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It has been nearly a year since Haiti held elections, but it was not until late Tuesday night that the troubled nation finally was able to form a new government.

Garry Conille, a United Nations development specialist and aide to Bill Clinton, was ratified by the Haitian Senate after debate that lasted more than seven hours.

President Michel Martelly, who took office in May, congratulated his new prime minister, saying that the installation of new leadership was a step forward in implementing ...

PRESIDENT George Maxwell Richards yesterday spent his first full day in office since returning from vacation on Wednesday. However, by the end of the day there was as yet no word on what action — if any — he would take in relation to a complaint filed against Integrity Commission chairman Dr Eric St Cyr over his disclosure to the press of an Integrity Commission probe of Udecott chairman Jearlean John.

A complaint against St Cyr was lodged at the Office ...

JAMAICA Labour Party officials Dr Christopher Tufton, Daryl Vaz and Delano Seiveright, along with People’s National Party functionaries Delano Franklyn, Raymond Pryce and Damion Crawford speak on Prime Minister Bruce Golding’s address to the nation last night. Here are their responses:

Dr Christopher Tufton, minister of industry, investment and commerce:

 Given his experience in the political process, one has to respect and yield to his own judgements on these matters and the views that he has advanced.

If you ...

JAMAICANS will soon begin to feel the real heat from the recrafted 2011-2012 Budget, the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) spokesman on finance and planning, Dr Peter Phillips has predicted.

Speaking at the PNP’s West Rural St Andrew constituency conference at the Oberlin High School in Lawrence Tavern on Sunday, Dr Phillips told party supporters that last week’s tabling of the Supplementary Estimates of Expenditure in Parliament was destined to have far-reaching consequences

“There has been a collapse of ...

Minister of Transport and Hydraulics, Robeson Benn, and a team comprising senior engineers from the Ministry of Public Works and Communication, recently visited the Essequibo island of Leguan and interacted with rice millers. Some of the concerns raised by millers  were the condition of the road which they use to transport their crops; the unavailability of efficient transportation to move  crops to and from Georgetown; losses they suffer at spring tide; and the desilting of the drainage system to ...

Barbados was an economic powerhouse in the Americas and the British Empire when globalization had its initial stirrings in the 17th century.

Indeed, Barbadians were in the vanguard of what is now referred to as “Western capitalism” and the linchpin of that economic system was a mix of an aggressive drive for wealth by early Bajans whose family roots were in England, the lucrative sugar industry and the Atlantic slave trade in the Caribbean.

That historical picture was painted in Charleston, South ...

Higher international prices of agricultural commodities are starting to affect local food prices.

Wheat prices on the world market, which have steadily increased over the past year because of bad weather in wheat-producing countries like Russia, pushed domestic prices of breads and cereals up in July, the Central Bank says in its latest repo rate report.

Breads and cereals on the local market climbed 3.7 per cent on a 12-month basis up to July this year, from 2.3 per cent in June.

There ...

Some U.S. residents were forced to evacuate their homes Thursday and the military moved more than two dozen ships out to sea ahead of Hurricane Irene, a huge storm that could prove to be the biggest to strike the United States in six years.

The Category 3 storm was “pounding the northwestern Bahamas,” the National Hurricane Center said. It was centered 65 miles east-northeast of Nassau, and about 670 miles south of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

Maximum sustained winds were at 115 ...

Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar said yesterday she intends to taking the “strongest, most aggressive approach possible” to rid Trinidad and Tobago of criminal elements as well as “those who direct, fund, influence or otherwise support these nefarious activities”.

Addressing a sod turning ceremony for a new police station in Arima, east of here, Persad Bissessar said that her administration has provided “lots of funds” in the fight against crime since it came to office 16   months ago.

She said in addition ...

The U.S. State Department no longer urges American citizens to avoid all travel to Haiti, but says they should still “carefully consider” before traveling to the island. The new travel warning issued Monday softens language from one released in January, when the country was suffering election-related violence, that “strongly urged” citizens to avoid all travel. The current one cites crime, a renewed cholera outbreak and an inadequate infrastructure as concerns. The Jan. 20 advisory noted that “the number of victims ...