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An archaeological research team from North Carolina State University, the University of Washington and University of Florida has found one of the most diverse collections of prehistoric non-native animal remains in the Caribbean, on the tiny island of Carriacou. The find contributes to our understanding of culture in the region before the arrival of Columbus, and suggests Carriacou may have been more important than previously thought. The researchers found evidence of five species that were introduced to Carriacou from South America between 1,000 and 1,400 years ago. Only one of these species, the opossum, can still be found on the...

(The Daily Beast) - Just days after President Obama announced a new austerity program to save billions in federal spending and travel, his attorney general, Eric Holder, is spending five days on the taxpayer’s dime hopping around Caribbean islands in the name of improving law enforcement in the region. Holder’s stated mission for the trip was to sign law-enforcement agreements with authorities in the area and to inspect some condos recently seized by federal authorities in a Medicare fraud sting substantially smaller than the department’s usual pursuits prosecuting massive Wall Street fraud, terrorists, and murderers. He’ll also attend an international...

China is continuing its bold economic and geopolitical march through the Caribbean and Latin America, using its growing economic might to dole out grant aid and soft loans to win friends and influence governments, continuing its plans to displace the United States as the region's major trading partner in the not-too-distant future. For two days this week, a large Chinese delegation led by Vice-Premier Wang Qishan spent hours in talks with Caribbean leaders and business delegations. By the time the forum ended in Trinidad's capital of Port of Spain, Beijing had unveiled measures worth $6.3 billion aimed at sealing better...

IN A BOLD declaration of his country’s bold ambitions for the Caribbean region, China’s Vice Premier Wang Qishan yesterday unveiled a suite of measures including a $6.3 billion loan to regional governments, aimed at deepening cooperation between the People’s Republic and the Caribbean. In an opening address at the Third China-Caribbean Economic and Trade Cooperation Forum, the Vice Premier wasted little time unveiling a series of six concrete steps which his country will take to consolidate its already considerable influence in the region. Among measures announced to thousands at the Regency Ballroom, Wrightson Road, Port-of-Spain, were: • a US$1 billion...

China announced on Monday it will provide $1 billion in loans to Caribbean countries to finance infrastructure projects as it deepens ties in a region historically linked with the United States. The loans will be made available through the state-run China Development Bank, China's Vice Premier Wang Qishan told a meeting of Caribbean and Chinese officials in Port of Spain, capital of oil and gas producer Trinidad and Tobago. "China cannot develop itself in isolation of the world and the world needs China for its development," he said.

During a televised discussion of the past week’s riots in England on Friday night, a prominent English historian sparked outrage by insisting that black, Afro-Caribbean culture was to blame for the mayhem and looting, even when the rioters were white. David Starkey, who has presented several documentaries on the Tudor period, said during a BBC debate: “the problem is that the whites have become black — a particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion — and black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together; this language, which is wholly false, which is...

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic — After the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2005, it received a token of appreciation from the mainland Chinese government: a $55 million cricket stadium. It was part of $132 million China doled out to Caribbean countries in aid and soft loans in the years leading up to the 2007 Cricket World Cup. At the time, the investment was seen as a not-so-subtle reward to countries that had broken off formal relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing. Ever since, China has made that sum look like pittance. The Beijing...

Rock art specialists from around North America have finally solved this century old archaeological riddle. The stone slab is evidence that native peoples from Puerto Rico or Cuba once lived within the interior of Eastern North America. One day, long before Christopher Columbus claimed to have landed on the eastern edge of Asia, a forgotten people cut steps in the rocks leading up a steep bluff near the Chattahoochee River in the northwest section of the State of Georgia. They carved a supernatural figure on a four feet by one foot granite slab and erected it on the top of...

There are cameras that capture images clear enough to distinguish between a fishing vessel and a boatload of pirates 10 miles away. There are cascades of water and noxious compounds to repel invaders. And there are shields to withstand a rocket-propelled grenade. A container ship that steamed into a Puerto Rican port Friday was old by commercial shipping standards but it had the latest in security measures, upgrades that convert it into a floating fortress designed to be impregnable to piracy.

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) decided at a meeting on Friday to set up a South American Parliament in Bolivia to promote the bloc's integration. Chilean President Michele Bachelet, also the UNASUR's temporary president, and Bolivian President Evo Morales opened the meeting in Bolivia's Cochabamba province which drew representatives from 12 countries in the region. "There are many tasks that the UNASUR is urged to accomplish, as part of the Latin American and Caribbean efforts," Bachelet said. Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia said that UNASUR members consider it necessary to promote the construction of the institutionalism and the...

21st Century SocialismThe attempt to destroy democracy in Latin America.  The Obama administration started out on the wrong foot in world affairs. It used techniques better suited for domestic political campaigns — popularity contests — in its foreign policy. In our own hemisphere, the result was confusion for our allies and our enemies alike. The overriding objective of U.S. policy — in Latin America and elsewhere — should be to advance U.S. national interests, not to curry favor with foreign leaders. If we can be liked while advancing our interests, so much the better. But when we try to befriend...

Goals include promoting calypso and improving calypsonians' lives Reigning Calypso Monarch Kurt Allen wants to use his title to help preserve the legacy, integrity and historical value of calypso music through the establishment of the Office of the Calypso Monarch. The initiative was launched yesterday at the National Academy for the Performing Arts, Port of Spain, with the unveiling of a crest. "When I became Calypso Monarch, I made a pledge that I will let my reign be reflective and symbolic of new development because I believe that emphasis must be placed on youth in calypso," Allen said. The office...

The crime was horrifying enough — a nightclub owner, hacked to death with a machete, was found buried in pieces. But what really outraged people was that the accused killer had been deported from the U.S. to his native Grenada as a convicted felon. As a foreign-bred criminal, the suspect never should have returned to the close-knit tropical nation, relatives of the victim and others said. Islanders called for more vigilance over deportees by the government, which says it needs help from Washington to handle the return of hardened convicts. "I hope that my brother did not die in vain...

From the August 10 edition of Jonah Goldberg’s The Goldberg File: Washington, D.C., … we all know, is a pestilential swamp where the horseflies and water snakes have been replaced with congressmen and senators. And that’s not a fair trade, because horseflies and water snakes leave your wallet alone when they bite. That’s where the Seat of Government (SOG — one of the few acronyms which makes sense as a stand-alone word) has long been located. There are lots of possible reasons why the SOG came to be in Washington, D.C., including the proximity to George Washington’s Mount Vernon. However,...

The twin-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago would seem to be the last place to raise alarm bells over the threat of radical Islam. Trinidad was briefly catapulted into the spotlight in June 2007 when reports surfaced that one of the suspects linked to an alleged plot to attack New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was a Trinidadian national and that the suspects reached out to Yasin Abu Bakr, the leader of Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM, Association of Muslims), for assistance in executing their plan. JAM is an enigmatic Trinidadian Muslim militant group that is implicated in violence,...

Holidaymaker John Anderson has uncovered what is believed to be a 300-year-old rifle – while hunting for lobsters. The 55-year-old, below, was snorkelling off the south coast of St Lucia in the Caribbean when he spotted a large rock with a hole beneath it at a depth of about two metres. Thinking it looked like the ideal hiding place for some juicy lobsters, John dived down and grabbed on to what looked like "a piece of rock" on the seabed to hold him underwater. But to his astonishment, the object began to move and John, who has an interest in...

Trinidad and Tobago elected its first female prime minister on Monday. Kamla Persad-Bissessar took a multiparty coalition to victory over the People's National Movement (PNM) and its leader, Patrick Manning, who had been in power for 13 of the last 17 years. During this campaign, Persad-Bissessar's gender was used by the opposition to appeal to deepseated but, hopefully, bygone fears. Manning repeatedly painted Persad-Bissessar as a pawn in the hands of strong and dangerous men and suggested that "the lady" was not strong enough to rule. Persad-Bissessar, by contrast, bravely appeared on her campaign platforms to the tune of Helen...

Bared teeth are a prominent and eye-catching feature on many historical and archaeological artifacts, and are commonly interpreted as representing death, aggression and the shamanic trance. But a study in the forthcoming issue of Current Anthropology argues that the bared-teeth motif often expresses something a bit less sinister: the smile. Alice V. M. Samson, Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Bridget M. Waller, Department of Psychology, University of Portsmouth, examined the bared-teeth motif (BTM) of the Taíno, who lived in the Greater Antilles (the Caribbean) from AD 1000 to the early decades of European contact (1492-1550). Here...

SNIPPET: "President Chávez also announced during the visit that Venezuela is working on a preliminary plan for the construction of a “nuclear village” in Venezuela with Iranian assistance so that “the Venezuelan people can count in the future on this marvelous resource for peaceful purposes.” The transfer of Iranian nuclear technology from Iran would be a violation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions - 1737 (2006), 1747 ( 2007), and 1803 (2008) - that imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear technology transfers. In late September 2009, comments by Venezuelan officials offered conflicting information about Iran’s support for Venezuela’s search for uranium deposits....

The US Navy's first "Littoral Combat Ship" (LCS), the USS Freedom (LCS 1), has entered service in the Caribbean, joining the U.S. Navy drug interdiction patrol. Operating out of a base (Mayport) near Jacksonville, Florida, the Freedom headed south on February 15th, and on the 22nd intercepted its first drug smuggling boat off the Colombian coast, recovering a quarter ton of cocaine. The LCS was built for this kind of coastal operations. The USS Freedom completed its sea trials and acceptance inspections during August, 2008. The ship did very well, with far fewer (about 90 percent fewer) problems (or "material...