Regional News

CARACAS/ SAN CRISTOBAL (Reuters) – At least a dozen protesters arrested in Venezuela remained in jail yesterday and masked assailants burned a bus amid scattered unrest over swelling lines for basic goods, activists said.

WASHINGTON/HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba has released all 53 prisoners it had promised to free, senior US officials said, a major step toward détente with Washington.

(iWitness News, SVG) – At least seven persons, mainly students, died after a minibus plunged into the sea in Rockguter, an area between Owia and Fancy on the northeastern tip of St Vincent yesterday morning.

(Trinidad Express) On man was shot dead and another injured yesterday while transporting pan equipment from the Laventille home of ten-time Panorama champions Witco Desperadoes to the band’s new safe haven, located at Queen’s Park East, Port of Spain.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The man poised to become Haiti’s next prime minister has vowed to build trust between opposition groups and the government to resolve a political crisis over long-delayed elections.

(Trinidad Express) The University of the West Indies (The UWI) is “intellectually bankrupt”, Member of Parliament for Diego Martin North East Colm Imbert has said.

ROME, (Reuters) – – Pope Francis has called for more regulation of financial markets and rejected suggestions that his criticisms of unbridled capitalism smack of Marxism.

(Barbados Nation) Ninety Nigerian students are to be quarantined after one of them tested positive for scabies, a contagious skin infection.

(Trinidad Express) – The final moments of 19-year-old Shabana Mohammed were spent gasping for air, face down on the ground, after she had been violently strangled.

(Barbados Nation) – Low oil prices and an improving world economy could have the airline industry smiling all the way to the bank.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Five years after a massive earthquake rocked Haiti, killing more than 200,000 people and reducing homes to rubble, few survivors would say they were traumatised or suffering depression as a result of the disaster.

(Trinidad Guardian) Police sergeant Dane Sorzano who appeared in the Siparia Magistrates Court yesterday on rape charges was placed in the holding cell with other prisoners after the magistrate expressed concern that he was being shown favourable treatment.

(Trinidad Express) The final moments of 19-year-old Shabana Mohammed were spent gasping for air, face down on the ground, after she had been violently strangled.

(Trinidad Express) A TT$7.4 billion shortfall is what Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Thursday night identified as a result of falling oil prices.

On the fifth anniversary of the earthquake that killed an estimated 217,000 Haitians, the International Organisation for migration (IOM) has released its latest Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), which shows that although 94 per cent of the internally displaced persons have left camps and other temporary sites, almost 80,000 remain displaced.

(Trinidad Express) A TT$7.4 billion shortfall is what Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar last night identified as a result of falling oil prices.

St. Kitts and Nevis is continuing its drive towards becoming the world’s first sustainable island state with the start of construction of a second solar farm.

(Jamaica Observer) Highly skilled and qualified Jamaicans are being urged to take advantage of Canada’s new Express Entry immigration management system which was launched at the start of the year and aims to attract 181,000 new economic immigrants.

(Jamaica Gleaner) Despite a series of interventions by local authorities, Jamaicans, including students, applying for visas to enter the United Kingdom are likely to be barred by a Home Office visa clampdown in the United Kingdom.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – A White House official yesterday denied that the Cuban government was resisting freeing some of the 53 people listed for release as part of a thaw in U.S.-Cuba