A man told today how he was shot three times in a London street for wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt.

Dube Egwuatu was buying a mobile telephone top-up card in an off-licence when the gunman confronted him and glared at the top, which carries an image of the Democrat US presidential candidate underneath the legend ‘Believe’.

The man then launched into a tirade of racist slurs, shouting ‘I f***ing hate n*****s’ and urging 36-year-old Mr Egwuatu to leave the shop with him.

Respect: Dube Egwuatu wearing the Obama T-shirt that provoked a racist attack

The man then left the shop but when Mr Egwuatu re-emerged, the attacker was waiting for him in broad daylight with a threatening-looking dog and holding a gun behind his back.

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Leaders and representatives of the Central American Integration System (SICA) member states Saturday met in Honduras’s capital Tegucigalpa on regional security and integration, according to reports reaching Managua.

Presidents from Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador, a vice president of Panama as well as representatives from the Dominican Republic and Belize attended the summit meeting.

Top on the agenda of the SICA meeting were security across the Central America, efforts to establish a customs union among the member nations and the U.S. financial crisis’s impact on the region.

SICA was founded in December 1991 to push for integration in the Central American region. It now has eight members — Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Dominican Republic.

Source:Xinhua

A British couple have been arrested in the Dominican Republic on suspicion of drugs trafficking.

The Foreign Office was providing the couple with consular assistance

The Foreign Office said it was providing Kelly Carrigan and Daniel Patterson, who are believed to be from Glasgow, with consular assistance.

The pair were arrested at Punta Cana airport on 2 October.

It is understood Foreign Office staff have visited Ms Carrigan’s two young sons who were taken into care following the arrests.

Penalties for drug offences in the Dominican Republic include long prison sentences and hefty fines.

Source: BBC

By Oscar Ramjeet

ST JOHN’S, Antigua: Representatives from several Caribbean governments, regional NGOs and law enforcement agencies have conducted landmark talks in Antigua on international arms transfers, development and the Arms Trade Treaty.

According to the statement read on behalf of the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Baldwin Spencer, the prime minister wished to assure “that my government will do all in its power to support the Arms Trade Treaty in the region”.

The discussions ended with a call for the United Nations to begin negotiations of an Arms Trade Treaty as soon as possible and before 2010.

The deliberations of the two-day conference centred on the social and economic impacts that armed violence was having on individual countries and on the region as a whole; the challenges to community safety; marginalisation of communities, the emerging culture of violence, and the demise of young males particularly in urban communities.

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TEGUCIGALPA Honduras (Reuters): Central American and Caribbean countries will take out loans, spend more on job creation and boost agricultural activity in a bid to shield their economies from the spread of the US credit crisis.

The US housing downturn triggered one of the worst economic crises in decades, crippling the construction sector that employs thousands of immigrants and curbing the amount of money they send home to their families.

Regional leaders gathering in Tegucigalpa on Saturday said the tough economic situation in the United States would take its toll on remittances, exports and foreign direct investment.

“Central America has to find a way to protect itself,” Honduras President Manuel Zelaya said.

Recent data suggest that waning job creation in the United States could prompt immigrants to return to their home countries, posing a problem to Central American governments that must meet increasing demand for jobs locally.

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