CARACAS, Venezuela — A tempest in an ink pot has broken out over the signature of President Hugo Chávez, which suddenly appeared on a government decree this week despite his long absence from the country.
The case of the mysterious signature comes as Mr. Chávez remains out of public view since undergoing cancer surgery in Havana on Dec. 11. He is still in Cuba, officials say, undergoing what they call a delicate recovery, which left him too sick to be sworn in on Jan. 10.
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WASHINGTON CMC – The World Bank has urged the Caribbean and other developing countries to safeguard their economic growth, warning that the “road ahead remain bumpy.”
In the Global Economic Prospects (GEP) report, released here on Wednesday, the Washington-based financial institution said four years after the onset of the global financial crisis, the world economy “remains fragile and growth in high-income countries is weak.”
MIAMI, CMC - A Miami-based group spearheading an initiative to exonerate Jamaican Marcus Garvey has expanded its online petition to the US House of Representatives.
The Coalition for the Exoneration of Marcus Garvey, Jamaica’s first National Hero, said it is urging the US Congress to clear his name once and for all.
Geoffrey Philp, a spokesman for the group, said the drive for the exoneration of Garvey has been going on now for at least 80 years and that on January 10, 2007, Harlem Congressman Charles Rangel introduced a bill to the 110th Congress.
Cuban health officials verified Tuesday a small cholera outbreak in Havana, the capital city of Cuba, the largest occurrence of the disease on the island nation in decades.
In August authorities confirmed the potentially deadly disease was gone, but a new statement by the Cuban Health Ministry today said 51 cases had been confirmed. "Fifty-one cases have been confirmed to date," the statement read.
It's unclear if anyone has died, according to CNN. However, the BBC reported a 46-year-old man died early January of what they suspect to be cholera.
LONDON, CMC – Challenges facing Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries in exporting their goods to the European Union were among matters discussed Tuesday during a meeting of the sub-committee of the Joint United Kingdom-CARICOM Committee on Trade and Investment.
The meeting, chaired by Trinidad and Tobago’s High Commissioner to London, Garvin Nicholas, was also attended by diplomats from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada and Dominica.
WASHINGTON, CMC – A major human rights group here has urged the Venezuelan government to end censorship and intimidation of media that challenge the official line regarding President Hugo Chávez’s health and inauguration. Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that, in recent days, the Venezuelan government has ordered a television station to cease transmission of spots that question its interpretation of the constitutional requirements for the re-elected president’s inauguration.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuela's government says President Hugo Chavez is conscious and responding to treatment for a respiratory infection at a Cuban hospital. Information Minister Ernesto Villegas says the infection has been controlled, but Chavez is still suffering from respiratory deficiency. Chavez has been fighting the infection after undergoing a fourth round of surgery Dec. 11 for a cancer in the pelvic area.
KINGSTON, Jamaica - The prognosis for the recovery from cancer of President Hugo Chavez is uncertain. If he is not able or does not assume the Venezuelan presidency, then it brings into question the continuation of PetroCaribe on which Caribbean countries are heavily dependent. The termination, phasing out, or revision of the terms of PetroCaribe would have devastating repercussions for the region already struggling to survive the global economic crisis.
GENEVA, Switzerland, CMC – A branch of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has urged Cuba authorities to immediately free jailed US government subcontractor Alan Gross, claiming that the Spanish-speaking Caribbean island’s judicial system is not independent or impartial. The UNHRC’s Task Force on Arbitrary Detention also charged that the national security law under which Gross was charged was vague and violated human rights agreements.
WORCESTER, England — Britons may remember 2012 as the year the weather spun off its rails in a chaotic concoction of drought, deluge and flooding, but the unpredictability of it all turns out to have been all too predictable_ Around the world, extreme has become the new commonplace. Especially lately. China is enduring its coldest winter in nearly 30 years. Brazil is in the grip of a dreadful heat spell. Eastern Russia is so freezing — minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and counting — that the traffic lights recently stopped working in the city of Yakutsk.