Agriculture has declined in Cuba

Cuba has launched a project to ring urban areas with thousands of state-controlled small farms in a bid to reverse the country's long agricultural decline.

The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in 4-mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba's cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.

The authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant.

But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in Cuba.

Debt pressure "to be maintained"

Finance ministers of the world's major industrialised countries have said they'll maintain pressure on multi-national lending bodies to cancel what Haiti owes them.

The announcement came after a G-7 meeting in Canada.

Despite debt cancellations in the past, Haiti still owes a sum approaching $1 billion to institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.

Caribbean Creole speakers for Haiti

It has been confirmed that Dominica and St Lucia will supply a few dozen Creole-speaking officers to Haiti.

The Dominican Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has told the AFP news agency during a visit to Port au Prince that the two countries could supply between 50-60 creole speakers in the short term, with more to follow.

The former Jamaican prime minister P.J. Patterson, who now serves Caricom's special on Haiti, said the staff would help restore ministries, many of which were destroyed in the earthquake.

Caricom pushes health agenda

Caricom wants the United Nations to organise a global summit on the worldwide "epidemic" of lifestyle diseases.

On Friday, Caricom and the World Health Organisation (WHO) organised a briefing at UN headquarters on the impact of the so-called non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes, strokes, heart diseases and cancer.

"Non-communicable diseases are a development issue as much as a health issue," said Donatus St. Aimee, St Lucia's UN ambassador.

Ala Alwan, an Assistant Director-General of WHO, said non-communicable diseases were responsible for 60 per cent of global deaths.

Douglas reaches across House floor

The Prime Minister of St Kitts and Nevis, Denzil Douglas, has included a member of the governing party in Nevis in his new cabinet.

The move in effect shores up the position of the governing Labour Party, which won six of the 11 seats in the federal parliament, even though the party took all but two of the eight on St Kitts.

Dr Douglas named Patrice Nisbett, an MP of the Nevis Reformation Party, as the Attorney General in the new nine-member Cabinet , which was sworn in on Sunday.

The Reformation Party runs the local government on Nevis but gained only one of the three federal parliamentary seats on the island.

Guyana sets up new intelligence agency

Guyana is moving to centralise its intelligence gathering agencies.

A huge two-storied building is currently being constructed close to the office of the president to house the new intelligence unit.

Chief government spokesman Roger Luncheon however said the administration was not going disband the intelligence gathering arms of the police, army and other agencies.

He did not say why the new agency is being formed but there have been widespread concerns about the country's intelligence-gathering capabilities.