Moontown

The Consul General informed Ontario’s new Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Eric Hoskins, of the initiative during a call on the Minister, on February 18.

Jamaica’s Consul General to Toronto, George Ramocan (right), with Ontario’s newly appointed Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Eric Hoskins, when the Consul General called on him on February 18. JIS photo

Noting that some Jamaicans are misinformed, the Consul General said that a number of Jamaican nationals who are permanent residents of Canada, have not pursued Canadian citizenship because they believe they will no longer be Jamaican citizens.

Ramocan, who assumed duties as Consul General three months ago, told Minister Hoskins that Jamaicans who remain permanent residents of Canada and do not take out citizenship are denied privileges accorded to Canadians, such as the right to vote and access to some federal jobs.

“The Canadian citizenship initiative will see a team of Jamaican/Canadians going out and speaking to our nationals to try and convince them of the importance of regularising themselves as citizens of Canada, so they can become more participative, enjoy the privileges, and contribute in more meaningful ways as citizens of this wonderful country that they are a part of,” said Consul General Ramocan.

Calling the initiative a fantastic one, Minister Hoskins, who took over the portfolio of Immigration and Citizenship in January 2010, said that as the Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) for St Paul’s, he has also come across a number of his constituents “who have resided here for 20, 30 and 35 years, and they still haven’t become Canadian citizens, because they have the same fear that somehow it will impact on their country of origin and the relationship with it.”

A medical doctor by profession and humanitarian at heart, Hoskins has worked in several war-torn countries and in the 1980s did a stint in Jamaica at the Foundation for International Self-Help (FISH) clinic on Gordon Town Road, in Kingston.

He has promised his assistance to the Consul General, as the team, headed by community leader, Paul Barnett, conducts community hall meetings, forums and visits churches in a bid to convince Jamaicans to become Canadian citizens.

Permanent residents of Canada are qualified to apply for Canadian citizenship after living in the country for three years. (Caribnet)

MIAMI, USA (Reuters) — Carnival Corp & Plc’s flagship unit Carnival Cruise Lines said it will increase its prices by up to 5 percent for all summer sailings, following strong wave-season bookings at the cruise operator.

The wave season, traditionally the busiest booking period for the cruise industry, runs from about mid-January through early spring.

“While pricing has not fully recovered to 2008 levels, we are increasing prices and will implement an across-the-board increase effective March 22,” Carnival Cruise Lines Chief Executive Gerry Cahill said in a statement.

The company did not comment on pricing changes at its other brands.

Travel agents fear that they will run out of inventory to sell this wave season due to rise in bookings, analyst Janet Brashear at Bernstein Research wrote in a note to clients.

This was also consistent with the bullish outlook given by Carnival Corp rival Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, Brashear said.

“This positive news about the wave season reignites investor sentiment surrounding the industry as demand continues to increase, and as CCL meaningfully works to reduce the cruise traveler’s reliance on discounting,” JP Morgan analyst Kevin Milota said.

Last month, Royal Caribbean posted a surprise fourth-quarter profit and said it sees encouraging 2010 bookings.

“Recent channel checks indicate bookings are also strong across the industry brand spectrum. We believe close-in bookings also remain strong, likely enhanced by unprecedented cold/snowy weather in the eastern United States,” Wells Fargo analyst Tim Conder said in a note.

For period from Jan. 1 through Feb. 21, Carnival Cruise Lines said bookings were at unprecedented levels for the line’s 22 ships.

Carnival’s announcement was worth another percentage point of net revenue yield, analyst Brashear said.

Analysts currently expect Carnival Corp’s total revenue to grow 9.9 percent to $14.45 billion in 2010, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. (Caribnet)

The move comes after the government offered to exchange all of its domestic debt, worth about $7.8 billion (700 billion Jamaican dollars), for longer-dated, lower-yielding securities as part of a plan to shore up its economy.

Earlier this month the International Monetary Fund finalized a $1.27 billion loan agreement for the Caribbean nation, whose economy was battered by the global financial crisis.

“Future sovereign rating actions will depend on our view of the government’s ability to benefit from interest cost savings, smoother debt amortization, and multilateral assistance to address its many fiscal rigidities and inefficiencies and to decrease its high debt burden,” S&P said in a statement.

S&P said it believes Jamaica’s fiscal performance may improve this year as the government tries to implement a series of fiscal reforms in line with the conditions established by the IMF’s loan agreement.

The firm said it still expects the pace of recovery in the real economy to be slow, with gross domestic product forecast to grow 0.5 percent this year versus a contraction of 3.5 percent last year.

In addition to the IMF loan agreement, the World Bank on Tuesday approved a $200 million loan to help Jamaica’s fiscal and debt reforms. (Caribnet)

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) — The hunger strike death of a Cuban political prisoner provoked international condemnation on Wednesday and regrets from Cuban President Raul Castro, though he suggested the United States was to blame.

Officials from the US State Department and European Union called on Cuba to release its political prisoners, as did human rights group Amnesty International, which said the death on Tuesday of Orlando Zapata Tamayo after 85 days on hunger strike was a “terrible indictment” of repression on the island.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (L) and Cuba’s President Raul Castro talk during the signing of bilateral agreements at Havana’s Revolution Palace. AFP PHOTO

Castro, in the midst of hosting a visit from Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was asked by Brazilian reporters about Zapata’s death.

“We regret it very much. That’s the result of relations with the United States,” he was quoted as saying while standing beside Lula at the port of Mariel, west of Havana.

Cuba considers dissidents to be US mercenaries working to overthrow its communist government and blames Washington for encouraging their illegal activities against the Cuban state.

“We didn’t murder anyone, here no one was tortured. That happens at the Guantanamo base, not in our territory,” Castro said.

Castro referred to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States houses foreign terrorism suspects and has admitted using techniques that are widely considered to be torture while interrogating them.

Reyna Tamayo, mother of the dead prisoner, did not accept Castro’s explanation of events.

“They were the ones who killed him, premeditated. They were the ones who killed him,” she told Reuters by telephone from her home in the eastern city of Banes, where her son’s body was transported after dying in a Havana hospital.

She said Cuban authorities wanted him buried Wednesday night, but she hoped to put off the funeral until Thursday.

Zapata, jailed since 2003 and serving a 36-year sentence for crimes including “disrespect, public disorder and resistance,” launched the hunger strike to protest prison conditions, the independent Cuban Human Rights Commission said.

Commission spokesman Elizardo Sanchez faulted Cuban authorities for not doing enough to save Zapata, a 42-year-old plumber and disputed Castro’s comments about there being no torture in Cuban prisons.

“The real history of Cuba in recent decades belies what General Castro said,” he said. “We reaffirm our conviction that Orlando Zapata was the victim of a horrendous crime.”

Dissidents said they were being detained in the homes or elsewhere by government agents to prevent a public outcry.

London-based Amnesty International said Zapata’s death by starvation reflected the desperation of political prisoners in Cuba, who are said by the Cuban Human Rights Commission to number about 200.

Zapata was one of 55 jailed Cubans labeled “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.

“Faced with a prolonged prison sentence, the fact that Orlando Zapata Tamayo felt he had no other avenue available to him but to starve himself in protest is a terrible indictment of the continuing repression of political dissidents in Cuba,” it said.

The case “also underlines the urgent need for Cuba to invite international human rights experts to visit the country to verify respect for human rights, in particular obligations in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” the group said.

In its statement, the US State Department said it was “deeply saddened” by Zapata’s death and that it highlighted the “injustice” of holding political prisoners.

Zapata’s death looked likely to add new tensions to US-Cuba relations, which after a slight warming under US President Barack Obama had worsened again with Cuba’s recent detention of a US contractor on suspicions of being a spy.

Several members of the US Congress, including Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, sent sharply worded statements on his demise.

“Let us take his sad and untimely death and renew our commitment to assure that the Cuba of the future is rid of the failed ideology which killed this brave man,” she said on Wednesday. (Caribnet)

Sailors aboard the amphibious dock landing ship USS Carter Hall (LSD 50) load meals-ready-to-eat (MREs) in the claw of a bulldozer to transport ashore to earthquake victims. AFP PHOTO

“It feels like the ship’s actually running aground,” said US Navy Commander George Doyon, master of the USS Carter Hall, an amphibious ship that was one of the first to land US Marines and earth-moving equipment last month to stricken towns and villages west of the shattered capital Port-au-Prince.

“The ship bounces,” Doyon told Reuters, describing the feeling, at sea, of the dozens of aftershocks that have shaken Haiti over the last six weeks. He said the vibration from the quakes “resonates exponentially from the bottom”.

This week, twin aftershocks early on Tuesday, one of 4.7 magnitude, brought nervous residents and foreign hotel guests out of their beds in Port-au-Prince. Early on Monday, another 4.7 magnitude quake had shaken the city. (Caribnet)