Island Beat Radio

Cuba angrily criticized US officials on Saturday for meeting with government opponents following high-level talks on migration issues and said it showed the United States' real goal is to topple Cuba's communist government, not move toward better relations.

The meeting with "dozens of their mercenaries" took place despite warnings from Cuba that it would be viewed as an act of provocation and contrary to "the spirit of the migration conversations," the Cuban Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Haiti urgently needs tarpaulins, tents and 25,000 toilets one month after a magnitude 7 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people, the United Nation's top aid official said on Friday.

UN Emergency Relief Coordinator John Holmes said the emergency medical care phase of earthquake trauma patients is "mostly over." He added that one month after the disaster the two top priorities for impoverished Haiti are shelter and sanitation.

Resilient residents of the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat this weekend shrugged off clouds of ash spewing out of a volcano, and donned masks to go about their daily business.

"It is makes you sneeze a lot," Gregory Willock, the president of the Montserrat Cricket Association, told AFP in the nearby island of Antigua by telephone.

Life has continued as normal since the Soufriere Hills volcano erupted Thursday, throwing up a plume of smoke and volcanic ash 10 kilometers (six miles) into the air, he said.