The prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines has been hospitalised after being injured at a protest against a proposed vaccine mandate.
Ralph Gonsalves was walking through a crowd outside parliament when he was reportedly hit in the head by a stone.
Images show the prime minister bleeding as he was rushed away from the scene.
The finance minister said he had been transferred to Barbados for an MRI scan on the advice of medical staff, Reuters news agency reports.
Protesters had gathered on Thursday to demonstrate against plans to require most frontline health workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19.
Stones and water bottles were thrown at the protest, according to reports.
His office told Reuters the 74-year-old was hit by a “projectile”. Local media suggest it was a stone.
St Vincent and the Grenadines, which lies in the south Caribbean, is made up of more than 32 islands.
The country has recorded 2,298 coronavirus cases and 12 deaths since the pandemic began, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. Almost 9% of the population has been fully vaccinated, the university says.
Its tourism industry has been badly impacted by the pandemic, and thousands of people were forced to leave their homes following a volcanic eruption in April.
Booster debate heating up: Moderna says booster likely needed before winter
Moderna said Thursday that its COVID-19 vaccine maintained 93 percent efficacy six months after the second dose but added that a booster shot will likely still be needed before the winter.
The efficacy rate was announced by the company ahead of an earnings call on Thursday, and is higher than the 84 percent efficacy rate of the Pfizer vaccine after the same amount of time.
Still, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said on CNBC Thursday that the data was collected before the delta variant became prevalent in the United States, meaning the equation could change now that the delta variant is widespread.
While there is strong data for six months, the company said in a presentation that it believes antibody levels will “continue to wane and eventually impact vaccine efficacy.”
It added that the combination of delta, fatigue with wearing masks and people moving indoors as the weather gets colder will cause an “increase of breakthrough infections in vaccinated individuals.”
“Given this intersection, we believe dose 3 booster will likely be necessary prior to the winter season,” the company said.
And one group in particular could need booster especially soon: the immunocompromised
The Biden administration is working to get immunocompromised people booster shots of the COVID-19 vaccine “as quickly as possible,” Anthony Fauci said Thursday, calling the group “vulnerable.”
Administration health officials have said that booster shots overall are not needed at this time, but Thursday’s comments from President Biden‘s chief medical adviser signal a new urgency for additional shots to those with compromised immune systems.
That group includes people who have received organ transplants, are undergoing chemotherapy or are taking medications that suppress their immune system. Slides presented at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advisory committee meeting last month estimated the group accounts for 2.7 percent of all U.S. adults.
“Immunocompromised individuals are vulnerable,” Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said at a White House press briefing on Thursday.
With some exceptions, he said, they “do not make an adequate response [to the COVID-19 vaccine] that we feel would be adequately protective.”
“It is extremely important for us to move to get those individuals their boosters, and we are now working on that and will make that be implemented as quickly as possible, because for us and for the individuals involved it is a very high priority,” Fauci said
But Mississippi is already recommending boosters for vulnerable people
Mississippi is encouraging COVID-19 booster shots for certain high-risk groups, as one of the least-vaccinated states in the country faces an onslaught from the delta variant of the coronavirus.
According to a memo from the state department of health, physicians should consider giving a booster dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to anyone who is immunocompromised, including organ transplant recipients, people taking immunosuppressive drugs, and people with underlying medical conditions such as chronic kidney disease.
While the overwhelming majority of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Mississippi are among unvaccinated individuals, the number of deaths among fully vaccinated people has been increasing.
Paul Byers, a physician with the state Department of Health, said in the memo that since April 1, more than 35 vaccine breakthrough deaths have been confirmed. For the deaths where the person’s medical history was known, 58 percent had either a known immunocompromising condition or history of kidney disease.
Guidance: The memo recommends waiting at least four weeks after the final dose of the original vaccination series before administering a booster. It also recommends physicians perform spike protein antibody testing to determine the presence, or absence, of detectable antibodies prior to booster dosing.
If a patient was originally given an mRNA vaccine, either Pfizer or Moderna, the recommendation is to consider using the same manufacturer for the booster dose. If the original vaccine was Johnson & Johnson, the recommendation is to consider using the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
White House says no decision yet on foreign traveler vaccination rule
The White House on Thursday said that the U.S. is strongly considering requiring foreign visitors to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, but that there has not been a final decision on whether such a requirement will be adopted.
“That is certainly under strong consideration, but it is under a policy process review right now that I won’t get ahead of myself,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a briefing.
White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients on Thursday also said no decision has been made about how to reopen international travel and suggested other options were being considered beyond requiring foreign travelers to have vaccinations.
“That’s one of the paths that’s being looked at and considered, but there are alternative paths being looked at, at the same time,” Zients told reporters during a coronavirus briefing.
Shift in guidance: The comments represented a shift from guidance that a White House official provided a day prior. The official told The Hill that interagency working groups are working to develop a plan “for a consistent and safe international travel policy, in order to have a new system ready for when we can reopen travel.”
“This includes a phased approach that over time will mean, with limited exceptions, that foreign nationals traveling to the United States (from all countries) need to be fully vaccinated,” the official said.
Reuters first reported that the Biden administration is developing a plan to require foreign visitors to have COVID-19 vaccinations. There was not an indication on Wednesday that requiring vaccinations was among a handful of options being considered, or that the ultimate goal was not definitively to require vaccinations.
Biden administration sees ‘significant’ rise in vaccinations as cases surge
Top White House officials highlighted a significant rise in vaccination rates on Thursday as the U.S. endures surging COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths, especially in Florida and Texas.
The national vaccination rate reached its highest level since early last month with 864,000 doses administered, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters. About 585,000 of those doses were the patients’ first shots, suggesting more unvaccinated people are getting the jab.
Zients stated that the vaccination rates in Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Alabama, Oklahoma and Mississippi have hit levels not seen since April.
“Importantly, we’re seeing the most significant increases in the states with the highest case rates,” Zients said.
But: The rise in vaccinations comes as the country struggles with COVID-19 — almost 83 percent of counties have “substantial” or “high” viral transmission.
Seven states with some of the lowest vaccination rates account for about half of new cases and hospitalizations this week, even though they make up less than a quarter of the population, Zients said.
Florida and Texas make up one-third of the U.S.’s new cases and more than one-third of the country’s new hospitalizations over the past week. A
Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.
The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.
Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.
The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.
“The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”
It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.
Scientists are increasingly concerned about tipping points – large, fast and irreversible changes to the climate. Boers and his colleagues reported in May that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink, threatening a big rise in global sea level. Others have shown recently that the Amazon rainforest is now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs, and that the 2020 Siberian heatwave led to worrying releases of methane.
Amazon rainforest now emitting more CO2 than it absorbs
The world may already have crossed a series of tipping points, according to a 2019 analysis, resulting in “an existential threat to civilisation”. A major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due on Monday, is expected to set out the worsening state of the climate crisis.
Boer’s research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is titled “Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the AMOC”. Ice-core and other data from the last 100,000 years show the AMOC has two states: a fast, strong one, as seen over recent millennia, and a slow, weak one. The data shows rising temperatures can make the AMOC switch abruptly between states over one to five decades.
The AMOC is driven by dense, salty seawater sinking into the Arctic ocean, but the melting of freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet is slowing the process down earlier than climate models suggested.
Boers used the analogy of a chair to explain how changes in ocean temperature and salinity can reveal the AMOC’s instability. Pushing a chair alters its position, but does not affect its stability if all four legs remain on the floor. Tilting the chair changes both its position and stability.
Eight independently measured datasets of temperature and salinity going back as far as 150 years enabled Boers to show that global heating is indeed increasing the instability of the currents, not just changing their flow pattern.
The analysis concluded: “This decline [of the AMOC in recent decades] may be associated with an almost complete loss of stability over the course of the last century, and the AMOC could be close to a critical transition to its weak circulation mode.”
Levke Caesar, at Maynooth University in Ireland, who was not involved in the research, said: “The study method cannot give us an exact timing of a possible collapse, but the analysis presents evidence that the AMOC has already lost stability, which I take as a warning that we might be closer to an AMOC tipping than we think.”
David Thornalley, at University College London in the UK, whose work showed the AMOC is at its weakest point in 1,600 years, said: “These signs of decreasing stability are concerning. But we still don’t know if a collapse will occur, or how close we might be to it.”
Move comes despite Home Office ‘agreement’ not to remove those who arrived in Britain under age of 12
Movement for Justice protesters outside the Jamaican embassy in 2020. A spokesperson for the group said there are several people due to be deported on a flight next week who came to the UK as children. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images
Preparations are being made for the deportation of a number of Jamaican nationals who came to the UK as children, in an apparent reversal of an earlier agreement not to deport people who arrived in this country as minors. Those being targeted have gained criminal records.
A charter flight to Jamaica is scheduled for 11 August, returning several dozen people whose criminal convictions have triggered deportation orders. However, campaigners have protested that it is unreasonable to remove people who have spent a lifetime in the UK to a country where they have no ties.
Last November the Home Office made an agreement with Jamaican officials not to remove people who came to the UK under the age of 12, according to Jamaican high commissioner Seth Ramocan. “They have consented to having an age limit. It’s a request that has been granted,” he told the Guardian last year. It is not clear whether this concession was granted only for the last Jamaica deportation charter in December, amid strong public pressure against the flight, with support from Bernardine Evaristo, model Naomi Campbell and historian David Olusoga.
One of those booked on next week’s flight arrived as a two-year-old child, and now, aged 23, is being deported for a drugs offence. “It feels unfair to send me back to a country I don’t know,” he said by telephone from Colnbrook immigration removal centre, asking to remain anonymous. “I did nursery, reception, primary school, and secondary school in England. I haven’t been in an aeroplane or left here since I was two.”
He acknowledged that he had committed the drugs offence, but said he had completed his two-year sentence, and felt that the deportation represented a double punishment. “I’m not really a foreign criminal because I’ve spent all my life here. Everything I learned, I learned in England,” he said. He will leave a two-year-old son and an unwell mother in England.
In 2018 a Home Office-commissioned report from the former prisons and probation ombudsman Stephen Shaw called for a new approach to the policy of detaining and removing people who had committed crimes but lived most of their lives in Britain; the Home Office has not implemented the recommendation.
Karen Doyle, of Movement for Justice, an immigrant rights campaign organisation, has spoken to 19 people due to be deported next week, six of whom came to the UK under the age of 12 and five of whom spent some of their childhood in the British care system. She said at least three of those who arrived in the UK as minors, one of whom arrived as a three-month-old baby, had had tickets on the deportation flight cancelled in the past 48 hours, but several others who came to Britain as children are still scheduled to be removed.
“There is very little public support for deporting people who were raised in the UK, in British schools and in our care system, to countries they don’t even remember,” she said.
Bella Sankey, director of the charity Detention Action, noted that many of the men and women scheduled to leave on the flight “were brought to the UK as children and are as British as the union jack. The Jamaican government should insist the UK upholds its agreement to stop deporting this group. There is no valid reason for this inhumane practice.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “People who come to this country and commit crimes should be expected to be removed. That is why we regularly operate charter flights to different countries – to remove foreign offenders, and those who have no right to be in the country but refused or failed to leave voluntarily.”
The Jamaican high commission has been approached for comment.
NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (August 05, 2021) —Seven primary school students on Nevis are the beneficiaries of the first Naomi Daniel-Browne Scholarship, an initiative of the Nevisian Association of Washington DC (NEV-DC).
Nathalia Nanton of the Joycelyn Primary School; Khylinn Prentice of the Elizabeth Pemberton Primary School, Seriah Laurent of the Ivor Walters Primary School; Kuwan Wilkin of the Charlestown Primary School; Kailar Isaac of the St. Thomas’ Primary School, D’Mari Myers of the Violet O. Jeffers-Nicholls Primary School; and T’shanzi Taylor of the St. James’ Primary School received the awards for Most Improved Students, at a ceremony at the Social Security Conference Room, on July 28, 2021.
Ms. Lauren Rivers, representative of the US-based Nevisian organisation said the scholarship programme is one way of giving back to the young people of Nevis in line with the organisation’s pledge to assist in the area of education, and in remembrance of their fallen colleague who was a stalwart educator.
“Naomi Daniel-Browne was an active member of NEV-DC. She was passionate about education. Naomi collaborated on a number of education initiatives in NEV-DC… Naomi also taught in the United States but Naomi started her love for teaching right here on the island of Nevis and she taught in 1980 at the Joycelyn Liburd Primary School. Her goal as a teacher was to never leave any child behind. Naomi sadly passed away in June of 2019. To keep Naomi’s torch lit, and to ensure no child is left behind, NEV-DC established the Naomi Daniel-Browne Scholarship,” she said.
Ms. Rivers explained that the scholarship financially rewards the most improved student at the Joycelyn Liburd Primary School who is being promoted from Grade 6 to high school in the amount of US$500. It also financially rewards the most improved student being promoted from Grade 5 to Grade 6 at all of the other public primary schools on Nevis in the amount of US$200.
She expressed hope that the programme would encourage students to do their best to achieve their goals.
The NEV-DC representative also thanked the Daniel family for allowing the organisation to attach Naomi’s name to the programme, and the Ministry and Department of Education for their support in launching he scholarship.
Meantime Ms. Uta Trish Taylor thanked the Nevisian Association of Washington DC on behalf of the family of Naomi Daniel-Browne for honouring the legacy of her aunt.
“We are indeed grateful and we know Naomi is looking down and smiling, as through her legacy she can still impact the lives of students.
Ms. Taylor, herself a teacher, described her aunt as a teacher extraordinaire who loved teaching and students, which propelled her to go over and beyond to help them.
“She was like Jerome Bruno and believed that every child at every level could earn once content was appropriately organised. She was a teacher who actively reached out to parents to ensure they were involved in their child’s development. She brought students who needed individual attention to her home and conducted what we would call micro teaching sessions to help them.
“Naomi epitomised the role of a teacher. She was talented, enthusiastic, assiduous, caring, helpful, empathic, and resourceful,” she said.
Ms. Taylor added that as a young teacher, having followed in Naomi’s footsteps, was happy to have commenced her teaching career prior to her aunt’s passing since she was able to benefit from her words of wisdom and encouragement.
She congratulated the recipients of the award and urged them to continue to do well.
“I would like to encourage you all to stay focused, work hard and believe in yourselves. If ever there is a moment you feel like giving up, remember this award and let it be a motivation to encourage you to push forward,” she said
Former Education Officer Mrs. Adina Taylor, sister of the late Naomi Daniel-Browne, presented the scholarships awards to the students.
Among those present at the ceremony were Mr. Kevin Barrett, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, and Ms. Zahnela Claxton, Principal Education Officer in the Department of Education.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis earned a new moniker this week as the resurgent coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on his state: the “Pied Piper of Covid-19, leading everybody off a cliff.”
The stark assessment of the Republican politician from Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, came as Florida continued to set records for new cases and hospitalizations, saw worrying surges in both deaths and rates of positivity, and led the nation in pediatric Covid admissions.
With the highly contagious Delta variant swirling, a state comprising little more than 6% of the US population was accounting for one in five of the country’s new cases, recording 50,997 in the three days to Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Meanwhile, DeSantis, who says the spike is “seasonal” and opposes lockdowns or new restrictions, was following up his signing of an executive order banning children from having to wear masks in schools by dismissing the burgeoning crisis in Florida’s hospitals as “media hysteria”.
“You try to fearmonger, you try to do this stuff,” DeSantis snapped at a reporter who asked him at a press conference in Miami on Tuesday about the state setting a new high for Covid hospitalizations of 11,863.
“Our hospitals are open for business. We’re not shutting down. We’re gonna have schools open. We’re protecting every Floridian’s job in this state, we are protecting people’s small businesses. These interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic,” he said, referring to mask mandates.
It is the governor’s single minded desire to keep the state open despite the Delta variant-fuelled spike that has drawn criticism from local political leaders to the White House, where Joe Biden said on Tuesday: “I say to these governors, ‘Please help’. But if you are not going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing.”
DeSantis, a likely Republican presidential candidate in 2024 if Trump doesn’t run, and a possible running mate if he does, shares the former president’s prioritizing of the economy.
But Gelber said he thought DeSantis’s stance could backfire and end up hurting businesses.
“I’m the mayor of a hospitality town. I think most people coming here would rather be in a place that they feel safer than a place that they feel like they may be getting the virus,” he told CNN.
“He’s like the Pied Piper just leading everybody off a cliff right now, letting them know that they don’t have to like the CDC, they don’t have to wear masks, they can do whatever they want in the midst of an enormous pandemic and Florida, by wide margins, is easily the worst state in the country.”
The mayor said he felt “hamstrung” by legislation signed by DeSantis in May that gave him veto power over coronavirus mandates by municipalities.
“We’re not allowed a mask edict now. We were one of the first cities to require it and the governor stopped allowing us to do it, then immediately we saw a surge across our county and state.”
Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor and Democrat seeking to unseat DeSantis next year, accused his rival of “a blatant disregard for the health and wellbeing of children and teachers” over the order withholding state funds from school districts that impose mask mandates on students.
On Tuesday, officials in Broward county, the nation’s sixth-largest school district, which last week voted to enforce mask-wearing, said they would back down, although appeared to be reconsidering their position a day later.
“With his latest stunt the Governor ignores science and the facts – that masks work,” Crist said in a statement to the Guardian.
“For the past year, masks kept Florida’s schools from becoming major contributors to the virus’ spread. They enabled our kids to be in the classroom safely. Now, with only a week until school starts back, Florida tragically leads the nation in children hospitalized due to the virus.
“He wants to defund the school systems trying to keep them safe. It’s unconscionable.”
In an emailed response to the Guardian, DeSantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, countered Gelber and Crists’s assertions that mask mandates were effective. In Texas, she said, cases declined following the lifting of a mandate in March, while in California numbers surged at the start of the year with a mandate in place.
“The governor and Florida department of health have always encouraged Floridians to protect themselves and their communities. The best way to do that is to get vaccinated,” she said.
Dr Jay Wolfson, professor of public health medicine at the University of South Florida, does not expect DeSantis to change course.
“The one driving force that most affects the governor’s decisions in the state’s policies is deaths. As long as deaths remain stable or under control, the rates of hospitalization and infectiousness are likely not going to elicit mandating masks or vaccines or doing anything else that would jeopardize the economic policies,” he said.
“Balancing public health policy interests against economic policy interests can be a delicate game and there are compelling interests on both sides.
“These judgment calls are not always based exclusively on educational or health issues, they’re based on political pragmatic realities, and thus far the governor has been successful in demonstrating he has a significant amount of political support for the positions that he’s taking.”
NIA CHARLESTOWN NEVIS (August 04, 2021) —The Nevis Health Promotion Unit (HPU) is embarking on an islandwide drive during the month of August to promote the use of condoms.
Ms. Terysia Herbert, HIV Education and Prevention Officer at the HPU in the Ministry of Health, says the month-long event dubbed “Wrap it before you tap it” serves to curb the incidence of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) on the island.
“It is a condom distribution programme and what we will be doing is we will be partnering with bars around the island and the idea is to promote condom usage by increasing access to free condoms…
“While the focus has been on COVID over the last year and a half, and rightly so, we still do want to keep in mind HIV and other STIs so we want to make sure that the general public is having safe sex and taking precautions to protect the ones that they care about,” she said.
Ms. Herbert explained that they are reaching out to and partnering with establishments throughout the island with high traffic of key populations among them – young people, men who have sex with men, sex workers, and the general public.
“We’ve partnered with various bars around the island, and we’ve covered a few bars in at least each parish so persons would be able to easily access the condoms.
“The condoms would be located behind the bar but there will be a sign indicating that this bar is participating in our programme, and so all the patron has to do is to request the condoms and they will be provided by the bartender,” she said.
So far the HPU has formed alliances with Culturama Bar, Sunshine’s Beach Bar and Grill, Weekendz Bar and Grill, Rose Stop and Shop, The “Lil” Cherry Tree Convenient Shop, Seal My Sip Longue and Juice Bar, Friends Bar, Five Trees Bar and Lounge, Hot Springs Spot, Friendz Bar, New Vybez, Real Vybez Bar, Squeeze Up Bar, Dew Drops Restaurant, Gabriella’s Snackette & Bar, Sandy’s Bar, Rumours Bar & Grill, Carbo’s, Gabriella’s Snackette & Bar and Esmie’s Bar.
“We are currently working on other bars so this is not an exhaustive list, so the full list of bars that are partnering with us. We ask that you please go to our Nevis HPU Facebook or Instagram for a full list of our partners,” Ms. Herbert urged.
Other establishments who wish to be a part of the initiative can call the Nevis Health Promotion Unit at Tel: 469-8010.
This month marks 16 years since St. Kitts and Nevis moved away from a 300-year history of sugar production to step into a new path of formally marketing the islands as a tourist destination.
The then leaders took the chance and saw it was best to make the change at that time due to the difficulties faced with producing sugar and the debt associated.
When St.Kitts and Nevis moved away from exporting sugar in the early 2000s, to focus on Tourism, it was met with mixed reactions.
Some would agree that this change was good for the economy as it encouraged locals to find innovative ways to be part of that change.
Loop Caribbean spoke with local businessman and St.Kitts and Nevis Honorary Consul to Switzerland and Italy Ernest Amory MBE about the diversification of the federation’s economy and what it meant for both the country and its people.
“I think it was a good idea by the government at the time because they saw where they were not making any money from the Sugar Industry. The cost of sugar on the world market had decreased so much that it wasn’t profitable for them to grow sugar.
Our local people were not interested in cutting Sugar Cane so the government had to employ persons from Guyana, Dominican Republic and Haiti to come to cut cane.
He said however that the move from the sugar industry to the tourism industry was a big move due to the fact that there was no form of preparation for the approximately 1500 persons within the sugar industry, to assist them in transitioning to this new industry.
“The persons who were left out from the sugar industry were not ready for tourism. There were no positions for them; they didn’t have the skills for tourism, there were no jobs.”
As is usually the case with anything new, there were teething issues. And while the impact of this shift wasn’t all bad, some were left struggling to come to terms with the implications of such a drastic change.
It was new for all and encouraged many to adapt and find new ways to fit into this new way of life, thereby offering more to the tourism product.
“It affected a lot of people in a negative way but it opened up more avenues for the country in general so the government received more revenue, more businesses opened. Of course, we can see Porte Zante today; it’s flourishing. Sometimes in the height of the season, we have had six or seven cruise ships on one day.”
Many persons were empowered to become entrepreneurs. We see people on the beach giving massages, hair braiders offering their services, more local craft vendors and people have even made training monkeys into a profitable business.
“It’s good and bad but I think it’s more good than bad and I commend everybody for doing their part in showcasing what they can offer to promote St. Kitts and Nevis.”
Brief History
On July 22nd 2005, two locomotives brought in the last sugar canes for processing at the St. Kitts Sugar Manufacturing Corporation (SSMC) factory, signalling the closing of the island’s 300-year old sugar industry.
From the time of settlement St. Kitts was developed as a plantation island. The small plantations produced tobacco, cotton, and indigo and over the 17th-century sugar cane started gaining ground and St. Kitts became the wealthiest of the British possessions.
Over the years the maintenance of the sugar industry became too high for the country to sustain and the then government decided it was time to close the industry and focus on something new. That’s where tourism came in.
Aug 4 (Reuters) – The head of a Miami-based security firm that hired the Colombian bodyguards suspected of killing Haiti’s president denied involvement in his death, saying on Wednesday he had been tricked and that the president’s own guards were to blame.
President Jovenel Moise was killed last month at his home in Port-au-Prince, and a group of former soldiers from Colombia were arrested in the attack.
Haitian officials said Antonio Intriago’s company, CTU, Security had hired the former soldiers, which he indirectly confirmed in a statement issued through his lawyers in Miami.
“Mr. Intriago had no knowledge of and no part in the tragic events,” his attorneys at Lacayo Law Firm said, marking Intriago’s first public remarks on the matter.
According to the statement, Intriago believed that his “unarmed security contractors” had been hired as personal guards in Haiti, but that there was a last-minute change of plans and the men were asked to serve an arrest warrant on Moise.
Intriago’s lawyers attached the warrant with their statement. The warrant was signed by a judge and dated February 2019.
“When they entered the presidential residence, they found the president deceased, his wife wounded, and the house ransacked,” the statement said. “It is our belief that the president’s own bodyguards betrayed him.”
“Mr. Intriago was the victim of an elaborate scheme,” it said, arguing the contractors had “no part” in Moise’s killing.
In Colombia, families and colleagues of Intriago’s hires have told reporters the men were hired to act as bodyguards.
Reporting by Chris Prentice and Daina Beth Solomon. Editing by Gerry Doyle
