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Grant says union and political activities should not mix

Grant made the remark to OBSERVER media, yesterday, two days after Deputy General Secretary of the Antigua & Barbuda Workers’ Union (ABWU) Chester Hughes issued a strong warning to Prime Minister Gaston Browne, at a United Progressive Party (UPP) public rally, that the ABWU would mount strong opposition to any increase in taxes.

“I want to tell the prime minister that my statement to the media is not a threat; it’s a promise. If you and your government go forward and add any more taxes on the working class people of this country, there will be industrial unrest in this country,” Hughes declared.

Political Crisis Looms in Nicaragua in Run-Up to Elections

The seventh consecutive nomination of Daniel Ortega as the governing party’s candidate to the presidency in Nicaragua, and the withdrawal from the race of a large part of the opposition, alleging lack of guarantees for genuine elections, has brought about the country’s worst political crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990.

If he wins his term of office will be extended to 2021, by which time he will have served a record breaking 19 years, longer even than that of former dictator Anastasio Somoza García whoruled the country for over 16 years.

Antigua and Barbuda is a multiparty, parliamentary democracy with a population of approximately 100,000.

There were human rights problems in some areas, including excessive use of force by police, poor prison conditions, some limits on press freedom, societal discrimination and violence against women, sexual abuse of children, and discrimination against homosexuality.

There were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.

President Raúl Castro unleashed his fiercest and lengthiest public lecture to date on the demise of Cuban culture and conduct. In a speech to the National Assembly, Mr. Castro said that Cubans’ behavior — from urinating in the street and raising pigs in cities to taking bribes — had led him to conclude that, despite five decades of universal education, the island had “regressed in culture and civility.”

Cubans build houses without permits, catch endangered fish, cut down trees, gamble, accept bribes and favors, hoard goods and sell them at inflated prices, and harass tourists, Mr. Castro said.

And that is just the start: Islanders yell in the street, curse indiscriminately, disturb their neighbors’ sleep with loud music, drink alcohol in public, vandalize telephones, dodge bus fares and throw stones at passing trains, the president lamented. “They ignore the most basic standards of gentility and respect,” Mr. Castro continued. “All this is going on under our noses, without provoking any objection or challenge from other citizens.”

culture of Antigua and Barbuda (local creole pronunciation, Antiga and Barbueda) is a classic example of a creole culture. It emerged from the mixing of Amerindian (Carib and Arawak), West African, and European (primarily British) cultural traditions.

Before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1493, Antigua and Barbuda had the Carib names of Wadadli and Wa'omoni, respectively.

. The population census of 1991 estimated the population of Antigua and Barbuda to be 64,252. Approximately 93 percent of this total are Afro-Antiguans and Barbudans, 0.2 percent are Portuguese, 0.6 percent are Middle Eastern, 1.7 percent are whites from Europe and North America, and 3.4 percent are mixed.

“We must recognize that security means more than defense,” they write. After ending the 20th century as the world’s most powerful country, “we failed to recognize that dominance, like fossil fuel, is not a sustainable form of energy.”

In their paper, the officers argue that the United States has to move from “containment” — the foreign policy established after World War II to limit the expansion and influence of the Soviet Union — to what they call “sustainment” or sustainability.

The first priority, they write, should be “intellectual capital and a sustainable infrastructure of education, health and social services to provide for the continuing development and growth of America’s youth.”

n the international arena, the new president, Dilma Roussef, has pulled back from Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva's many excesses (indifference to human rights abuses, support for Iran and its nuclear program, and rhetorical anti-Americanism) during his last year in office, and may even have a present for Obama.

South America is booming, as India and China swallow up its exports of iron, copper, soybeans, coffee, coal, oil, wheat, poultry, beef, and sugar. Its foreign trade and investment patterns are diversified and dynamic. With a few minor exceptions, migration is internal to the region, and a modus vivendi has been reached with the drug trade, mainly coca leaf and cocaine in Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Moreover, relations with the US, while important, are no longer paramount. South American governments can afford to disagree with the US, and often do. They have just elected a new president of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), whose headquarters are being built in Quito, Ecuador. As its name suggests, Unasur's main raison d'être is to exclude Canada, the US, and Mexico (in contrast to the Organisation of American States).

None of this holds true for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean islands – mainly the Dominican Republic, but eventually Cuba, too, and, in its own way, Haiti. These are not mineral-rich or bountiful agricultural nations: some coffee and bananas here, a little sugar and beef there, but nothing with which to sustain a boom. While Mexico is America's second-largest supplier of oil, this represents only 9 per cent of its total exports. Instead, these countries export low-value-added manufactured goods (Mexico does more, of course), and live off remittances, tourism, and drug-transshipment profits. All of this is overwhelmingly concentrated on the US: that is where the migrants are, where the towels and pajamas are shipped, where the tourists come from, and where the drugs are bought. For these countries, including Mexico, stable, close, and productive relations with America are essential.

Uruguayan voters elected Tabaré Vázquez as president on Sunday in a show of support for the leftist coalition that has governed the country over the last decade, presiding over robust economic growth and a pioneering set of socially liberal laws, including a state-controlled marijuana market.

The election came after a stretch in which Uruguay’s president, José Mujica, 79, a former guerrilla, raised the country’s profile with legislation that legalized abortion and same-sex marriage and created the marijuana market. He is set to leave office with high approval ratings.

Dr. Vázquez is more moderate than Mr. Mujica, having vetoed an abortion law during his first term as president. He has also expressed opposition to parts of the marijuana law, a position shared by many Uruguayans as broad skepticism persists over the project. Still, he has said that he would enforce the law.