The UN Secretary General, ban Ki-moon, has urged world nations to foster what he described as a wholesale national renewal of Haiti.

	Mr Ban wants wholesale national renewal for Haiti

He said efforts being made to move the quake-hit country from emergency to longer-term reconstruction shouldn't be bogged down by a "business as usual" attitude.

World leaders are due to gather at UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday for a donors conference that will examine Haiti's needs.

Participants will consider a plan under which an Interim Haiti Reconstruction Committee would channel nearly $4 billion into specific reconstruction programmes during the next 18 months.

Cabinet takes office

A new cabinet has been sworn into office in the Netherlands Antilles to preside over the final rites of the Dutch Caribbean federation.

The life of the cabinet of Prime Minister Emily de Jongh Elhage is expected to be short-lived, as the five-territory group is due to be formally disbanded on 10 October.

Under new constitutional arrangements, Curacao and St Maarten will become countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, with a great measure of autonomy, while Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius will revert to direct rule from the Hague.

OECS warned over skills

The former Barbados prime minister, Owen Arthur, has said that OECS countries need to substantially raise their education and training levels to compete within the Caricom single trading market.

Mr Arthur is a now consultant to the Caricom secretariat assessing the factors that prevent the OECS and Belize from fully participating in the single market.

He spoke in Dominica, which he cited as one country which does not possess the skills needed to transform itself from a banana economy to an export service economy.

He said enrollment in tertiary education in the OECS was 10% lower than the rest of the region - a "severe deficiency".

Second BA strike on

British Airways expects to fly more than three quarters of passengers during the next cabin crew strike, which was due to begin at midnight Friday British time.

This is more than during last weekend's strike, but some 17,000 customers will still be hit by flight cancellations during the four-day stoppage.

BA said it was hoping to fly a full and normal schedule from Gatwick airport - where many flights to the Caribbean originate.

At Heathrow, the carrier said it would operate more than two-thirds of long-haul flights.

Call for patience over collapsed company

Fourteen months after the collapse of CL Financial's Caribbean business empire, questions about its future remain unresolved.

At its home in Trinidad and Tobago, jittery investors and policyholders in Clico, the group's insurance and financial services arm, appear increasingly nervous about whether they will recover their funds.

So much so, that the minister of finance and the central bank governor have issued a joint call for patience as the authorities try to sort out the company's tangled finances.

The government has pumped $5 billion (US$833 million) - to shore up C L Financial locally -- but the company is now estimated to owe Clico policymakers more than three times that amount.

Ponzi tax breaks proposed

A bipartisan group of American Senators has proposed legislation that would expand tax breaks for investors swindled in Ponzi schemes such as those run by Allen Stanford.

The Internal Revenue Service last March allowed investors to take a loss from Ponzi schemes.

Mr Stanford is accused by American prosecutors of using his bank on Antigua and Barbuda to orchestrate an alleged $7 billion Ponzi scheme.

He denies the charges and is awaiting trial in the United States.

The proposed bill would expand the period for which investors can apply losses to prior income to up to six years.