By Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, May 12 2013 (IPS) - Officially, the Caribbean’s rainy season begins in June, coinciding with the start of the hurricane season. But recently, heavy rains have signalled an early start to the rainy season, flooding streets, swelling rivers and causing widespread damage to crops.

“With global warming, you have to expect anything these days,” Shiraz Khan, president of the Trinidad and Tobago Farmers’ Association (TTFA), told IPS.

Over 44,000 people from 30 Members States and 15 of the territories* in the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions participated in the second full scale regional tsunami exercise held on March 20, 2013.

By Desmond Brown

ST. JOHN'S, Antigua, Jan 13 2013 (IPS) - A new initiative is catching on in the Caribbean that aims to increase and sustain agricultural productivity by incorporating information about weather and climate into the farming process, all under the umbrella of climate-smart agriculture.

Government of BVI (GIS), BVI, October 29th, 2012 - The Department of Disaster Management (DDM) in collaboration with the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) Coordinating Unit, with financial support from the Enhancing Resilience to Reduce Vulnerability in the Caribbean Region (ERC) Project is hosting a stakeholders meeting to discuss the data needs for the DEWETRA Platform and how it can be used within the Caribbean context.

The Ministry of Housing, Lands and Marine Affairs has distributed $1.8 million in grants to those who were affected by floods in early August.

In a process that would usually take up to six months, Government was able to expedite and distribute cheques to at least 100 families from the Diego Martin, Maraval, Carenage and Laventille.

The residents were presented with cheques which ranged from $7,000 to up to $30,000.

The refined framework will assess and contribute to the effectiveness of policies, laws and practice in promoting gender equality

The high-level group which oversees progress on the Commonwealth’s gender equality targets has agreed on a clear set of markers for measuring efforts in member countries.

The Commonwealth Gender Plan of Action Monitoring Group, which is made up of ministers and senior officials, met in London from 30 June to 2 July.

The member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS), meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia, have underscored the need for action to improve food security in the Americas, including current and future proposals to provide their citizens with access to abundant, safe, and nutritious food.

This was the consensus coming out of the second plenary of the forty-second OAS General Assembly. The plenary ran from Monday into Tuesday.

2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the Empress Shoken Fund, which was created in 1912 by Her late Majesty the Empress of Japan to support Red Cross and Red Crescent activities worldwide. Over the past century, the fund has grown substantially thanks to contributions from the Japanese government, the Japanese Red Cross Society, the Imperial Family and the Meiji Jingu shrine.

Si todo sale como está previsto, para cuando comience el próximo año escolar en septiembre, Furcy tendrá una nueva escuela pública. El edificio, que reemplazará a la escuela derrumbada por el terremoto del 2010, será construida según normas estrictas. Y como comentó su director, Francius Saintilus, durante una reciente ceremonia de colocación de la primera piedra, la nueva escuela tendrá un gran impacto en esta aldea en las montañas detrás de Puerto Príncipe.