Regional News

(Jamaica Observer) – Gunmen on Sunday morning shot dead a 56-year-old policeman and injured his son, 25, in the parish of Westmoreland.

More criticism of planned APD increase The head of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) said Monday that the planned increase in the UK’s Air Passenger Duty (APD) will hinder efforts to reduce poverty in developing countries.

(Trinidad Express) A soldier who once trained and enlisted as a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force elite Special Forces Unit has been convicted alongside six others for a series of offences arising out of the kidnapping and murder of US war veteran Balram Maharaj.

(Trinidad Guardian) The Government has awarded a contract worth more than TT$2.1 billion to a subsidiary of an Italian company to supply four helicopters for use by the country’s Air Guard, Web sites and wire services have reported.

(Jamaica Gleaner) South Central St Catherine Member of Parliament (MP) Sharon Hay-Webster has decided to give up the land of her birth – the United States of America (USA).

(Barbados Nation) Govern-ment is concerned that landlords are kicking Barbadian tenants from rental homes and converting them into rooms.

(Antigua Sun) – The Royal Police Force of Antigua and Barbuda has renewed efforts to track down the sources of illegal guns entering the country.

(Antigua Sun) – A Guyanese man who faces deportation after pleading guilty to remaining in Antigua after the expiration of a permit has asked the court for time to sell his two cars and house.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Russia and Cuba have signed contracts that “set the bases” for Russian oil company Zarubezhneft to search for oil in Cuba’s part of the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba’s state-run press said on Wednesday.

Turks police continue search Police in the Turks and Caicos Islands say they are keeping up search and recovery efforts for missing Haitians whose boat sank earlier this week.

(Barbados nation) – There is a backlog of up to 6,000 Caribbean nationals seeking immigrant status in Barbados.

(BBC) – It appears that the protracted dispute between management and pilots of regional carrier LIAT could be resolved soon.

MIAMI,  (Reuters) – The U.S. Coast Guard yesterday called off its search for up to 67 Haitian migrants  missing from a wooden sailboat that sank off the Turks and  Caicos Islands, saying they were presumed lost at sea.

ATLANTA, (Reuters) – About half the U.S. population  should get vaccinated against H1N1 influenza but pregnant women  and healthcare workers should be at the front of the line, U.S. 

HAVANA, (Reuters) – Cash-strapped Cuba should  consider putting more of its state-run economy in the hands of  producers, as President Raul Castro has done with agriculture,  the country’s top economic commentator said yesterday.

(Trinidad Guardian) Prime Minister Patrick Manning disclosed on Monday night that an unnamed organisation was behind a plot to kill him.

HOLGUIN, Cuba, (Reuters) – More belt-tightening may  lie ahead for Cuba as President Raul Castro said yesterday the  government will look at making its second “adjustment to  expenditures” this year due to the effects of the global  financial crisis.

(Jamaica Gleaner) Jamaican families, heavily dependent on remittances, are feeling the tight squeeze of reduction in inflows.

Jamaica Observer) Lady Bustamante, highly regarded as a defender of women’s and workers’ rights, and widow of late former Prime Minister and National Hero Sir Alexander Bustamante, died in the Tony Thwaites Wing of the University Hospital of the West Indies on Saturday afternoon.

(Trinidad Express) The Government has sent out a “Staff Notice” to heads of T&T overseas missions informing them of the education drive by the People’s National Movement (PNM), a move that one former diplomat describes as “very worrying” in that this constitutes a party notice being sent out to Government workers.