In a fit of rage after an argument with his wife, a La Brea man committed suicide by setting himself on fire inside the family home. The house was also destroyed.

The remains of Derron Phillips was found in the ashes of the home at Coffee Street.

The tragedy was witnessed by Phillips’ neighbours. In video shot of the house while it still burned, a woman is heard saying: “The boy lit himself afire and ran into the house. He is cremating right now. He made up his mind to do what he has to do. He is somewhere underneath the galvanize”. Police were told that Phillips had an argument with his wife and at around 5.45 p.m. he doused himself with a liquid and ran into his wooden house. Within minutes the entire house caught afire and was gutted by the flames. La Brea police and Point Fortin fire officers responded to the scene. A district medical officer viewed the remains and they were taken to the San Fernando mortuary.(Trinidad Express)…[+]

A woman was rescued on Monday after being trapped in the elevator of a billionaire’s Manhattan townhouse for an entire weekend. She is now in the hospital in stable condition. The house is owned by Warren Stephens, the chief executive of the investment bank Stephens. He has an estimated net worth of $2.4bn.

Stephens was away with his family over the weekend, leaving 53-year-old housekeeper Marites Fortaliza alone in the townhouse. She entered the elevator on Friday evening and got stuck. At 10am on Monday morning, a member of the Stephens family and a delivery worker called 911 when they found the elevator wasn’t working. When firefighters arrived they were shocked to find Fortaliza inside. “We went for a stuck elevator,” a fire department of New York (FDNY) official said. “Not for a person stuck in an elevator.”

Firefighters forced their way into the elevator to find Fortaliza stuck between the second and third floors. After being rescued she was taken to Weill Cornell medical center. Authorities say she is dehydrated but in a stable condition. According to city records, the elevator was inspected in July and had no violations. It is not known whether Fortaliza had a mobile phone or if the emergency call button was working.

A spokesperson for Stephens said Fortaliza has worked for the family for 18 years and described her as “extended family”. The spokesperson said: “The Stephens family is relieved and thankful that she is doing well in the hospital. The cause of this unfortunate incident is being investigated and appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that something like this never happens again.”(theguardian)…[+]

LOS ANGELES, – The family of Michael Jackson yesterday described reaction to a new documentary about alleged child sex abuse by the late singer as a “public lynching” and said he was “100 percent innocent” of such accusations.

The statement followed the premiere at the Sundance film festival on Friday of “Leaving Neverland,” in which two men, now in their 30s, say they were befriended by the “Thriller” singer and sexually abused by him starting from when they were 7 and 10 years old.

The documentary received a standing ovation at Sundance on Friday, Variety and other entertainment media reported. It will be shown on cable channel HBO and Britain’s Channel 4 television network this spring. Jackson, who died in 2009, was acquitted at a 2005 criminal trial in California on charges of molesting a different, 13-year-old boy, at his Neverland ranch. The singer is survived by his mother Katherine and nine siblings, four of whom were members of pop group “The Jackson 5.”(Reuters)…[+]

Thank you, Daryl. Those were the words mother of two, Alesha Garcia, would say to her husband if she could see him one last time. Daryl Garcia, 43, drowned at a beach in Guayaguayare while saving his eight-year-old son last week Thursday.
The drowning was witnessed by the couple’s two children. Garcia, also 43, said her children were traumatised by the incident. But she was grateful that they were alive.

In a telephone interview with the Express, Garcia thanked her husband for the ultimate sacrifice. “Thank you, Daryl. Because of him I have my two children here with me today. I could have been burying all three of them. Daryl was not a good dad. He was a great, great dad. There are no words to describe how good he was. I want him to know that I know he sacrificed his life for our son. He wanted his son to live, to carry on his name. Thank you for that,” she said.

Garcia, a security guard, said her husband had dropped her to work at the Arima Health Centre at around 5.30am that day. He was on a week leave from work, she said. Garcia said her husband checked on his mother in Arima and then returned home to their children.(Trinidad Express)…[+]

Police have launched a murder investigation after a man died following what was described as a “horrific” attack in east Belfast. The 45-year-old victim was seriously assaulted on Sunday night, police said.

Detectives from the Police Service of Northern Ireland‘s serious crime branch launched a murder investigation. The Democratic Unionist party Belfast city councillor George Dorrian tweeted an image of a police cordon near the scene.

Dorrian said the man was well-known and popular, telling the BBC: “It has been barbaric and the level of violence, the level that was used, was a disgrace. “People just could not believe the sort of violence that was used upon this man.” Detectives appealed for anyone with information who was in the area of Cluan Place, Albertbridge Road or Templemore Avenue between 9pm and 10pm on Sunday to make contact.(theguardian)…[+]

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO,  – Detained in a California lockup with hundreds of other immigrants seeking asylum, Duglas Cruz faced a choice.

He could content himself with a jailhouse diet that he said left him perpetually hungry. Or he could labour in the prison’s kitchen to earn money to buy extra food at the commissary. Cruz went to work. But his $1-a-day salary at the privately run Adelanto Detention Facility did not stretch far.

A can of commissary tuna sold for $3.25. That is more than four times the price at a Target store near the small desert town of Adelanto, about two hours northeast of Los Angeles. Cruz stuck with ramen noodles at 58 cents a package, double the Target price. A miniature deodorant stick, at $3.35 and more than three days’ wages, was an impossible luxury, he said. “If I bought that there wouldn’t be enough money for food,” Cruz said.(Reudollters)…[+]

The government will be using a near $2 billion loan from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to finance the training of Jamaicans for high-skilled jobs.

The contract for the loan, valued at US$15 million, was signed on Friday and is repayable over 24 years. The interest rate was not disclosed. The funds will be channelled through the Global Services Sector Project (GSS), which is the vehicle being used by the government to develop a high-skilled workforce that will enable Jamaica to take advantage of high-value jobs in the global marketplace.

The Ministry of Finance explained that the GSS  project is comprised of two main components. The first component seeks to improve the skills development system to provide the GSS with better skilled workers, particularly, in higher value-added segments. The implementing entities for this component are HEART/NTA; the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information; and the Business Process Industry Association of Jamaica.(Jamaica Gleaner)…[+]

A gilets jaunes (yellow vests) demonstrator injured in the eye at a demonstration in Paris will be disabled for life, his lawyer has said. Jérôme Rodrigues, a high-profile member of the protest movement, claims he was struck by a “flashball”, a weapons launcher firing large rubber pellets used by French riot police. They have been blamed for dozens of injuries, some serious, including the loss of an eye.

Investigators are looking into the incident after police reportedly insisted Rodrigues’s injuries were caused by a crowd-control grenade that exploded near him, a version of events his lawyer “categorically” denied. Rodrigues was injured at Place de la Bastille on Saturday afternoon, during an 11th weekend of demonstrations by the gilets jaunes in Paris. Witnesses said the police used flashballs, “sting-ball” crowd dispersal grenades and tear gas while protesters calling for the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to resign threw projectiles at them

There have been calls for French police to be banned from using the flashball launchers, and last week the interior minister, Christophe Castaner, ordered officers carrying them to wear body cameras to establish if they were used legally. Witnesses are reported to have picked up the projectile that struck Rodrigues and handed it to investigators. Internal police investigators have launched an inquiry, as has the Paris prosecutor. More than 80 similar inquiries have been launched following serious injuries or legal complaints during gilets jaunesprotests.(theguardian)…[+]

BRASILIA/RIO DE JANEIRO– Brazilian rescuers were searching for some 200 missing people after a tailings dam burst yesterday at an iron ore mine owned by Vale SA, the second major dam disaster involving the company in just over three years. Seven bodies had been recovered by nightfall, said Avimar de Melo Barcelos, the mayor of the town of Brumadinho where the dam burst in the mining-heavy state of Minas Gerais.

The toll was expected to rise sharply. Vale Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman said only one-third of the roughly 300 workers at the site had been accounted for. He said a torrent of sludge tore through the mine’s offices, including a cafeteria during lunchtime. Minas Gerais is still recovering from the collapse in November 2015 of a larger dam that killed 19 people in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. That dam, owned by the Samarco Mineracao SA joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton , buried a village and poured toxic waste into a major river.(reuters)…[+]

A Jamaican man has come forward as the winner of last month’s US$298 million Powerball lottery jackpot in the United States. Dave Johnson, a 56-year-old married father of three, opted for the lump sum payout of $180 million and will take home $114 million after taxes.

According to the New York Daily News, Johnson immediately indicated that he was retiring from his job as a truck driver and that he has no plans to trade his adopted home of Brooklyn, New York for his native Jamaica. Already, the newspaper said he is looking to purchase a new, bigger house, possibly in another section of Brooklyn.

“New York is my place. Brooklyn is my place,” Johnson was quoted as saying yesterday as he collected his prize at the Resort World Casino in Queens, New York.

His winning ticket was purchased on Boxing Day.(Jamaica Gleaner)…[+]