Haiti sees little hope one year afterward

An earthquake's anniversary finds a nation lying in ruins

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - As Haitians mark the anniversary on Wednesday of the earthquake that flattened much of the capital Port-au-Prince, hopes that a better nation could rise from the rubble have given way to a crushing sense of bitterness and despair.

Reconstruction work has barely begun despite billions of dollars in pledged aid, profiteering by Haiti's tiny and notoriously corrupt elite has reached epic proportions, and a national cholera epidemic has added to the misery of a country where the quake killed about 250,000 people and left more than a million homeless.