Regional News

(Barbados Nation) BARBADOS’ largest drinks company could be on the verge of falling totally into foreign hands.

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia will shift its focus in the fight against illegal drugs by funding the planting of legal crops, President Juan Manuel Santos said yesterday as the government halts aerial fumigation in one of the world’s top cocaine producers.

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil’s cash-strapped government is in talks with lawmakers over legalizing gambling to increase revenues as Congress balks at President Dilma Rousseff’s efforts to overcome a budget deficit by raising other taxes.

(Jamaica Gleaner) British Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to visit Jamaica next week where he will address members of the legislature.

(Trinidad Guardian) What if the Elections and Boundaries Commission was wrong in its decision to extend polling by one hour in Trinidad during the September 7 general elections.

(Jamaica Gleaner) – Caribbean literary legend and Jamaica-born novelist Anthony Winkler has died.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A massive corruption and political kickback scheme at Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras started with former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s chief of staff, a lead prosecutor said yesterday.

HAVANA (Reuters) – The popes change, but the images are similar: plain-clothed Cuban security agents wrestling with dissidents to prevent them delivering messages to the pontiff.

(Trinidad Guardian) Another double murder and another young couple killed by the gun.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Pope Francis met Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro yesterday hours after warning Cubans to beware the dangers of ideology and the lure of selfishness as their country enters a new era of closer ties with the United States.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Pope Francis told former Cold War foes Cuba and the United States yesterday to set an example for the world by deepening the recent rapprochement that he helped broker.

(Barbados Nation) – Joseph Niles the patriarch of gospel music in Barbados, according to reports, died last night after ailing for a number of years.

ANSE-a-PITRE, Haiti (Reuters) – Every morning, Gustavo Adolfo wakes up in a migrant shelter in Haiti, treks across a field of burnt brush where men make charcoal, and crosses a river into the Dominican Republic, a country he left in fear three months ago.

(Trinidad Guardian) Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi has fired almost the entire legal team hired to represent the State in the extradition case of corruption accused former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner.

CARACAS (Reuters) – A Venezuelan fighter jet crashed near the Colombian border after an “illicit aircraft” likely linked to drug trafficking entered its airspace, the government said yesterday.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazil will boost its Internet communications to reduce dependence on US hubs and be able to host global data centers for heavy users like YouTube and Netflix, Jorge Bittar, head of state-run telecoms company Telebras, said in an interview.

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigerian security services said they had recovered $111,000 in cash, wrapped up and swallowed by a member of a suspected smuggling ring.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House defended its new regulations opening up business activity with Cuba yesterday as advancing US interests in the region and empowering the Cuban people, something it said five decades of economic embargo failed to do.

A couple was shot dead around 9 pm last night in Tacarigua, on the Eastern Main Road near Dinsley Junction.

WASHINGTON/HAVANA (Reuters) – The White House is drafting sweeping regulations to further weaken the US trade embargo on Cuba that would ease restrictions on US companies and make it easier for Americans to travel there, US government sources said yesterday.