PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Opposition politicians, trade unionists and non-government organisations have accused the Kamla Persad Bissessar government of seeking to impose an undeclared state of emergency in Trinidad and Tobago as it battles to deal with the escalating crime situation in the twin island republic.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - THE revolutionary PetroCaribe initiative that allowed signatory nations to benefit from subisdised Venezuelan fuel and the role its architect, Hugo Chavez, the late President of Venezuela, played as a patron in Latin American and Caribbean integration were among the highlights of an afternoon of reflection on Monday, six days after his death.
St. John’s Antigua- Leader of the Opposition Gaston Browne is warning government could be forced to renew its arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as it faces increased difficulty meeting financial obligations. “Antigua & Barbuda will remain in an IMF programme for at least another three years because the government is not in a position to pay them,” Browne said. “Clearly the government is not in a position to pay. So what the IMF is going to do is that they are going to roll us over into a next IMF programme.”
WASHINGTON, CMC – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Tuesday said that St. Lucia has weathered the difficult post-crisis environment, becoming the largest economy in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU).
The ECCU comprises Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Former Jamaican Prime Minister P J Patterson has blasted the decision by the United Nations to invoke "legal immunity" for rejecting compensation claims by some 5,000 Haitian victims of cholera.
"It is simply appalling, a most reprehensible behaviour... for the UN to claim such immunity," Patterson told the Jamaica Observer in a telephone interview.
"The moreso when scientific evidence substantates that the cholera epidemic was originally introduced in Haiti at the time by peace-keeping soldiers (from Nepal) under UN command," Patterson continued.
PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, CMC – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says a lack of funds and supplies has crippled cholera treatment programmes in Haiti, leading to unnecessary deaths and increasing the risk of greater outbreaks during the upcoming rainy season.
In recent evaluations of public health facilities in four Haitian departments—Artibonite, Nippes, Southeast, and North—MSF said it found that the quality of cholera treatment declined significantly in the last year due to funding shortfalls.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - AS the saying goes, in party politics “all things are possible”—including, of course, success and defeat at free and fair elections and, by extension, related court rulings. Within the past two days, two opposition parties—one in Dominica, the other in Antigua and Barbuda—had to contend with this reality based on separate court decisions.