On Jan. 1, 1804, Haiti declared its independence from French colonialism. To celebrate, Haitians eat soup joumou to honor their culture and freedom.

The US Women’s National team rode a pair of Abby Wambach goals to a dominant win over Haiti, qualifying them for the knockout round of the CONCACAF Women’s Championship.

It looks like J. Freedom du Lac’s Alternating Year Law regarding Pulitzer Prizes for the Washington Post will hold: the newspaper pulled in only one Pulitzer this year — the award for Breaking News Photography went to Carol Guzy, Nikki Kahn and Ricky Carioti for their work in Haiti after the earthquake which devastated that nation. Congratulations to the trio — Guzy, Kahn and Carioti truly produced some incredibly relentless, moving work.

The District Department of Transportation issued a traffic alert for the Haiti memorial mass scheduled for 1:30 p.m. today at Sacred Heart Church, located at 16th Street and Park Road in NW. DDOT predicts large crowds and traffic on 16th Street between Irving and Newton Streets and on Park Road between 14th and 17th Streets. There is a small irony in a Haiti memorial service prompting severe traffic, since traffic has been such a severe…

Wale headlined a bill stacked with local hip-hop artists at the 9:30 Club on Monday night, as D.C.’s music community staged a benefit concert in support of earthquake relief efforts in Haiti. Tabi Bonney, Paula Campbell, D.C. Don Juan, Phil Adé, and a host of other acts also performed at the event, for which the 9:30 Club donated the use of its facilities — club employees even donated their wages for the evening. All proceeds…

Photo by Mr Stucke Felix Salmon was the first to throw a wet towel on the feelings of philanthropy and common cause that have led so many Americans to donate to a number of charities supporting emergency aid for beleaguered Haiti. For Reuters, Salmon writes: [R]ight now there’s very little that can be done with the money. There are myriad bottlenecks and obstacles involved in getting help to the Haitians who need it, but…

Silver Spring resident Rick Santos can count himself among the fortunate humanitarian aid workers who survived what sounds like a harrowing ordeal. The Washington Post reports that Santos spent 50 hours trapped in a tiny space under the rubble of the Montana Hotel in Port-au-Prince, returning Saturday after he was rescued by French firefighters. Santos, president of IMA World Health, says he met a Fairfax County responder, some of whom are working with French rescuers…

There are a lot of Haitian relief fundraising events around town this weekend (our friends at We Love DC already put together a helpful list of many of them), but we wanted to highlight the Embassy of Haiti in Washington’s call for donations of survival kit items. The National Organization for the Advancement of Haitians will be collecting donations this Sunday, Jan. 17 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at the embassy, located at…