This was announced by Prime Minister Dr Timothy Harris who said the county can now reposition on a path to a full restoration of normalcy.

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MEXICO CITY, July 9 (Reuters) – Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Friday shrugged off a video showing one of his younger brothers receiving cash from a political operator, saying it was part of a smear campaign by adversaries to discredit him.

The video, the second within a year to feature a brother of the president taking money from the political operative, sparked fresh criticism of Lopez Obrador from Mexico’s opposition, which he has routinely depicted as steeped in corruption.

Released by Mexican news outlet Latinus, the video apparently made in 2015 shows a man who later formed part of the Lopez Obrador administration handing Martin Jesus Lopez Obrador an envelope stuffed with a large stack of bills. read more

“I think the intention is to do damage to me, or to try to damage me,” the president told a news conference. “It’s the perennial black campaign of my adversaries. We’re used to this. But we have always emerged unscathed from slander.”

He said he would not cover up for anyone, and that authorities should investigate whether any crime had been committed and punish any wrongdoing.

“But my conscience is clear,” added Lopez Obrador.

The man filmed giving his brother the cash was David Leon, who Lopez Obrador named head of Mexico’s civil protection agency after assuming the presidency in December 2018.

Leon stepped down from the government last August after a separate video was leaked of him handing money in 2015 to another brother of Lopez Obrador. On that occasion, the president described the cash as contributions from supporters.

Leon said on Twitter the money in the new video was a loan he had provided from his personal savings.

Lopez Obrador forged his reputation as a scourge of corruption, and the video leak comes three weeks ahead of a referendum over whether to investigate past political decisions that he has used to question the legacy of past presidents.

One of the former presidents, Vicente Fox, seized on the video, tweeting: “A question: are people who get their brothers to receive illicit money also going to stand trial?”

According to Latinus, the latest video was shot in 2015 just before elections in which Lopez Obrador’s political party, the leftist National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), was competing for the first time.

Lopez Obrador told the news conference the cash was not for him or any political campaign, and that he understood it was a personal matter between his brother and Leon.

The president’s popularity remains robust, polling well above 50% in most national surveys. The 2020 video leak did erode his approval rating somewhat, and the new one could do the same, said Roy Campos, head of polling firm Consulta Mitofsky.

But Lopez Obrador has generally been more adept at switching the political narrative than the opposition has been at capitalizing on scandals, Campos said.

On Friday afternoon, media attention began shifting away from the video leak after the attorney general’s office said it was investigating a prominent official in the previous government for suspected illicit enrichment. read more

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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, July 08, 2021 (Press Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister) – The Government of St. Kitts and Nevis today (Thursday, July 08) announced a slew of new measures that will help to stimulate economic activity and bring much needed relief to vulnerable groups across the Federation that were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic – one such group being passenger bus operators.

As part of the protocols implemented to protect citizens and residents and slow the spread of COVID-19, passenger bus owners and operators were asked to limit the seating capacity to 50 percent of the established capacity to facilitate physical distancing.

Speaking at his press conference at the NEMA Conference Room, Prime Minister Dr. the Honourable Timothy Harris said his Cabinet has decided to “reinstate the annual Import Duty exemption for 16 tyres (4 tyres per quarter), four pairs of brake pads and three pairs of brake shoes for ‘H’ passenger buses.”

Prime Minister Harris used the opportunity to thank the bus operators for understanding the reality of COVID-19 and for appreciating the Government’s position that life must come first.

“Some of them very readily understood that if we are to control the spread, if we are to control the virus, they couldn’t be carrying the same number of passengers as they did before the community spread and so I again say thank you for appreciating that. We understand and we appreciate that for you it has been a sacrifice – for the entire country it has been a sacrifice – but we are in it together, so in good times and bad we have to be there for one another,” the prime minister said.

Dr. Harris continued, “I want the bus operators to know that my Government cares for you and your family, so in addition to extending the annual Import Duty exemption on 16 tyres, four pairs of brake pads and three pairs of brake shoes, the Government will go further and we will provide a fuel subsidy of $400 per month to passenger bus operators for three months.”

In the meantime, passenger bus operators are being asked to continue to adhere to the established prevention and control measures on their vehicles such as complying with the established seating regulation, sanitize high-touched areas and all seats as often as possibly and to have sanitization stations or the necessary products available for passengers to sanitize their hands upon entry.

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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, July 09, 2021 (Press Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister) – Prime Minister Dr. the Honourable Timothy Harris said the Government and people of St. Kitts and Nevis stand in solidarity with the people of the Republic of Haiti and the Haitian community residing in the Federation in the wake of the recent assassination of that country’s President, His Excellency Jovenel Moïse.

Prime Minister Harris, while speaking at his Thursday, July 08 press conference at the NEMA Conference, stated that his Government is making every effort to keep citizens and residents, particularly those from Haiti, informed on the situation in the sister CARICOM Member State.

“We have an important group of Haitians living in St. Kitts and Nevis and we want them to understand that we appreciate their own uncertainty over developments in their own country. We stand with you. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been advised to keep abreast of the evolving situation in Haiti and to make as much information available to the people of St. Kitts and Nevis, including all our residents here from Haiti,” Prime Minister Harris said.

There is an active non-profit organization of persons from Haiti residing in the Federation. The Haitian Association of St. Kitts and Nevis was founded in 2016 with the sole purpose of assisting those in need back in Haiti.

The prime minister stated that Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Kaye Bass has been in constant contact with the Federation’s Honorary Consul in Haiti. He told members of the Haitian community that “if there are any particular issues or concerns which you would like to have the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through its Permanent Secretary Ms. Kaye Bass, investigate on your behalf, we would be willing to provide that particular service.”

President Moïse was killed in a brazen attack which took place in the early hours of Wednesday, July 7, 2021, when gunmen broke into his home in Port-au-Prince, killing him and wounding his wife, Martine Moïse.

Mrs. Moïse, 47, was seriously wounded and is in a stable condition after being flown to Florida for treatment.

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Police and intelligence agencies in the United States and Colombia are investigating links to the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, after arrests of their nationals by Haitian authorities.

Colombian security sources told Reuters on Friday that several Colombians believed to be part of the commando unit that assassinated Moise in his home in the early hours of Wednesday had spent more than a month in Haiti before the killing, after entering via the neighboring Dominican Republic.

The head of Colombia’s national intelligence directorate and the intelligence director for the national police will travel to Haiti with Interpol to help with investigations, Colombian President Ivan Duque said on Friday.

“We offer all possible help to find out the truth about the material and intellectual perpetrators of the assassination,” Duque wrote on Twitter, saying he had just spoken on the phone with Haitian interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph.

The assassination of Moise, a 53-year-old former businessman, drew international outcry and pitched Haiti deeper into a political crisis https://www.reuters.com/article/us-haiti-politics-timeline-idAFKCN2ED1F6 which is feared could worsen growing hunger, gang violence, and a COVID-19 outbreak.

Police in Haiti said the assassination was carried out by a squad of 26 Colombian and 2 Haitian-American mercenaries. The two Haitian Americans were identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55, both from Florida.

Seventeen of the men were captured after a gun battle with Haitian authorities in Petionville, a hillside suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince, while three were killed and eight are still at large, according to Haitian police.

Authorities are still hunting for the masterminds behind the operation, they said.

Two U.S. law enforcement sources, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an active investigation, said that agencies were looking into U.S. connections to the killing , but declined to comment specifically on the two suspects.

The sources said U.S. agencies were not assisting in the investigation in Haiti because Haitian officials had not requested their help.

Haitian officials have not given a motive for Moise’s killing or explained how the assassins got past his security detail. He had faced mass protests against his rule since taking office in 2017 – first over corruption allegations and his management of the economy, then over his increasing grip on power.

Moise himself had talked of dark forces at play behind the unrest: fellow politicians and corrupt oligarchs who felt his attempts to clean up government contracts and to reform Haitian politics were against their interests.

Colombian officials have confirmed they received requests for information from Haiti on six suspects, two of whom had apparently been killed and four who are under arrest. Initial investigations showed the men were retired members of Colombia’s armed forces, the defense minister said.

Four of the men took an Avianca flight on June 4 to the resort of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, Colombian police and army sources told Reuters. Two days later they crossed the border into Haiti.

One of the men – who Colombian newspaper El Tiempo said had previously been part of the Colombian military’s urban anti-terrorism special forces unit – has 16 photos on his Facebook account that appear to have been taken in the Dominican Republic.

The newspaper reported that another of the men, who it said took the same flight and posted photos from the same locations, was a nurse at the naval hospital in the Colombian city of Cartagena.

CONFUSION OVER POLITICAL CONTROL

In Haiti, the government declared a 15-day state of emergency on Wednesday to help authorities apprehend the killers but has since urged businesses to open up again.

Grocery stores, gas stations and commercial banks re-opened on Friday although the streets were still quiet, with just a few vendors plying their wares.

Moise’s killing sparked confusion about who is now the legitimate leader of the country of 11 million people, the poorest in the Americas.

“The assassination … has provoked a political and institutional vacuum at the highest level of state,” said Haitian opposition politician Andre Michel. “There is no constitutional provision for this exceptional situation.”

The 1987 constitution stipulates the head of the Supreme Court should take over. But amendments that are not unanimously recognized in the country state that it should be the prime minister, or, in the last year of a president’s mandate – the case with Moise – that parliament should elect a president.

The head of the Supreme Court died last month due to COVID-19 amid a surge in infections in Haiti, which is one of the few countries in the world yet to start a vaccination campaign.

There is no sitting parliament as legislative elections scheduled for late 2019 had been postponed amid political unrest.

Just this week, Moise appointed a new prime minister, Ariel Henry, to take over from Joseph, although he had yet to be sworn in when the president was killed.

Joseph appeared on Wednesday to take charge of the situation, but Henry – who is viewed more favorably by the opposition – told Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste he did not consider Joseph the legitimate prime minister.

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U.S. sending FBI, DHS law enforcement to Haiti

By Metro US

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Posted on July 9, 2021

People walk past a wall with a mural depicting Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise, after he was shot dead by unidentified attackers in his private residence, in Port-au-Prince

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will send senior federal law enforcement officials to Haiti as soon as possible to help after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, the White House said on Friday.

“The United States remains engaged and in close consultation with our Haitian and international partners to support the Haitian people in the aftermath of the assassination of the president,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.

In response to a Haitian government request, senior officials from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security will be sent to Port-au-Prince to assess the situation and see how to best assist, she said.

Strengthening Haiti’s law enforcement capacity was a key U.S. priority even before the assassination, Psaki said.

Police and intelligence agencies in the United States and Colombia are investigating https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/colombian-suspects-haiti-presidents-killing-arrived-via-dominican-republic-2021-07-09 links to the assassination on Wednesday of Moise after arrests of their nationals by Haitian authorities.

The United States is providing $5 million to strengthen the Haitian National Police capacity to work with communities to resist gangs, Psaki said.

The United States also will send COVID-19 vaccines to Haiti as early as next week, she said.

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British entrepreneur and Virgin founder Richard Branson will fly to space aboard Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity plane for the company’s next suborbital flight, the most high-profile launch since its founding in 2004.

Richard Branson says he isn’t racing ex-Amazon CEO and richest-man-in-the-world Jeff Bezos into space, but it certainly looks that way. The British billionaire is set to join five others on a Virgin Galactic test flight to space on July 11, just over a week ahead of Bezos’ planned space flight with his brother on July 20 aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft.

Virgin Galactic claims it began planning Branson’s flight before last month’s announcement that Jeff and Mark Bezos would launch to the edge of space with the winner of a multi-million-dollar auction. But whatever the reason, this sudden rush to get into space at least appears to be the result of an intense rivalry among the entrepreneurs and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Dubbed the ‘NewSpace’ set, Bezos, Branson and Musk all say they were inspired by the first moon landing in 1969, when the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the space race. They have each pumped billions of dollars into their respective start-ups with the aim of creating cheap, commercialized space travel.

What happens now? Branson is set to fly into space on Sunday, July 11, while Bezos will board the New Shepherd on July 20. SpaceX started crewed flights in May 2020, but Musk has yet to fly on a mission, despite once saying he’d like to “die on Mars”.. SpaceX is renting out its Dragon space capsule this fall for its first private spaceflight, taking a crew of four on a three-day orbital odyssey.

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By Sir Ronald Sanders  

(The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States.   He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and Massey College in the University of Toronto.  The views expressed are entirely his own)  

Haiti was in a constitutional and political crisis before the assassination of its President Jovenel Moïse in the early hours of the morning of July 7.   That crisis has worsened. It is now explosive unless representatives of the main political parties collectively agree on an interim, broad-based government to prepare the country for presidential, legislative, and municipal elections due to be held in September.

Fuel was poured on the fire of the crisis by Claude Joseph who has declared himself as prime minister.  There is no legal or other basis for Joseph’s action.   He was appointed ‘interim Prime Minister’ by Moïse for 30 days in May. The appointment was renewed for another 30 days, until July 5 when Moïse published a decree, appointing Ariel Henry as the new prime minister with power to form a government, including representatives of opposition parties and civil society.

Joseph acknowledged the appointment of Henry by publicly congratulating him and departing the official office and residence. Now, there is a sudden about turn.

Meantime, in an interview with Le Nouvelliste,  a daily newspaper printed in Haiti, Mr Henry insisted that he, and not Mr Joseph, is the prime minister.  According to the Constitution,  it is the president of the Supreme Court who should take over in the event of a presidential vacancy. However, Chief Justice René Sylvestre died of Covid-19 on June 23, and had not been replaced.

At best, in this turbulent situation, it is Ariel Henry who should be responsible for governmental affairs while he works swiftly on establishing a broad-based interim and national government.

The international community should not delude itself that anything but an interim government, comprised of political parties and civil society, will be acceptable to the Haitian people.  If a few powerful governments attempt to support a power grab and not a broad-based interim government, they will condemn Haiti to worse unrest than has been the case in recent years.

It should be recalled that Moïse had been running Haiti by decree since January 2020.  There is no national assembly, and the normal institutions of government are not functioning as required by the Constitution.

CARICOM Heads of Government were right when, at the conclusion of their regular meeting from 4 to 6 July, they expressed their “grave concern over the untenable situation in Haiti which is in the throes of a protracted, political, constitutional and humanitarian crisis”.   The leaders were almost prescient in stating that they were “particularly alarmed by the precipitous deterioration of security, calling into question the state’s ability to protect the people of the country”.  Little did they know that the state had become unable even to protect the President of the country.

What happens in Haiti in the coming weeks will determine if the country is to be plunged into further chaos, or stability will be established.

Earlier this year when there were cries for an interim government in Haiti, including by top members of the US Congress, the US government, which has long exerted huge influence in Haiti’s politics, had indicated that it did not support the idea. It called, instead, for Moïse to abandon his ambition to hold a controversial  referendum to change the country’s constitution as he saw fit, and to concentrate on holding the September elections.

However, when the presidency of Michel Martelly had come to an end in 2016 with no successor because of the failure to hold elections, an interim government was installed by agreement of all political parties in the National Assembly.  Having led the delegation of the Organization of American States that helped to broker that agreement, I can testify to its wide support.  That agreement, which included Martelly, allowed for the formation of an interim government which oversaw a period of relative peace and stability, including elections that brought  Moïse to office in 2017.

At that election, marred by Hurricane Matthew that devastated the country less than a month before, only 21 percent of the electorate voted.  Moïse secured 55.67 percent of that small number of 21 percent, accounting for his unpopularity from the start of his presidency when almost 80 percent of the electorate did not vote.

For peace to prevail, the Haitian people must have confidence in the governance of the country over the next few months, including the impartiality and independence of the elections’ machinery which, at the moment, is populated by persons handpicked by Moïse and his party.  If there is no change in this situation, it is most unlikely to be accepted by opposition parties and by civil society.

The stakeholders in Haiti have to come together to agree on an interim government and re-establish, as best they can, some of the key institutions of government, especially the judiciary and electoral council.  One of the critical decisions surrounds whether free and fair elections can possibly be held in September.   On any objective analysis, the answer would be that such elections are not possible.

The country would accept an interim, national government delaying the election date until independent and transparent machinery is established.  It is hardly likely that they will accept elections – two months from now in the hands of persons they did not elect and who were not approved in accordance with the country’s constitution.

The problem is that no country or organisation can proffer itself to help Haiti through this crisis.  The Haitian government has to issue an invitation.  In the absence of an interim government, no invitation will be issued to an organisation that commands wide trust from the Haitian stakeholders.

There are few organisations that command such trust amongst Haitians – CARICOM is probably the one that enjoys the widest confidence.

On July 6 – even before Moïse’s assassination – CARICOM leaders expressed their “support for dialogue between the contending parties” and repeated “the Community’s willingness to extend its good offices in attaining a Haitian-led peaceful resolution to the current impasse”.   This would entail both facilitation and mediation.

The UN and other international organisations should provide CARICOM with the resources it would need to undertake this vital role.  Haiti is a CARICOM country. What happens in it has consequences for the region.

Responses and previous commentaries: www.sirronaldsanders.com  

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