Alexta Francis, 26, was arrested two days ago after MP Asot Michael found dead at his home on Caribbean island
Antigua police have charged a man over the fatal stabbing of a member of parliament in his seaside home.
Police on the Caribbean island charged Alexta Francis, 26, two days after the landscaper was arrested and questioned about the killing of Asot Michael. Francis was due to make his first appearance in court on Monday.
Continue reading...Prime minister of Caribbean island expresses ‘deep shock and sadness’ at death of MP Asot Michael
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda has expressed “deep shock and sadness” after the suspected homicide of one of the country’s most prominent MPs.
Asot Michael, 54, was found unresponsive with what appeared to be “multiple puncture wounds about his body” at his home just after 8am, according to police on the Caribbean island. The representative for the country’s St Peter constituency was declared dead at the scene.
Continue reading...US territory shutters schools and opens shelters as storm is forecast to also near Virgin Islands and become hurricane
Tropical Storm Ernesto battered the north-east Caribbean on Tuesday as it took aim at Puerto Rico, where officials shuttered schools, opened shelters and helped move dozens of the US territory’s endangered parrots into hurricane-proof rooms.
Ernesto is expected to become a hurricane early on Wednesday, prompting forecasters to issue a hurricane watch for the US and British Virgin Islands as well as the tiny Puerto Rican islands of Vieques and Culebra.
Continue reading...Three prime ministers write to UK government saying islands cannot sustain debt from repeated rebuilding
Caribbean leaders struggling to raise hundreds of millions after Hurricane Beryl wiped out entire islands have asked the UK government to back a “Marshall plan” to rebuild their devastated countries.
The hurricane, which made landfall in the Caribbean on 1 July, killed at least 11 people, demolished more than 90% of buildings in parts of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and left thousands homeless and without running water, electricity and food.
Continue reading...Dangerous surf and rip currents expected along most of Atlantic coast from Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center
Hurricane Lee is making its way through the Atlantic Ocean and is expected to remain a powerful hurricane through early next week, prompting warnings of dangerous beach conditions on the US east coast over the weekend.
Between Wednesday and Thursday night, Lee evolved from a category 1 tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane. It then dropped down to a category 4 hurricane, the National Hurricane Center announced on Friday morning.
Continue reading...Barring public access to beaches and other sites is not a model for development. Transparency and engagement are needed
Walk along a Caribbean beach, which may stretch for miles, and your stroll is guaranteed to be cut short by an angry hotel security guard. In recent years, the Caribbean has seen a worrying trend of governments readily selling off assets to foreign corporations and political financiers.
Prime real estate, protected land and valuable resources are being relinquished without consideration for long-term consequences. It raises questions about whether remnants of the colonial mindset still prevail in political ideologies and decision-making.
Continue reading...Fugitive Mehul Choksi claims UK-based group was part of alleged conspiracy to abduct him in 2021
A fugitive Indian-born businessman has won the first round of a court battle to prove that a UK-based group including a younger woman was part of an Indian intelligence service plot to lure him to a Caribbean villa to be kidnapped and extradited to his home country.
The high court of Antigua and Barbuda has found that Mehul Choksi has an “arguable” case in relation to his civil claim against the country’s attorney general and chief of police over the response to his alleged abduction and illegal rendition to Dominica in May 2021.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Aboriginal Olympian Nova Peris says ‘change begins with listening’ as campaigners from 12 countries ask for ‘process of reparatory justice to commence’
Australians have joined Indigenous leaders and politicians across the Commonwealth to demand King Charles III make a formal apology for the effects of British colonisation, make reparations by redistributing the wealth of the British crown, and return artefacts and human remains.
Days out from Charles’s coronation in London, campaigners for republic and reparations movements in 12 countries have written a letter asking the new monarch to start a process towards “a formal apology and for a process of reparatory justice to commence”.
Continue reading...Poor nations exhort UN to consider ‘climate-related and justice-based’ tax on big fossil fuel users and air travel
The world’s most vulnerable countries are preparing to take on the richest economies with a demand for urgent finance – potentially including new taxes on fossil fuels or flying – for the irrecoverable losses they are suffering from the climate crisis, leaked documents show.
Extreme weather is already hitting many developing countries hard and forecast to wreak further catastrophe. Loss and damage – the issue of how to help poor nations suffering from the most extreme impacts of climate breakdown, which countries cannot be protected against – is one of the most contentious problems in climate negotiations.
Continue reading...Prime minister Gaston Browne reiterates plan for referendum in wake of Queen’s death
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, has said he will call for a referendum on the country becoming a republic within three years, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Browne signed a document confirming Charles III’s status as the new King, but minutes later, said he would push for a republic referendum after indicating such a move earlier this year during a visit by the Earl and Countess of Wessex.
Continue reading...Jamaican minister’s entry to race for secretary general called ‘monumental error’ by Antigua
Patricia Scotland’s hopes of being re-elected Commonwealth secretary general are under threat, after Jamaica’s foreign minister, Kamina Johnson-Smith, announced that she was challenging Scotland for the post.
The decision has sparked controversy in the Caribbean, which had previously met to back Scotland’s bid for a second term. The Antiguan prime minister, Gaston Browne, has described Jamaica’s decision to break ranks as a “monumental error”.
Continue reading...Opponents warn construction of the Yida project, which includes a manufacturing hub, puts island at risk of hurricane damage
Plans to construct a sprawling “Chinese colony” complete with factories, homes and holiday resorts across a pristine marine reserve in Antigua have ignited a storm of controversy on the Caribbean island.
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