Regional News

(Trinidad Express) Bad aviation fuel from State-owned National Petroleum (NP) shut down the domestic airbridge on Tuesday afternoon, leaving passengers stranded.

Tourism campaign planned The Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association says it is planning a campaign to highlight the importance of tourism to island economies.

CARACAS (Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez is threatening to close Venezuela’s top anti-government television station in his latest push to weaken the opposition and build a socialist state in South America’s top oil exporter.

BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil is trying to forge an  alliance with African and South American countries to defend  seabed mining rights and strategic shipping lanes in the South  Atlantic, its defence minister said yesterday. 

(Jamaica Observer) The global economic downturn is hitting home with remittance inflows for the January to March period declining by 15 per cent to US$414.6 million compared to the corresponding period in 2008, the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) revealed in a report on Monday.

BOGOTA, (Reuters) – Colombian senators yesterday  approved a proposed referendum on whether President Alvaro  Uribe can run for re-election in 2010, taking the popular  conservative one step closer to an unprecedented third term.  

(Barbados Nation) The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) will continue to invest in Barbados, and Government is about to become a big client.

  Douglas stays on Prime Minister Denzil Douglas has been re-elected for a 21st consecutive year as leader of the governing Labour Party in St Kitts and Nevis.

(Jamaica Observer) – A number of clergymen here have fallen prey to fraudsters – some of them operating from right here on the island – who have hacked into their e-mail accounts and sought to swindle money from contacts listed in their address books.

MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippines, which has more gun-related deaths than any other country in Asia relative to its size, needs tougher gun control laws as the number of illegal weapons has topped one million, a police general said yesterday.

-Bodies dumped in river (TRINIDAD EXPRESS) IN A SCENE that bore resemblance to that of a mafia movie, two construction workers were found dead in the Felicity River.

HAVANA, (Reuters) – The United States and Cuba  offered a glimmer of hope last month that they might be ready  to end years of hostility, but neither side has moved much  since then to widen that window of opportunity.

(Jamaica Gleaner) The pain of 47-year-old Brigitte Smith is poignant as she revealed to The Sunday Gleaner how her now 72-year-old father allegedly raped her from as early as age four.

(BBC) The man spearheading a closer union of the Eastern Caribbean has taken another dig at what might be regarded as its parent.

(Jamaica Observer) The one-day trip to Cuba last Thursday that ended in a swirl of controversy involving former prime minister P J Patterson was a proactive attempt by telecoms giant Digicel to secure a phone service carrier contract between Jamaica and Cuba, the Sunday Observer has learnt.

Curacao votes to accept Dutch conditions for ‘country status’ Voters in Curacao have chosen to accept the conditions under which the island will form a new constitutional relationship with Holland.

(Trinidad Express) President George Maxwell Richards is not resigning. He will not subject the country to any constitutional crisis by creating a vacuum in the Office of the President, as is being called for by some persons (who have been calling for his resignation).

(Trinidad Express) Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira says Clico is now back on its feet following government’s intervention to save the cash-strapped subsidiary of the CL Financial Group.

GUATEMALA CITY, (Reuters) – Guatemala’s president  said yesterday powerful enemies are behind a scandal about  claims he ordered the murder of a prominent lawyer, as his  government cracked down on military abuses and drug gangs.

(Trinidad Express)In a bid to find out what went wrong at the country’s largest conglomerate, the Central Bank has quietly retained the services of ace forensic investigator Robert Lindquist to sift through the tangled records of financially troubled insurance giant, Clico, to determine whether it was a case of bad judgment or corporate malfeasance.