UNITED NATIONS The United Nations has rejected a claim for compensation filed on behalf of 5,000 Haitian victims of a cholera outbreak, saying the world body is protected by immunity. The claim, filed in 2011, sought millions of dollars from the United Nations, saying its peacekeepers brought the deadly disease to Haiti. The water-borne disease had not been documented in Haiti for decades when it appeared several months after the January 2010 earthquake that left thousands of people homeless and living in makeshift camps. Newly arrived U.N.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A UN envoy in Haiti said last week that the Caribbean nation is "not yet" ready for foreign investment. The remarks by UN Acting Special Representative Nigel Fisher challenged a mantra often championed by Haitian President Michel Martelly's government. The slogan "Haiti is open for business" has been a rallying cry for the government as it seeks outside investors to help the country rebuild from the devastating 2010 earthquake.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - THE $200 million loss in tourism revenue that Trinidad and Tobago suffers annually due to crime is a "conservative estimate", industry experts said yesterday. "I am absolutely convinced it is costing the country a huge amount of money. I think $200 million is conservative because that is just lost opportunity through fears of crime, but I would imagine it would cost businesses more in crime prevention practices," Tobago Hotel and Restaurant Association president Nicholas Hardwicke told the Express yesterday in a telephone interview.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - I have read with great alarm and significant disappointment an article published on Wednesday in the Stabroek News of Guyana and carried on the internet with the headline Suriname Will Not Support Ramdin for OAS Post. Apparently, the Suriname Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Lackin has confirmed that his Government will neither nominate nor support the current Assistant Secretary General (ASG) of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Albert Ramdin, who is also Surinamese, for the top post of Secretary General (SG) of the OAS.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Those with an eye for coincidence and irony might have observed that, just as we were warning in last Friday’s editorial, that “a high academic title alone is no guarantee of personal achievement or, indeed, integrity” and that we should not “take anyone’s curriculum vitae at face value,” a mini-drama involving the appointment of Dr Naresh Singh to the post of CARICOM Deputy Secretary-General was beginning to unfold.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Practical obstacles in the way of growing more and consuming more local produce have been elaborately acknowledged by Food Production Minister Devant Maharaj. And the ministry's solution_ a year-long advertising campaign to persuade citizens to eat local. Such a campaign must necessarily be based on assumptions that ordinary people do not know what they like to eat and are incapable of calculating what their budgets can afford. Yet, even if this PR strategy bears fruit, would local production be able to meet desired demand?

GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Agro-processing and rice production and research are among the options Trinidad and Tobago is pursuing under its mega-farm initiative in Guyana. This is according to Trinidad and Tobago’s minister within the Ministry of Food Production Jairam Seemungal who on Thursday hosted a media briefing with Agriculture Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy in Georgetown. Seemungal is here for a follow up meeting on discussions aimed at establishing an arrangement that would see Trinidadian businesses investing in farming in Guyana with the government as facilitator.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC - Barbadian voters kept with tradition and provided the incumbent party with a second consecutive term in power following a nerve jangling general elections here on Thursday. According to the preliminary results, the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) won 16 of the 30 seats in the elections with the remainder going to the main opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP). In the 2008 general election, the DLP won 20 seats.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Barbadians have elected a new administration to govern this country’s affairs for the next four to five years. Once again, Barbadians can congratulate themselves on a peaceful elections period, devoid of the violence, rifts and fierce territorial demarcations that characterise other jurisdictions in the region and beyond. Bees, Dems, independent or apathetic, we all have to live on this same little rock, and we must continue to co-exist when the dust settles after elections.

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua - The international community has long agreed that English should be the language of business and diplomacy and for this reason, nations have made it compulsory that citizens at all strata are exposed to that language. Those who intend to conduct business in the international arena are expected to master it at a higher level. There are those who believe that there is no place for our local dialect. In fact, a few years ago, the chief education officer issued a mandate that dialect should not be spoken on the schools’ compounds.