Category: CANA News

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Thursday, expressed deep condolences over the tragic loss of life, the growing number of injuries, and the extensive damage to infrastructure and homes as a result of the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday.

‘We stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela during this time of immense grief and offer prayers for a swift recovery to the injured and displaced.’

New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in an effort to protect a newly enacted package of state laws aimed at increasing accountability and transparency in immigration enforcement.

The legal challenge comes after the federal government signaled its intention to challenge the measures, which are set to take effect on Friday.

One of the new laws prohibits local, state and federal law enforcement officers from concealing their identities while interacting with the public by wearing masks or face coverings. It also requires officers to clearly display identifying information, including their agency affiliation.

James said the legislation was designed to address growing concerns over the use of masked federal immigration agents during enforcement operations.

‘By hiding their faces and refusing to wear identification, federal immigration officers endanger New Yorkers and intentionally evade accountability,’ James said.

‘Our communities should not have to live in fear of being disappeared by unidentified masked agents.’

Another measure, known as the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, bars local governments and law enforcement agencies from entering into agreements that allow local officers to carry out federal immigration enforcement duties or detain individuals solely for civil immigration violations. The law also prohibits the use of public funds to support immigration detention facilities.

James said the legislation ensures that local police resources remain focused on community safety rather than federal immigration enforcement.

The lawsuit follows warnings from the Trump administration that it would move to block the laws. James said federal officials formally notified New York last week of their intention to sue and seek emergency relief before the measures take effect.

White House Border Czar Tom Homan has also threatened to increase the number of federal immigration agents operating in New York in response to the state’s actions.

Hochul defended the legislation, saying it reflects New York’s commitment to transparency and public accountability.

‘A badge carries with it a responsibility to uphold the public’s trust,’ Hochul said. ‘New Yorkers deserve to know who is enforcing the law in their communities and to have confidence that local resources are being used to protect public safety, not advance the agenda of a rogue federal agency.’

State officials argue that New York has the constitutional authority under the Tenth Amendment to enact laws governing the use of state and local resources and to establish public safety standards for law enforcement operating within its borders.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the laws constitutional and block the Trump administration from interfering with their implementation.

According to James, the measures were introduced in response to growing concerns over federal immigration enforcement tactics, including operations involving masked and unidentified agents that critics say undermine public trust and make it difficult to hold officers accountable.

State officials maintain that the legislation is intended to protect residents, strengthen transparency and preserve New York’s authority over local law enforcement priorities.

Health Minister, Dr. Christopher Tufton has directed regional health authorities, (RHAs), and the University Hospital of the West Indies, (UHWI), to undertake a comprehensive physical audit of the accommodation facilities for medical interns.

The audit is to be completed within 72 hours.

Tufton, who issued the directive in a statement on Wednesday said the RHAs and the UHWI are to take immediate action to address the working and living conditions of medical interns across the public health system.

The findings are to be submitted to the Permanent Secretary’s office no later than Friday.

According to the Health Minister, any facility found to have structural, sanitary, or safety deficiencies, including sewage-related issues or inadequate sleeping arrangements, must undergo immediate interim corrective action.

His directive followed concerns raised by the Jamaica Medical Doctors’ Association (JMDA) which called on members to wear blue on Wednesday in solidarity with the interns.

In addition to the audit of the physical space, Senior Medical Officers have been instructed to review duty rosters to ensure that interns, residents and senior housing officers are appropriately scheduled to avert the potential for overwork.

Human resource directors across all RHAs are also required to submit, within five working days, a detailed assessment of intern staffing gaps by department and facility.

The Health Minister says the assessment will inform accelerated deployment under the 2026 Medical Internship Programme.

Additionally, coordinators of the Employee Assistance Programme have been directed to engage interns proactively and provide access to mental health and wellness support services.

Tufton noted that as of July 1, 232 medical interns are expected to be deployed across the public health system.

He says additional placements are anticipated following the completion of the June 2026 qualifying examinations.

According to the minister, his staff has been reviewing internship post allocations in consultation with the Medical Council of Jamaica and the RHAs to ensure that training sites are quipped with the requisite supervision, clinical workload, and physical infrastructure to support quality experiences.

Tufton says a revised internship post-allocation framework is to be presented to Cabinet in the coming weeks.

Also among the proposed changes, Dr Tufton says the Director of Health Services Planning and Integration has been tasked with working alongside the regional teams to incorporate facility readiness as a key criterion in future internship placements.

The Health Minister says the plan is for a joint monitoring committee to track the progress on a fortnightly basis.

The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on Thursday, expressed deep condolences over the tragic loss of life, the growing number of injuries, and the extensive damage to infrastructure and homes as a result of the devastating earthquakes that struck Venezuela on Wednesday.

‘We stand in solidarity with the people of Venezuela during this time of immense grief and offer prayers for a swift recovery to the injured and displaced.

CARICOM commends the tireless efforts of the emergency personnel, first responders, and citizens working under challenging conditions to rescue survivors and provide vital assistance, ‘ the regional body said in a statement on Thursday.

CARICOM wishes the people of Venezuela strength and resilience as they navigate this tragedy and begin the difficult process of recovery and reconstruction.

On Thursday, Venezuelans are still searching for survivors beneath collapsed buildings as rescue teams raced to northern areas rocked by a pair of powerful earthquakes that officials say killed at least 188 people and left more than 200 trapped.

More are feared dead.

The 7.2- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes that struck Wednesday evening were among the strongest in Venezuela in more than a century and were felt throughout the region.

Some 1,500 people were injured and thousands were reported missing across the country. The coastal region of La Guaira, which is north of the capital, Caracas, experienced some of the heaviest damage and casualties, officials said.

Buildings were evacuated as far away as Brazil’s Amazon, about 1,700 kilometers (1,050 miles) from Caracas, where the country’s main airport was damaged and closed.

Offers of help poured in from around the world, including from the United States, which seized Venezuela’s then-president Nicolas Maduro at the beginning of the year in a surprise military operation.

The natural disaster is just the latest challenge for acting President Delcy Rodríguez, the former vice president who took office in January after Maduro’s capture. Venezuela has been facing economic disarray for more than a decade, and many people reject the legitimacy of the political movement Rodriguez represents.

Sri Lanka post 95 for three at lunch on the opening day of the first against the West Indies at North Sound here on Thursday.

SCORES:

Sri Lanka 95-3 in 22 overs (Dinesh Chandimal 40 not out, Dhananjaya de Silva 25 not out, Nishan Madushka 23; Alzarri Joseph 2-18, Kemar Roach 1-15)

Sri Lanka post 204 for five at tea on the opening day of the first Test against the West Indies at North Sound here on Thursday.

SCORES:

Sri Lanka 204-5 in 48 overs (Dhananjaya de Silva 76 not out, Dinesh Chandimal 54, Sonal Dinusha 41 not out; Alzarri Joseph 2-43, Shamar Joseph 2-42)

The US Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to end legal protections for migrants fleeing violence and natural disaster in Haiti and Syria, exposing hundreds of thousands more people to potential deportation.

The 6-3 decision overturns lower court orders and allows the Department of Homeland Security to swiftly end temporary protected status (TPS) a programme that protects a total of 1.3 million people from 17 countries.

The Republican administration argued that judges cannot second-guess immigration officials’ decisions about protections that were intended to be temporary.

The court’s conservative majority agreed, finding that the law creating the program keeps courts out of the process. ‘The Secretary’s TPS designation decisions are not subject to judicial review,’ Justice Samuel Alito wrote.

Immigration lawyers said the countries at issue remain unsafe for migrants to return and they argued that the administration ended the protections in an unlawfully hasty process tinged by racial animus. During Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, he amplified rumors that Haitian immigrants were abducting and eating dogs and cats.

The court majority found that the statements from Trump and his administration were not ‘overtly racial.’ Alito said that Haitian people should not face character attacks. ‘But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people,’ he wrote.

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, writing that the law does allow for judges to step in if officials sidestep the process for ending the protections. Race, meanwhile, does appear to have played a role, Justice Elena Kagan wrote.

‘The evidence is there, plain to see, in the President’s statements, which the majority (and for that matter, his own lawyers) cannot even bear to repeat,’ she wrote. ‘Respectfully, I dissent from the Court’s decision that they may instead be put on the next plane.’

Lawyers for the Haitian immigrants said the Haitians would be in danger if they were sent back. ‘Simply put, the Supreme Court’s ruling will directly result in thousands of innocent people dying violent, needless deaths,’ Geoff Pipoly and Andy Tauber said.

They urged the Senate to approve an extension of deportation protections for Haitians. That measure has languished since it was passed the House on a rare bipartisan vote in April.

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, also condemned the decision.

‘This ruling is a devastating betrayal of Haitian families who have lived, worked, and contributed to this country for years — only to be cast out based on anti-Black immigration sentiment,’ he said.

The Department of Justice appealed to the Supreme Court after judges postponed the end of the programme for about 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. The high court sided with the administration before and allowed the end of the program for people from Venezuela.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, DHS has ended the protections, including some that had been in place for more than a decade, for people from 13 countries.

The terminations were made even though countries such as Haiti and Syria remain dangerous, immigration lawyers said.

Four Haitian women who were deported from the United States in February were found beheaded and dumped in a river several months later, lawyers said in court documents.

The United States first granted protections to Haitians in 2010 after a catastrophic earthquake and extended them multiple times amid ongoing gang violence that has displaced more than a million people, according to court documents.

Syrians were first granted protected status in 2012, during a civil war that lasted for more than a decade before the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government in late 2024.

The programme was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters, civil strife and other instability. It allows people already in the country to stay with work permits in increments of up to 18 months, but it does not provide a path to citizenship.

Barbados and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Fund have launched the Vulnerability to Viability (V2V) Compact, whose goal is to provide cheaper, longer-term, and more predictable funding to countries facing severe climate shocks and high sovereign borrowing costs.

Barbados’ Senior Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Christopher Sinckler, addressing the 56th Regular Session of the Organization of American States (OAS) General Assembly, here on Wednesday, said that the initiative was launched by Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley and President General of the OPEC Fund, Dr. Abdulhamid Alkhalifa, on Tuesday. The V2V Compact is a landmark international finance partnership launched by 74 climate-vulnerable economies (CVF-V20) and development banks, led by the OPEC Fund.

Sinckler said that Barbados signed the initiative in its capacity as Chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum and its V20 Finance Ministers, ‘which aims to mobilise much-needed flow and affordability of development finance to economies that have contributed the least to global emissions but suffered disproportionately from its impacts.

‘Team development partners in the financial sector, include members of the Arab Coordination Group, the African Development Bank, the Asia Development Bank, the Caribbean Development Bank, the Inter-American Bank for Development CAF, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, and others.

‘This compact focusses on three key sectors, central to long-term resilience, water, education, and health. By combining more affordable development finance (4:38) with private capital mobilisation, to have better terms, more concessional on interest rates, and longer on tenure, from 15 to 20-year money to 30 to 40-year money.

‘We commend this new compact to members of this Assembly and of the OAS for those vulnerable climate countries who are on the forefront, the front line of the climate battle,’ Sinckler said.

Earlier, Sinckler told delegates that the hemisphere enters the second quarter of this century facing profound challenges.

‘We continue to grapple with rising debt, climate shocks, food insecurity, transnational crime, democratic pressures, and widening inequality. Yet beneath these challenges lies a deeper concern, a growing crisis in institutions, that is, the trust in institutions and in our collective abilities to deliver solutions. ‘

He said that the question before the OAS, therefore, is not whether the Americas possesses sufficient resources or knowledge.

‘The question is whether we possess the political will to act together. This is why the theme of this conference is so timely. Firm multilateralism is not a diplomatic preference. It is a necessity.’

Sinckler said that no nation, regardless of its size or power, can effectively confront today’s interconnected challenges alone, noting that for small states, multilateralism remains the principal guarantee that rules, rather than power, shape outcomes.

He said it is the foundation upon which sovereign equality, participation, and international cooperation rests.

Sinckler said that for the Caribbean, the climate crisis represents the immediate test of times.

‘Climate vulnerability is no longer solely an environmental concern. It is a developmental challenge, a fiscal challenge, an energy challenge, and increasingly a security challenge.

‘Every major hurricane or storm can erase years of economic progress in a matter of hours. This reality is why Barbados continues to champion reform of the international financial architecture through the Bridgetown Initiative and other actions.’

Sinckler said that countries must not be forced deeper into debt simply to protect themselves from climate impacts they did little to create.

‘We must align debt sustainability resilience, resilient financing, insurance, and investment into a coherent framework that allows vulnerable countries not to merely survive the shocks but to emerge stronger from them.’

Sinckler said that Barbados is supportive of the actions being taken in Haiti, ‘not only because it is an urgent problem for us, but because we know that lawlessness and bad behaviour descend into criminality and, like any other infectious human disease, can spread.

‘We have to act expeditiously and concretely to reverse the lawlessness that we have seen in Haiti because whenever one state is challenged, all the states of the Americas are challenged. ‘

He said that for the OAS to remain relevant, it too must evolve, noting that democracy cannot be reduced just to elections.

‘It must deliver fairness, opportunity, and accountability, including with trust. The Inter-American Development Charter must therefore remain a living instrument, a lived reality for all our peoples, and history will judge this Assembly not by our declarations, not by our resolutions, but by the actions and the impacts which they create,’ he added.

The Guyana government has wrtten to Meta, the parent company of Facebook, seeking to establish a formal relationship, as it is moves ahead with plans to clamp down on unregulated social media use for children.

But Attorney General, Anil Nandlal, speaking on his weekly ‘Issues in the News’ programme on Tuesday night, said there is no ulterior motive behind the Government’s move. Nandlall has rejected claims that the government’s ongoing consultations on social media regulation are aimed at censorship, insisting that the initiative is focused exclusively on protecting children from harmful online content.

‘We should have had a relationship with Facebook a long time ago,’ he told viewers, adding that any future regulatory framework would require cooperation from parents, guardians, and educators.

‘This initiative has no ulterior motive, no political content, and is not inspired or driven by any form of desire to control or censor. It is to accord paramount importance and protection to the welfare of our children,’ Nandlall said, noting that state alone cannot monitor children’s online activity.

He is also contending that there is no political move to censor anyone on the platform, but stated that the nation’s children remain at risk of being exposed to the dark side of the internet.

‘There is pornography, there is violence, there are violent materials and there are materials there that a child should be shielded from. If you don’t appreciate that then I don’t think that you belong to civilized society, if you don’t see the dangers that ban unregulated web, and unregulated social media access, if you don’t see the evil and harm that that can have on our children, then I am not speaking to you and this has nothing to do with politics,’ the Attorney General said.

Nandlall said the the Irfaan Ali government is not trying to stop the use of Facebook in Guyana, but simply putting systems in place to ensure that children are protected and that Guyana is not alone in that respect.

‘Facebook is a global platform, you can’t stop Facebook, nobody is trying to stop Facebook, every country is trying to regulate what goes on in the cyberspace and we are moving in direction.

‘The United Nation has produced a model legislation, a 177 countries have already signed. So this is not something that’s not going to happen, it is happening. How are you going to regulate this global platform if you don’t have a relationship with the global platform?’ Nandlall questioned, using the opportunity to criticise the opposition for not supporting the initiative.

‘This initiative is devoid of any disadvantage because our children will continue to have access but it will now be managed. They will continue to have access to educational programmes but they will not have access to pornography, and what they have access to would be dependent on their age,’ Nandlall said, adding that Guyana has nothing to fear as the intended legislation and initiative are not intended to control or censor, but to accord paramount importance and protection to the welfare of children.

Delegates attending the sixth Suriname Energy, Oil and Gas Summit (SEOGS)here have been told that the Malaysian state energy company Petronas has made another gas discovery in the offshore Block 52 off the coast of Dutch-speaking Caribbean Community (CARICOM) country.

President Jennifer Greelings-Simons said that she had received confirmation that the oil and gas company was successful in drilling the Swartzia Aspasia Complex-1 exploration well (SAC-1).

She said she had received the information from Petronas and while she did not provide details regarding the nature or extent of the discovery, she spoke of it as an important development for the country.

‘This is truly good news for us,’ she told the conference, which ends on Friday, adding that the discovery lays ‘the foundation for multiple oil and gas developments and a better future for Suriname’. She said that the country is at a historic turning point due to large-scale developments in the oil and gas sector, such as the GranMorgu project and that the revenues flowing from this sector must benefit the entire population.

‘Every aspect of Suriname’s natural wealth must develop into broad national prosperity. What emerges from our soil and our deep waters today must be visibly and tangibly reflected in the daily lives of our people tomorrow.’

The head of state urged the Surinamese population to seize the opportunities presented by these oil and gas developments, announcing also the establishment of a specific strategic project management team to steer policy and legislation in the run-up to the first oil production.

The new discovery reinforces expectations surrounding Block 52, where Petronas is already working on the development of a natural gas project based on the previously discovered Sloanea-1 gas find.

The state-owned Staatsolie had last November announced that the commercial development plan for the Sloanea-1 gas discovery had been approved and constituted an important step on the path towards actual production.

Petronas is currently focusing on the further development of gas reserves in the bloc. A final investment decision is expected to be made in the second half of this year. If the project proceeds according to plan, initial gas production could take place around 2030

The Suriname Energy, Oil and Gas Summit and Exhibition 2026 is being held under the theme ‘Unlocking Energy, Empowering Nations,’ and has brought together policymakers, investors and industry stakeholders to discuss the future of energy development.

Meanwhile, the Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago and the Suriname Energy Chamber have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) representing a significant step forward in private-sector collaboration between the two countries.

The agreement was signed by Dr. Priya Marajh, Interim Executive of the Energy Chamber of Trinidad and Tobago, and Orlando Olmberg, President of the Suriname Energy Chamber.

Under the MOU, the two parties have agreed to cooperate on institutional collaboration and energy-sector development, knowledge transfer, institutional strengthening, and local-content capacity building, the development of regional policies, investment promotion, and regional integration and joint activities, including events, research papers, and consultations.

‘The development of energy resources in the southern Caribbean requires a strong private sector to ensure that local businesses can participate in the supply chain and retain value within the economy.

‘This MOU with the Suriname Energy Chamber fosters the growth of private-sector firms in both countries and promotes the local content participation of our people and businesses. We believe that through cooperation, we can encourage stronger investment inflows and create an environment where the private sector can capitalize on the opportunities rapidly unfolding in our region,’ said Maraj.