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.
Member
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.
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."
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Haitian President Michel Martelly briefly stepped back in time last weekend, doing his old “Sweet Micky” stage name proud as he sang alongside Spanish heartthrob Julio Iglesias at a glittering fundraiser in the Dominican Republic. The celebrity-studded concert was staged to help raise money for impoverished Haitian children, with proceeds going to the Pink and White Foundation, a charity run by Martelly and his wife Sophia. The Haitian president publicly thanked Iglesias for dedicating a concert of his "1 World Tour 2012" to Haiti's children.
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - The New Year started with yet another welcome affirmation from the British Government of the importance of the 54-nation Commonwealth.
Hugo Swire, who was appointed Minister of State for the Commonwealth last summer, published an Opinion in the Daily Telegraph in London on January 2 in which he said that the Commonwealth “is an important institution” that can “through dedication and reform become stronger and speak with a louder voice than ever before”.
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, CMC – Opposition Leader Shawn Richards has criticised the St. Kitts-Nevis government of wasting much needed funds in hosting the Annual Prime Minister’s New Year’s Gala at a time when the twin-island federation could ill afford to do so.
The gala was held over the weekend and with American actor, producer and humanitarian Danny Glover and Citigroup’s chief executive officer Izzat Dajani the guest speakers
SCARBOROUGH, Tobago, CMC – The main opposition People’s National Movement (PNM) said it is in the “dark” regarding plans by the coalition People’s Partnership government to table legislation later on Monday providing for more autonomy for Tobago. “It is a high point of vulgarity, lack of class, and crassness that washes this country when you see a government calling the Parliament to session to lay in the Parliament a bill to give Tobago internal self-government in the height of an election.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - There are no issues more core to the integrity of the unitary state of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago than the terms of association between the islands of this republic. It is therefore a great pity that the Government has chosen the hectic and pugilistic period of an election campaign for the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) to take legislation to Parliament that proposes to alter this fundamental relationship.