ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – The Antigua and Barbuda government says it is preparing to deal with a motion filed by the son of the owner of a company based here who is asking the US courts to reconsider a previous ruling that dismissed a US$750,000 breach of contract lawsuit against the government.

WASHINGTON, CMC – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Tuesday said that St. Lucia has weathered the difficult post-crisis environment, becoming the largest economy in the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU).
The ECCU comprises Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Former Jamaican Prime Minister P J Patterson has blasted the decision by the United Nations to invoke "legal immunity" for rejecting compensation claims by some 5,000 Haitian victims of cholera.
"It is simply appalling, a most reprehensible behaviour... for the UN to claim such immunity," Patterson told the Jamaica Observer in a telephone interview.
"The moreso when scientific evidence substantates that the cholera epidemic was originally introduced in Haiti at the time by peace-keeping soldiers (from Nepal) under UN command," Patterson continued.

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, CMC – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) says a lack of funds and supplies has crippled cholera treatment programmes in Haiti, leading to unnecessary deaths and increasing the risk of greater outbreaks during the upcoming rainy season.
In recent evaluations of public health facilities in four Haitian departments—Artibonite, Nippes, Southeast, and North—MSF said it found that the quality of cholera treatment declined significantly in the last year due to funding shortfalls.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - AS the saying goes, in party politics “all things are possible”—including, of course, success and defeat at free and fair elections and, by extension, related court rulings. Within the past two days, two opposition parties—one in Dominica, the other in Antigua and Barbuda—had to contend with this reality based on separate court decisions.

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – The main opposition United Workers Party (UWP) has expressed disappointment at the ruling handed down by the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court dismissing an election petition filed by filed by the defeated party candidates challenging the nomination of Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit and his Education Minister Petter Saint Jean to contest the 2009 general election.

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has hinted at an early general election and has already told supporters that he intends to follow the record set by Grenada’s ruling New National Party (NNP) of a clean sweep of the seats in the upcoming poll.

What does Hugo Chávez leave to the Venezuelan people? Three legacies, all of which are poisoned_ a harebrained way to govern, the mindless 21st-Century socialism, and a neopopulist model based on welfare-patronage.

CARACAS, Venezuela — The United States said Monday that it had expelled two Venezuelan diplomats in response to the ouster last week of two American military attachés by Venezuela.
“Around the world, when our people are thrown out unjustly, we’re going to take reciprocal action,” Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said at a news conference. “And we need to do that to protect our own people.”

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC - Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is proposing that a facility in St. Vincent and the Grenadines be named in honour of former Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, who died of cancer last week.
“I believe that it would be fitting for us, at some time, to have a facility, whether it be a school or some other public building or facility, named after President Chavez,” Gonsalves told Parliament.