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Government yesterday said it plans to turn the Forestry Division into a statutory body to allow for a more effective operation as the conservation of forests is critical to the country.

This was announced by Minister of Housing and the Environment Dr Roodal Moonilal at the opening ceremony of a media workshop for a better understanding of watersheds and marine resources. The workshop was held at the Hilton Trinidad, St Ann’s.

Moonilal said his ministry was in the process of introducing a ...

Prime Minister Bruce Golding has said that getting the economy back on a path of growth is what will rescue Jamaicans from poverty.

Making his contribution to the Budget Debate in Parliament on Tuesday, Golding said that the Government will do everything possible to facilitate and accelerate that growth and that this is an area of focus for his Administration.

“The increase in the poverty level is directly attributed to the decline in the economy, loss of jobs and ...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, May 13 (UPI) — Haiti’s new president, former musician Michel Martelly, will be inaugurated Saturday.

Workers were building wooden benches on the lawn of the National Palace, which was destroyed during last year’s 7-magnitude earthquake that killed an estimated 230,000 people.

“Everything is broken,” Daniel Supplice, head of Martelly’s presidential transition team, said in a Miami Herald report Friday. “But we don’t have a choice. The president has to be inaugurated either way. It has to be done. We have ...

The minister said that axing of the thousands of public sector workers is now left to permanent secretaries and technocrats in the various ministries and agencies.

Vaz said the PSTU will be getting into the details in the coming days as they hold their own briefing to clarify some of the issues. The minister made it clear, however, that the PSTU will continue to act as an oversight body to see that the recommendations are implemented accordingly and will ...

THE GUYANA rice industry has once again been greeted with good news as yet another export deal has beenclinched with Venezuela worth some US$48M, making it the third such consecutive agreement with our eastern Spanish-speaking neighbour.
Under the agreement Guyana is expected to export 30,000 tonnes of white rice and 50,000 tonnes of paddy at US$800 and US$480 per metric tonne, respectively, while making greater strides in improving its share in the Venezuela market.
This certainly is a big boost for ...

KINGSTON – President of the Jamaica Bar Association (JBA) Ian Wilkinson says he believes it will be a “retrograde step” if the country decides to establish its own final court of appeal rather than seek to join the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).

In an interview with the Jamaica Observer newspaper, Wilkinson said that any contemplation of going that route would amount to a backward step which would be of little benefit to Jamaica.

“I think that it would be a retrograde step ...

PORT-OF-SPAIN – Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar today confirmed that the appointment of Planning, Economic and Social Restructuring and Gender Affairs Minister Mary King has been revoked.

The Prime Minister made the announcement after holding talks with President George Maxwell Richards, a short while ago.

“I have advised his Excellency that I will be sending in a note this evening asking him to revoke her appointment. It is a sad day for us,” she told reporters.

The dismissal follows a story published in the Sunday ...

PORT-AU-PRINCE — As the representative of Haitians living abroad on a commission charged with rebuilding quake-ravaged Haiti, Joseph Bernadel, a retired U.S. army major from Delray Beach, can have an opinion — but he doesn’t get a vote.

That harsh reality is just one of many examples of how Haitians who have accepted citizenship from other countries have been left out when it comes to deciding on the future of their unlucky homeland, Bernadel said.

But he and some other Haitians living outside ...

A minor earthquake struck east Jamaica at 4:29 this morning.

The earthquake had a magnitude of 4.2 on the richter scale, reported the United States Geographical Survey (USGS).

The epicentre was 26 kilometres (16 miles) from Kingston and had a depth of 20.3 km  (12.6 miles).

United Nations (CNN) — The cholera outbreak that killed more than 4,500 people in Haiti last year was linked to peacekeepers from Nepal, a new report says, a conclusion previously resisted by at least some United Nations officials.

The report, released late Wednesday by a United Nations-appointed independent panel of experts, says that the cholera strain did not originate in Haiti. Instead, it was “very similar” to strains of cholera currently circulating in South Asia.

The report does not directly blame the peacekeepers, ...