Regional News

MOSUL, Iraq, (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi arrived in Mosul on Sunday and congratulated the armed forces for their “victory” over Islamic State after nearly nine months of urban warfare, bringing an end to jihadist rule in the city.

(Trinidad Guardian) Eight years after the Clico collapse, shareholders in Barbados, St Vincent and Grenada are now calling on the T&T Government to bail them out of the debacle.

CARACAS (Reuters) – With many Venezuelans angry at the government and planning to sit out a July 30 vote for a new superbody assembly, President Nicolas Maduro has ordered all state workers to take part, seeking to avoid an embarrassingly low turnout.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Residents in Brazil’s Amazon region yesterday blocked a key way for the transport of Brazilian grains to northern ports in a protest over increased protections for the rainforest, grains industry groups said yesterday.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Congressional support for Brazilian President Michel Temer is weakening, lawmakers said yesterday, days before the lower house is expected to vote on whether he should stand trial on a corruption charge.

(Trinidad Guardian) President Anthony Carmona says it is only talk he is hearing after people are murdered in T&T.

TEPIC, Mexico (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Extreme violence in Central America is forcing aid agencies to use conflict-zone tactics to reach people most at risk in gang-plagued nations such as El Salvador and Honduras, where homicide levels are comparable to those in war, experts say.

ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) – A brutal fight broke out in a prison in the Mexican Pacific resort of Acapulco on Thursday, leaving at least 28 inmates dead in one of the worst outbreaks of violence in the country’s troubled penal system in recent years.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Pipe-wielding government supporters burst into  Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress yesterday, witnesses said, attacking and besieging lawmakers in the latest flare-up of violence during a political crisis.

(Trinidad Express) Police have charged Rayad Mohammed, the man who wrote a Facebook post directed at Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley, his wife and daughter.

(Trinidad Express) Former prime minister Basdeo Panday believes that there is a deep racial divide in the country that is going to get worse and trigger a revolution.

(Trinidad Express) The mother arrested after a video  was posted on social media showing a woman abusing an infant boy, appeared in court on Tuesday.

(Trinidad Express) There is a $100 million illegal gun trade in this country and some of the drugs and guns are being smuggled in via jet skis and possibly through 40 per cent of containers at the ports that are given a “green light” without any checks.

CARACAS (Reuters) – President Nicolas Maduro’s foes announced plans yesterday for an unofficial referendum to let Venezuelans have their say on his plan to rewrite the constitution and the opposition’s alternative push for an election to replace him.

The Hague (Reuters) – Costa Rica asked the highest UN court yesterday to establish its maritime boundaries with Nicaragua once and for all to end repeated border disputes with its Central American neighbour.

(Reuters) – Brazilian police yesterday arrested former minister Geddel Vieira Lima as part of an investigation into loans that state bank Caixa Econômica Federal extended to meatpacking, finance, toll road and real estate companies between 2011 and 2013, the prosecutor-general’s office said.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina’s government has banned Brazilian builder Odebrecht SA from bidding on public works projects for 12 months, a spokesman for the interior ministry said yesterday.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) – Haiti could stem its seven-year-long cholera epidemic by the end of 2018 as the number of reported cases has dropped sharply, government and United Nations officials said.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba is reviving a network of state-run “love motels” in Havana where couples can rent rooms by the hour as the communist government seeks to “diversify options for love,” the official trade union weekly Trabajadores said yesterday.

The Hague, (Reuters) – Costa Rica asked the highest U.N. court today to establish its maritime boundaries with Nicaragua once and for all to end repeated border disputes with its Central American neighbour.