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The Internet has become such a powerful tool that it now enables small Caribbean countries like the Cayman Islands, to act as its own travel agent rather than rely on foreign countries to drive tourists to their destinations. Furthermore, the Internet and digital technology can upscale the travel experience, increasing the likelihood that tourists will recommend that destination to their family and friends, according to the Secretary of General Caribbean Tourism Organisation. More

They were never going to be paid anyway and yesterday, Cabinet gave the approval for the DFC to write off $5.8 million in small loans. The loans, 1,525 of them were for agricultural and hurricane recovery purposes, and DFC came to the decision that prudentially it's best to write them off because they'll never be collected anyway. Government will now absorb this debt. More

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists on Tuesday confirmed that coral bleaching in the Caribbean basin last summer was the most extensive and severe they have seen since they began collecting satellite data more than 20 years ago. Discussing the bleaching on the second day of a coral monitoring workshop at the Nature Conservancy in Estate Little Princess, Mark Eakin, coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, said his organization was in the process of collecting data from more than 70 researchers measuring 1,000 sites throughout the Caribbean. The early returns are grim "This was an extremely severe event," Eakin said. "It was unlike anything we've ever seen." More

Last year was the warmest recorded on Earth's surface, and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said on Tuesday. All five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred within the last decade, according to analysis by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In descending order, the years with the highest global average annual temperatures were 2005, 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004, NASA said in a statement. More

Coral reefs and mangroves are worth protecting for economic reasons, contributing as much as $1m per sq km to tropical economies. That is the conclusion of a new United Nations report which calculates the value of reefs and mangroves to fishing, tourism and coast protection. More

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