SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AFP) -- Two men killed in a helicopter crash in the Dominican Republic were US citizens supporting relief operations in quake-devastated Haiti, a US official said. Dominican authorities said that the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot were recovered from the wreckage of a helicopter. read more...

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LOS ANGELES, USA (Reuters) -- As urban bachata act Aventura performed sold-out concerts January 20-21 at New York's Madison Square Garden and spent its 21st week atop Billboard's Top Latin Albums chart, other Dominican-American acts were busy charting their own paths. read more...

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (Reuters) -- Toppled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya emerged from months holed up in a Brazilian embassy compound and flew into exile in the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, ending a months-long political crisis as a new elected president took office. read more...

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (Reuters) -- Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya will end his four-month refuge in the Brazilian embassy and leave the country next week, when his term would have ended, his closest adviser said on Thursday.  Leaving the country effectively ends his career as a meaningful leader in Honduras. read more...

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NEW DELHI, India -- The visit of India's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Shashi Tharoor, to the Dominican Republic this week could be a significant moment in the widening of a huge market for the Caribbean nation and for the region, asserted the Caribbean Media Exchange (CMEx). read more...

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- Earthquake-ravaged Haiti turned down an offer of troops from the neighbouring Dominican Republic, forcing the United Nations to look elsewhere for additional peacekeepers, UN diplomats said on Wednesday. The Dominican Republic had offered an 800-strong battalion. read more...

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (Reuters) -- The Dominican Republic agreed with Honduras' newly elected president on Wednesday to welcome ousted President Manuel Zelaya as a "guest" in an attempt to end his state of political limbo after a June coup. Zelaya said he was studying the offer. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AFP) -- In hospitals in the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti, survivors of last week's earthquake are spilling over in wards and operating theaters. Aguena Mondesi is just one young Haitian looking for relatives she believes made it to a facility in Santo Domingo. read more...

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PARIS, France (RSF/IFEX) -- Jaime Flete García, a businessman based in the northern Dominican Republic city of Santiago de los Caballeros, was charged on 12 January 2010 with hiring two men to murder Normando García, a cameraman employed by Santiago-based TV station Teleunión, on 9 August 2008. read more...

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SAN JUAN , Puerto Rico -- The crew of Coast Guard Cutter Pea Island repatriated seven Dominican men to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on Tuesday, following an at-sea interdiction by Caribbean Border Interagency Group Law Enforcement authorities on Monday. The crew detained one other Dominican man. read more...

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PARIS, France (Reuters) -- Two young French women jailed in the Dominican Republic for trafficking cocaine were freed on Tuesday having served 18 months of their eight-year sentence, following pressure from President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife. The two had written to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy asking her to intervene. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, will provide $20 million to Corporación Aeroportuaria del Este, SA to expand the Punta Cana International Airport and support the Dominican Republic’s tourism sector. CAE will build a new runway and taxiway. read more...

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WASHINGTON, USA -- On December 10, International Human Rights Day, the government of the Dominican Republic was set to promulgate a constitutional reform measure that could leave large numbers of Dominicans of Haitian descent stateless. The changes to nationality provisions, first approved... read more...

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GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala (AFP -- Central American nations will demand 105 billion dollars from industrialized countries for damages caused by global warming, the region's representatives said on Friday. Central American environment ministers gathered to discuss the so-called "ecological debt". read more...

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I just spent a full week in the Dominican Republic visiting the cities of Santiago and Santo Domingo as well as the towns and the villages in between. The experience was as pleasant as my trip to Trinidad and Tobago during Carnival time. Compared to Haiti, which is still living in the stone age, the... read more...

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WASHINGTON, USA (Reuters) -- The International Monetary Fund on Monday approved a $1.7 billion loan program for the Dominican Republic to shore up confidence in the government's economic policies and win additional financing from other lenders. The program aims to pursue short-term counter-cyclical policies. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- The Member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) agreed on Thursday in Santo Domingo to institutionalize the Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Public Security in the Americas (MISPA) to strengthen cooperation against delinquency. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- The President of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernández, met Wednesday with the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, ministers, vice ministers and heads of delegation attending the Second Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Public Security... read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters) -- The Dominican Republic will conclude in the next 15 days the sale to Venezuela of a 49 percent stake in its Refidomsa oil refinery, at a price of $131.5 million, the Caribbean nation's government said on Wednesday. Finance Minister Vicente Bengoa said... read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, called on Wednesday for closer cooperation among authorities in the hemisphere to fight crime and violence, during his speech at the opening ceremony of the Second Meeting of... read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AFP) -- Venezuela's state-owned oil giant PDVSA has agreed to buy nearly half of the government-owned Dominican Oil Refinery for 131.5 million dollars, Dominica's finance minister said. Talks to sell 49 percent of the refinery shares concluded late Thursday. read more...

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WASHINGTON, USA -- The Second Meeting of Ministers Responsible for Public Security in the Americas (known by its Spanish acronym, MISPA II) was described on Friday by the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, as a meeting of great importance. read more...

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BASSETERRE, St Kitts (CUOPM) -- New flights by British Airways to St Kitts and other Caribbean destinations will mean an additional 2,000 seats to the region. BA will operate a total 55 flights a week from London to the Caribbean, with 11 destinations served from Gatwick and three from Heathrow. read more...

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WASHINGTON, USA (Reuters) -- The Inter-American Development Bank on Wednesday approved a $500 million loan to support social programs and to streamline energy subsidies in the Dominican Republic. "The country will use the IADB financing to increase spending on targeted subsidies, education..." read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO (Bloomberg) -- The Dominican Republic has hired Barclays Plc and Citigroup to arrange the country’s first international dollar bond sale in more than three years. The government may sell as much as $600 million of bonds, said Roberto Cabanas, head of general financing at the Public Credit Office. read more...

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CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti (AFP) -- Former US president Bill Clinton, visiting Haiti in his capacity as a United Nations special envoy, wrapped up a two-day trip with a call for tourists to visit the Caribbean country. "I love this place. It's wonderful. I see the potential," he said as he visited Cap-Haitien, on the country's north coast. read more...

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BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) -- Venezuelan magnate Gustavo Cisneros will build a $2 billion tourist resort in the Dominican Republic to be called The Tropicalia, a statement issued by Cisneros' business group said on Wednesday. The resort is expected to take about 20 years to build. read more...

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BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (BGIS) -- Barbados' Minister of Foreign Affairs, Senator Maxine McClean, and her Dominican Republic counterpart, Carlos Morales Troncoso, have discussed bilateral cooperation between the two nations, with a view to identifying ways and means of deepening that friendship. read more...

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MIAMI, USA -- The Dominican Republic has extended Marine Exploration, Inc's "in-country" contract for another two years. Further, the contract expands the contracted search area into waters that are of high interest to Marine Exploration. Marine Exploration anticipate locating and recovering historic shipwrecks. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Proposed changes to the constitution of the Dominican Republic could lead to a ban on abortions, putting the lives of women and girls at risk and potentially increasing maternal deaths in the country, Amnesty International has warned. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Different sectors in the Dominican Republic have reacted with outrage about what they describe as "a persistent, unfair and slanderous" campaign the English-Spanish priest Christopher Hartley Sartorius has waged in relation to the treatment given to Haitian workers. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- US Coast Guard Cutters Venturous, Kodiak Island and several vessels from the Dominican Republic Navy concluded a seven-day joint maritime law enforcement operation in the Mona Passage Saturday off the southeastern coast of the Dominican Republic. read more...

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The Haitian-New York Diaspora as well as the Florida and the Canadian Diaspora are well accounted for in their contribution in helping Haiti to sustain itself while the country is still in coma. Yet the 1.2 million Haitians in the Dominican Republic are soon becoming one of the largest mass of middle class stock on the island. read more...

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) -- Tropical Storm Erika weakened to a tropical depression in the northeast Caribbean on Thursday but still threatened Puerto Rico and neighboring islands with heavy rainfall, the US National Hurricane Center said. Most government offices and schools closed early on Thursday. read more...

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KINGSTON, Jamaica (Panos) -- Thirty young environment advocates from 12 Caribbean islands met in the Dominican Republic recently to discuss climate change issues in the region and to gain insights into effective ways to get the public and their respective governments to engage with climate change. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters) -- The Dominican Republic will open formal talks with the International Monetary Fund this week aimed at securing $1.5 billion in new assistance from the multinational lender. A possible standby agreement with the IMF was announced by the central bank. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Bloomberg) -- The Dominican Republic’s dollar bonds will “outperform” the market as the country moves closer to reaching an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, Barclays Plc said. The country’s economic growth slowed to 1 percent in the first quarter. read more...

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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (Reuters) -- The Dominican Republic will seek a fresh loan from the World Bank or Inter-American Development Bank to help finance a fiscal deficit triggered by a severe economic downturn, authorities said. The government has flatly ruled out tax increases to cover the deficit. read more...

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GEORGETOWN, Guyana -- The Population Reference Bureau's 2009 World Population Data Sheet released recently shows a significant number of nationals in five Caribbean countries live on less than US$2 a day. Those countries are: Haiti, St Lucia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname. read more...

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The saying that old wounds run deep has never proven truer than in the case of the relationship between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the two countries sharing the island of Hispaniola. Since declaring independence from its neighbor in 1844, the Dominican Republic has visibly outmatched Haiti read more...

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