Kingston,JA (GLEANER-9/1/01)- Red Stripe Brewery will be making the jobs of about 195 employees redundant in October, largely resulting from the implemention of a plant modernization programme.
Company president John Irving said that all employees would be re-hired with competitive benefits and conditions of employment in keeping with the company's standards. The plant modenization programme includes an upgrade of the brewhouse which has already started.
The programme is in preparation for globalization and international competition in which the company has been engaged since 1993 when Guinness acquired controlling shares in Red Stripe.

Bridgetown,Barbados (DAILYNATION-9/3/01)- The Barbados Marine Trust is warning people against eating, selling, or removing dead fish from the Graeme Hall Swamp saying that they fear a health problem. On Thursday,officials from he Graeme Hall Nature Sanctuary discovered fish gasping for breath and on Friday, several began to die.

Tortola,BVI (VI DAILY NEWS-8/7/01)- The British Virgin Islands' annual festival climaxed with the Parade on what is known as August Monday.
A three hour delay in the scheduled start got some complaining and others slightly more merry than they intended, but spectators excused the tardiness with,"It's island time,mon." By the time the parade got rolling and the bands started vying for attention by cranking up the volume, everyone was having fun.
There were the bands: The steel drum bands on their specially built trailers throbbed and bounced under the combined rhythm of the pans. Then, just down the road, a reggae band felt it was getting drowned out, so the volumes intensified. Spectators and performers loved it and danced in the Caribbean festival style.
The mocko jumbies were a popular attraction. Dressed in colorful costumes and walking on stilts, sometimes adding as much as ten feet to their height, these performers danced and clowned around.
Individual costumes were spectacular this year and the children also did their bit with well performed troupes.

Kingston,JA (GLEANER-9/4/01)- A Jamaican delegation attending the United Nations Conference on Racism has supported the call for former white colonial powers to pay reparations to people of African descent for the atrocity of slavery. The delegation will convey Jamaica's support, primarily through a call for debt relief to former colonies which continue to labour under a heavy debt burden.
The conference has been plagued by controversy. The U.S. delegation withdrew from the conference over disagreements with the meeting's draft declaration, which it claimed contained anti-Semitic comments.

Vieques (VI DAILY NEWS-8/7/01)- The U.S. Navy resumed bombing exercises on Vieques while protesters vowed to continue invading the range to disrupt training.
Fifty-three people have been detained for trespassing since exercises began. "We're redoubling our efforts for the continuation of this fight",said protest leader Robert Rabin.
About 21,000 sailors and 2,000 marines were participating in the exercises, which include amphibious invasions, ship-to-shore shelling and airplanes dropping inert bombs.

St. Thomas,USVI (VI DAILY NEWS-8/7/01)- Islands across the Caribbean are seeing a declining number of tourists, tourism professionals and government officials agreed at a recent meeting.
Members of the Caribbean Tourism Organization said that islands must increase their marketing efforts if the region is to regain its market share.
"We're all impacted by what is perceived as an upcoming recession in the U.S.",said V.I. Tourism Commisioner Pamela Richards. "We're competing with companies that can out- market us", such as the cruise lines and huge corporations such as Disney.
Organization members agreed to focus on an often overlooked market: intra-Caribbean tourism. They will work to create vacation packages with regional airlines to try to get more Caribbean residents to visit other islands.

Kingston,JA (GLEANER-9/4/01)- Thirty-one teen-aged boys, several of whom lived for extended periods of time on the streets, surprised a number of people when all of them received passing grades on the Grade Nine Achievement Test. They are all expected to begin classes in traditional and technical high schools this month.
"I must be honest with you, I was so shocked with the results",said Sarah Newland- Martin, General Secretary of the YMCA Youth Development Programme. "The amount of problems these boys give us here.... the amount of times I have to send them home for bad behaviour. I am really pleased with the results,"she smiled warmly.
Mrs. Newland-Martin explained that without the hard work if her dedicated team of teachers it would have been almost impossible to prepare the boys for the exams. "For these teachers, it's not about money. It's about love of service to mankind."

Willemstad,Curacao (AP-8/7/01)- Authorities on this Dutch island won't arrest illegal immagrants in the near future because they don't have adequate facilities to jail them.
Lt. Governor Lisa Richards-Dindial freed the 17 men and one woman who were housed in the barracks at Bon Futuro Prison, which was set up as a temporary holding area for undocumented workers. They were freed after authorities determined that the facility was not in suitable condition to house detainees.
The freed illegals were not criminals, but mostly people who overstayed visas and permits. Richards-Dindial estimated there are several thousand undocumented workers on the island. Curacao has about 120,000 residents

St. Croix,USVI (VI DAILY NEWS-8/23/01)- If a "tourist" walked off a cruise ship on St. Thomas with a deadly biological disease or the HOVENSA Oil Refinery became the object of a terrorist attack, the Virgin Islands may be in a better position to respond.
During a daylong exercise at VI-TEMA Headquarters, members of local and federal emergency services learned how to coordinate their responses and improve communication in the event of an attack. This exercise grew out of the U.S. Department of Defense's Homeland Defense Program, which has trained 28,000 people in the nation's 105 largest cities through its Domestic Preparedness Program. The Homeland Defense Program has sent representatives to 13 states and territories without large cities, including the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma City, New Hampshire and Vermont.
James Duhala, a general engineer in the program stated there are multiple threats from domestic militia groups and international terrorist groups. "There are groups out there that hate the U.S. so much, they'd do just about anything." (Note the date of this article-Pato)

Guidance and Protection.
Patrick "Pato" Foster

"Unity is strength. No nation can divide w-ithin itself and remain powerful." HIM

Comments'' e-mail pato@arawakroots.com