Regional News

(Jamaica Gleaner) While the police have been kept busy implementing strategies to address the escalating crime rate, statistics have revealed that the country’s murder total has jumped to 461 since January.

BOGOTA (Reuters) – The United States has  suspended aid to Colombia’s DAS intelligence agency, whose  agents are accused of illegally wiretapping President Alvaro  Uribe’s opponents, journalists and top court magistrates.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s President Luiz  Inacio Lula da Silva said yesterday that he will tell Iran’s  President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the Islamic Republic would suffer  the consequences if it seeks nuclear arms.

President Chavez has ramped up his anti-America rhetoric‘Venezuela’s no threat’ The US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said he does not see a military threat from Venezuela.

(Trinidad Express) The election date is still in Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s backpocket.

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A court in Brazil has  sentenced a rancher to 30 years in prison for ordering the  murder in 2005 of US-born nun Dorothy Stang, who lived in the  Amazon region and opposed the destruction of the rain forest.

CARACAS (Reuters) – A Venezuelan website that has  poked fun at leftist President Hugo Chavez for two years has  become a roaring success on the Internet, where its authors set  up their satirical blog to avoid censorship.

US First Lady’s in Haiti The First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, is making an unannounced visit to Haiti.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Communist Cuba is turning over  hundreds of state-run barber shops and beauty salons to employees  across the country in what appears to be the start of a  long-expected revamping of state retail services by President Raul  Castro.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Deaths of women in and  around childbirth have gone down by an average of 35 per cent  globally, according to a study using new methods, but are  surprisingly high in the United States, Canada and Norway.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and  Brazil signed an agreement yesterday meant to bolster military  ties, but Brazil’s Defence Minister Nelson Jobim did not offer  any hint about a key defence contract sought by US-based  Boeing Co.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Criminal gangs have duped  al Qaeda with offers of bogus nuclear material, hampering the  group’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb that would allow them  to “threaten world order,” the White House said yesterday.

Trinidad oppostion parties unite The Trinidad and Tobago opposition is promising a solid alliance that’ll work to defeat the governing Peoples National Movement (PNM) in the yet to be announced general elections.

ROME (Reuters) – The powerful head of Italy’s  bishops, responding to mounting pressure on the Vatican, said yesterday those in the Church who mishandled, minimised and covered  up sexual abuse of children should be dismissed.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – The death toll from  mudslides and flooding in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state has  risen to 224, its fire department said yesterday, about a week  after heavy rains began pounding the coastal region.

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Suspected drug hitmen  killed nine people in Tegucigalpa in one of the deadliest  attacks in Honduras since Mexican drug kingpins escalated their  war over smuggling routes, police said yesterday.

(Trinidad Express) The election bell has been rung, but without a date.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The World Bank and other  development banks  yesterday stepped up efforts to root out the  corrupt use of aid funds, saying companies and individuals  blacklisted at one institution would be unwelcome at all.

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian authorities  cautioned yesterday that negotiations with the United States to  solve a long-standing dispute over US cotton aid were only at  a preliminary stage and that a deal was not certain.

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Rescuers pulled more  bodies from a collapsed hillside slum near Rio de Janeiro yesterday, abandoning hope of finding survivors from a disaster  caused by the heaviest rains in four decades.