Several governments in the Caribbean are expected to...

Several governments in the Caribbean are expected to speed up plans to establish a regional court after a ruling by Britain's Privy Council that the mandatory death penalty is in violation of the constitutions of several countries.
The ruling by the body of senior politicians that advises Queen Elizabeth - and the final court of appeal for many of Britain's former colonies - was welcomed by human rights groups but denounced by government officials.
Members of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) are planning to create a Caribbean Court of Justice to adjudicate on trade disputes in their nascent common market, and also to be the group's final appellate court.
P. J. Patterson, Jamaica's prime minister, said the ruling was a unilateral move by the British law lords - judges who sit in the House of Lords, the UK's highest court - to abolish capital punishment in the Caribbean. However, Alfred Sears, a Bahamian human rights lawyer, said: "The meaning of this ruling, based on the evolving standard of human decency, is that the death penalty is perceived as an inappropriate form of punishment. I agree with that."
Faced with rising violent crime and increasing murder rates, several governments have been under pressure to execute convicted killers. Jamaica has the world's third-highest murder rate, after South Africa and Brazil, according to the United Nations.