Regional News

Fidel praises Obama Pre-Obama, Fidel Castro praising a US president was almost unheard of.

(Antigua Sun) – A Guyanese man has found himself in deeper trouble with the law after he attempted to perpetrate a fraud on the court.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cubans began taking a hard look this week at entrenched customs like food rationing, pilfering on the job, cradle-to-grave subsidies and black market trading in a national debate called by President Raul Castro.

Wanted Haitian detained A Haitian born man wanted by police in Miami for questioning in the killings of his wife and their five children, has been detained in Port-au-Prince.

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said yesterday he would meet next week with companies interested in bidding for the Carabobo oil blocks in the Orinoco heavy crude region.

(Trinidad Express)  – A 15-year-old secondary school student is among eight people who were arrested on Monday, following the seizure of a stash of arms and ammunition in Morvant.

(Jamaica Observer) – A 75-year-old man was brutally murdered and a 59-year-old man injured in a brazen Saturday afternoon attack at the Rae Town Fishing Beach in Kingston, bringing to seven, the number of persons killed over the weekend.

IMF won’t do much, says Bird Antigua’s opposition leader Lester Bird has said that the country should not expect much help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

(Trinidad Express) – One man is in police custody assisting investigators into the murder of husband and wife Bevan and Judith Toby of Runnemede, Tobago, who were burnt to death at their home shortly before noon on Sunday.

(Trinidad Express) Sharon Arneaud, the wife of Michael Arneaud, Trinidad and Tobago’s former ambassador to Washington, DC, was killed on Saturday night when a 32-foot boat piloted by her husband slammed into a cliff at Monos Island off Trinidad’s western peninsula.

(Jamaica Observer) – In face of fierce opposition to his current US tour from the gay community, Buju Banton, no stranger to controversy, no doubt is reaching for the ‘Inna Heights’ of his ‘Unchained Spirit’ (in the vein of two of his finest albums), determined not to be outdone by his detractors.

(Trinidad Express) – T&T is ranked as the 98th among countries with the highest consumption of alcohol.

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Human rights activists in Colombia are being persecuted and subjected to arbitrary arrest by state security agents, Margaret Sekaggya, UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, said yesterday.

HAVANA (Reuters) – US and Cuban officials began exploratory talks yesterday on the possibility of restoring direct mail service between their two countries for the first time in 46 years.

(Jamaica Gleaner) – The United Kingdom Border Agency has arrested four Jamaican women on suspicion of taking part in bogus marriages.

(Jamaica Gleaner) – Trevor Rhone, arguably Jamaica’s greatest playwright, is dead.

(Barbados Nation) –  Because of the indiscriminate practice by some Barbadians of abandoning their elderly relatives at government-owned health care institutions, the elderly care facilities at the four district hospitals are now under severe stress.

(Jamaica Observer) – The Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica’s (BNS’) Information Technology (IT) Centre has been implicated in what the police have described as the identity theft of the bank’s former president and chief executive officer William ‘Bill’ Clarke with whom it has been involved in a bitter legal battle.

(Trinidad Express) – Attorney General John Jeremie on Monday hit back hard, taking serious issue with the decision of Justice Rajendra Narine to have investigated, allegations that Prime Minister Patrick Manning promised Yasin Abu Bakr that his government would not seize Jamaat property, in exchange for assistance to the PNM in the 2002 election campaign.

(Barbados Nation) – Jasper Watson, the lead investigator into the murder of Grenada’s Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and his cabinet, has described Bernard Coard as a cold-blooded killer who wanted power at any cost.