GEORGETOWN, Sept 12, 2007 (AFP) - Thousands of sugar workers in Guyana were on strike for a second day Wednesday pressing for pay hikes.

The 14,000 unionized workers are demanding a 12 percent wage increase to help offset a 12 percent inflation rate and a 16 percent Value Added Tax (VAT), which was introduced late last year.

State-owned Guyana Sugar Corporation (Guyasuco), managed by British-based Tate and Lyle, has said it can afford only a 6.5 percent cost of living increase in workers' pay..

Sugar accounts for about 30 percent of Guyana's farm production.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Aug 27, 2007 (AFP) - Guyana President, Bharrat Jagdeo announced on Monday he will grant an unconditional pardon to Mark Benschop, a political activist in jail on treason charges since 2002.

Jagdeo, however, did not give any time frame for the release of Benschop, who formally appealed to the Guyanese leader in a letter dated August 24.

'I intend to grant Mr. Mark Benschop a free pardon for that offence of treason with which he was charged; this will be done over the course of time,' the president told a news conference.

GEORGETOWN, Aug 26, 2007 (AFP) - Guyanese police and soldiers were Sunday continuing their manhunt for 15 'dangerous' prisoners, who escaped from a jail in the eastern part of the country and still remained at large.

'They are considered very dangerous men and we ought not to take chances with them,' Director of Prisons Dale Erskine told reporters outside the New Amsterdam Prison located about east of Guyana's capital.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, 6 Ago 2007 (AFP) - The Inter American Development Bank (IDB) announced Monday it has set aside 300 million dollars to help Caribbean nations study the viability of producing bio-fuels.

IDB President, Luis Alberto Moreno, said the money would be put into a 'green energy' programme to finance projects for energy efficiency, renewable energy, bioenergy and carbon finance lending and technical assistance, mainly for small scale investments in the smaller countries of the region.

GEORGETOWN, Aug 5, 2007 (AFP) - Guyana will get funding to assess the possibility of building a road to link it to neighboring Brazil through the Amazon jungle under a deal struck Sunday, the Guyanese president said.

The 'pre-feasibility agreement' signed in the presence of Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo and the president of the Inter American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno, will determine whether a more in-depth study should be done.

GEORGETOWN, Aug 3, 2007 (AFP) - President Hugo Chavez's philanthropy -- made possible with money from Venezuela's bountiful oil reserves -- received two new beneficiaries Friday: Argentina and Guyana.

Venezuela has agreed to pay two million dollars to build a homeless shelter in its dirt-poor neighbor Guyana, the Guyanese foreign minister Rudy Insanally said Friday, in the latest of several charitable moves by Caracas.