Four Frenchmen were sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison in the Dominican Republic for drug trafficking.

Pilot Pascal Fauret, co-pilot Bruno Odos, passenger Nicolas Pisapia and alleged broker Alain Castany were arrested in March 2013 as they were about to take off from the Caribbean resort of Punta Cana.

A Chilean soldier who was part of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti was shot dead Monday during a violent protest in the Caribbean nation, the mission said.

Sergeant Rodrigo Sanhueza was providing security for a military vehicle traveling near the border with the Dominican Republic when the unit encountered a protest and came under fire, the defense ministry said.

Ten Venezuelans have been arrested over a shipment of cocaine found in a plane that traveled from Caracas to the Dominican Republic, prosecutors said Thursday.

Five of them were arrested in the airport of the Venezuelan capital -- three military officials, one working in customs and the fifth employed by a state-run security firm.

A huge two-week operation by Interpol in Central America and the Caribbean netted 27.5 tons of drugs and saw 50 illegal drug labs and almost 20 jungle airstrips destroyed, the agency said Monday.

Strengthening Hurricane Cristobal killed at least four people in the Caribbean and then trained its deadly sights Tuesday on the holiday paradise of Bermuda, officials and meteorologists said.

The storm dumped torrential rain on the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos Islands and Dominican Republic, triggering flooding and killing four people, authorities there said.

One person was swept away and 4,000 were displaced Saturday when heavy rains from a newly forming tropical depression slammed into the Dominican Republic, authorities said, warning the Bahamas was next.

The Dominican Republic government commission that oversees public performances is banning a Sept. 13 concert by Miley Cyrus on morality grounds.

The commission said in a statement Thursday that it took the action because Cyrus often "undertakes acts that go against morals and customs, which are punishable by Dominican law."

The Vatican's former ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been convicted of sex abuse by a church tribunal and has been defrocked in the first case of its kind, the Vatican said Friday.

Polish archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, who was recalled to Rome last year amid claims that he sexually abused a number of children in the slums of Santo Domingo, was found guilty by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and can no longer perform priestly duties.

Health officials in the Dominican Republic say a mosquito-borne virus has spread widely since making its first appearance in the country.

The Health Ministry says it has documented about 3,500 suspected cases of chikungunya virus since it was first detected in March. Most cases have been near the capital, but Health Minister Freddy Hidalgo said Tuesday there have been some isolated cases in northern provinces.

The Dominican Republic has recalled its ambassador to Haiti for consultations and suspended a bilateral dialogue in a dispute over its stripping citizenship rights of Dominicans of Haitian descent, the foreign ministry said Wednesday.

A regional body called Caricom, or the Caribbean Community, suspended Tuesday the Dominican Republic's application to join it, and Haiti voted in favor of this decision.