Same-sex marriage is banned in the Dominican Republic, but a man and his partner have exchanged vows in the first ceremony of its kind performed at the British embassy in the conservative Caribbean country.

THE caskets of dozens of children lined Jimani’s streets after floods swept away villages and sent families into the darkness and mud in a frantic search for loved ones among the 500 dead and hundreds missing.

The death toll from flooding in the Dominican Republic and Haiti rose to at least 363 today as villagers desperately searched for loved ones feared swept away by the torrent of mud from swollen rivers.