A package of news briefs from the Caribbean

PUERTO RICO: Island's governor says corruption probe is political harassment

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico's governor has accused the FBI of politically motivated harassment as a corruption probe into his campaign finances appears to gather momentum a year before elections in the U.S. Caribbean territory.

Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila, who publicly acknowledged the investigation for the first time in June, said U.S. authorities are trying to intimidate him. As evidence, he said that authorities are not probing the campaigns of other Puerto Rican parties.

Acevedo made the comments after witnesses in a grand jury investigation told reporters they had been asked about the finances of Acevedo's 2004 campaign for governor. Others have previously said they were asked about his successful 2000 campaign for resident commissioner, the island's nonvoting delegate to Congress.

Acevedo, whose party supports maintaining Puerto Rico's loose commonwealth affiliation with the U.S., has denied any wrongdoing and vowed to run for re-election in November 2008.

The investigation has been going on for about two years and the FBI and Justice Department have declined to comment.

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: Mexican workers stranded on island after job promise falls through

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Nearly 100 Mexicans were left stranded on an extended layover in the Dominican Republic after attempting to enter the Turks and Caicos Islands without proper documents, a Mexican Embassy official said here Friday.

A Mexican-based food company had promised the group jobs in the British dependency, but Turks and Caicos officials turned them away several weeks ago, sending them back to the Dominican Republic where they'd stopped on the way from Mexico, said Francisco Hernandez, who oversees labor issues at the Mexican Embassy in Santo Domingo.

The migrants stayed at the Santo Domingo airport for three days before moving to a nearby hotel.

Hernandez had no further information on the food company, whose ties to Turks and Caicos are unclear. It is up to authorities in Mexico to investigate the case, he said.

The embassy flew four of its citizens home on Friday, and will return another 24 in coming days. The rest, who have at least temporary permission to stay legally in the Dominican Republic, vowed to wait there for the food company to provide their promised visas for Turks and Caicos, Hernandez said.

JAMAICA: Air Jamaica president resigns from troubled government-owned carrier

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The chief executive of Air Jamaica has resigned after two years at the helm of the troubled government-owned carrier, the airline's board said Friday.

Michael Conway, an American who co-founded America West Airlines and National Airlines, had one year remaining on his contract, said Shirley Williams, the chairwoman of a new board appointed earlier this week.

"There is a clause in his contract that permits him to leave and he exercised it," she said.

As word of his departure spread late Thursday, some workers protested by walking off the job at the Donald Sangster International Airport in the tourist haven of Montego Bay.

The Jamaican government took over the troubled airline in 2004 and launched a restructuring, but the carrier has continued to eliminate routes and lay off workers as it struggles to turn a profit.

In May, Conway announced Air Jamaica was selling its London-to-Kingston route to Virgin Atlantic as part of a strategy to achieve profitability by 2009.

PUERTO RICO: Investigation into pet massacre zeros in on Animal Control Solutions

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — An investigation into the mass killing of dogs and cats seized from Puerto Rican housing projects and thrown off a bridge has confirmed the involvement of an animal control company whose owner has denied any role in the massacre, police said Friday.

Several people from the town of Barceloneta identified their dogs from among animals found dead or injured beneath the highway bridge, Sgt. Wilbert Miranda told The Associated Press.

Miranda also said local veterinarians confirmed some of the animals were from the housing projects, where local authorities hired the contractor, Animal Control Services, to pick up dogs and cats to enforce a rule banning them from the projects.

Julio Diaz, the owner of Animal Control Solutions, denied his workers disposed of the dogs and cats by hurling them off the bridge.

The animal cruelty investigation is ongoing and no arrests been made, Miranda said.

Dozens of dead and wounded dogs and cats were found last week beneath the bridge a day after a mass round up of pets and strays at the housing complexes, prompting international outrage.

Pet owners say they were told their dogs and cats were to be taken by the company — which has animal control contracts throughout Puerto Rico — to a shelter. Edwin Arroyo, a special assistant to the mayor of Barceloneta, also said the Animal Control Services was supposed to deliver them to shelters.

GRENADA: Hotel developers promise to protect rare bird

ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada (AP) — A luxury resort developer employed by the Four Seasons hotel chain has hired a biologist to survey a rare bird species in the national park where it plans to build a new high-end getaway.

Grenada developer Cinnamon88, whose sprawling Four Seasons project is opposed by international conservation groups, vowed in a letter to the Caribbean island's government earlier this month that it would preserve a habitat for the endangered Grenada dove. Only about 200 of the birds are thought to exist in the world.

But George Wallace, a vice president at the American Bird Conservancy, said Friday that he worried conservationists would have no opportunity to comment on the survey's results.

Grenada's government and Toronto-based Four Seasons Hotels Inc. have not yet reached a final agreement on the project, Jennifer Allured, an adviser to Grenada's prime minister, said.

Mount Hartman National Park is believed to be home to roughly 40 Grenada doves — about a fifth of the endangered birds' global population, according to Birdlike International, a U.K.-based alliance of conservation groups.

JAMAICA: Island doctor says he arrived too late to help collapsed cricket coach

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — The first doctor to examine Bob Woolmer last spring testified Friday he got to Pakistan's cricket coach 40 minutes after the body was discovered — and it was apparently too late to save him.

Dr. Asher Cooper, part of the Cricket World Cup's medical team, said Woolmer, sprawled on the floor of a hotel bathroom, had no pulse and it appeared he had not been breathing for some time.

Cooper testified at an inquest into what caused the death of the 58-year-old coach a day after his heavily favored team was ousted from the World Cup in an upset loss to Ireland.

Woolmer's body was found March 18 at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in downtown Kingston. Four days later, Jamaican police announced Woolmer had been strangled — setting off a globe-spanning homicide investigation.

In June, authorities ended the probe after pathologists in Britain, South Africa and Canada concluded the coach died from natural causes.

The inquest to determine the cause of death began Tuesday and is expected to end Nov. 9 after about 50 witnesses appear before the 11-member jury. Testimony resumes Monday.