Member

ST. JOHN’S, Antigua, CMC – The Antigua and Barbuda government says it is designing a project that offers temporary economic relief to unemployed people in the country.
Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said that the three year project, which is being established with technical and financial assistance from the World Bank, will benefit at least 1,200 low-income unemployed people between the ages 17 and 50.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - A perfect example of the shortage of vision affecting CARICOM governments is their dropping of the ball on the Leucaena project in the early 1980s. Ambassador Byron Blake, former CARICOM assistant secretary general, reminded us of that last month during a sitting of the Jamaica Observer Monday Exchange. For those who missed it, the Leucaena project was established in response to the energy crisis of the late 1970s.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - GORDON ‘Butch’ Stewart yesterday urged Jamaicans to hold each other’s hands and face the challenges of 2013 in an exemplary spirit of unity and teamwork. Stewart, the Caribbean’s leading hotelier, said co-ordinated teams win big games, and if Jamaicans work as a team, by “helping each other, protecting each other, and supporting each other, as never before, there is very little that we cannot achieve together”.

The Haitian government is "vehemently" protesting travel advisories recently issued by the United States and Canada.
The U.S. State Department last week strengthened a travel advisory on Haiti. It warned Americans planning to visit the Caribbean nation about kidnappings, robbery, lawlessness and cholera. Canada followed with a similar statement.

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC –Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit says he intends writing Britain later this month seeking permission for Dominica to sever ties with the London-based Privy Council in order to join the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
“This month, January 2013 God’s willing, we shall write formally to the British government indicating to them our intention of severing ties with the Privy Council and seeking their agreement on that,” Skerrit said.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Haiti’s President Michel Martelly has started his six-month role as chairman of the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) grouping pledging to help CARICOM unite and overcome its economic problems as well as improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the region’s population.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - THE YEAR 2012 has seen challenges and opportunities, new beginnings and familiar setbacks, victories and defeats. The most glaring example is the attempts by the United Nations to end the bloody 21-month-old Syrian conflict through diplomacy which have been a resounding failure. There is little reason to expect a quick change given the Russian-United States disagreement on Syria.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that by 2017 China will be the largest economy in the world, but it is not yet a developed country. If and when it achieves that status, it will represent a remarkable and unprecedented development in the world economy. Developing countries are now responsible for over half of global economic growth, according to a report released in October by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Seven years after Jamaica started courting the eastern Europeans, the first Russian carrier Transaero arrived on the island yesterday. The flight, a boost to the winter tourist season, landed at the Sangster International Airport in Montego Bay, St James, with 320 passengers aboard from Moscow, Russia. In a welcome ceremony at the airport, Minister of Tourism and Entertainment Dr Wykeham McNeill reiterated the importance of airlift to the survival of the island's tourist industry.

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad - UNLESS mistaken, I sense a general lack of any public response from national or regional women organisations, as well as from women cabinet ministers and women in the legal profession within our Caribbean Community on two very disturbing media reported cases involving the heinous, degrading crime of rape. One of the cases involve the courage of two white British women who have exposed themselves to the public as victims of rape while separately visiting Barbados.