Joseph Guyler Delva | Port-Au-Prince | April 27

Reuters - Haitian President Rene Preval named a new prime minister on Sunday after lawmakers fired his predecessor to quell violent protests over rising food prices in the impoverished nation, a senator said.

Preval named Ericq Pierre, a senior advisor with the Inter-American Development Bank, to replace former Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, said the president of the Caribbean country's Senate, Sen. Kelly Bastien.

Alexis was dismissed on April 12 in a vote by opposition senators who blamed him for failing to ramp up food production and reduce the cost of living. At least six people died in riots over food prices in the poorest nation in the Americas.

Pierre's appointment must be ratified by Haiti's parliament.

Public unrest has struck in several countries as bad weather, competition with biofuels, market speculation and rising demand in Asia send the price of many staples soaring.

Havana | April 15

M&C - Yusnel was up early on Monday, and he had a clear goal.

'I wanted to be the first Cuban to buy a cellphone,' he explained.

However, when he made it to one of the few stores in Havana allowed to sell cellphones to Cubans long before it was scheduled to open, he found a queue of over 30 people waiting for the same reason.

That happened at other stores too, in the latest move to lift 'an excess in prohibitions and regulations' by new Cuban President Raul Castro.

Port-Au-Prince | April 13

AFP - Haiti's prime minister was ousted on Saturday in a no-confidence vote after more than a week of violent demonstrations over rocketing food and fuel prices.

Just as President Rene Preval unveiled a plan to cut the price of rice by 15 percent, 16 senators in the upper house of parliament voted unanimously to censure Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis over the crisis, costing him his job leading the government.

With the 10 senators in Alexis's own party absent, the legislators reproached the prime minister for failing to respond to the needs of Haiti's 8.5 million people, 80 percent of whom live on less than two dollars a day.

The move came amid reports that UN peacekeepers fired tear gas at protesters in central Port-au-Prince and that a UN policeman dressed in civilian clothes was shot dead by unknown assailants near the capital's cathedral.

** Related thread: Hungry mob attacks Haiti palace

Havana | April 12

AP - Thousands of Cubans will be able to get title to state-owned homes under regulations published Friday, a step that could lay the groundwork for broader housing reform.

The measure was the first legal decree formally published since Raúl Castro succeeded his brother Fidel as president in February. It came a day after state television said the government would also do away with wage limits, allowing state employees to earn as much they can as an incentive to productivity.

The housing decree spells out rules to let Cubans renting from their state employers keep their apartment or house after leaving their jobs. They could gain title and even pass it on to their children or other relatives. Those who could take advantage of the new law include military families, sugar workers, construction workers, teachers and doctors.

Related thread: Raul Castro's Reforms: DVDs, Farms for Cubans

Joseph Guyler Delva | Port-Au-Prince | April 7

Reuters - A man was killed by gunfire as demonstrators took to the streets in the southern Haitian city of Les Cayes on Monday, raising the death toll to five in protests against rising food prices, officials and radio reports said.

Protesters also marched outside the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, the capital of the impoverished Caribbean nation of nearly 9 million people, expressing anger at the higher cost of food.

Four people were killed and 20 others were hurt in a riot in Les Cayes last week. U.N. vehicles were burned, peacekeepers were attacked and a food warehouse was looted by angry mobs on Thursday and Friday.

UPDATE April 8:

Hungry mob attacks Haiti palace -

Crowds of demonstrators in Haiti have tried to storm the presidential palace in the capital Port-au-Prince as protests continue over food prices.

Witnesses say the protesters used metal bins to try to smash down the palace gates before UN troops fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse them.

Wil Weissert | Havana | April 1

AP - Cubans snapped up DVD players, motorbikes and pressure cookers for the first time Tuesday as Raul Castro's new government loosened controls on consumer goods and invited private farmers to plant tobacco, coffee and other crops on unused state land.

Combined with other reforms announced in recent days, the measures suggest real changes are being driven by the new president, who vowed when he took over from his brother Fidel to remove some of the more irksome limitations on the daily lives of Cubans.

Analysts wondered how far the communist government is willing to go.

** Cuba's Opening Marks Shift Away From Fidel

Laura N Perez | San Juan, Puerto Rico | March 29

AP - For former Puerto Rican Gov. Carlos Romero Barcelo, the federal indictment of the current governor is sweet revenge indeed.

Barcelo, now a statesman for the main opposition party, had previously identified himself as the person who alerted the FBI to possible corruption by Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila.

And at a news conference Friday, Romero did a bit of gloating, saying he decided to finger Acevedo after his rival raised questions about his own campaign finances almost a decade ago.

``He who is responsible pays for it,'' Romero said, using a Spanish adage whose English equivalent is: ``You've made your bed, now lie in it.''

William M. Arkin | March 29

WaPo - Here's an odd news story that puts meat on the bones of the phrase "global war on terror": The United States is fighting that war in the Caribbean and Central America.

My assumption was that "Operation Enduring Freedom -- Caribbean and Central America," a formal military operation I'd never heard of before yesterday, is oriented toward Cuba and Venezuela. But it is not. The U.S. military is indeed engaged in a global war, and the terrorist threat, at least in the eyes of the counter-terror warriors, extends to our backyard.

I don't know whether the actual threat necessitates such an "operation," but its bureaucratic existence says a lot about our overreliance on the military and the belief of many in government that the GWOT is a real war, equivalent to the Cold War, and is one that the United States should and will be fighting for decades.

The Rhode Island media this week was filled with the news that a unit of the state's National Guard, an organization called Special Operations Detachment -- Global (SOD-G), is deploying this week in support of something called Operation Enduring Freedom -- Caribbean and Central America.

Kirk Semple | March 28

NYT - The prosecution may affect the presidential race. Mr. Acevedo is a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention and a supporter of Senator Barack Obama.

Gov. Aníbal Acevedo Vilá of Puerto Rico, charged in a federal indictment unsealed on Thursday with campaign finance violations, denied any wrongdoing and vowed to remain in office and fight the charges.

Among the 19 criminal counts he faces are tax fraud and using campaign money to pay for family vacations in Miami; Orlando, Fla.; and China; to pay for $57,000 worth of “high end” clothing; and to pay personal credit card bills.

The indictment threw Puerto Rican politics into disarray as some politicians and political commentators called for Mr. Acevedo’s resignation and members of the opposition party, the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, began to discuss impeachment.

March 22

BBC - Farmers in Haiti have become the accidental victims of US imports and international aid as food writer Stefan Gates explains.

...This valley used to produce nearly enough rice to feed the entire country, but back in the 1980s the International Monetary Fund and World Bank demanded that Haiti drop import tariffs in return for loans.

Haiti was soon flooded with cheap and heavily subsidised US food.

"We can't compete with imported rice," Maye says.

It is estimated that the US rice crop costs $1.8bn (£900m) to grow, but its farmers get subsidies of $1.3bn (£650m), and there was no way that Haiti could cope with competition like that.

Agriculture - one of the few sources of employment in this desperately poor country - effectively collapsed. Rice production halved and imports increased 50-fold, making Haiti the USA's fourth-largest market for rice.

Havana | March 15

M&C - Mexico and Cuba have ended their years of frozen relations and declared not only are they 'fully normalized' but they also plan close bilateral and international cooperation.

Cuban President Raul Castro has invited his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderon, to visit Cuba, the foreign ministers of both countries said Thursday night at the end of their meeting in Havana.

Calderon has worked since his inauguration in December 2006 to normalize relations, which have historically been warm between the two nations but turned chilly under his predecessor Vicente Fox, who criticized former Cuban president Fidel Castro.

'Relations between Mexico and Cuba are fully normalized,' Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said ahead of Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque's visit to Mexico in September, when he is to formally present Cuba's invitation to Calderon.

Perez Roque announced that Cuba would support Mexico's bid to take up one of the 10 rotating seats on the 15-member UN Security Council at the next UN General Assembly meeting.

Marc Frank | Havana | March 14

Reuters - Access improving to consumer goods

Communist Cuba has authorized the unrestricted sale of computers as well as DVD and video players in the first sign that its new president, Raúl Castro, is moving to improve Cubans' access to consumer goods.

An internal government memo said the appliances long desired by Cubans can go on sale immediately, although air conditioners will not be available until next year and toasters until 2010 due to limited power supplies.

James C. McKinley Jr. | Havana | March 6

NYT - Young journalists have also started blogs and Internet news sites, using servers in other countries, and their reports are reaching people through the digital underground.

A growing underground network of young people armed with computer memory sticks, digital cameras and clandestine Internet hookups has been mounting some challenges to the Cuban government in recent months, spreading news that the official state media try to suppress.

Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly.

Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire through Havana, passed from person to person, and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.

I may not blog or comment very much these days here on Agonist, to be honest the quality of the discussions, comments and crowd here leaves me a little intimidated sometimes and I spend so much time reading the threads I'm interested in and the comments that I run out of time to do much else. I may not have been a big contributor, but I remember well the days of flame fests, bulletin boards and Arta, Maddog and others.

Three years ago friend of mine started a local blog site after being inspired by the Agonist (and my nudging), called St. Maarten Private Eye, and I am now about to get more involved with it. We need some help. But before I explain what kind of help, let me tell you about St. Maarten.

Pablo Bachelet | Washingotn | March 1

McClatchy - New Cuban leader Raul Castro would consider exchanging dissidents held in Cuban jails for five Cuban intelligence agents imprisoned in the United States as spies, a top Vatican official said in an interview.

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone told the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano in an interview published Friday that the subject came up during a meeting he had with the new Cuban leader, who officially replaced his ailing brother Fidel last weekend.

Speculation that Cuba might be interested in such a swap has been widespread in Havana since the Cuban government launched a massive campaign for the release of the five Cuban agents, who were convicted in a Miami federal court in 2001. But Bertone's interview is the first confirmation that the Cuban government is interested in an exchange.

Anthony Boadle | Cienfuegos, Cuba | Dec 21

Reuters - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered Caribbean and Central American nations the option on Friday to pay for already cheap oil supplies with local products, such as bananas and sugar.

At a summit of his growing regional energy alliance, Petrocaribe, the leftist firebrand attacked the United States and other rich consumer nations for squandering their unfair share of world resources.

"In spite of the Yankees, our oil and gas will always be at the service, first of Venezuela, and at the same time of our brother nations of Latin American and the Caribbean," he said.

"We have begun to create a new geopolitics of oil that is not at the service of the interests of imperialism and big capitalists," Chavez said in a speech.

December 18

The Guardian -

Cuba's ailing leader, Fidel Castro, has hinted at possible retirement, saying he does not want to "cling" to power.

In a letter read out by Cuban state television last night, the 81 year old - who has not been seen in public for 16 months after undergoing intestinal surgery - said he did not want to stand in the way of younger leaders.

"My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, or even less to obstruct the path of younger people, but to share experiences and ideas whose modest worth comes from the exceptional era in which I lived," Castro wrote in the final paragraph of the lengthy letter, which mainly discussed the Bali summit on global warming.

Some commentators interpreted the comments as indicating that Castro, Cuba's unchallenged leader since 1959, could be preparing the way for a handover of power. Following the surgery in July 2006, Castro temporarily ceded power to his younger brother, Raul.

However, the Cuban leader has made similar comments previously, including before his illness. Elsewhere in the latter, Castro also invoked the example of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who has just celebrated his 100th birthday.

Dec 11

BBC - Cuba is going to sign up to two major United Nations agreements on civil and political rights, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque confirmed.

Legally binding protocols on economic, social and cultural issues, and civil and political rights, make up the UN Bill of Human Rights.

Communist Cuba is one of the countries which has never signed up.

The news came as government supporters shouted down dissidents marking the UN's international human rights day.

When it signs up to the protocols early next year, Cuba will commit to allowing freedom of expression and association and the right to travel abroad, among other things.

Alex Renton | Haiti | December 2

Observer - ....According to the United Nations' collation of research, almost half of all the girls in Cité Soleil and the country's other 'conflict-zone' slums have been raped or subjected to other sexual violence. These figures compare with those that emerge from the wars in Congo and Darfur - but this is not a country at war. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Americas, but it has a functioning democratic government, courts, police and a free press, all assisted by a three-year-old United Nations stabilisation mission that has been widely hailed as a success.

If the UN's figures are correct, there could be some 80,000 young women in Cité Soleil - a suburb smaller than Croydon - who have been sexually assaulted. What could turn a population to such voracious and cruel abuse of itself? Annacius Duportal, an aid worker funded by Oxfam who looks after HIV-positive women in the slums, told me the answer is simple - that the stripping of the plane and the high incidence of rape were caused by the same thing. Not culture, not tradition, but poverty. 'It is the source of all this. Poverty stops these young people from using their abilities, from fulfilling their promise. It compromises their sexuality, it forces the young women to use their sexuality so they can get money and assistance from the young men. And that has meant those who steal property seem to think it's also acceptable to steal women.'

ROSEAU, Dominica | November 29

AP - ROSEAU, Dominica (AP) - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.3 rocked the eastern Caribbean on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. No damage was immediately reported.
The earthquake was centered 23 miles (37 kilometers) southeast of Roseau, the capital of Dominica, where the shaking lasted for about 20 seconds. The quake was felt as far away as Puerto Rico.
The quake struck at 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) at a depth of 90 miles (145 kilometers) beneath the surface of the earth, according to the geological survey's Web site.

Earthquake rocks Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, Martinique, Dominica and other Caribbean Windward islands

Buildings reported to collapse in Martinique/Gaudaloupe

USGS - Magnitude 7.4 - MARTINIQUE REGION, WINDWARD ISLANDS

Nov1

BBC -

At least 90 people have died in floods and mudslides sparked by Tropical Storm Noel in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, officials say.

The Dominican Republic authorities say dozens are missing and at least 58,300 have had to flee their homes.

Forecasters have warned of hurricane strength winds in the Bahamas as the storm heads towards the archipelago.

And the US National Hurricane Center has issued a tropical storm warning for Florida's south-east coast.

Meanwhile with rain still falling on Hispaniola - the island shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti - rescuers have been struggling to reach communities cut off by the flooding.

At least 56 people have died in the Dominican Republic, 34 in neighbouring Haiti and one in Jamaica.

In pictures: Storm damage

Neil Bowdler | Oct 30

BBC - The strain of the HIV virus which predominates in the United States and Europe has been traced back to Haiti by an international team of scientists.

The strain passed from Haiti to the US in about 1969 before spreading further, says the team in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences.

They hope knowing this could help find a cure for HIV, which can lead to Aids.

"HIV-1 group M subtype B" predominates in the US, Europe, large parts of South America, Australia and Japan.

Now scientists say they know where it came from.

Will Grant | Miami | Oct 8

BBC News - Hero. Rebel. Revolutionary. These are words one often hears in association with Ernesto Che Guevara.

But they are not words you will often hear in Miami where many people see Che Guevara as a brutal guerrilla who brought Cuba nothing but misery with his communist ideals.

One of those anti-Che voices in Miami belongs to Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban-born former CIA agent who was part of the mission of CIA operatives and Bolivian army forces that captured and killed Che Guevara in October 1967.

Forty years on, how does he feel about the role he played in ending the life of one of the most iconic Latin American leaders of the 20th Century?

I visited the ex-CIA man at his Miami home. He was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the logo of the 2506 Association of the Veterans of the Bay of Pigs, another of his earlier military incursions against the Cuban government.

United Nations | Sept 27

Reuters - Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque has hit back at US President George W Bush, saying he was a reckless global cop who has put the world's security at risk.

A day after he stormed out of the UN General Assembly hall when Bush referred to ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro as a "cruel dictator" whose rule was coming to an end, Cuba's envoy said the US president had no right to demand "regime change" in sovereign countries through war and sanctions.

"It was an embarrassing show, the delirium tremens of the world's policeman, the intoxication of imperial power, sprinkled with mediocrity and cynicism," he said of Bush's speech on Monday.

Perez Roque blamed Bush for the death of 600,000 civilian in the Iraq war and said the US president had no moral grounds to speak about human rights in other nations after authorizing the use of torture against prisoners in the Guantanamo naval base and Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail.

"He has been the most selfish and reckless politician we have ever seen," he said of Bush. "He should be held accountable to the world for his crimes."

John Lichfield | Paris | Sept 19

The Independent - The indiscriminate use of toxic pesticides on banana plantations in the French Caribbean has left much of the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe poisoned for a century to come, a report to the French parliament warned yesterday. The two islands and their 800,000 inhabitants faced a "health disaster", with soaring rates of cancer and infertility, said Professor Dominique Belpomme, a French cancer specialist.

Based on present trends, half the men of Martinique and Guadeloupe were likely to develop prostate cancer at some point in their lives, Professor Belpomme said. Birth defects in children were also becoming far more common, he warned.

Tests have shown that every child born in Guadeloupe is contaminated with chlordecone, a highly toxic pesticide also known as kepone, which was banned in many countries in 1979. It was used legally in France until 1990 and in the French Caribbean until 1993. But it was used illegally – often sprayed by aeroplanes – to kill weevils in Martinique and Guadeloupe until 2002.

Professor Belpomme said: "The situation is extremely serious. The tests we carried out on pesticides show there is a health disaster in the Caribbean. The word is not too strong. Martinique and Guadeloupe have literally been poisoned.