PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Chicken is a staple of the Haitian diet but its price has doubled in four years. Cooking oil and rice have gone up 10 percent the last 12 months. A liter of milk costs more than half the daily minimum wage, putting it out of reach for most of the country. […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Ten months after Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico’s electric grid, the local agency responsible for rebuilding it is in chaos and more than $1 billion in federal funds meant to strengthen the rickety system has gone unspent, according to contractors and U.S. officials who are anxious to make progress […]

HAVANA (AP) — A 16-month freeze on new private restaurants and bed-and-breakfasts will end in December when Cuba’s communist government implements new regulations meant to prevent tax evasion and the accumulation of wealth, state media said Tuesday. Cuban officials who announced the change said that the private sector had become a necessary part of the […]

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Looters pillaged burned and vandalized shops in Haiti’s capital Sunday following two days of violent protests over the government’s attempt to raise fuel prices. Journalists saw young men stripping shelves bare in some supermarkets that were charred from the protests. Several bodies lay among debris scattered in the streets. With the […]

CARTAGENA DE INDIAS, Colombia — The sixth regional platform for the reduction of natural risks in the Americas was held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, between June 20 and 22, 2018. This sixth edition brought together government agencies, representatives of the private sector, and members of civil society from the different states of the Americas […]

BASSETERRE, St Kitts — US forces, along with more than 20 Caribbean nation partners, took part in Exercise Tradewinds 2018, which kicked off in St Kitts on June 4, 2018, to conduct joint, combined, and interagency partner-nation capacity building. The international exercise has been taking place in the Caribbean for over 30 years. US Air […]

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Eight days after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, Efrain Perez felt a pain in his chest. Doctors near his small town sent him to Puerto Rico’s main hospital for emergency surgery for an aortic aneurysm. But when the ambulance pulled into the parking lot in the capital, San Juan, […]

MIAMI, USA — A broad area of showers and thunderstorms persisted over the southwestern Caribbean Sea on Monday. This activity is associated with a tropical wave over northwestern Venezuela and a surface trough located just east of Nicaragua interacting with a large upper-level trough. According to the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, little development […]

HAMILTON, Bermuda — On Thursday, the ruling Progressive Labour Party (PLP) in Bermuda secured a 25th seat in Bermuda’s 36-seat parliament. In a by-election held in Constituency 25, Warwick North East, PLP candidate Curtis Dickinson defeated One Bermuda Alliance (OBA) candidate Justin Mathias with a total of 375 votes against 300 votes respectively — a […]

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) secretary-general, Irwin LaRocque, is hosting on behalf of the lead head of government for the CARICOM Single Market and Economy (CSME), a stakeholders consultation on the CSME on 8-9 June 2018 in Guyana. State and non-state stakeholders will examine the CSME and its implementation as currently configured and […]

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (BGIS) — The new prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, has elevated the continuing sewage problems on the south coast to a national crisis and ordered that a Cabinet paper be prepared outlining options to resolve the issue. After a tour of the area last week, accompanied by management of the Barbados Water […]

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — The opposition Barbados Labour Party (BLP), led by Mia Mottley, won all of the 30 seats at stake in Thursday’s general election Barbados as she swept aside incumbent prime minister, Freundel Stuart, and the governing Democratic Labour Party (DLP) in an unprecedented clean-sweep. After a somewhat chaotic day, with an emergency court […]

GEORGETOWN, Guyana – The Indonesian foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, after her presentation at the United Nations in which she called for the “the enforcement of international law” at the UN Security Council (UNSC), and in particular as it relates to Palestine, arrived in Guyana on Friday and held talks with President David Granger and Foreign […]

WILLEMSTAD, Curacao (AP) — A court on the Dutch island of Curacao has authorized the local subsidiary of U.S. oil giant ConocoPhillips to seize $636 million worth of assets held on the island by Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA. The move comes as Houston-based Conoco seeks to recover $2 billion in a decade-old dispute over […]

LONDON, England (CNS) — British Overseas Territories (BOTs) will be forced to make the beneficial owners of companies registered in their jurisdictions public after a cross-party amendment to a Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Bill was accepted by the UK government on Tuesday. In a significant blow to the BOTs’ financial service sectors, they will be […]

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — Nearly 350 potential victims of sexual exploitation and forced labour have been rescued in an INTERPOL-coordinated operation targeting human trafficking in the Caribbean, Central and South America. More than 500 police officers in 13 countries also arrested 22 individuals during Operation Libertad (3 – 9 April), held under the INTERPOL Project to […]

BASSETERRE, St Kitts — Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, chairman of Malta-based Pilatus Bank, who was arrested at Dulles airport in Washington, DC, on March 19, 2018, for his alleged involvement in a scheme to evade US economic sanctions against Iran, to defraud the United States, and to commit money laundering and bank fraud, reportedly used […]

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad — The United Nations System in Trinidad and Tobago said it is concerned after authorities in Trinidad and Tobago announced they had facilitated the return to Venezuela of scores of Venezuelan nationals, including asylum seekers, who had been in detention. “The United Nations is concerned for the welfare of these people […]

HAVANA, Cuba (ACN) — Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez was elected president of Cuba on Wednesday during a session of the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP). Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, president of the National Electoral Commission (CEN), at the Havana Convention Center, announced the results of the vote on the 604 ballots cast, when 99.83 of the […]