Free Republic

The president of the Dominican Republic has announced plans to build a fence along its border with Haiti, which extends for about 380km (236 miles). Luis Abinader said the barrier would help curb illegal immigration, drugs and the flow of stolen vehicles between the two countries, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Mr Abinader said work on the barrier would start later this year. Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the Western Hemisphere. Relations between the two neighbours have been historically difficult. Mr Abinader said the barrier in some "conflictive" sections would include a double-fence along with...

Christopher Columbus' accounts of the Caribbean include harrowing descriptions of fierce raiders who abducted women and cannibalized men - stories long dismissed as myths. But a new study suggests Columbus may have been telling the truth. Using the equivalent of facial recognition technology, researchers analyzed the skulls of early Caribbean inhabitants, uncovering relationships between people groups and upending longstanding hypotheses about how the islands were first colonized. One surprising finding was that the Caribs, marauders from South America and rumored cannibals, invaded Jamaica, Hispaniola and the Bahamas, overturning half a century of assumptions that they never made it farther north...

On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Haiti warned American citizens, volunteers and missionaries in Haiti to stay in place and hunker down after angry demonstrators attempted to get past a barricade and security guards at a Port-au-Prince hotel. CNN reports that American Airlines, JetBlue and the Spirit Airlines (whose official slogan is: “We’re like a Greyhound bus with wings”) canceled all flights to Haiti following unrest in the country related to rising fuel prices, corruption and widespread poverty. When comparing them side-by-side, the story of the American Revolution ain’t got shit on the history of Haiti. For black people, Haiti...

* Divers spent two years recovering the haul from the bed of the Caribbean * The unnamed galleon is thought to have sunk around 1540 * It held 1,200 top quality items, bound for Spanish ambassador's mansion Specialist divers spent two years extracting the pewter plates and bowls from beneath the waves off the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. More than 1,200 items of the finest quality English pewter were recovered from the wreck of the unnamed galleon which is thought to have sunk around 1540... It is believed the ship was transporting the incoming Spanish ambassador from Seville to...

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic, Jan 11 (Reuters) - At least 24 Haitians suffocated to death in the back of a van thought to have smuggled them into the Dominican Republic, local media reported on Wednesday. The bodies were found in the van by members of the Dominican armed forces, Radio Popular said. An army spokesman said the driver and owner of the van had been arrested and an investigation was underway. Up to 1 million Haitians, most of them illegal immigrants, are believed to be living in the Dominican Republic, which shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with their impoverished...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Atlantis, the legendary island nation over whose existence controversy has raged for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by a Swedish scientist. Atlantis, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in 360 BC, was an island in the Atlantic Ocean where an advanced civilization developed some 11,500 years ago until it was hit by a cataclysmic natural disaster and sank beneath the waves. Geographer Ulf Erlingsson, whose book explaining his theory will be published next month, says the measurements, geography, and landscape of Atlantis as described by Plato match Ireland almost exactly. "I am...

HAVANA -- A former political prisoner whose case was highlighted by President Bush urged Cuba's government Friday to hold a referendum on whether to change the communist island's political system. In a 10-page report called "The Cuba We Want," Leonardo Bruzon Avila and fellow dissident Carlos Rios Otero called for the referendum and laid out a plan for Cuba's transition to a multiparty, democratic system and free-market economy. The report was delivered Friday to the offices of Cuban Justice Minister Roberto Diaz Sotolongo. There was no public reaction by the President Fidel Castro's government to the recommendations. The proposal echoed...