KINGSTON, Jamaica - FINANCE officials from 13 Caribbean island nations and territories met yesterday in Antigua to brainstorm about ways of strengthening anti-money-laundering efforts and asset forfeiture. It's an uphill battle in the Caribbean, which UN experts consider a top destination for the laundering of cocaine income. Last year, eight Caribbean countries or territories were designated by the US as jurisdictions of "primary concern" for money laundering.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- George Corvington, a prominent Haitian historian best known for his exhaustive study of the Caribbean nation's capital of Port-au-Prince, died Wednesday at age 88, a close friend said. Fellow historian and longtime friend Georges Michel said that Corvington died peacefully in his sleep at his home in the capital he wrote so much about. Michel said Covington had recently spent a few weeks in the hospital and the cause of death was heart failure. "He's a giant that has fallen," said Michel, who is also a physician.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Given the parlous state of regional economies, there could scarcely be disagreement that if any of our traditional officious bystanders, the little green man from Mars, the fly on the wall or the politically observant “blind man on a trotting horse” were to observe our current situation, he would offer a view that “it cannot be business as usual”. Indeed, this identical phrase has become a modern cliché, applying at different times to our courts, our public service, our policymaking, our university and even the regional cricket team.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - Whether or not the call for a special court for tourism-related crimes comes into being, Barbados needs to be safer – for the half-million tourists who visit here annually and, equally, for our citizens.
This fair land is not immune to the dramatic increase of crime, mainly robbery-based and drug-related, that has been sweeping the Caribbean in the last decade; but keeping these shores as safe as possible must be paramount, particularly in the current challenging economic times when every tourism dollar and every ounce of positive publicity counts.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados - An official of one of the United Nations agencies has expressed concern about the dearth of social data in the Caribbean region.
UNICEF’s Representative for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Khin-Sandi Lwin, made the point yesterday morning while addressing those gathered for the opening of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), Data Analysis Workshop in the conference room of the Baobab Towers.