Philadelphia Tribune - Index

Philadelphia Tribune - Sunday, September 07 2008 - Index

Sunday, September 7, 2008
Dominica
establishes officials’
Integrity Act
DOMINICA – The
Caribbean island of Dominica
finally has a commission to
monitor the behavior of public
officials – a full five years
after legislators approved the
idea. The Integrity in Public
Office Act says that officials
can face fines and prison if
they own property disproportionately
worth more than
their income. Prime Minister
Roosevelt Skerrit says he is
prepared to declare all of his
assets and has dismissed
corruption allegations.
Skerrit appointed the sevenmember
panel on Tuesday.
Members will serve for three
years and are expected to
present legislators with an
annual report.
Source: The Associated Press
International
police asked
to aid Antigua
ANTIGUA – Authorities in
Antigua are asking the United
Nations and international
police to help them fight crime
in the eastern Caribbean
island. The request comes
days after Prime Minister
Baldwin Spencer dismissed
the police chief, citing unsatisfactory
performance. No further
explanation has been
given. Antigua continues to
investigate the July killing of a
honeymooning British couple
as officers grapple with a
spike in crime. The island has
recorded 12 killings so far this
year. Police reported a record
19 slayings last year. Spencer
says it is too early to say what
role the U.N. and Interpol
would play.
Source: The Associated Press
Two earthquakes
shake up
St. Lucia
ST. LUCIA – Two moderate
arthquakes have rattled the
astern Caribbean island of
t. Lucia and jolted residents
ut of their beds. Police
onstable Sylvester John
ays no injuries or damages
ere reported, and that most
eople remained in their
omes. Scientists say a magitude
4.8 quake was folowed
eight seconds later by a
agnitude 4.5 quake early
uesday. The first occurred
ome 43 miles east of
astries. The second hit
bout 17 miles west of
anaries. A magnitude 7.4
uake last November damged
buildings and water
ipes in several islands.
Source: The Associated Press
U.S. offers storm-hit Cuba $100,000 in aid
Will Weissert
LA PALMA, Cuba – The
United States has offered Cuba
$100,000 in emergency aid for
the victims of Hurricane Gustav
and is willing to send far more
if a U.S.-approved disaster
ssessment team is allowed to
our the hardest-hit areas.
All aid would be provided
hrough international relief
organizations, with none going
directly to the communist government,
said Gregory Adams,
a spokesman for the U.S.
Interests Section in the Cuban
capital.
“We’re awaiting a response
from the Cuban government,
whether they say yea or nay,”
Adams said. “It’s not a shift in
U.S. policy, it’s a response to a
humanitarian emergency.”
The Cuban government has
not commented on the offer
from its traditional foe.
Gustav damaged 100,000
homes, so the initial U.S. offer
works out to only about $1 per
home in need of repair.
But Cuba’s government is
facing sky-high expectations
from those who lost everything
in the storm. Yanet Perez, for
one, is convinced the government
will build her a new
home.
“I have faith. Other times
when catastrophes have happened,
they have mobilized and
rebuilt,” said the 28-year-old,
BAHAMIAN SURF
A man holding a child stands next to a big wave on Paradise Island on the northeast shore of Nassau, Wednesday. Many beaches were
labeled as no-swimming areas due to the approach of Tropical Storm Hanna into the Bahamas island chain. –– AP PHOTO/TIM AYLEN
Gustav levels
homes, floods
roads in Cuba
CUBA – Cubans returned
from shelters to find flooded
homes and washed-out roads
Sunday, but no deaths were
reported after a monstrous
Hurricane Gustav roared
across the island and into the
oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
Gustav hit the Isla de la
Juventud south of the Cuban
mainland just short of a
top–scale Category 5 hurricane
with screaming 140 mph
winds that toppled telephone
poles and fruit trees, shattered
windows and leveled
some homes. Authorities
evacuated 250,000 residents
nationwide. In Pinar del Rio,
the western tobacco-producing
region, highways were
blocked by fallen trees and
downed power lines, and all
public transportation ground
to a halt. Officials measured
gusts of 212 mph in the
western town of Paso Real del
San Diego – a new national
record for maximum wind
speed in a country often hit
by major hurricanes, said
Miguel Angel Hernandez of
the Cuban Institute of
Meteorology.
Source: The Associated Press
who was slumped in a rocking
chair with her 1-year-old
daughter in front of the skeletal
remains of her home in La
Palma. “Those with children are
given priority.”
Such sentiment sounds
much like the propaganda that
clogs state-controlled radio and
– but also reflects the genuine
expectations of people who
have always been promised
that the communist system will
provide for them, especially
when times are hardest.
Living up to those expectations
is an important test for
Raul Castro, who succeeded his
brother Fidel as president six
months ago.
While Gustav killed at least
122 people, including 26 in the
United States, Cuba reported
no deaths, thanks to mandatory
evacuations. Still, the
Category 4 hurricane will worsen
an already severe islandwide
housing shortage.
Thousands who moved into
temporary housing after
Hurricane Michelle in 2001 still
live in the decrepit apartments
without proper water and
sewage, and many are skeptical
about quick recovery from
Gustav as well.
“You have to keep pestering
the (Communist) Party or they
do nothing,” said Josefa
Fuentes, 52, who complained
that officials won’t fix the hole
the hurricane left in her roof in
Bahamian
Olympian
to retire from track
BAHAMAS – Bahamian quarter-miler
Tonique Williams-
Darling, says she is retiring
from track and field, less than
a week after watching her reign
as Olympic champion end in
Beijing, China.
Williams–Darling has been
absent from the track since
September 2006 and several
reports had suggested that she
was on the verge of quitting the
sports. The 32-year-old, however,
played down those
remarks in July, stating that
she was eyeing a 2009 return.
Williams-Darling, Bahamas’
only individual Olympic gold
medalist, who also won a gold
medal at the Helsinki World
Championships in 2005, also
admits to not miss competing,
something that played a big
part in her decision.
Source: Caribbean Net News
Guyana cane
cutters end
weeklong strike
GUYANA – Thousands of
cane cutters ended a weeklong
strike in Guyana after
Batabano, a low-lying fishing
community south of Havana.
Russian planes carried tents,
floor tiles, pipes and food to
Havana on Thursday, and several
Latin American countries
have pledged to send aid. But
Fidel Castro wrote this week
that repairs could cost billions
– on an island where the average
state salary is only about
$20 per month.
The U.S. offered aid after
Hurricane Michelle too, and
Cuba turned it down. But Cuba
took advantage of a 2000 U.S.
law allowing direct-payment
sale of U.S. food and agricultural
products to the island.
Today, America is Cuba’s top
supplier of food.
avana offered 1,600 doctors
to help victims of Hurricane
Katrina, which devastated the
U.S. Gulf Coast in August
2005. The State Department
said that Cuban help was not
needed.
Gustav’s center roared close
to La Palma, a banana-growing
town flanked by breathtaking
green, limestone mountains,
leaving piles of sticks where
homes once stood. The region is
where Cubans plant their finest
tobacco, though the crop won’t
be affected because Gustav hit
before planting season.
Work to rebuild homes is still
days off, but trucks loaded with
metal sheets for roofs and other
flimsy construction materials
the government ordered binding
arbitration in a bid to
reopen the state-run sugar
industry and avoid interrupting
exports to Europe, a labor
leader said Sunday. Most of
the 15,000 striking workers
returned to their jobs this
weekend after an arbitrator
started to review the case,
according to Komal Chand,
head of the Guyana
Agricultural and General
Workers Union. The nationwide
strike – the second massive
walkout since
mid–August in a dispute over
wages – forced the closure of
all eight sugar estates owned
by state-run Guyana Sugar
Corp., or Guysuco, which produces
all sugar in the South
American country. Guyana is
the Caribbean’s largest sugarproducing
nation. Guysuco
produced roughly 281,000
tons (255,000 metric tons)
last year.
Source: The Associated Press
Barbados
official calls for
improved services
BARBADOS – There must
be a major change in the
way in which public service
institutions function, if
Barbados is to cope with the
have begun arriving.
Much of the recovery will fall
to the military and brigades of
students and young communists
forced to work hard and
fast for little or no wages.
In the one-room Batabano
home that Maria Elena Araujo
shares with her wheelchairconfined
husband, the hole
Gustav punched in the roof
allows sunlight to shine at
jagged angles on the bed.
Araujo said officials told her it
didn’t require urgent attention.
“We don’t have any support
from anyone,” the 54-year-old
said. “I don’t see a solution. I
hope it doesn’t rain.”
Back in La Palma, Perez and
her family are living in far
worse conditions. Hurricane
Gustav tore off the roof and
crushed the walls and floor.
“It’s a total loss,” she said.
They sleep in a wood hut
crammed with furniture salvaged
from the house. There’s
no electricity. A truck rumbles
by every day with potable water
and milk for the baby. But the
family has to cook on a camping
stove, subsisting on rice
and beans it stored up before
the storm.
“The food is the hardest thing.
There’s not enough of it,” said
Perez, who said she’d like to
slaughter one of the chickens her
husband raises, but that a lack
of refrigeration means eating all
the meat in one sitting. – (AP)
many and varied challenges
emerging from the current
global environment. This
assertion was made recently
by Prime Minister David
Thompson as he delivered
the feature address at the
recently held 67th Annual
Delegates’ Conference of the
Barbados Workers’ Union at
“Solidarity House”. The
prime minister further stated
that effectiveness in the
public service could be maximized
if it was an integrated
system, with revised
accountability structures
and ways of working.
Source: Caribbean Net News
Tourist board
official fired
in British V.I.
BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS –
In an unusual move, British
Virgin Islands Premier Ralph
O’Neal has fired Terrance Ford,
acting chairman and member
of the BVI Tourist Board.
Tourism is one of the main pillars
of the British Virgin
Islands’ economy, next to the
financial services sector, and
the government said it wants
to ensure that the BVI Tourist
Board is run in the best interest
of the territory. In a press
release issued on Tuesday,
Page 5-C
O’Neal, who is also the Minister
responsible for Tourism, cited
professional differences as the
reasons for Ford’s termination.
He nevertheless expressed
appreciation to Ford for his
interest and work in helping to
develop the industry during his
most recent appointment and
over the years as a member of
the board.
Source: Caribbean Net News
British Navy
vessels come to
Caymans’ aid
CAYMAN ISLANDS – Royal
Navy Warship, HMS Iron Duke
and Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel
Wave Ruler have now
arrived in the vicinity of the
Cayman Islands, ready to render
assistance if required in
the wake of Hurricane Gustav.
Gustav, which recently caused
damage to Haiti and Jamaica,
has now passed over Cayman.
Between them, HMS Iron
Duke and RFA Wave Ruler are
able to deploy first aid and
rescue teams ashore, as well
as engineering support as
requested by the local authorities.
The key aspect is that
Royal Navy and RFA personnel
are available for that initial
period now that Gustav has
hit. They will respond as
requested by the local authorities
on the ground.
Source: Caribbean Net News
Lawyer says
Grenada mistreated
ex-advisor
GRENADA – One of the
lawyers representing former
legal advisor to the Keith
Mitchell administration in
Grenada, Hugh Wildman,
claims that the Jamaicanborn
attorney was humiliated
and disgraced by the Grenada
police. Attorney Dwight
Horsfod told newsmen on
Monday night that Wildman
slept on a concrete platform
and the police did not want
him to get medical attention
during his 30-hour ordeal at
the police station. Wildman
was detained on Saturday
afternoon while he was about
to board a flight en route to
Jamaica. He was arrested following
instructions from the
director of public prosecutions
for alleged wrongdoing in relation
to the collapsed offshore
bank, First International Bank
of Grenada (FIBG). There
were allegations made a few
years ago that Wildman, a former
attorney general, accepted
bribes from FIBG officials in
order to prevent the FBI in the
United States from going into
Grenada to investigate the
bank.
Source: Caribbean Net News
– Compiled by Jordan Ingram
Residents unload roof materials provided by Cuba’s government
to repair damaged homes after Hurricane Gustav hit the
area in La Palma, Cuba on Tuesday. — AP PHOTO/JAVIER GALEANO