News stories by Peter Richards, page 9

For the past 19 years, Wendell Eversley has been staging a one-man protest calling for a public inquiry into the failed coup by a group of radical Muslims against the then Trinidad and Tobago government headed by Prime Minister Arthur N.R. Robinson.

Faced with a steep escalation of the murder rate since it came to power on May 24, the new People’s Partnership government in Trinidad and Tobago is considering resuming capital punishment as a means of dealing with the situation.

Two years after 14 Caribbean countries signed a wide-ranging and controversial Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with Europe, Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo still maintains that his country was right in holding out until the last minute to get a 'better deal' for the Caribbean.

For 37 years, Caribbean leaders have fended off charges from critics that the 15-member regional grouping Caricom is nothing more than a talk shop.

They descended in droves after the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated the French-speaking Caribbean Community (Caricom) country, killing an estimated 300,000 people and leaving more than one million homeless.

Caribbean Community (Caricom) leaders are gathering here next week for their annual summit still struggling to recover from the two-year global economic and financial crisis that has taken a major toll on their individual economies.

The votes of six Caribbean countries could help decide whether or not the International Whaling Commission (IWC) will ease the 1986 global ban on commercial whaling and allow hunting in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary around Antarctica.

When she is sworn in as prime minister later this week, Kamla Persad-Bissessar says she will bring the same kind of care and attention to governing Trinidad and Tobago that she has devoted to her own family.

A year and a half after Caribbean leaders inked a controversial and sweeping free trade pact with the European Union, concerns are emerging that the region is lagging in accessing some of its benefits.

Kamla Persad-Bissessar may never want the year 2010 to end.