WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Twenty of the world’s most troubled countries have made progress in efforts that range from reducing poverty to improving the education of girls and cutting down on the deaths of women in childbirth, the World Bank said yesterday. The improvement is a big shift from just a few years ago for the 20 fragile and conflict-hit states.
BOSTON – There is no right way to react to a terrorist attack. Oklahoma City rebuilt after Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 truck bomb attack on the federal government.
Atlanta moved on following anti-abortion activist Eric Rudolph’s 1996 bombing of the Olympics. New York displayed staggering resiliency after the September 11 attacks. Boston, though, may have set a new standard.
WASHINGTON, CMC - Caribbean nationals who have been deported from the United States are returning illegally to the country, according to a report released by an immigration think tank.
Immigration Policy Center (IPC) said that new figures show that the number of United States federal prosecution cases against previously deported immigrants from the Caribbean and other developing countries is increasing nationwide.
It said that criminal prosecutions for illegal re-entry to the US increased from 7,900 in fiscal year 2000 to 35,800 in fiscal year 2010.
BARCELONA, Spain, CMC - Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries Monday appealed for continued international financial assistance to deal with the HIV-AIDS epidemic.
In an addressing commemorating the 10th anniversary of the XIV AIDS Conference here, St. Kitts-Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas, who has responsibility for health issues within the 15-member CARICOM grouping, said a decade after signing an accord with six pharmaceutical companies in Barcelona, “we can truly and optimistically pronounce the aspirational goal to achieve an AIDS-free generation”.
WASHINGTON, CMC - A new report released here says remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) showed a slight increase in 2012 compared to the previous year.
The report, titled “Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean in 2012: Differing Behavior among Sub-regions,” was released by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). It said the region received a total of US$61.3 billion in remittances last year.
This amount represents a year-on-year increase of US$300 million, or 0.6 per cent increase from 2011.
It is to be hoped that the visit last week to Canada of Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, who in July will become the chair of Caricom, an association of 15 Caribbean nation-states, will help move forward Canada’s free-trade negotiations with Caricom. Canada’s merchandise trade with the Caricom countries is not huge, but the connections in banking, energy, immigration and culture are strong.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria's prime minister escaped an assassination attempt Monday when a bomb went off near his convoy in Damascus, state media reported, the latest attack targeting a top official in President Bashar Assad's regime.
Prime Minister Wael al-Halqi was unhurt in the bombing in the capital's western neighborhood of Mazzeh, state TV said. The TV showed footage of heavily damaged cars and debris in the area of the blast as firefighters fought to extinguish a large blaze caused by the explosion.
Cuba and Venezuela have signed accords for 51 joint projects worth $2 billion US dollars in Havana, local media reported Sunday. At the close of 13th Cuba-Venezuela Intergovernmental Meeting Saturday night, Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the deals for projects in such areas as education, health, sports, culture, food production, construction, transport, communications, energy and support of social missions.
ABOARD THE HIGHSPEED VESSEL SWIFT (AP) — Drug smugglers who race across the Caribbean in speedboats will typically jettison their cargo when spotted by surveillance aircraft, hoping any chance of prosecuting them will vanish with the drugs sinking to the bottom of the sea. That may be a less winning tactic in the future. The US Navy last Friday began testing two new aerial tools, borrowed from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, that officials say will make it easier to detect, track and videotape drug smugglers in action.
WASHINGTON, CMC – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says the Caribbean and other low-income countries are among the fastest-growing economies in the world, but warn that many remain vulnerable to shocks and spillovers from advanced and emerging markets.
“Low-income countries have worked to develop institutional capacity and build fiscal buffers that they were able to use during the crisis, and now, all the hard work has paid off,” said IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu told an IMF seminar.