(Trinidad Express) President of the Dominican Republic Danilo Medina has appealed to regional leaders to allow his country to join Caricom. According to a release from the Office of the Prime Minister, Medina addressed 15 Caricom leaders, including Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, during a retreat at Petrotrin Staff Club, Pointe-a-Pierre, yesterday. Medina said that since 1989, the Dominican Republic has been trying to gain membership status in Caricom.

PANAMA CITY, Panama, CMC – The Caribbean Confederation of Credit Unions (CCCU) has ended a four-day international conference here calling on regional governments to regard the co-operative movement as the new engine of growth in light of the ongoing global economic and financial crisis.
Newly elected CCCU president, Aaron Moses of Grenada, told the closing ceremony on Tuesday night that Caribbean governments, who have in the past placed much emphasis on the private sector as the main engine of socio-economic growth, should begin to re-think that strategy.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, CMC – The United States Coast Guard along with the Royal Netherlands Navy has seized 1,517 pounds of cocaine, with a street value of about US$24 million, from a go-fast vessel in the Caribbean Sea.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Coast Guard said as a result, three smugglers from the Dominican Republic have been detained.
The sea-interdiction stemmed from an “international multi-agency law enforcement effort” in support of Operation Unified Resolve, Operation Caribbean Guard and the Caribbean Corridor Strike Force.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - CHINA’S PRESIDENT Xi Jinping last week embarked on a four-nation tour of the Caribbean and Americas involving Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica, Mexico and the United States of America. The trip had more than symbolic significance. Trinidad and Tobago, with its vast oil and gas resources, is an important cooperation partner of China in the Anglophone Caribbean, and the two countries have expanded political, economic, trade and cultural cooperation over recent years.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Trinidad and Tobago is already beginning to put some $833 million of the US$3 billion in concessional loans from China to use. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced yesterday this country will be able to immediately access $833 million of these funds to accelerate the development of Business/Commercial and Industrial Parks throughout Trinidad and Tobago. “We will be building seven such parks on 592.1 acres of land representing an investment of $833 million. The leasable space on the estates would be 355.7 acres.