The hur­ri­cane fore­cast for 2019 is just as bad as the fore­cast of 2018 and with nine to 15 named storms ex­pect­ed to form in the At­lantic this year, of­fi­cials from the Com­mon­wealth of Do­mini­ca wants the rest of the Caribbean to pre­pare. Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the is­land last week and mar­velled at how Do­mini­ca has man­aged to bounce back from ex­ten­sive dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Maria which rav­aged the is­land in Sep­tem­ber 2017, killing 65 peo­ple.

Many of the bod­ies were nev­er found and some of the homes bat­tered by the force of the hur­ri­cane re­main roof­less. Some of the moun­tains still har­bour rem­nants of de­bris but Min­is­ter for the En­vi­ron­ment, Cli­mate Re­silience, Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment and Ur­ban Re­new­al Joseph Isaac be­lieves this year the is­land is bet­ter pre­pared the hur­ri­cane sea­son. Back in 2017 the res­i­dents like Dec­i­ma Sharplis, own­er of Sea­world Guest House, were not pre­pared for a Cat­e­go­ry Five Hur­ri­cane.

Sharplis said she could re­mem­ber run­ning around her home se­cur­ing items be­tween 11 pm to 3 am while the hur­ri­cane ham­mered the is­land. “Maria was the most hor­ri­ble ex­pe­ri­ence I ever had. I will nev­er for­get when I went down­stairs to se­cure some stuff and I saw these big waves com­ing at me. I had to run,” Sharplis said.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]

Several German politicians who have publicly stood up for refugees have received death threats since what police are treating as the alleged politically motivated murder of one of Angela Merkel’s party allies. An email sent to politicians and media organisations across the country on Tuesday night warned that the alleged murder of the Christian Democratic Union politician Walter Lübcke, allegedly by a man linked to the far right, was the first in a line of “upcoming purges” and called for terror attacks on left-leaning politicians, refugees and Jews in Germany.

The mayors of the city of Cologne and the western town of Altena, who have both been victims of knife attacks because of their pro-refugee stances, were singled out in the letter. Cologne’s mayor, Henriette Reker, narrowly escaped death in 2015 when she was attacked with a hunting knife by a rightwing extremist who said he had wanted to send a signal against the government’s course on the refugee question.  Altena’s mayor, Andreas Hollstein, was stabbed in the neck in 2017 by a man who had loudly criticised his liberal asylum policy in the North Rhine-Westphalia town. Both confirmed they had received death threats this week.

A police spokesperson would not comment on whether there was a direct link to Lübcke’s murder. Lübcke, who was the president of the regional council of Kassel, was found dead on the veranda of his home in Istha just over two weeks ago. Police have arrested a suspect, Stephan Ernst, who has links to rightwing extremists and previous convictions for politically motivated attacks.(theguardian)…[+]

This coun­try’s lat­est fast fer­ry, the HSC Jean de la Valette, once out­ran some pi­rate ships, a de­scrip­tion from the Ship Tech­nol­o­gy web­site has claimed. And cit­i­zens of T&T were on Wednes­day giv­en a glimpse of the ves­sels speed af­ter it com­plet­ed its jour­ney from Cadiz, Spain five days ahead of the sched­uled ar­rival time.

But the Jean de la Valette’s speed was not the main fea­ture that had peo­ple on so­cial me­dia in awe yes­ter­day. Pho­tographs of the Jean de la Valette’s in­te­ri­or went vi­ral on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day hours af­ter the ves­sel docked in Trinidad. The Jean de la Valette sailed in­to the Port of Port-of-Spain short­ly af­ter 8 am yes­ter­day af­ter com­plet­ing its jour­ney from Cadiz, Spain. Ac­cord­ing to one ship track­ing ser­vice, the ves­sel had been sched­uled to ar­rive at 11 pm last night.

The Jean de la Valette set sail from Spain last Fri­day and was es­ti­mat­ed to ar­rive in Trinidad wa­ters ten days lat­er. The voy­age be­tween Spain and Trinidad in­clud­ed one bunker­ing stop in Cape Verde, Africa.(Trinidad Guardian)…[+]

Government officials and experts from across the Caribbean participated in the subregional preparatory meeting of the XIV session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, an ECLAC subsidiary body, held in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 18 June 2019 to examine progress as well as obstacles for advancing women’s autonomy and gender equality in the context of the Caribbean’s changing economic scenarios.

The event was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean and ECLAC’s Division for Gender Affairs as the Technical Secretariat for the Regional Conference on Women, in partnership with UN-Women and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and recorded the participation of more than 17 ECLAC member countries, including Anguilla, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Chile, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks and Caicos Islands, as well as several agencies of the UN system, members from civil society organizations and academia.

Welcoming government officials and experts from across the Caribbean, Gaietry Pargass, Senior Legal Adviser in the Office of the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, underscored that “over the past five years, Trinidad and Tobago has strengthened its legal, policy and programmatic frameworks in its efforts to achieve gender equality, more specifically, its initiatives towards the dismantling of structural barriers that impede gender equality”…[+]

SAN SALVADOR– El Salvador President Nayib Bukele ruled out negotiations with criminal gangs yesterday and vowed to go after their finances in a bid to reduce violence in the Central American country. Bukele, 37, took office this month pledging to bring down a sky-high murder rate and reduce poverty, corruption and mass migration to the United States.

“We are not open to having a dialogue with criminal groups,” said the political maverick who ended three decades of two-party rule with his election victory in February. “We have not received communications from the gangs and we don’t expect any either,” Bukele said at a swearing-in ceremony for his deputy justice minister. El Salvador is one of a trio of countries in Central America, along with Guatemala and Honduras, that has seen thousands of desperate migrants flee raging gangland violence and bleak economic prospects over the past couple years.

Last week, the director of the police force vowed to do more to fight organized crime and said it was raiding dangerous areas to recover territory from the gangs, capture their leaders and confiscate arms, illicit cash and drugs.(Reuters)…[+]

The five Jamaican fishermen picked up by United States Homeland Security investigators in September 2017 off the Haitian coast were charged with conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute some 613 pounds of marijuana, according to an affidavit filed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jesus Pertierra.

Pertierra, who filed the affidavit in the United States Southern District Court of Florida, said the charges followed an incident in which the fishermen were seen throwing bales overboard after they were spotted in a go-fast vessel approximately 12 nautical miles south-west of Navassa Island, on September 24, 2017.Pertierra named the five men who are from St Ann as Robert Weir, the captain of the Jamaican vessel; Patrick Ferguson; David Williams; Luther Patterson; and George Thompson. However, more recent reports following the decision by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to file a lawsuit last Wednesday in Florida, claiming that the Coast Guard had improperly detained four Jamaicans, excluded Thompson. No mention has been made of him in local reports either, and there has been no indication of his whereabouts.(Jamaica Observer)…[+]

US artist and fashion icon Gloria Vanderbilt has died aged 95. She passed away at home with family members by her side, said her son Anderson Cooper, a CNN anchor, after suffering from stomach cancer.

Vanderbilt, known as the “poor little rich girl”, was the great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, a 19th Century tycoon. The socialite, who was married several times, made her name in the 1970s and ’80s as a designer jeans pioneer.

“Gloria Vanderbilt was an extraordinary woman, who loved life, and lived it on her own terms,” Mr Cooper said in a statement. “She was a painter, a writer, and designer but also a remarkable mother, wife, and friend. “She was 95 years old, but ask anyone close to her, and they’d tell you, she was the youngest person they knew, the coolest, and most modern,” the statement added. Vanderbilt was not even two years old when her father died.

As the beneficiary of a multimillion-dollar trust fund, Vanderbilt became widely known as the “poor little rich girl” in 1934 because of a high-profile custody fight between her mother and her aunt in New York. The aunt eventually won the legal battle, described by the media at the time as the “trial of the century”. Vanderbilt was a talented painter and actress. She was also the author of several books.(BBC)…[+]

KHARTOUM – Sudan’s ex-president Omar al-Bashir was charged with corruption-related offences yesterday, as he appeared in public for the first time since he was overthrown and detained in April. Looking much the same as prior to his removal by the military, he was driven to the prosecutor’s office in Khartoum.

He was charged with illicit possession of foreign currency and accepting gifts in an unofficial manner, prosecutor Alaa al-Din Abdallah told media, adding that Bashir would be given the chance to respond to the accusations. His trial will be a test of how serious the country’s transitional military council is about trying to erase the legacy of his autocratic 30-year rule, marked by widespread violence, economic collapse and the secession of South Sudan.

Bashir was charged last month with incitement and involvement in the killing of protesters, and prosecutors also want him questioned over suspected money laundering and terrorism financing. Sudan’s chief prosecutor said on Saturday that 41 former officials from Bashir’s administration were being investigated for suspected graft.(Reuters)…[+]

The Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha is concerned about Venezuelan migrants entering the country with Hindu marriage licences issued by a pundit in central Trinidad. Pundit Lutchmidath Persad Maharaj, in a telephone interview yesterday, said there was an investigation of Venezuelans coming in from Cedros, presenting Hindu marriage licences.

These licences, he added, were being issued by a pundit from central Trinidad. Maharaj, who is also the first vice-president of the Inter-Religious Organisation, said the Immigration Division has been contacted. According to Maharaj, almost 100 people have produced marriage licences with that pundit’s registration.He said this took place over an extended period of time and not during the recently concluded two-week registration period.

“There was an investigation going on because it meant the licence had to be shipped out of the country for them to be presenting it when they came in at the port in Cedros.” “It is a legitimate concern for the Maha Sabha,” he told Newsday. He said marriage licences are only issued after a particular set of religious rituals were performed, such as pre martial counselling and the balancing of astrologies or the planetary influences. “We would hope that the pundits’ practice the correct thing. Once you hold a Hindu marriage licence, the process of registering the marriage could only take place after the ritual is completed.”(Trinidad Newsday)…[+]