Venezuela expels Panama ambassador over 'conspiracy'
Venezuela has expelled Panama's ambassador and three other diplomats amid growing tensions over opposition protests.
The officials were given 48 hours to leave the country.
It comes a day after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro broke diplomatic relations and froze economic ties with Panama.
At least 20 people have died in anti-government protests in Venezuela in the last month.
Mr Maduro has accused Panama of conspiring to bring down his government.
The latest fallout comes after the Central American nation requested a meeting at the Organization of American States (OAS) to discuss Venezuela's crisis.
"There are moves by the United States government in accord with a lackey government of a right-wing president which has been creating the conditions for the OAS and other bodies to step towards an intervention in our country," Mr Maduro said earlier this week.
Four diplomats working at Panama's embassy, including ambassador Pedro Pereira, were declared "persona non grata" on Thursday, according to Panama's Deputy Foreign Minister Mayra Arosemena.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said Venezuela also had suspended debt negotiations over $1bn (£600,000) owed to Panamanian exporters, according to reports.
Meanwhile a member of Venezuela's National Guard and a motorcyclist became the latest victims of the unrest in the country on Thursday.
The pair were shot dead during clashes that broke out when a group of men of motorcycles tried to clear opposition barricades in a street in Caracas.
The opposition accuses the government of using armed civilian groups on motorcycles to break up demonstrations.
Thousands of government supporters and troops took part in a huge parade through the centre of the capital, commemorating the first anniversary of former President Hugo Chavez's death on 5 March.
Source-BBC
Several Caribbean countries named in US money laundering report
The United States has named several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries as major money laundering states whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking.
In its just released “2014 International Narcotics Control
Strategy Report,’ the US State Department listed Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize and Haiti as among major money laundering countries and jurisdictions around the world.
In addition to these CARICOM countries, the other Caribbean islands named are the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands.
The report also notes that countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Brazil, Russia, France, Canada as well as the Dominican Republic, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands had been designated major money laundering countries
The report which describes the steps taken during the previous year by the governments of nearly 90 countries, to reduce illicit narcotics production, trafficking, and use, as well as money laundering and financial crimes, said that the “complex nature of money laundering transactions today makes it difficult in many cases to distinguish the proceeds of narcotics trafficking from the proceeds of other serious crime. “Moreover, financial institutions engaging in transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds of other serious crime are vulnerable to narcotics-related money laundering.”
Washington said that “this year’s list of major money laundering countries recognizes this relationship by including all countries and other jurisdictions, whose financial institutions engage in transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from all serious crime”.
The report also notes that Caribbean countries like the Bahamas, Belize, Haiti and Jamaica had been classified as major drug-transit countries.
The State Department defines a major drug transit country as one “that is a significant direct source of illicit narcotic or psychotropic drugs or other controlled substances significantly affecting the United States; or (B) through which are transported such drugs or substances”.
It said that apart from the Caribbean countries, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela were identified and notified to Congress by the President on September 13, last year.
Source-CMC News
Rio rubbish collectors continue strike despite union deal
Rubbish is still piling up in Rio de Janeiro as the Brazilian city's street cleaners continue a strike, despite an announced agreement with the union.
Hundreds of refuse workers protested at the mayor's office on Friday demanding better pay and working conditions.
Authorities said on Monday that they had reached an agreement with union leaders and expected normal collection to be resumed within days.
But many workers say the union is not representing their interests.
The president of Rio's rubbish collecting company, Comlurb, has even appealed to the population to store rubbish at home whenever possible, the BBC's Julia Carneiro reports from Rio.
Friday's protests stopped the traffic in central Rio, despite threats from the authorities to fire those who did not show up to work.
On Monday, municipal authorities said they had sealed a deal with leaders of the 15,000 rubbish collectors after offering a salary raise of 9%.
But a group of street cleaners – whose starting monthly salary is 803 reais ($342; £205) – is demanding a pay of 1,200 reais ($510; £306) and other benefits.
They say they are being "being treated like rubbish" and threaten to cause further disruptions during the football World Cup, due to start on 12 June.
"The mayor wants to hold the World Cup, bin men want to go shopping," read some of their banners on Friday.
The strikers say more than half of the workforce are still with them and vowed to stage fresh demonstrations over the weekend.
But the street cleaners' union says the strikers are a minority.
In some parts of the city, groups of rubbish collectors have started to clean up the rubbish left by this year's carnival festivities, which ended on Wednesday.
Security officers have been deployed to protect the workers from their striking colleagues, authorities say.
Tonnes of rubbish left after many street parties and by samba schools and beach goers were left piling up in the city for days.
The BBC's Julia Carneiro says the local culture of littering the streets makes matters worse.
Even Rio's mayor, Eduardo Paes, was caught on video allegedly throwing rubbish on the street.
Mr Paes said he did not remember the event, but nevertheless asked the authorities to fine him to serve as an example.
Last year, his government announced a "zero tolerance" policy towards street littering.
Source-BBC
Visa waiver for Jamaicans travelling to Bermuda
The Jamaica government Friday announced that nationals travelling to the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda for vacation or to conduct business would no longer require a visa.
But Foreign Affairs Minister AJ Nicholson told the Senate that for Jamaicans to be able to take advantage of the waiver, they must be in possession of a multi-entry visa to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
“Jamaican nationals who hold such multiple entry visas for the USA, Canada or the UK must be careful to ensure that the visas are valid for a minimum of 45 days after the expiry of the planned stay in Bermuda. They must also ensure that their Jamaican passports have a validity of at least 45 days after the expiry of their planned stay,” Nicholson said.
Nicholson said that Jamaica a few weeks ago signed an agreement with Brazil to facilitate visa free travel for Jamaicans to that South American country.
Source-CMC
US Economy Added 175,000 Jobs in February
U.S. employers added 175,000 jobs in February, picking up the pace of hiring after two months of sluggish job growth.
A senior economist at the country's biggest bank, James Glassman at JPMorgan Chase, tells VOA the advance in the labor market last month is a favorable sign for the world's largest economy. That is especially so, he says, after an unusually cold and snowy winter in the United States limited job growth in December and January.
"The February report tells you we may see better numbers in the next couple months as we get back to something more normal."
The U.S. Labor Department reported Friday that the unemployment rate edged slightly higher to 6.7 percent in February. But Glassman says that may be a good indicator that frustrated jobless workers are more optimistic about the economy and have resumed their search for employment, even if they have yet to find a new job.
"If the unemployment rate's going up because people are coming back into the market looking, then that's a good sign, frankly. I think for a while we shouldn't really view a rise in the unemployment rate as a negative if it accompanies an increase in the labor force, because it means that something must be going on. People must be hearing there are opportunities."
There are 10.5 million unemployed workers in the U.S., and more than a third of them have been out of work for six months or longer.
The U.S. jobless rate has been steadily declining over the last four-plus years as the country recovers from its worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930's.
But economists have noted that some of the improvement in the unemployment rate has occurred because thousands of job seekers have been unable to find work and dropped out of the labor market, and thus are not counted by the government as unemployed.
Even as U.S. stock market indexes have soared to new highs, many American businesses have been reluctant to significantly boost their payrolls. Employers added only 129,000 jobs in January and 84,000 in December, after averaging 189,000 over the past year.
The country's central bank, the Federal Reserve, is watching the U.S. economic trends to see whether it should continue to trim its direct support of the American economy. Last year, the Fed had been buying $85 billion worth of securities a month in an effort aimed at keeping long-term interest rates low and boosting job growth, but now has cut the figure to $65 billion.
Fed policy makers, including new chair Janet Yellen, are meeting again later this month. Glassman says he thinks the Fed will continue to cut its asset purchases and end them in late 2014.
Source-VOA
Facebook's WhatsApp purchase challenged
Facebook's purchase of mobile messaging service WhatsApp has been opposed by privacy groups.
Mark Zuckerberg's firm is planning to buy the company for around £11bn.
Opponents want US regulators to stop the deal until Facebook provides more information on what it plans to do with the personal data of WhatsApp's users.
But Facebook said it will operate as a separate company and honour existing privacy arrangements, which include not collecting user data for advertising.
"WhatsApp built a user-base based on its commitment not to collect user data for advertising revenue," read a complaint filed with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). It was drawn up by two non-profit groups, the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy.
They added: "Users provided detailed personal information to the company including private text to close friends. Facebook routinely makes use of user information for advertising purposes and has made clear that it intends to incorporate the data of WhatsApp users into the user profiling business model.
"The proposed acquisition will therefore violate WhatsApp users' understanding of their exposure to online advertising and constitutes an unfair and deceptive trade practice, subject to investigation by the Federal Trade Commission."
And the groups, which work on research and consumer protection online, asked the regulators to investigate the deal "specifically with regard to the ability of Facebook to access WhatsApp's store of user mobile phone numbers and metadata"
Facebook, the world's top social network with 1.2 billion users, generates the majority of its revenue by showing ads that target users by age, gender and other traits.
"As we have said repeatedly, WhatsApp will operate as a separate company and will honour its commitments to privacy and security," Facebook said in a statement seen by Reuters.
Facebook announced its intention to buy WhatsApp, which has 450 million users who are able to send instant messages and other media over mobile, with cash and stock.
There is no charge for individual messages, which are sent using wi-fi or data connections, making it cheaper than SMS messaging in many cases. Other users pay around £0.60 per year subscription.
Referring to the business model, Jan Koum wrote on the WhatsApp website: "When people ask us why we charge for WhatsApp, we say, 'Have you considered the alternative?'"
Despite assurances by WhatsApp and Facebook that the privacy policies will not change, the groups noted that Mark Zuckerberg's social networking company has in the past amended an acquired-company's privacy policies.
Notably, it did so with the Instagram photo-sharing service that it bought in 2012.
Regulators must require that Facebook "insulate" WhatsApp user information from access by Facebook's data collection practices, read the complaint, which was dated 6 March 2014.
"WhatsApp users could not reasonably have anticipated that by selecting a pro-privacy messaging service, they would subject their data to Facebook's data collection practices," read the filing.
The FTC will decide whether the acquisition can go ahead and, if so, whether or not conditions should be imposed.
Source-BBC
Boeing checks 787 Dreamliners for wing cracks
Boeing is checking Dreamliner planes being produced in the US for potential "hairline cracks" in their wings.
The move came after Japanese supplier Mitsubishi Heavy Industries warned Boeing that a change in its manufacturing process may cause cracks.
Boeing said the issue may affect nearly 40 planes and there may be "some delays in deliveries".
However, it added that it was confident "the issue does not exist in the in-service fleet".
"The affected areas are very small and the time required to address the issue will vary between one and two weeks," the company said in a statement.
"There may be some delays in deliveries, but we expect no impact to 2014 delivery guidance."
The firm's shares fell 1% in after-hours trading on the news.
The 787 Dreamliner is considered to be one of the most advanced planes in the industry. However, the jet has been hit by a series of issues.
Last year, its entire fleet in operation was grounded by regulators amid safety concerns.
If followed a fire that broke out in one of Japan Airlines' 787 Dreamliners, and a battery fault which forced an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight to make an emergency landing.
The planes have since been given the permission to fly again and Boeing has redesigned the battery system. However, the precise cause of the problem was never conclusively proved.
The plane has also suffered other issues over the past few months.
In July last year, a fire broke out on a 787 jet operated by Ethiopian Airlines while it was parked at London's Heathrow Airport. It was traced to the upper rear part of the plane where a locator transmitter is placed.
In August, ANA said it had found damage to the battery wiring on two 787 locator transmitters during checks.
US carrier United Airlines also found a pinched wire during an inspection of one of its six 787s.
Later in the year, one of the two engine-protecting anti-ice systems failed on a jet operated by Japan Airlines.
Despite these issues, the plane continues to remain popular and Boeing has received orders for more than 950 jets since its launch.
The aircraft-maker has forecast sales of 3,300 planes by the year 2030.
Source-BBC
Trini hotels score big with Carnival
Major hotels and guest houses in and around Port of Spain, Trinidad were booked solid for the Carnival season.
The staff at the Hyatt Regency hotel, Capital Plaza, Carlton Savannah and several smaller guest houses said they had no room to spare.
Neema Persad-Celestine, marketing manager at the Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain, in a brief telephone interview, said they had reached their occupancy levels.
"The hotel has 428 rooms. We are fully booked for the Carnival period and it is similar to what we did last year."
She added that some of the rooms were double occupancy so that the average number of guests this Carnival season was at least 856 people.
"It may be more than that because we also have a triple occupancy rate so some people may have also booked triple occupancy rate," she added.
Calls to the reservations desk at Capital Plaza yielded similar results.
"We have a total of 243 rooms, all of which were booked for the Carnival season," an employee said.
Things were not much different at the Carlton Savannah where employees said all of their 120 rooms, which are double occupancy were booked. This, they said, meant that they would be servicing approximately 240 guests over the Carnival period.
And while Hilton Trinidad said they could not divulge information on their occupancy status, calls to smaller guest houses found them singing the same tune as the hotels who gave information on their reservations -- all their rooms were booked.
Monique's Guest House was one such guest house. With a total of 20 rooms, all of them were grabbed up by visitors to the island for the Carnival season.
A brief telephone interview with head of corporate communications at Caribbean Airlines, Clint Williams, confirmed the influx of travellers to the island for this year's Carnival celebrations. He described the trends as "very positive".
"Travel into the island from key ports of New York, Miami and Toronto were very strong. We put on additional flights particularly on New York, all of which were quickly picked up by passengers in the system and the trend looks to be an increase year over year, not an increase I can put numbers to right now but we have seen an increase."
Among the thousands of foreign arrivals were several well-known American celebrities, including Tahiry Jose, star of VH1's reality show Love & Hip Hop New York; actor and writer Anthony Anderson, actor, screenwriter, producer and director Damien Dante Wayans; writer, television producer, director and actor Craig Wayans; Salim Akil, an executive from Sony, and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
LIAT Airlines cutting unprofitable routes
The regional airline, LIAT, says it will take “decisive action” to deal with unprofitable routes as the Antigua-based airline seeks to make its operations financially variable.
“We have been trying, before going the harsh route, to persuade people to invest. We have met with a number of governments and Prime Ministers... we have expressed to them that we will have no other option but to cut the service,” LIAT chairman Jean Holder told a news conferenceThursday evening.
“I think we have reached the point, after a lot of challenges, where we need to do as we say that we will do. That may after all be more effective than the persuasion route,” Holder said after a meeting of the shareholder governments.
“We’ll have to take a very hard look at our current schedules and the profitability of our current routes. We have brought in some experts to assist us in looking more deeply into the route analysis issues, but it is clear that LIAT cannot continue to provide essential social services to 21 countries in the Caribbean on a daily basis, offering close to 1 000 flights weekly, and only four countries put any funds into this operation,” said Holder.
Holder said that this would involve reshaping the routing system in a way that would ensure there is no longer an abundance of social routes at the expense of commercial operations.
In October 2012, then chief executive officer of LIAT, Ian Brunton, had warned that the cash-strapped airline would soon be dropping at least eight routes deemed to be consistently unprofitable.
He said that the situation would only change if the airline, whose major shareholders are Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica and St Vincent, was able to secure some kind of support from affected governments.
Holder said that the company has taking the stance that it needs to be more professional and implement the changes needed to keep the airline on an even keel.
St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, who is also chairman of shareholder governments, told reporters he had been putting public pressure on his counterparts across the region, particularly from those countries that benefit considerably from the operations of the airline.
“We’ve not been putting the same pressure on Dr Keith Mitchell of Grenada because I know he has just come into office... and is trying to sort himself out... We give him a break, but he too has to come to the table,” said Gonsalves.
He said that the existing contributing countries were not immune to the ravages of the global economic meltdown but, since 2008, had been demonstrating their commitment to the region.
“Despite the stresses and strains, we have come up with significant monies and I am sure that that is a factor which some governments, who have not put in, will bear in mind.
“But I also think that because some governments have [received] a free ride for such a long time... it’s always better for someone to have a free ride that for them to pay for the ride,” Gonsalves said.
The prime minister said Holder and acting chief executive officer Julie Reifer-Jones had made presentations to the meeting which outlined a plan for sustainable recovery of the airline, as well as an immediate programme for implementation.
LIAT said it would employ an expert to assess the unprofitable routes which would not only entail cutting, but rescheduling or reviewing them.
Source-CMC
UN Says Almost All Muslims Have Fled C.A.R. Capital
The United Nation's humanitarian chief says almost the entire Muslim population of the capital of the Central African Republic has fled after a campaign of violence by largely Christian militias.
U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos says about 900 Muslims remain in Bangui. That is less than one percent of the original population of more than 100,000.
Amos said Friday in Geneva that the demography of the C.A.R. is changing. Other cities in the western part of the country have seen a similar exodus of Muslims.
Amos said the U.N. hopes to work with the government to target two to four cities to make sure they retain a mixed population.
"We have to set ourselves some relatively modest tasks to achieve in the short term, just to give people a sense of stability. And I think if we are able, for example, to do that in two, three, four areas of the country where you still have mixed communities, and where you can demonstrate that people can continue to live together, side by side, in a degree of peace and harmony, that that would be a really good message for the Central African Republic right now," said Amos.
Chaos erupted in the C.A.R. last year when mainly Muslim rebels toppled the government. The rebels looted, raped and murdered civilians, giving rise to equally brutal militias made up largely of Christians and animists who have attacked Muslim civilians.
The fighting has killed tens of thousands and left hundreds of thousands homeless and fleeing for their lives.
On Thursday, U.N. High commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres said the world is effectively witnessing a "cleansing" of the majority of the Muslim population in western C.A.R. He said most of the Muslims who remain in the region are under permanent threat.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said that he is concerned the violence in the C.A.R. could lead to the country being partitioned.
Ban proposes sending a 12,000-member peacekeeping force to the country.
Sixteen-hundred French soldiers already are in the C.A.R., along with 6,000 African Union troops.
Source-VOA