标签： Jamaica

HAVANA, Cuba — Cuba’s central bank announced Wednesday that all Visa and Mastercard payment operations across the island will be halted this weekend, after sweeping United States economic sanctions pushed a key international processing bank to cut off its business relationship with a Cuban state-affiliated financial entity. In an official public statement, the central bank confirmed that it received formal notification of the exit on June 2. The processing bank, which has overseen all Visa and Mastercard card-based transactions within Cuba’s borders, said it would end its contractual agreement with Fincimex SA, the entity designated to manage these international card payments for the Cuban government. Fincimex operates as the financial subsidiary of GAESA, a large military-led conglomerate that has long been targeted by US economic sanctions imposed on Cuba. This development marks another significant disruption to Cuba’s access to global financial networks, exacerbating existing economic pressures that have limited the country’s ability to facilitate international commerce and serve foreign visitors who rely on global card payments during their stay. The suspension comes as US sanctions on Cuban entities remain in place, with little indication of near-term adjustments to the long-standing restrictive trade and financial policy. Cuban financial officials have not yet announced an alternative workaround for processing international card payments, leaving many in the tourism and commercial sectors bracing for new disruptions.

As a critical May 24 deadline from the United States forcing foreign firms to cut all business ties with Cuba’s powerful military-owned conglomerate GAESA approaches, international companies have dramatically drawn down their operations on the island by Tuesday, delivering another crippling blow to Cuba’s already collapsing economy. This latest round of sanctions is part of the Trump administration’s sweeping escalation of pressure on Havana, which has included a full energy blockade imposed earlier this year and growing rhetoric about potential US control over the island.

Back in early May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order freezing all of GAESA’s assets held within US jurisdiction and imposing harsh secondary sanctions on any foreign entity that continues doing business with the group. The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has given all affected international companies until this Friday to restructure their operations to comply with the new rules, or face harsh penalties including asset freezes and exclusion from the global financial system. By all indicators, the US pressure campaign has had its intended effect, with a wave of withdrawals and suspended operations unfolding across multiple key sectors of Cuba’s economy in recent weeks.

Cuban economist and independent consultant Daniel Torralbas told AFP that the immediate economic fallout from this exodus is catastrophic, noting that 2026 has already shaped up to be the worst year for Cuba’s economy in seven decades. The damage is being felt acutely across the island’s critical tourism sector, which has long been one of its largest sources of foreign currency. Canada’s Blue Diamond Resorts, one of the biggest international hospitality operators working in Cuba, announced Monday that it was ceasing all operations on the island. While the firm framed the decision as a response to broader challenging tourism conditions, it comes directly in line with the new US sanctions mandate.

Multiple industry sources confirmed to AFP on Tuesday that Spain’s Iberostar Group, another major hotel operator in Cuba, is withdrawing from 12 properties it managed in partnership with entities linked to GAESA. Specifically, the firm is exiting all co-management agreements with Gaviota Tourism Group, which is a core subsidiary of GAESA. The withdrawal went into effect on June 1, according to two separate sources familiar with the decision. The Mallorca-based company declined to publicly comment on the changes when contacted by AFP, but sources added that Iberostar will maintain its co-management agreements for hotels owned directly by Cuba’s Ministry of Tourism, which are not covered by the new sanctions. Two other major international hotel groups — Spain’s Melia and Indonesia’s Archipelago International — are currently evaluating full or partial withdrawals from their Cuban operations, according to industry insiders.

The impact extends far beyond tourism, hitting the island’s logistics and natural resource sectors as well. Two of Europe’s largest shipping companies, France’s CMA CGM and Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, have already temporarily suspended all new freight bookings to Cuba, explicitly citing Trump’s executive order as the reason for the move. In early May, Canadian mining giant Sherritt International announced it was ending its decades-long presence in Cuba, where it had operated a joint nickel and cobalt mining venture with state-owned General Nickel Company S.A. since the 1990s.

The Trump administration has framed its crackdown on GAESA as a push against Cuban government corruption. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American politician and one of the most vocal critics of the Havana government, has repeatedly accused GAESA of operating as a shadow state that accumulates wealth for a small circle of ruling elites at the expense of ordinary Cuban citizens. “It is a ‘state within a state’ that is accountable to no one, hoarding the profits from its businesses for the benefit of a tiny elite,” Rubio said of the conglomerate.

Havana issued a sharp rebuke of these allegations on Tuesday, pushing back against the US claims and defending GAESA’s role in the Cuban economy. Cuban officials explained that the conglomerate was established specifically to counteract the impact of the decades-long US trade embargo that has been in place since 1962. The government called the new US sanctions “the most intense, disproportionate, and dangerous escalation in the recent history of relations between Cuba and the United States.” It also highlighted the public benefits GAESA has delivered to the Cuban people, noting that the group played a central role in keeping the Cuban economy stable during the Covid-19 pandemic and has led construction of more than 10,000 new affordable homes for Cuban citizens. “Its work speaks for itself, and it does so above the state slander concocted in Washington,” the Cuban government’s statement concluded.

On a historic Tuesday sitting, France’s National Assembly voted unanimously to pass a landmark bill that formally acknowledges the French state’s partial responsibility for decades of harm caused by the unregulated use of a toxic pesticide across its Caribbean overseas territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique. The long-overdue recognition paves the way for full decontamination of affected ecosystems and reparations for thousands of harmed residents, closing a painful chapter of environmental injustice rooted in decades of state inaction.

The toxic compound at the center of the scandal, chlordecone (marketed under the brand name Kepone), was deployed extensively across banana plantations in the two island territories to eradicate crop-damaging weevils for 21 years, from 1972 to 1993. Notably, France had already outlawed the pesticide for use on its European mainland in 1990, but granted a three-year extension that allowed its continued application in the Caribbean islands, a decision that has been widely criticized as a double standard prioritizing agricultural industry interests over public health.

The unanimous vote in the lower house of parliament followed earlier approval from the French Senate, meaning the bill will now enter into force. Its text explicitly states the state recognizes its role in the widespread health, ethical, environmental, and economic damage that the territories and their populations have endured as a result of the prolonged chlordecone use.

Public health data underscores the staggering scale of the contamination. Research cited by France’s national health and safety agency ANSES shows that nearly 90 percent of the populations of both Guadeloupe and Martinique carry traces of chlordecone in their bodies. The toxic chemical has been definitively linked to multiple life-threatening cancers: prostate cancer rates in the two territories rank among the highest in the world, and the compound is also associated with elevated risks of stomach and pancreatic cancer. Beyond cancer, ANSES confirms chlordecone exposure causes lasting harm to the nervous system, reproductive function, hormonal regulation, and critical organ function including cardiac health.

Warnings about the pesticide’s dangers date back decades: as early as 1979, the World Health Organization released a report identifying chlordecone as a confirmed carcinogen in lab rodents, and noted it should be treated as a carcinogenic risk for humans. The compound was ultimately added to the global list of banned persistent organic pollutants under the Stockholm Convention in 2009.

Beyond formal recognition of responsibility, the new law establishes two core binding goals for the French state: completing comprehensive decontamination of all polluted soil and water reserves across Guadeloupe and Martinique, and delivering full financial compensation to every person harmed by the chlordecone contamination. While lawmakers from the affected territories welcomed the bill as a critical step toward accountability, many also acknowledged that the vote is only the beginning of a long process of repair.

Elie Califer, a Socialist deputy from Guadeloupe who sponsored the legislation, called the compromise bill an important step toward rebuilding public trust that has been deeply eroded by decades of state denial. But he added that substantial additional work remains to ensure the promises of decontamination and compensation are fully realized. Olivier Serva, another Guadeloupe-based deputy, noted that while he was not entirely satisfied with the final scope of the bill, the vote marked a major shift from the state’s earlier outright refusal to accept any responsibility.

The Tuesday vote came just one week after the same lower house passed another landmark measure repealing archaic, still-active French slavery laws that had remained on the books more than 170 after the formal abolition of slavery in 1848. Historians estimate that between the 17th and 19th centuries, more than one million enslaved African people were forcibly transported by French ships to Caribbean colonies, where they were forced to work on sugar and banana plantations. Activists have long drawn a connection between the legacy of chlordecone contamination and the enduring structural inequalities between mainland France and its former colonial territories that are now overseas departments, arguing that environmental harm is just one extension of a long history of prioritizing mainland and commercial interests over the well-being of island populations.

Serge Letchimy, an official from Martinique, praised the vote as a watershed moment that breaks down a long-standing system that suppressed the truth, shielded responsible parties from accountability, and ignored the suffering of victims. Looking ahead, the French Court of Appeal in Paris is set to rule later this month on whether to reopen a criminal investigation into the chlordecone scandal. Three years ago, lower court magistrates dismissed the case, arguing that too much time had passed to secure convictions, a decision that sparked widespread outcry from victim advocacy groups.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica’s top broadcast regulator has formally ruled that two of the island’s leading subscription television providers, Flow and Digicel, violated the terms of their operating licences through the unprofessional and inadequate way they handled customer notifications for channel and programming adjustments rolled out in late 2025.

In an official statement published Tuesday, the Broadcasting Commission announced it had wrapped up its full investigation into the controversial programming changes, confirming that both telecommunication giants failed to meet mandatory customer service standards when rolling out updates that directly impacted paying subscribers.

The regulator’s investigation uncovered critical gaps in Flow’s notification strategy: the company relied almost entirely on email alerts to inform customers of upcoming changes, despite internal engagement data that proved most subscribers never opened these communications. Data presented during the review shows 68.5% of distribution emails went unopened in November 2025, followed by 64.1% unopened in December. A portion of emails also failed to reach inboxes entirely, sent to outdated, incorrect, or inactive email addresses on file. Further, Flow posted supplementary change notices on its website, but the commission noted this passive method proved particularly unreliable in the aftermath of a hurricane that disrupted digital access for many Jamaican households. Flow also failed to provide any analytics to confirm that subscribers actually accessed and viewed the online postings.

For its part, Digicel went a step further, offering no advance warning at all to subscribers before removing certain channels from its line-up. The company later admitted to this oversight and issued a public apology to customers after the regulator launched its formal probe.

While both providers added new and reconfigured existing channels to replace the removed content, the commission found that the explanatory materials shared with subscribers lacked enough detail and clear, objective metrics for customers to verify whether replacement channels offered comparable value and maintained the service quality customers paid for.

As a corrective measure, the two operators have been ordered to implement comprehensive, multi-channel communication protocols to guarantee customers receive clear, accessible notice of all future service changes. The commission stressed that all customer notifications must be purposefully designed to actually reach most subscribers, rather than serving as a meaningless box-ticking exercise. This requirement explicitly extends to reaching older customers and Jamaicans with limited or inconsistent digital connectivity, who are often overlooked in all-digital communication strategies.

The regulator also highlighted the long-term implications of this ruling: findings of customer service non-compliance are added to each operator’s permanent compliance record, and will be a core factor considered when the companies apply for licence renewal in the future, including when negotiating the terms and conditions of new operating agreements.

In closing, the commission clarified that it does not challenge the right of television operators to make commercial decisions about their channel line-ups and service packages. “The issue is not the changes themselves, but the manner in which subscribers are treated,” the statement read. “Customers are entitled to clear, timely and effective communication whenever their services are altered. Subscription television operators are accountable for meeting this standard.”