Ten Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations began to operate as a single domestic space on Thursday, allowing travelers smooth movement throughout the zone in advance of the Cricket World Cup.

CARICOM Secretary General Edwin Carrington was expected to announce the start of the three-and-a-half-month-long initiative in a regionally broadcast message on CaribVision, the CMC's international channel, later Thursday.

"Travelers, whatever their nationality, will not normally have to present their passports or have them stamped at ports of entry of the other countries within the single domestic space," the secretary general said. "Persons are, however, still advised to travel with their passport in the event that it is needed for identification purposes."

LIAT Chief Executive Officer Mark Darby says the airline does not plan to follow its new commercial partner Caribbean Star and slash staff.

On Wednesday, on the eve of the beginning of a new commercial agreement between the two regional carriers, Caribbean Star severed nearly 200 of its 470 staff, but Darby said there was no immediate need to send home staff from the LIAT side of the operation.

The Gleaner newspaper has defended its decision to publish a controversial cartoon of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller earlier this week.

Member of the Gleaner's editorial team, Byron Buckley, has questioned the basis for the controversy noting that former Prime Ministers Michael Manley, Edward Seaga and P.J Patterson experienced similar treatment.

He noted that in spite of the controversy the Gleaner has no plans to apologize.

Jamaica's Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Anthony Hylton Friday urged Caribbean states to be prepared to block any international trade agreement that would have a disastrous effect on the lives of the people of the region.

Speaking at the 20th special meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) (STRATEGIC) Issues in External Trade Negotiations, Hylton said he had just returned from a World Trade Organization (WTO) Mini-Ministerial in Switzerland on the Doha Development Round multilateral trade negotiations and would be prepared "to share some thoughts with you on the implications of the full resumption of negotiations and the process that now lies before us.

The British telecommunication company, Cable and Wireless, Friday denied allegations that it was seeking to weed out Caribbean nationals from senior positions and replace them with British expatriates.

The denial followed statements by a former senior executive of the company that the telecommunication giant was practicing discrimination and corporate bullying against Caribbean nationals.

Rudy Gurley, who served as Vice President of Strategy and Business Development and Chairman of the Board of Directors of C&W Grenada, has since written the London-based British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) urging an investigation of the allegation.