Regional News

(Trinidad Guardian) Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is expected to arrive in T&T tomorrow to hold high-level bilateral talks with Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine. The

(Barbados Nation) CASTRIES – Saint Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr Kenny D.

MIAMI, (Reuters) – Wildrick Guerrier, a refugee from the devastation of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, died in a Haitian jail in 2011, 10 days after the United States revoked his temporary permission to stay in the country and deported him and 26 other men.

LONDON, (Reuters) – A new criminal offence should be introduced to clamp down on tax evasion, a senior figure in Britain’s finance ministry said yesterday in the wake of a scandal surrounding HSBC.

(Trinidad Express) A man in prison custody is now assisting police with details into the murder of Senior Counsel Dana Seetahal.

CARACAS (Reuters) – The mayor of Vene-zuela’s capital Caracas will fight charges of plotting violence against the socialist government, his lawyer said yesterday, denouncing the accusations as baseless.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba has freed Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian after more than three years in jail, his company said yesterday, resolving a case that had strained Cuban-Canadian relations and alarmed foreign investors.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti’s president and prime minister attended a rare official funeral yesterday for the victims of a Carnival stampede that killed 17 people earlier this week, accompanying relatives of the dead and hundreds of other mourners at the open air ceremony on a main city avenue.

(De Ware Tijd) Zanderij – Now that the Kaloti Mint House has become operational, Suriname has secured a leading role in the gold industry in the region.

(Jamaica Observer) THE University of Technology Jamaica, (UTech) on Monday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ganja Labs, USA — a subsidiary of Ganja Inc — to collaborate on research in science, technology and best practices in the cultivation of medicinal marijuana under controlled and secure conditions.

SAO PAULO, (Reuters) – Some of the companies caught up in a massive corruption scandal at state-run oil firm Petrobras are quietly pressing Brazil’s government and judiciary to strike a “grand bargain” to minimize the legal fallout, five sources with knowledge of the talks say.

HAVANA, (Reuters) – Nine members of the U.S. House of Representatives met Cuban Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel yesterday, marking the first time Cuba’s heir apparent to power has received an American delegation.

(Jamaica Gleaner) A senior official at the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) is among more than 70 public-sector employees expected to be hauled before the court in a fresh crackdown by the Corruption Prevention Commission (CPC) on public servants accused ignoring their responsibility to file statutory declarations on time.

LIMA, (Reuters) – Two Peruvian naval officers are on trial on charges that they spied for Chile, Peru’s defense minister said yesterday, chilling relations between the two Andean countries that had been improving diplomatic ties.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuelan security officials yesterday arrested Caracas metropolitan mayor Antonio Ledezma, an opposition leader and fierce critic of President Nicolas Maduro, witnesses told local media.

(Jamaica Gleaner) Businessman Cornelius Robinson has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 14-year-old Westmoreland schoolgirl Sontoya Campbell.

(Jamaica Observer) Losing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) as its final court could have a detrimental effect on Jamaica’s attempts to attract increased foreign direct investment (FDI), according to Ismail Erturk, an expert in corporate and international finance and a senior lecturer at Manchester Business School (MBS) in Britain.

(Barbados Nation) Barba-dos is not doing enough to fix its fiscal problems, according to the latest assessment from the Carib-bean Development Bank (CDB).

(Barbados Nation) Minister of Industry and Commerce Donville Inniss is “deeply troubled” there’s no Barbadian on the bench of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

In a day of high drama, St. Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Denzil Douglas was voted out of office with his former minister Timothy Harris leading an opposition coalition to victory.