BBC Caribbean News in Brief

Dominican leader invited to Caricom meeting

Foreign ministry sources in the Dominican Republic say President Leonel Fernandez has been invited to attend this week’s Caricom summit in Georgetown.

Heads of government will consider the Dominican application to join Caricom.
Some member nations are known to be uneasy about admitting the Caribbean’s second largest nation.

OAS condemns Honduran coup

The Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States has condemned the coup d’Etat in Honduras.
The country’s Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove leftist president Manuel Zelaya, who was trying to change the constitution to extend his presidency.

An emergency meeting of the OAS permanent council, comprising ambassadors, met within hours of the Sunday’s ouster and issued a statement calling for Mr Zeleya’s return to office.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, has condemned the coup in Honduras as has Cuba, Venezuela and the United States.

Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez warned that he’d take military action if anyone harmed his ambassador in Tegucigalpa.

Warning over
monkey farm

Residents of a Puerto Rican town are vowing to fight a planned monkey-breeding facility for fear that the animals will escape and overrun their community.

The facility, which will supply monkeys to pharmaceutical companies for research, was cleared for construction in Guayama last week.

Hundreds of residents of the area are said signing a petition asking the governor of the US territory to halt the project.
The project organisers, a Mauritius-based company, insist that the probability of a monkey escaping is “zero”.