PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti’s outgoing president has released a brash pop song jeering at his critics and aiming sexually suggestive lyrics at his main target, the award-winning journalist Liliane Pierre-Paul.

In an unusual move by a sitting leader, President Michel Martelly released during what is likely his last week in office, a track called Bal Bannann Nan”— Haitian Creole for “Give Them the Banana.” Martelly’s choice to be Haiti’s next president, Jovenel Moïse, is nicknamed ‘Neg Bannann’ — Banana Man in Haitian Creole.

Martelly’s song was the talk of social media and Haiti’s call-in radio shows Monday. While some dismissed it as a light piece of entertainment that harkens back to the president’s days as the self-proclaimed “bad boy” of Haitian pop music, others were repelled.(JAMAICA OBSERVER)…[+]

PARIS, France – French schools have begun allowing students to smoke on their grounds to prevent them becoming terror targets on the streets outside, a union says. The union of school administrators first called for the measure days after the Paris attacks in November, but the health ministry refused. The SNPDEN union renewed its call last week, but a union official said some schools had already gone ahead anyway.

A third of French teenagers smoke, according to government statistics. “Students massing on the street constitutes a very high risk, one that is certainly greater than that posed by the consumption of tobacco,” SNPDEN Deputy Secretary General Michel Richard told France Info. Mr Michel said the union was not attempting to minimize the dangers linked to smoking, but he said it was “necessary in this particular context to protect against the biggest risks”. France’s health ministry refused the union’s initial request to allow smoking on school grounds, saying the state of emergency currently in force in France “did not affect rules about smoking”, Mr Michel said.(BBC)...[+]

BRAZIL – The spread of Zika virus across Latin America, with its apparent tragic consequences for the babies of infected pregnant women, has parallels with the emergence of Aids more than 30 years ago, according to a senior epidemiologist on the frontline in Brazil. Wilson Savino, director of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in Rio de Janeiro, said the current state of scientific ignorance around the virus and its effects resembles that over HIV – the human immunodeficiency virus which gives rise to Aids – in the early 1980s. “Back then, the scientific and medical community did not know what was going on until many people had died and considerable research had been undertaken,” said Savino. “Then it turned out to be a global health issue. In Brazil, although we have identified the Zika virus, we don’t know much about it compared with dengue or yellow fever. The degree of ignorance is comparable to what we faced 32 years ago.(theguardian)…[+]