PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - THE GOVERNMENT of South Africa has found itself in an embarrassing position after having felt compelled to postpone a posthumous conferment of its highest national honour, the Oliver Tambo Award, on Guyana’s late president, Forbes Burnham.
The Tambo Award is normally conferred on outstanding foreign personalities for their contributions in helping to bring about the collapse of apartheid in South Africa.
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KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – South Africa is seeking to widen its relationship with Jamaica under a cooperation agreement dating back to 2009, the country’s ambassador Mathu Joyini has said.
“The one thing that Jamaica does particularly well is sports from the school level. It is something that we can learn,” she said, noting that the 2009 accord encouraged co-operation, as well as facilitating the exchange of knowledge, experience and achievements between both countries in the fields of arts and culture.
Geneva, Switzerland - BRAZIL'S Roberto Azevedo will take the helm of the World Trade Organization, diplomats said yesterday, confirming the Latin American giant's new status as a global power. Azevedo, currently Brazil's ambassador to the 159-nation WTO, narrowly pipped the former Mexican trade chief and heavyweight negotiator Herminio Blanco in a final round, sources familiar with the closed-door contest said, after seven other candidates stumbled earlier in the race.
NEW YORK, CMC - United States federal prosecutors have charged a powerful Caribbean American legislator with embezzlement.
New York State senator, John L. Sampson, who represents the largely Caribbean 19th Senatorial District in Brooklyn, had been charged with stealing funds from the sale of foreclosed properties and using the money to help finance his race for Brooklyn district attorney.
A close ally of a charismatic but divisive politician killed by two assailants in Curacao said Monday he believes the lawmaker was slain in some sort of politically motivated attack on the Dutch Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, CMC - Prime Minister Mark Rutte Monday condemned the assassination of Helmin Wiels, the leader of the largest political party in Curacao's coalition government who was shot dead late Sunday in the Punda section of the Dutch island's capital.
Rutte spokesman Henk Brons said it is not yet clear whether the Netherlands will assist the police investigation, and if so how.
WASHINGTON, CMC – The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says Caribbean countries will experience economic growth of just over one per cent this year, even as Latin America and the Caribbean will record half a percent economic growth in 2013.
The IMF said that the growth will be supported by stronger external demand, favourable financing conditions and the effects of earlier policy easing in some countries.
WASHINGTON, CMC – The United States has changed its mind in allowing the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro to attend a gay rights forum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, reversing a previous rejection. Sexologist Mariela Castro, the director of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education and a vocal proponent of same-sex marriage and gay rights, has received a US visa to attend several gatherings in May at the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan in New York.
BONN, Germany (Reuters) – A US-led plan to let all countries set their own goals for fighting climate change is gaining grudging support at UN talks, even though the current level of pledges is far too low to limit rising temperatures substantially. The approach, being discussed this week at 160-nation talks in Bonn, Germany, would mean abandoning the blueprint of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which set central goals for industrialised countries to cut emissions by 2012 and then let each work out national implementation.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea’s continuing development of nuclear technology and long-range ballistic missiles will move it closer to its stated goal of being able to hit the United States with an atomic weapon, a new Pentagon report to Congress said yesterday. The report, the first version of an annual Pentagon assessment required by law, said Pyongyang’s Taepodong-2 missile, with continued development, might ultimately be able to reach parts of the United States carrying a nuclear payload if configured as an intercontinental ballistic missile.