PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Trinidad-born United Kingdom-based writer, Monique Roffey, whose work titled “Archipelago” based on the 2008 floods here, has won the US$10,000 2013 One Caribbean Media (OCM) Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. St. Lucian poet, Kendel Hippolyte won ...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - THE recent decision by the South Africa Government to confer on Guyana's late President Forbes Burnham its highest national honour designated for outstanding foreign citizens- — the Oliver Tambo Award (gold) — has drawn strong criticisms from two well-known Jamaic...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Jamaica's former Prime Minister PJ Patterson receiving South Africa's highest award presented to non-nationals, the Order of the Companions of OR Tambo, from President Jacob Zuma at the annual Freedom Day ceremony in Pretoria on Saturday. The Order, instituted on December...

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC - Political activist and social commentator Jomo Thomas has tendered his resignation from the National Heroes Selection Committee in protest against a speech delivered on national; heroes by Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves. “I am convinced that the Prime Minister...

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 w...

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - At Wednesday’s consultation with religious bodies on the 2012 draft national policy on gender and development, Leela Ramdeen, chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice, raised a curious argument regarding the definition of gender in the document. After ackno...

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The European Union is providing J$2.5 billion (One Jamaica dollar = US$0.01 cents) in grant funding to boost the delivery of maternal and paediatric health care in public health institutions in Jamaica. Health Minister Dr. Fenton Ferguson said the allocation is expecte...

ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Computer technology expert Yves Ephraim has pointed to growing incidents of cyber attacks in the country as a new report points to its damaging effects on small businesses in particular. Ephraim, managing director of Pegasus Technologies, told OBSERVER Media that in ...

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - WITH the private sector backing the recently announced tourism initiatives it is going to be important to gauge whether the measures will in fact translate into an improvement in the island’s tourism industry. Coming off an eight per cent to nine per cent decline in lon...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, CMC – Haiti has launched an ambitious vaccination campaign against tetanus and the rotavirus that causes severe, fatal diarrhea in children under the age of 5. The campaign comes a year after the Michel Martelly administration launched a similar campaign against several ...