Highlights

WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US embassies could ask visa applicants for passwords to their own social media accounts in future background checks, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said Tuesday. Kelly said the move could come as part of the effort to toughen vetting of visitors to screen out people who could pose a security threat. He said it was […More]

People’s National Party president Portia Simpson Miller is to demit office on April 2. A week earlier on March 26, the party will host a special delegates’ conference to choose its new president. Simpson Miller, a short while ago, announced at a meeting of the party’s National Executive Council in Manchester that she will submit her resignation as Opposition Leader […More]

WASHINGTON, USA — The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Monday released the staff report prepared in connection with the approval of the rapid credit facility (RCF) for Haiti in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. On November 18, 2016, the Board approved Haiti’s request for a disbursement of 30.7125 million SDR (about US$41.6 million) in financial assistance under the RCF, to […More]

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti — While the security situation in Haiti is “not perfect”, solid progress has been made over the past few years, the head of United Nations peacekeeping operations said, stressing that the Organization is considering a change in the mandate of the UN stabilization mission in the island nation, known as MINUSTAH. Wrapping up a week-long visit, […More]

By Deirdre Gittens BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (BGIS) — The most fitting testament of solidarity between Cuba and the Caribbean would be their active collaboration to strengthen the region’s domestic, regional and global agendas, said Barbados minister of foreign affairs and foreign trade, Senator Maxine McClean, at a cocktail reception on Tuesday to mark the 58th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. McClean […More]

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti — Following the earthquake in January 2010, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) undertook the implementation of a monitoring system of displaced persons in camps in Haiti, named the displacement tracking matrix (DTM), in partnership with the government of Haiti, through the Directorate of Civil Protection. It is a tool to monitor the movements of displaced […More]

By Kenneth Rijock HOUSTON, USA — A final legal effort by R Allen Stanford to overturn what is effectively a life sentence, for operating his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, a massive Ponzi scheme that stole the life savings from many victims in the United States and elsewhere, has ended in failure after the US Supreme Court again declined to hear […More]

MIAMI, Florida — The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has expressed regret that the old year ended with the toughest censorship and restriction of the Venezuelan press following the announcement by the South American country’s oldest newspaper, El Impulso, that in 2017 it will no longer circulate in its print edition. The paper, founded in January 1904, announced in an […More]

BASSETERRE, St Kitts (CIU) — Prime Minister Dr Timothy Harris, in his New Year’s address to the nation, talked about 2017 as a year of growth and resilience, themes that sit well with the way in which the St Kitts and Nevis citizenship by investment programme is shaping up. Since the appointment of Les Khan in September 2016 as the […More]

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s US Immigration and Enforcement Agency says it removed a total of 240,255 immigrants from the country in fiscal year 2016, a two percent increase over FY 2015. The leading countries of origin for removals were all Latin American – Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Almost 2,000 immigrants were sent back to the Dominican […More]