This is the Scottish church in New Amsterdam (Guyana). The Scots, many of them left landless by the agricultural reforms in Scotland, were the pioneers of a new prosperity in this region (building on what the Dutch had begun). By the early 1800s they had an appreciable presence on this coast.

Dr. Leon C. Wilson, formerly the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, has been named interim provost and vice president for Academic Affairs at Alabama State University. Wilson has served as dean of ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences since 2011.

It's not just Guyana that has a large population of Indians. Next door, in Suriname, around half the population are descended from those who came from India. In fact, there are 170,000 Hindus here (37% of the population) plus 18,000 'Indian' Muslims. It's not uncommon to hear the greeting 'Salaam alay-kum!'

The great Indian diaspora can be found all over the world, particularly in Canada, UK (e.g Southall) and the USA. Their contribution has been inestimable, especially in terms of the professions and business (the most common name for a millionnaire in Britain is now Patel). Over the next few days, I'll be focussing on the Indians who came to the Guianas

MIAMI --The U.S. Coast Guard has repatriated ten Haitian migrants who were picked up at sea east of Boynton Beach, Florida
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Coast Guard officials say the migrants were taken to Cap Haitien in Haiti on Thursday, a week after being found on a 28-foot vessel.

They may be the largest living land mammals of the Americas with few predators, but for the few thousand wild tapirs left in the world the future looks bleak.

Over the last 30 million years, the odd-looking animals have adapted brilliantly to their environments.

Not long ago, I visited the site of the world's greatest mass suicide, in NW Guyana. Remote and derelict, it's hard to imagine that up to 1,000 people had lived here.

Intel developer blog blogger Wendy Boswell has been busy bemoaning the lack of female developers in Western nations and pointing to some (arguably) insightful (if a little dated) figures.

Women are (as we know) unfairly underrepresented in the STEM category i.e (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).

How else do you describe watching Guyanese cowboys (or vaqueiros) at work in a corral? At Dadanawa Ranch, there was a bonfire for brands, and – high up in the rails – the boys clambered around, waiting for their moment to drop down and join the fight. Below them, in the arena, hundreds of animals swirled round, blind with dust and mad with panic.

In the UK, we tend to associate the end of this gruesome trade with William Wlberforce. But there are a few other Britons associated with abolition, all with links to either Guyana (then the colonies of Demerara and Berbice) or Suriname:-