Regional News

(Trinidad Guardian) Pepper spray will be available ahead to women and girls within a regulated arrangement where a permit will be required .

QUITO,  (Reuters) – Ecuador’s election authority said yesterday it will conduct a recount in most of the country to ensure the transparency of Sunday’s presidential elections, after one of the candidates made accusations of electoral fraud.

CARICOM Secretary General Irwin LaRocque has written Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressing appreciation for New Delhi’s donation of 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines to the region.

(Trinidad Guardian) Over 500 businesses have announced they will be closed today as murder victim Andrea Bharatt is laid to rest.

(Trinidad Guardian) Two yachts were destroyed by fire Thursday at the Trinidad and Tobago Yacht Club in Carenage.

(Trinidad Guardian) Negus George, of Seventh Street, Gooding Trace in Malabar, has been formally charged with the murder of 23-year-old Andrea Bharatt.

BRASILIA,  (Reuters) – A coronavirus variant identified in the Brazilian Amazon may be three times more contagious but early analysis suggests vaccines are still effective against it, the country’s health minister said yesterday, without providing evidence for the claims.

CARACAS,  (Reuters) – Venezuelan government officials and opposition leaders have met to discuss buying coronavirus vaccines through the COVAX program using cash frozen in the United States by economic sanctions, two sources familiar with the matter said yesterday.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – Haiti’s ambassador to the United States yesterday called for the international community to support talks between President Jovenel Moise’s government and the opposition as a constitutional crisis escalates, but rejected calls for Moise to leave office.

BRASILIA,  (Reuters) – Medical teams working to immunize Brazil’s remote indigenous villages against the coronavirus have encountered fierce resistance in some communities where evangelical missionaries are stoking fears of the vaccine, say tribal leaders and advocates.

REIMS, France,  (Reuters) – When Marie-Ines Romelle, a Black woman born on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, decided to join the exclusive world of France’s champagne producers, she saw no one who looked like her.

(Jamaica Gleaner) Dancehall artiste Moses Davis, more popularly known as Beenie Man, has pleaded not guilty to charges for breaches of the Disaster Risk Management and Noise Abatement acts.

(Trinidad Express) Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard has instructed police to charge one man with the murder of court clerk Andrea Bharatt.

PORT-AU-PRINCE,  (Reuters) – Haitian police yesterday clashed with rock-hurling protesters in the capital Port-Au-Prince amid street demonstrations against President Jovenel Moise after his government retired three Supreme Court judges earmarked as his potential replacements.

(Reuters) – The executors of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate were accused yesterday of being the “indispensable captains” of the financier’s sex trafficking scheme, escalating a legal battle that could delay compensation for Epstein’s victims.

(Trinidad Guardian) A private forensic autopsy done on the body of Andrea Bharatt has revealed that she died from massive internal haemorrhaging after she was struck on the head with a blunt object that caused her to fall back and crack her skull.

(Barbadis Nation) Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said the COVID-19 vaccination campaign will be rolled out over the next few days.

(Trinidad Express) Homicide detectives are investigating the fatal shooting of a 16 year-old girl in Claxton Bay yesterday.

(Trinidad Express)  Devon Charles, the main suspect in the kidnapping and murder of Andrea Bharatt, has died.

(Jamaica Gleaner) A Jamaican man accused of killing three people in a vehicular incident in the United States more than 20 years ago, before fleeing to Cuba and then back to Jamaica, has been extradited.