Tropical Storm Erika was downgraded Thursday to a tropical depression not far from Puerto Rico, the BBC reports. Poor communities living by the river in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are still at risk, though, of flooding. In Dominica there was some reported flooding and the government decided to close schools and businesses because of Erika. There were not any reports of major damage on the island, the news service reports.

Millions in the Caribbean Survive on Less Than $2 a Day
An eye-opening report revealed that millions of people in five Caribbean nations are surviving on less than $2 a day, Caribbean Net News reports. The affected citizens are from the Dominican Republic (with 15 percent attempting to live on that small wage), Haiti (72 percent), St. Lucia (41 percent), Guyana (17 percent), Trinidad and Tobago (14 percent) and Suriname (27 percent), according to the recent Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet. News from the bureau, based in Washington D.C., doesn’t get much better. It estimates that the population will rise in the Caribbean, as well as poverty-stricken areas in Africa, Latin America and Asia, by a little less than 50 percent between now and 2050, the news service reports. “This scenario assumes that fertility in less-developed countries will decline smoothly to the low levels observed in today’s more developed countries: about 1.8 children per woman,” the report states. “For fertility to fall to those low levels, many factors are key, including significant increases in the use of family planning in many less-developed countries.”
 

Thousands Protest Mali’s Marriage Law
Thousands of people in the west African nation of Mali have been protesting a new law that provides more rights for wives, reports the BBC. The law, which was adopted weeks ago but has not been signed by the nation’s president yet, decreed that married women are no longer required to obey their husbands. In addition, the legislation allows for stronger inheritance rights for mothers and children who are born out of wedlock, the news service reports. “We have to stick to the Koran. A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband,” Hadja Sapiato Dembele, a spokeswoman from the National Union of Muslim Women’s Association, told BBC recently. Only a certain segment of the population supports the law, she says. “It’s a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law – the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country – the real Muslims – are against it,” she said.

Hurricane Bill Picks Up Steam
Hurricane Bill has morphed into a scary Category 4 storm whose winds could surpass its current 135-mph ruckus before settling down. The residents of the Leeward Islands are the most vulnerable right now, according to officials at the National Hurricane Center, but Bermudians could also feel Bill’s rage before he fizzles out over the next several days. “The wind sheer is light and the waters are warm,” Todd Kimberlain, a forecaster at the center, said Tuesday. “Those are two essential ingredients not just for the formation, but also the maintenance, of hurricanes.” As of early this morning, Bill’s eye swirled about 460 miles east of the Leeward Islands and moving west-northwest near 16 mph. In the flood-ravaged Haiti and the Dominican Republican, residents were happy to hear that another potential killer, tropical storm Ana, would leave the island of Hispaniola, which the two nations share, virtually unscathed this time.