News
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CARICOM worried about OAS budget cuts
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC) — Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries have told the Organisation of America States (OAS) that budget cuts are threatening the provision of scholarships and the activities of OAS national offices in the Caribbean. A Caricom Secretariat statement issued here last Friday said that Caricom foreign ministers, who attended the 43rd General Assembly of the OAS that ended in…
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Beyond The T&T Smokescreen
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Whatever it is A.J. Nicholson drank last Friday, we hope Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller will insist that he recommend it to Industry Minister Anthony Hylton. The foreign minister, speaking in the Senate, properly dressed down critics of Trinidad and Tobago's trade practices, saying that if there are genuine issues concerning the application of the Treaty of…
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AJ, Know Your Role – Private Sector Fires Back At Nicholson After ‘Trade Bickering’ Comments
KINGSTON, Jamaica – Calls from Foreign Trade Minister A.J. Nicholson for the parliamentary Opposition and other critics to end the bickering with Trinidad and Tobago over claims of unfair trade practices have not gone down well with members of the local manufacturing sector. Yesterday, Christopher Zacca, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), said he was “concerned by…
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CARICOM’s ‘survival’ challenges
KINGSTON, Jamaica – THE first in a series of planned consultations, across this region, for the introduction of a Five-Year Strategic Plan for CARICOM had a low-profile start in Barbados last Wednesday. First official news on the beginning of the consultative process came from the Georgetown-based Community Secretariat and, at best, media coverage was quite patchy or, worse, absent. No…
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Is CARICOM A Necessity?
KINGSTON, Jamaica – The relationship of Jamaica with its Caribbean neighbours in a regional organisation was first publicly discussed at a conference in Montego Bay in 1947, called by the British secretary of state, Arthur Creech Jones, to discuss the question of regional political integration. From this opening discussion, 11 years later, the West Indies Federation was born, comprising 10…
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CPL a bright idea
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – The Caribbean Premier League, which bowls off in Barbados on July 30, could bring many benefits to the sport and the region. For West Indies cricket, which has spent the better part of the last decade in the doldrums, there are great prospects for re-energising players and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB). The WICB…
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Latin America’s Pacific Alliance
GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Even as Chinese President Xi Jinpeng was making his way around the region to promote more trade and cooperation between China and Latin America and the Caribbean, visiting Trinidad and Tobago (where he also held bilateral talks with those Caricom countries with which Beijing enjoys diplomatic relations), Costa Rica and Mexico, there was a buzz coming from…
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Britain’s expression of regret and the reparations debate
KINGSTON, Jamaica – England's expression yesterday of sincere regret and offer of compensation for the acts of torture that a British colonial government carried out against Kenyans fighting for liberation from colonial rule in the 1950s and 1960s, will, we expect, revive the reparations debate in the Caribbean. As reported on page 29 of today's Jamaica Observer, the simultaneous announcement…
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Jamaica to host World Blood Donor Day
KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – Jamaica has been selected by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to host the official ceremony for World Blood Donor Day (WBDD) for the Region of the Americas, on June 14. PAHO Director Dr. Carissa F. Etienne is expected to be the keynote speaker at the official World Blood Donor Day ceremony, held under the theme…
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UNICEF concerned about child killings
KINGSTON, Jamaica – THE United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has condemned what it describes as the “unrelenting violence” against the nation's children, saying that a total of 16 children were murdered over the first four months of this year. The UN body made particular reference to last week's spate of child killings, which included the beheading of four-year-old Natasha Brown.
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