ST KITTS:

Douglas sworn-in for fourth term

BASSETERRE, St Kitts (CMC) — For the fourth time in his decorated political career, Dr Denzil Douglas was sworn in as the prime minister of St Kitts and Nevis on Wednesday, calling for healing in the twin-island federation after a bruising general election campaign.

“The campaign has been hard, it has been very trying and testing, it has been bruising…I ask that the healing process begin today. We must recognise each of us as our brother’s keeper,” said Douglas after taking the Oath of Allegiance, the Oath of Office.

He also received his Instruments of Appointment during a brief ceremony at Government House presided by High Court judge Justice Francis Belle.

Douglas, 57, led his St Kitts-Nevis Labour Party to a fourth consecutive five-year term by winning six of the 11 seats in the National Assembly at Monday’s poll. The People’s Action Movement won the two other seats on St Kitts, while the Concerned Citizens Movement (two) and the Nevis Reformation (one) split the seats on Nevis.

BAHAMAS:

Appeals court rejects US bid to extradite fugitive financier

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A Bahamas court has rejected a US bid to extradite a Czech-born financier on charges of plotting to bribe officials in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan in the late 1990s to get favourable treatment in oil deals, officials said Wednesday.

The Bahamas Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court ruling that Viktor Kozeny, who has lived in the islands since 1995, cannot be extradited to stand trial in New York because bribing foreign officials isn’t a local crime and he is not subject to American anti-bribery laws.

“An extradition offense must be an offence under the law of both states,” wrote Justice Hartman Longley, one of three judges on the Bahamian panel.

Kozeny was indicted in October 2005 on 27 counts of bribery in US District Court in Manhattan under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it a crime to offer payment to foreign government officials to obtain or retain business.

US prosecutors have also alleged he stole tens of millions of dollars from 15 investment funds managed by Omega Advisors that had agreed to invest the money in the expected privatisation of Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company about a decade ago.

The federal government and the Bahamas attorney general can appeal the extradition ruling to the London-based Privy Council, the highest court of review for the Bahamas and many former British colonies.

GRENADA:

Trade unions threaten to picket airport

ST GEORGE’S, Grenada (CMC) — The Trade Union Congress (TUC) is threatening to picket the Maurice Bishop International Airport today in support of 17 workers who have been told that they will lose their jobs at the end of this month.

The eight unions that make up the umbrella grouping are peeved at a decision to make the female workers, whose jobs involve cleaning aircraft, redundant effective February 1.

They said the protest action will go ahead of no concrete union is reached during a meeting being attended by Labour Minister Karl Hood and the TUC executive.

The workers have been employed by Airport Services of Grenada (ASG) but a local firm, Gibbs Cleaning Services, has now been contracted to clean the planes.

BARBADOS:

Tourism minister projects marginal growth in 2010

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) — Tourism Minister Richard Sealy is projecting marginal growth in the vital tourism sector this year following a fall-off of 8.7 per cent in 2009.

Sealy said the drop was expected since Barbados was not spared from the effects of the global economic crisis.

“We are will aware that tourism receipts are down, and this is something that is receiving our constant attention,” he told journalists on Wednesday.

“We were eight per cent in 2009 and that fact is that this is what we have targeted. We figured that if we can control our decline to just about that, then that would have been quite satisfactory under the circumstances.”

The tourism minister noted that Barbados did not perform too badly considering that in other parts of the Caribbean declines were close to 25 per cent.

He said earnings from the British market were particularly hard-hit.