PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Just as soon as the airline begins to show signs of fractured operations, there is a flurry of Caribbean government “actions”, and a plethora of expert articles on what ails the airline and what should be done to make it better. Almost no one seems to remember the principle of structured transformation_ the time to make changes/improve the way you do business, is when things are going well; not when you have your back up against the wall.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC – The shareholder governments of the regional airline, LIAT, will meet in Barbados on Friday, but a planned meeting in Bridgetown with Trinidad and Tobago’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar will not materialise, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has said. He told a news conference that his Trinidad and Tobago counterpart was unable to attend the meeting because Parliament would be meeting on the same day. LIAT shareholder governments are Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados and Dominica.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - TRINIDAD-BASED Caribbean Airlines (CAL) assumed responsibility for Air Jamaica flights as well as the right to use the Air Jamaica brand name in 2010.

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – A three-day regional workshop aimed at promoting regional economic integration as part of an International Financial Corporation (FIC) implemented initiative to automate the Bureau of Standards’ clearance for imports began here Wednesday. “With this initiative we seek to help government agencies connect more efficiently, thus making import clearance easier and reducing logistics costs that are still a challenge for many businesses in the region,” said IFC trade logistics specialist Lazare Ristic. The workshop is being attended by delegates from Antigua and Barbuda, Gren

CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC – St. Lucia was jolted by an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 late on Tuesday night, the Trinidad-based Seismic Research Centre (SRC) of the University of the West Indies (UWI) reported Wednesday. It said that the quake occurred at 11.45 pm (local time) and was located at 14.02° degrees north, and 60.61 degrees west. UWI said that the quake with a depth of 20km “may have been felt in nearby islands” but that there have been no reports of injury or damage.

Thousands of supporters of Haiti's former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide have defied a ban on protests to follow his convoy through the streets. Mr Aristide was attending a courthouse in Port-au-Prince to answer questions about the murder of a well-known journalist in 2000. It was his first appearance in public since his return from exile in 2011.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – As the coalition People’s Partnership gets ready to celebrate its third anniversary in office, Opposition Leader Dr.

NEW YORK, CMC – A United States-based human rights group has given the United Nations 60 days to reach a compensation deal or face a legal lawsuit from victims of Haiti's cholera epidemic. The United Nations has already indicated it is legally immune from legal action over the epidemic that afflicted some half a million people. But the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti said it is ready to open legal proceedings in New York with claims totalling billions of dollars unless the United Nations adhered to the deadline.

TELESCOPE, Grenada (AP) -- The old coastal road in this fishing village at the eastern edge of Grenada sits under a couple of feet of murky saltwater, which regularly surges past a hastily-erected breakwater of truck tires and bundles of driftwood intended to hold back the Atlantic Ocean. For Desmond Augustin and other fishermen living along the shorelines of the southern Caribbean island, there's nothing theoretical about the threat of rising sea levels.