News

CASTRIES, St. Lucia, CMC - Civil Servants were returning to their jobs on Tuesday after voting on Monday to end a near three week strike in support of demands for higher wages.
Their decision to end the strike will also allow their union – the Civil Service Association (CSA) to return to the bargaining table with the government negotiating team (GNT) that had earlier indicated it would not be prepared to resume negotiations until the workers end their crippling strike action.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -The Government of Barbados has been accused of being involved in a "huge cover-up" after local authorities trampled on the rights of Jamaican woman Shanique Myrie. The claim was made yesterday before the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) by the lawyer representing Myrie in her discrimination case against Barbados.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Technocrats can do a lot more to build confidence in the ability of state institutions to facilitate an enabling environment for business, to create a greener environment for generations to come and to position Barbados to take full advantage of its CARICOM membership. Recently, Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, Donville Inniss, stated that there were issues which need to be addressed within the Port that were impacting heavily on the ease of doing business and the cost of living.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Lawyers for a Jamaican national who claimed that their client had been discriminated against because of her nationality when she travelled to Barbados on March 14, 2011 called for substantial compensation as the matter resumed at the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) on Monday. Attorney Michelle Brown told the six-member CCJ panel of judges that the regional court, should also lay down firm guidelines pertaining to the treatment of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nationals at airports throughout the 15-member regional grouping.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - On the Caricom front, Trinidad and Tobago has unexpectedly been drawn into a low-level confrontation against the United States, its own major trading partner. Two areas of conflict comprise online gambling (whereby players participate in virtual casinos online), as pursued by Antigua and Barbuda, and rum exports to the US, in which T&T shares concerns with some 14 regional states. Antigua and Barbuda has been subject to adverse reviews about its loose controls that have been known to welcome financial adventurers and worse.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – During his visit here in March Haitian President and sitting Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Chairman Michel Martelly provided confirmation of what we already knew …that more than three years after a devastating earthquake that claimed thousands of lives and wreaked monumental physical damage, the country still faces a long and arduous journey on the road to recovery.  It is likely that Mr. Martelly’s entire presidential term will be spent seeking material around the world for his country’s rebuilding process.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s Public Ministry, a body of independent public prosecutors, has begun an investigation into a claim connecting former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to a vast vote-buying scheme that involved the channeling of funds to the governing Workers’ Party. The inquiry, which was announced in the capital, Brasília, on Friday and comes after several months of analyzing testimony, opens a new phase in what has arguably been Brazil’s largest corruption scandal, already involving the conviction of Mr.

BOGOTA -- One is a former union organizer and foreign minister who skipped university to pursue politics. He rose to fame as the loyal soldier of late President Hugo Chávez. The other is a governor and lawyer who spent four months in jail. He prides himself on defeating every rival he has ever faced except one_ Chávez. As Venezuela barrels toward snap elections Sunday, one of these two men — Nicolás Maduro and Henrique Capriles — will be the first to occupy the seat Chávez owned for 14 years.

ST JOHN’S, Antigua – Jeffrey Robinson, considered the world’s leading financial crime author, is warning the nation and all Caribbean countries that a “financial tsunami” will hit the region in a few years and the time to plan a response is now. “In the next three to five years, Fidel Castro will die and when he does Raul (Castro) will not be able to hang on,” he said. “The invasion of Cuba is now being planned and it will be massive. It will be something the likes of which no one has seen before.”

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - Last month, veteran journalist Owen Baptiste, former editor in chief of both the T&T Guardian and the Trinidad Express, spent a week in Florida talking with Lawrence Duprey. This is the first of an exclusive five-part series by Baptiste, based on their long, frank discussions of Duprey’s past and his vision and hopes for the future.