Regional News

HAVANA, (Reuters – Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro  said his frail health forced him to delegate his powers as head  of Cuba’s Communist Party, suggesting he may have resigned his  last leadership post.

(Trinidad Express) National Security Minister Brigadier John Sandy introduced legislation in the Senate on Tuesday aimed at cracking down on illegal guns and ammunition which are used to commit murder and other serious crimes.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuela deported three  alleged guerrillas to Colombia yesterday in another show of  rapprochement between the Andean neighbors after they clashed  over charges President Hugo Chavez was soft on rebels.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Anti-U.N. riots in the  Haitian city of Cap-Haitien have disrupted international  efforts to tackle a spreading cholera epidemic, increasing the  risk of infection and death for tens of thousands of poor  Haitians in the north, aid workers said yesterday. 

(Trinidad Guardian) Six months after being elected the Prime Minister of T&T, Kamla Persad-Bissessar has named Housing and Environment Minister Dr Roodal Moonilal as her successor.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – The United Nations yesterday blamed political and criminal “spoilers” in Haiti for  attacks on U.N.

(Barbados Nation) More than 300 local and international creditors and suppliers connected with the Four Seasons project are set to get about Bds$100 million over the course of two years.

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Protesters in Haiti who blame United Nations troops for a cholera epidemic that has killed hundreds attacked UN peacekeepers with rocks in two cities yesterday, raising questions about security ahead of presidential elections this month, authorities said.

(Trinidad Express) – Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she wants a full probe into the operations of the Security Intelligence Agency (SIA).

(Trinidad Express) Warring gangs took their fight from the dancehall to the Sangre Grande District Hospital on Sunday morning, forcing doctors and nurses to scamper for safety and lock themselves in various rooms to avoid being injured.

(Barbados Nation) Opposition leader Owen Arthur on Sunday told the woman he and four of his parliamentary colleagues ousted from the leadership of the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) that the country and the party needed her.

Early Vincie  poll The Vincentian parliament was dissolved yesterday ahead of general elections in less than a month’s time on 13 December.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – The death toll from  Haiti’s cholera epidemic has reached more than 900 and the  disease is present in six of the 10 provinces of the  earthquake-battered Caribbean country, the Health Ministry said  yesterday.

HAVANA, (Reuters) – Cuba has freed one of 13  political prisoners who refused to go into exile and will let  him stay on the island, in a signal that all may be released  soon.

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, (Reuters) – The Organization  of American States urged Nicaragua and Costa Rica on Saturday  to withdraw their security forces from a disputed river border  in a spat that forced Google to correct its maps of the area.

(Barbados Nation) Mia Mottley, former leader of the Barbados Labour Party, says she will not be taking part in any tainted election process to select the party’s chairman.

(Trinidad Express) The most damning, explosive, “troublesome and vexing” of the revelations made by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar in the Parliament on Friday, was that the nation’s Head of State, its first citizen, President George Maxwell Richards’ phone was among those persons whose phones were being tapped and e-mails intercepted by the Strategic Intelligence Agency (SIA), the “secret intelligence agency,“ since 2005.

(Trinidad Express) Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on Thursday stated that in her capacity of chairman of the National Security Council (NSC), she was never informed of the secret operations of the Security Intelligence Agency (SIA), a unit which spied on law-abiding citizens.

(Jamaica Observer) Two workmen died on Wednesday after the walls of a trench in which they were working to lay sewer pipes in Barbican, St Andrew, collapsed, covering them under mounds of earth.

(Jamaica Observer) Police Commissioner Owen Ellington has ordered members of the constabulary to dress and conduct themselves more professionally.