Regional News

NEW YORK, (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors have  narrowed their criminal case against Allen Stanford, the Texas  financier accused of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

MIAMI, (Reuters) – Higher global oil prices are  squeezing economies and family budgets in the Caribbean, one of  the last regions in the world still struggling to bounce back  from the global financial crisis.

CAIRO, (Reuters) – Palesti-nian leaders formally ended  a four-year rift between secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas at  a ceremony in Egypt yesterday, a reconciliation their people  see as crucial for their drive to set up an independent state.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Experts charged by the  United Nations with probing the cause of a deadly cholera  epidemic in Haiti pointed on Wednesday to fecal contamination  by a riverside U.N.

GENEVA, (Reuters) – Switzerland has found 360 million  Swiss francs ($415.8 million) of potentially illegal assets  linked to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and his circle stashed  in the Alpine country, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

(Trinidad Express) Pupils at an all-girls prestige high school busted a biology teacher who took up duties last week, revealing that he was convicted in the United States a few years ago, on charges of sexually assaulting five of his female pupils.

HAVANA, (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of Cubans  paraded through Havana’s Revolution Square on Sunday in a May  Day celebration that touted recently approved economic reforms  in one of the world’s last communist countries.

(Trinidad Guardian) The Tunapuna Piarco Regional Corporation (TPRC) has launched a forensic audit into the purchase of a TT$1 million stainless steel automated public toilet, making it the most costly public convenience in Trinidad.

(Trinidad Guardian) Finance Minister Winston Dookeran believes the board of Caribbean Airlines should be dissolved.

(Trinidad Express) Former prime minister Basdeo Panday will face a retrial on June 13 for failing to declare a London bank account to the Integrity Commission for three consecutive years while he was prime minister.

(Trinidad Express) Representative of the Trinidad and Tobago Transparency Institute Boyd Reid said the Joint Consultative Council (JCC) for the construction industry supports government in its quest to reform procurement legislation.

(Barbados Nation) Close to 300 employees at the NCO Financial Services (Barbados SRL) will be on the breadline at the end of May.

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Left-wing groups and  lawmakers close to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez burned  effigies of top officials yesterday to protest the  extradition to Colombia of a suspected senior rebel leader.

(Trinidad Express) Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar has ordered an immediate halt to the bulldozing of farmlands throughout Trinidad and Tobago.

(Trinidad Express) Murdered businessman Anthony Chen was identified by police as the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Chinese businesswoman Xue Hua Shan.

(Barbados Nation) Shanique Myrie is free to return to Barbados and point a finger at who she alleges assaulted her at the Grantley Adams International Airport last month.

(Trinidad Guardian) Dirty money can be laundered in T&T through real estate, jewelry stores,  money transfers, on-line lottery games, plus other business lines, Attorney General Anand Ramlogan said yesterday. 

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – A delegation of Libyan  officials is in Venezuela to discuss possible peaceful  solutions to the war in the North African country, Venezuela’s  President Hugo Chavez said yesterday.

(Trinidad Express) Two cousins were shot dead while asleep at their Arima home early Monday morning.

(Jamaica Gleaner) Contractor General Greg Christie has made yet another call for a more aggressive approach in the fight against corruption.