of winding Ocean View Boulevard in La Canada Flintridge offering spectacular panoramas of Los Angeles.

Lynn Thompson, a 32-year resident who barricaded her front door and windows with plywood and took family photos to her daughter's house said, "sometimes you have to pay big bucks for these views, both emotionally and financially."

State authorities also advised of considerable avalanche danger on steep, north-facing slopes of the central Sierra Nevada after as much as 30 inches of snow fell since Sunday. Blizzard conditions cut visibility to near zero on U.S. Interstate 80 over Donner Summit, and blowing snow made driving dangerous between Sacramento and Reno, Nev.

In Arizona, officials warned residents to prepare for up to 3 feet of snow in the north on Thursday and Friday, up to 4 inches of rain in the Phoenix area and 2 inches of rain around Tucson. Travel on Interstates 40 and 17 was slow after the roads were closed overnight.

Democrats see Mass. message: Jobs, jobs, jobs

WASHINGTON – Wounded in Massachusetts, frustrated Democrats on Wednesday urged the White House to focus on jobs and the economy — not the health care overhaul that's now at risk — and pressed President Barack Obama to more forcefully make their case against Republicans ahead of potentially disastrous elections this fall.

On the day after the improbable Senate election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Obama and his Democratic Party raced to re-evaluate their midterm election strategy, adjust their health care approach and assuage an angry electorate. The embarrassing defeat to the GOP in a Democratic stronghold was a bitter end to the president's first year in office, and it triggered furious party soul-searching.

"I would like the Democratic Party as a whole including its leader, the president, to speak clearly about the differences and to define those differences," Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Democrats' campaign effort, told The Associated Press. And it's not just about Republicans and Democrats, he said: "We have to do a much better job of both engaging and delivering to independent voters."

Obama himself owned up to a failure to communicate.

In a year of hopping from crisis to crisis, he told ABC News, "we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values."

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., put it more simply, assessing the message Massachusetts sent. "Economy, economy, economy," she said.

"We need a jobs bill. We need short-term, focused strategies to create jobs, real fast," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. "If the dominant message isn't about jobs and spending, we'll be making a difficult challenge exponentially more difficult."

At the Capitol, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., declared, "If there's anybody in this building that doesn't tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them."

Indeed, there was a grim sense among Democrats that if the GOP could win in a traditionally deeply liberal state, Massachusetts, it could probably win anywhere.

Said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.: "Every state is now in play."

Democrats still have majority control of both the House and Senate. But Tuesday's GOP upset for the seat long held by the Sen. Edward Kennedy — following Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey last fall for Democratic-held gubernatorial seats — was a sign of serious trouble this fall. Even when the economy is strong, the party holding the White House historically loses seats in midterms.

Despite the loss that gave Republicans a 41st vote in the 100-seat Senate, neither Democrats nor most Republicans said they thought control of Congress could be up for grabs. But both parties expect big Republican gains, and fewer Democratic seats would make it more difficult for Obama to pass his agenda.

"I'm not under any illusion that we can take anything for granted. We have to fight," said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

On the anniversary of his inauguration, Obama faced a need to reevaluate both his policy — specifically his endangered health care plan — and his politics in a White House stunned by a shift in the mood of the electorate from just a year earlier. Voters were hopeful and supportive then. They are cranky and belligerent now. Of utmost concern: independent voters who have fled to the GOP after a year of Wall Street bailouts, enormous budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

"The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they're frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years," Obama told ABC in an interview.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters: "That anger is now pointed at us because we're in charge. And rightly so."

From the White House to Capitol Hill, Democrats appeared more determined than devastated after the Massachusetts outcome as they huddled to chart a new way forward.

Obama's sweeping health care overhaul was the most urgent matter at hand.

The president and his fellow Democrats wrestled with options now that they were one vote shy of the 60-vote Senate supermajority they were counting on to block Republican delaying tactics.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky declared the overall measure dead and added: "The president ought to take this as a message to recalibrate how he wants to govern, and if he wants to govern from the middle we'll meet him there."

In light of Brown's victory, Obama said it's time to come together around a bill that can draw Republican support, too.

"The people of Massachusetts spoke," Obama said in the interview.

Said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "We will move forward with their considerations in mind, but we will move forward."

Just how remained to be seen.

In the longer term, Democrats said the White House should do more to reduce unemployment, given that economists expect joblessness to remain near 10 percent through November.

The White House already has begun pivoting to a jobs agenda, and Gibbs said of the president: "We will have him continue to focus on the economy and jobs."

Several Democratic officials characterized the party rank-and-file lawmakers as frustrated by a seeming White House hesitation to get involved in high-stakes races until it's too late, like the Senate race in Massachusetts as well as the Virginia and New Jersey contests last fall.

These Democrats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the White House, say there's a sense that Obama and his advisers are too cautious and more focused on his 2012 fortunes than on helping Democratic candidates get elected in 2010. They want Obama to use his White House perch to embrace his role as Democratic Party chief.

"There's no doubt that the White House, which has a big megaphone, needs to make sure that the contrasts are very clear to the public," Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the House Democrats' campaign committee, told the AP.

To be sure, Obama has started laying out a sharper contrast with Republicans by hammering them for opposing his proposed bank bailout tax. He's sought to paint Democrats on the side of taxpayers and Republicans on the side of special interests and Wall Street, trying out that pitch when he rushed to Boston in an effort to save Democrat Martha Coakley. It didn't work in just two days.

Said Menendez: "We knew we had a winning argument. We just got it too late in Massachusetts."

Despite Coakley's loss, Democrats urged their House and Senate candidates to embrace Obama's Wall Street vs. Main Street contrast to tap into voter anger.

Senate Democrats were examining their campaigns to ensure messages are calibrated to the volatile electorate and candidates are focused on jobs, the economy and spending. An edict went out from Menendez that candidates should aggressively define themselves as change agents and their Republican opponents as representing a step backward.

Republicans, for their part, reveled in Brown's victory. They have found what they believe is a surefire recipe for GOP candidates to win against a popular president — focus on opposition to his policies, downplay overtly political Republican ties, and embrace voter anger with populist appeals to ride an antiestablishment wave.

Group: More than 200 dead in Nigeria violence

JOS, Nigeria – Charred bodies with scorched hands reaching skyward lay in the streets and a mosque with blackened minarets smoldered Wednesday after several days of fighting between Christians and Muslims killed more than 200 people.

Sectarian violence in this central region of Nigeria has left thousands dead over the past decade, and the latest outbreak that began Sunday came despite the government's efforts to quell religious extremism in the West African country.

Jos was mostly calm Wednesday, though many terrified civilians kept indoors while soldiers patrolled the streets. The city is situated in Nigeria's "middle belt," where dozens of ethnic groups mingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south.

There are conflicting accounts about what unleashed the bloodshed. According to the state police commissioner, skirmishes began after Muslim youths set a Christian church ablaze, but Muslim leaders denied that. Other community leaders say it began with an argument over the rebuilding of a Muslim home in a predominantly Christian neighborhood that had been destroyed in November 2008.

Corinne Dufka, senior West Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch, said what caused the latest spark was beside the point. The deeper problem, she said, is the government's failure to address underlying conflict in the region.

After similar bouts of violence in the past, Nigerian authorities have "come up with analysis, but they don't respond properly with concrete measures and policies," Dufka said. "Tensions seethe, and months or years later you have another outbreak."

More than 13,500 Nigerians have died in sectarian violence in the last decade, and at least 2,500 people had been killed in Plateau state alone since 2001, according to Human Rights Watch. Dufka said no one has been held accountable, leading to a climate of impunity.

"It's not just the perpetrators who often murdered people in horrific ways who have not been held accountable, but also the political leaders and sometimes the religious leaders that foment violence, as well as the security forces who've used excessive force to respond to it."

In Jos, witnesses said rioters armed with knives, homemade firearms and stones had attacked passers-by and fought with security forces, leaving bodies in the street and stacked in mosques after fighting began Sunday.

Authorities imposed a 24-hour curfew, but on Wednesday people could been seen walking around the center of the city. When an army convoy passed, they stopped and raised their hands above their heads to show they were not a threat.

"We want the government to come and help us," said Abdullahi Ushman, who said he had seen rioters attacking people with firearms and bows and arrows.

Plateau State governor Jonah Jang said the violence was not provoked by a lack of opportunity in this rural farming community. He claimed many of the attackers were from Muslim-dominant northern Nigeria and from the nearby, predominantly Muslim nations of Niger and Chad.

"There are people masterminding this for their own selfish reasons," said Jang, who is Christian.

The Minister of Police Affairs, Ibrahim Yakubu Lame, issued a statement Tuesday blaming the violence on "some highly placed individuals in the society who were exploiting the ignorance and poverty of the people to cause mayhem in the name of religion."

The chief of Army staff, Lt. Gen. Abdulrahman Danbazau, confirmed accounts that some residents had been dragged out of their homes and shot by men dressed in what appeared to be army uniforms. He said five of the suspects arrested were dressed in khaki army-style uniforms and claimed to be police officers, though only one of the five men could provide police identification.

Jos is not alone in being shaken by religious violence. In July, an extremist group known as Boko Haram — translated as "Western education is sacrilege" — attacked police stations and other government buildings, starting days of violence that left more than 700 people dead in northern Nigeria. Another wave of violence started by infighting in another Islamic extremist group left at least 38 people dead in December.

Still, nearly all violence caused by extremist sects comes from intensely local politics or grievances — not any call for holy war against the West.

The government has sought to distance itself from any al-Qaida links after a 23-year-old Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound flight on Christmas Day. Nigerian officials have said that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was influenced far beyond the nation's borders while studying in London and in Yemen.

Nnamdi Obasi, a Nigeria-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the government's response to previous cycles of violence in Jos has been to deploy soldiers without resolving the underlying tensions.

"There is poverty and desperation. So you very easily have mobs of young people ready to take out frustrations on other groups, especially when they can identify them as an opposing group, be it Muslim or Christian," Obasi said.

Aftershock Drives More From Haitian Capital

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A frightening new aftershock Wednesday forced more earthquake survivors onto the capital's streets to live and sent others fleeing to the countryside, where aid was only beginning to reach wrecked towns.

A flotilla of rescue vessels, meanwhile, led by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort, converged on Port-au-Prince harbor to help fill gaps in still-lagging global efforts to deliver water, food and medical help. Hundreds of thousands of survivors of Haiti's cataclysmic earthquake were living in makeshift tents or on blankets and plastic sheets under the tropical sun.

The strongest tremor since the Jan. 12 quake struck at 6:03 a.m., just before sunrise while many still slept. From the teeming plaza near the collapsed presidential palace to a hillside tent city, the 5.9-magnitude aftershock lasted only seconds but panicked thousands of Haitians.

"Jesus!" they cried as rubble tumbled and dust rose anew from government buildings around the plaza. Parents gathered up children and ran.

Up in the hills, where U.S. troops were helping thousands of homeless, people bolted screaming from their tents. Jajoute Ricardo, 24, came running from his house, fearing its collapse.

"Nobody will go to their house now," he said, as he sought a tent of his own. "It is chaos, for real."

A slow vibration intensified into side-to-side shaking that lasted about eight seconds — compared to last week's far stronger initial quake that seemed to go on for 30 seconds and registered 7.0 magnitude.

Throngs again sought out small, ramshackle "tap-tap" buses to take them away from the city. On Port-au-Prince's beaches, more than 20,000 people looked for boats to carry them down the coast, the local Signal FM radio reported.

But the desperation may be deeper outside the capital, closer to last week's quake epicenter.

"We're waiting for food, for water, for anything," Emmanuel Doris-Cherie, 32, said in Leogane, 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince. Homeless in Leogane lived under sheets draped across tree branches, and the damaged hospital "lacks everything," Red Cross surgeon Hassan Nasreddine said.

Hundreds of Canadian soldiers and sailors were deploying to that town and to Jacmel on the south coast to support relief efforts, and the Haitian government sent a plane and an overland team to assess needs in Petit-Goave, a seaside town 10 miles (15 kilometers) farther west from Leogane that was the epicenter of Wednesday's aftershock.

The death toll was estimated at 200,000, according to Haitian government figures relayed by the European Commission, with 80,000 buried in mass graves. The commission raised its estimate of homeless to 2 million, from 1.5 million, and said 250,000 people needed urgent aid.

With search dogs and detection gear, U.S. and other rescue teams worked into Wednesday night in hopes of finding buried survivors. But hopes were dimming.

"It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and each day the needles are disappearing," said Steven Chin of the Los Angeles County rescue team.

One rescue was reported. The International Medical Corps (IMC) said it cared for a child found in quake ruins on Wednesday. The boy's uncle told doctors and a nurse with the Los Angeles-based organization that relatives pulled the 5-year-old from the wreckage of his home after searching for a week, said Margaret Aguirre, an IMC spokeswoman in Haiti.

Family members working to recover a body said they heard a voice saying, "I'm here, I'm here," Aguirre recounted.

The boy was dehydrated, drinking four bottles of water and two juices, but otherwise unharmed, she said.

Many badly injured Haitians still awaited lifesaving surgery.

"It is like working in a war situation," said Rosa Crestani of Doctors Without Borders at the Choscal Hospital. "We don't have any morphine to manage pain for our patients."

The damaged hospitals and emergency medical centers set up in Port-au-Prince needed surgeons, fuel for generators, oxygen and countless other kinds of medical supplies, aid groups said.

Dr. Evan Lyon, of the U.S.-based Partners in Health, messaged from the central University Hospital that the facility was within 24 hours of running out of key operating room supplies. Wednesday's aftershock was yet another blow: Surgical teams and patients were forced to evacuate temporarily.

Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division were providing security at the hospital. A helicopter landing pad was designated nearby for airlifting the most critical patients to the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort.

The great white ship, 894 feet (272 meters) long, with a medical staff of 550, was anchored in Port-au-Prince harbor and had taken aboard its first two surgical patients by helicopter late Tuesday even as it was steaming in.

It joined the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and other U.S. warships offshore, along with the French landing craft Francis Garnier, which carried a medical team, hundreds of tents and other aid.

The Garnier offloaded pallets of bottled water and prepared meals at the city's quake-damaged port, while U.S. Army divers surveyed the soundness of the main pier, where trucks drove only on the edges because of damage down its center.

The seaborne rescue fleet will soon be reinforced by the Spanish ship Castilla, with 50 doctors and 450 troops, and by three other U.S.-based Navy vessels diverted from a scheduled Middle East mission. Canadian warships were already in Haitian waters, and an Italian aircraft carrier, the Cavour, also will join the flotilla with medical teams and engineers.

U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes said at U.N. headquarters in New York that it's believed that 3 million people are affected, with 2 million of those needing food for at least six months.

Between the U.N. World Food Program and deliveries by the Red Cross and other private aid groups, about a half-million Haitians should have been reached with "reasonable quantities of food," he said. "That's still very far short of what's needed."

At the hillside tent camp, set up on a golf course where an 82nd Airborne unit has its base, the lines of hungry and thirsty stretched downhill and out of sight as paratroopers handed out bottled water and ready-to-eat meals as fast as helicopters brought them in.

In one sign of normalcy, women carried baskets of cauliflower, sweet potatoes and sugar cane into the city from farms in the hills. Some food and water was on sale in Port-au-Prince's markets, but prices had skyrocketed.

"We need money, man. I don't have enough to buy anything," said Ricardo, the newly homeless man who was seeking work and food, as well as a tent, at the golf course encampment.

Looking over the food lines there, 82nd Airborne Capt. John Hartsock said, "This is the first time I've seen it this orderly."

President Rene Preval stressed the relative quiet prevailing over much of Port-au-Prince. People understand, he told French radio, "it is through calmness (and) an even more organized solidarity that we're going to get out of this."

Concerns still persisted that looting and violence that flared up in pockets in recent days could spread. In downtown Port-au-Prince on Wednesday, dozens of men, women and children clambered over the rubble of a department store, hauling off clocks, lamps, towels, even women's hair extensions. Police stood nearby, not intervening.

The European Commission's report described the security situation as "deteriorating."

U.S. troops — some 11,500 soldiers, Marines and sailors onshore and offshore as of Wednesday and expected to total 16,000 by the weekend — were seen slowly ratcheting up control over parts of the city. Marine reinforcements were to help escort aid deliveries. One unescorted truck was seen screeching off Wednesday when a crowd grew unruly as its tents were being distributed.

The U.N. was adding 2,000 peacekeepers to the 7,000 already in Haiti, and 1,500 more police to the 2,100-member international force. That plan suffered a setback when Haiti — with historically tense relations with the neighboring Dominican Republic — rejected a Dominican offer of an 800-strong battalion, according to a Western diplomat at the U.N., speaking on condition of anonymity in the absence of a public announcement.

Other small signs of normalcy rippled over Port-au-Prince: Street vendors had found flowers to sell to those wishing to honor their dead. One or two money transfer agencies reopened to receive wired money from Haitians abroad. Officials said banks would open later this week.

But Wednesday's aftershock, the stench of the lingering dead, and the tears and upstretched hands of helpless Haitians made clear that the country's tragedy will continue for months and years as this poor land counts and remembers its losses.

After the tremor's dust settled Wednesday, street merchant Marie-Jose Decosse walked past the partly collapsed St. Francois de Salles Hospital in Carrefour Feuille, one of the worst-hit sections of town. She raised her arms to the sky, and spoke for millions.

"Lord have mercy, for we are sinners!" she shouted. "Please have mercy on Haiti."

Associated Press writers contributing to this report included Alfred de Montesquiou, Tamara Lush, Kevin Maurer, Michelle Faul and Bill Gorman in Haiti; Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations; Emma Vandore and Elaine Ganley in Paris, and Aoife White in Brussels.