The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice. That so-called unpaid sentry is now literally melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, said delegates at the Arctic Frontiers conference, the polar circle’s biggest talking shop, who debated a series of recent escalations.

Russia is reopening and strengthening cold war bases on the Kola peninsula in the far north-west of the country. Norway is beefing up its military presence in the high Arctic. Last October, Nato staged Trident Juncture with 40,000 troops, its biggest military exercise in Norway in more than a decade. A month earlier Britain announced a new “Defence Arctic Strategy” and promised a 10-year deployment of 800 commandos to Norway and four RAF Typhoons to patrol Icelandic skies. The US is also sending hundreds more marines to the region on long-term rotations and has threatened to send naval vessels through Arctic shipping lanes for the first time.

While these strategic moves have echoes of the cold war, the modest buildup falls far short of that era, and there remains a strong spirit of cooperation in many areas. The current tensions are a result of a world warmed by industrial emissions. The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet, shrinking sea ice and exposing more water and territory to exploitation and access.(theguardian)…[+]

WASHINGTON– The U.S. Senate shifted slightly closer yesterday to resolving a month-long partial government shutdown, but there was no sign of relief anytime soon for 800,000 federal workers who are furloughed or working without pay.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid the groundwork for a vote tomorrow on a Democratic proposal to fund the government for three weeks, without attaching the $5.7 billion in U.S.-Mexico border wall funding demanded by President Donald Trump. The president has opposed similar legislation in the House of Representatives. McConnell had said previously he would not consider a funding bill that Trump would refuse to sign.

The Senate leader said he would also bring up for a Thursday vote a proposal by Trump to end the shutdown that includes border wall funding and relief for “Dreamers,” people brought illegally to the United States as children. The plan was unlikely to pass in the Senate and had even less chance in the Democratic-led House of Representatives.Democrats have said they would not trade a temporary restoration of the immigrants’ protections from deportation in return for a permanent border wall they view as ineffective. In 2017, Trump moved to end the Dreamers’ protections, triggering a court battle.(Reuters)…[+]

From April 1, the importation, retail, sale and use of petro-based single use plastic (plastic made from petroleum) will no longer be allowed in Barbados. Products such as single-use plastic cups; cutlery, including plastic knives, forks and spoons; stirrers; straws; plates; egg trays (both plastic and Styrofoam), and Styrofoam containers used in the culinary retail industry will be banned from that date.

In a joint press conference yesterday, Minister of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Economy, Kirk Humphrey, and Minister of the Environment and National Beautification, Trevor Prescod, announced the ban, and its parameters. Humphrey explained that with effect from January 1, 2020, there would be a ban on all petro-based plastic bags, with the exception of those used for the packaging of pharmaceuticals/medicines, hygiene and the preservation of food. In addition, a moratorium has been extended on the use of tetra pack straws, while poultry producers have been given more time to find alternatives to the Styrofoam trays used to package chickens.(stabroeknews)…[+]

A woman who defied violent protests to worship at a centuries-old south Indian shrine that banned females of “menstruating age” has been spurned by her family, attacked by relatives and locked out of her home. On New Year’s Day, Kanakadurga, 39, along with Bindu Ammini, became the first women to enter the inner sanctum of Kerala state’s Sabarimala temple, one of the country’s holiest Hindu sites.

The supreme court had in September declared unconstitutional a customary ban on women aged between 10 and 50 from entering the temple, a hill shrine located at the end of a three-mile trek through dense mountainous forest. Kanakadurga, Ammini and hundreds of other women had attempted to reach Sabarimala once it reopened after September’s verdict but were turned away by sometimes violent protesters, mostly men, who see the court’s decision as inappropriate state intervention in a religious matter.

The pair – Kanakadurga, a government employee, and Ammini, a 40-year old law lecturer – entered the temple to pray with police protection in the early hours of 1 January. The same day, hundreds of thousands of women in Kerala formed a 380-mile human chain across the length of the state in support of gender equality.(theguardian)…[+]

PARIS – Singer Chris Brown said yesterday that a rape allegation against him was false, a day after the French prosecutor’s office said that he had been arrested in Paris with two other suspects. Brown, who is a U.S. citizen, has been released from police custody as authorities were still investigating the case, the French prosecutor’s office added.

The arrests were first reported by Closer magazine, which said Brown, his bodyguard and a friend were detained after a 24-year-old woman alleged she was raped at the singer’s suite at the Mandarin Oriental hotel on the night of Jan. 15. The woman said she had met the men at a Paris nightclub earlier in the evening, according to the magazine. “I wanna make it perfectly clear … This is false,” Brown said in a post on his Instagram account. “For my daughter and my family, this is so disrespectful and is against my character and morals.” Brown, 29, pleaded guilty to assaulting Rihanna, then his girlfriend, in 2009, an incident that made headlines around the world when a photo of her bruised face was released.(Reuters)…[+]

Four years in jail will be served by a husband who breached a protection order and beat his wife. Meetra Chaitram told the court that he did not hit her much but the 35-year-old mother of five said she was cursed at, hit in her head and other parts of her body and her hair was pulled out.

Chaitram, 46 of Debe, was charged with assault by beating and contravening a protection order. The charge was laid by constable Anderson Maingot of the San Fernando police station. Police prosecutor Cleyon Seedan told San Fernando magistrate Alicia Chankar that at 5.45 p.m. last Monday, Chaitram accused the woman of being unfaithful and dealt her blows to her head and body. Chaitram breached a protection order which was issued by the San Fernando Magistrates’ Court in 2016. It comes to an end on July 4 2019. Chaitram said it instructed that he was “not supposed to lash she or anything”. The woman was treated and discharged and a medical report was received.(Trinidad Express)…[+]

The American singer Chris Brown and two other people were held in custody in Paris after a woman filed a rape complaint. Brown was detained on Monday on potential charges of aggravated rape and drug infractions, a French judicial official said. Investigators have two days to decide whether to let him go or file preliminary charges.

The singer’s publicists at Sony Music would not immediately comment on the complaint or say what he was doing in Paris. Brown, 29, has been in repeated legal trouble since pleading guilty to assaulting his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. He completed his probation in that case in 2015. One of Brown’s bodyguards was among those detained, according to a Paris police official.The woman who filed the complaint said she met Brown and his friends at the club Le Crystal in the 17th arrondissement of north-western Paris on Wednesday and went to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel near the Concorde Plaza, according to the official.(theguardian)…[+]

One of Nicaragua’s most influential political watchdog reporters said on Sunday he has gone into exile in Costa Rica after receiving threats from the government, which has led a heavy-handed crackdown on protests against President Daniel Ortega.

Carlos Fernando Chamorro had accused the government of using increasingly authoritarian tactics to purge Nicaragua of dissent. The famed reporter announced on his television program he had fled to Costa Rica, without detailing the threats that prompted him to leave Nicaragua. He said he planned to keep reporting from the city of San Jose, where the government has welcomed him and his wife.

He told Reuters in an interview in late December he had been targeted with death threats on social media and feared the government could trump up charges as an excuse to throw him in jail. Chamorro said police had raided his offices earlier in December and taken his equipment, forcing him to work almost in hiding.(Reuters)…[+]

Two Trinidadian children kidnapped and taken to Syria by their ISIS fighter father in 2014 have been reunited with their Trinidadian mother. The boys, who were taken to live in the so-called IS “caliphate”, were able to leave Syria with the help of rock musician Roger Waters, front man for Pink Floyd, who helped their mother fly to Syria to meet them.

Several articles carried online by international news agencies yesterday said the reunion was arranged by lawyer, rights activist and founder of Reprieve, Clive Stafford-Smith, who was engaged by Waters. Reprieve provides free legal and investigative help to the vulnerable around the world facing rendition, torture, and extra-judicial imprisonment or death.(Trinidad Express)…[+]

Egyptian authorities are reaching for their paint brushes following a decree by the president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, demanding buildings across the country adhere to a unified colour scheme of “dusty” shades in Cairo and blue on the coast.

Egypt’s prime minister, Mostafa Madbouly, told a cabinet meeting: “The plan is to have unified colours for the buildings instead of this uncivilised scene.” He said a presidential decree targeting unpainted red-brick buildings demands local authorities paint them soon, or face punishment. Clusters of red-brick tower blocks are a common feature of Egypt’s urban sprawl, and house much of the country’s population of nearly 100 million people. Mohammed Abu Saada, the head of the National Organisation for Urban Harmony, said the colour scheme for buildings would be determined by area.Buildings in Cairo and the south of the country will be painted “with dusty colours”, while tower blocks on the coast will be painted blue. In an interview with the local Extra News channel, he said the move to unify the colours of buildings is intended to remove “visual deformity”.

The demand to unify the appearance of swathes of public buildings across Egypt comes at the same time as unpopular government austerity measures, including cuts to essential subsidies, as well as the arrests of thousands of people in order to silence criticism. Egyptian authorities have also targeted many of the country’s poorest people with forced evictions in an attempt to move them to the capital’s outskirts, part of a plan to end informal housing by the end of this year. Commonly known as “ashwiyyet”, and including many unpainted buildings, these areas of informal housing, which contain 40% of Egypt’s population, are often seen as places of social and sometimes political unrest.(theguardian)…[+]