BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - No country rejoices at being downgraded, says Prime Minister Freundel Stuart on last month’s International rating agency Moody’s downgrade of Barbados.
“However, the downgrade has not altered any of the facilities to which Barbadians are entitled and to which they have access. Life continues,” he stressed.
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KINGSTON, Jamaica - In a broadcast Sunday evening, Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller provided her account of the stewardship of the Government in the year since its election. She followed up yesterday with newspaper advertisements in her role as president of the People's National Party. This newspaper welcomes these initiatives. Reporting to constituents is an important component of leadership.
Haiti’s Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe is pushing back at suggestions that his nation is unsafe. “We would like to reassure the tourists, the diaspora, people who want to visit....Haiti is one of the safest destinations that they could visit,” Lamothe said Monday at a press conference in Port-au-Prince, quoting U.N. crime statistics. The latest figures from U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime show that in 2010 Haiti had a recorded murder rate of 6.9 for every 100,000 persons. The rate is close to one-quarter that of Jamaica and less than half of the neighboring Dominican Republic. Still, U.N.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - n a pace-setting move the Guyana Parliament last week unanimously approved a motion to record for posterity the “special relationship” that country shares with Cuba.
As Guyana’s Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, noted, the relationship with Cuba dates back to more than four decades when Guyana was still a British colony, and prior to the 1962 United States-imposed economic and financial embargo against the western Caribbean nation.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - It is time that Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago fully sign on to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as their final court of appeal.
This is coming from political scientist Peter Wickham, who thinks that both countries have a moral duty to accept the court.
Venezuelans and their political leaders are facing a week of questions as the country, and the world, wait to see if ailing President Hugo Chavez takes the oath of office January 10.
Thursday is the day designated by the Venezuelan constitution for administering the oath of office. Chavez won re-election in October, but he has been in Cuba for cancer treatment and has not been seen in public for nearly a month.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela has recovered from his recent lung infection and a surgical procedure to remove gallstones, according to an announcement yesterday by President Jacob Zuma.
Doctors say that Mandela, 94, has made "steady progress and that clinically, he continues to improve," according to a statement issued by Zuma's office. Mandela was hospitalised for nearly three weeks in December before going home on December 26.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana - The election which took place yesterday in Venezuela was of a certain significance. It was a poll among legislators to elect the chairman of the National Assembly and pitted Diosdado Cabello, who already held the post, against challenger Blanca Eekhout, who belongs to the Chávista faction led by Vice President Nicolás Maduro. It masked the jostling for power which is going on behind the scenes in the wake of President Chávez’s latest bout of illness, and the cloud hanging over his swearing in for his fourth term on January 10.
KINGSTON, Jamaica - As the world awaits further news on the health of Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, representatives of the governments of Jamaica and Venezuela and a throng of other diplomats gathered yesterday at the Grace Missionary Church in Kingston to offer prayers on his behalf.
Chávez, who is to be sworn in as president for another term, is currently undergoing treatment for cancer.
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who was present at the church service, used the occasion to highlight the long-standing relationship between Jamaica and Venezuela.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Haitian officials have renewed the diplomatic passport of former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, his attorney said Saturday. Lawyer Reynold Georges said the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reissued the expired travel document for Duvalier last month as is customary for ex-presidents and former prime ministers. "They have to, because he's an ex-president," Georges said by telephone. "This is not something people should talk about. It's common practice."