Six people linked to the far right have been detained in connection with a “violent” plot against the French president, Emmanuel Macron, officials said. The six, who were not identified, were picked up by anti-terrorism units in the eastern French regions of Moselle and Isère and the north-west region of Ille-et-Vilaine, officials added.

A source close to the investigation said the arrests came after reports of a possible plot involving “violent action” aimed at the president. Prosecutors have launched an investigation into a “criminal terrorist association”, a judicial source said. Another official said: “This investigation is looking into a plot, vague and ill-defined at this stage, involving violent action against the president of the republic.” In July 2017, a 23-year-old far-right extremist was charged with plotting to assassinate Macron at France’s Bastille Day military parade, which the French leader attended with the US president, Donald Trump.(theguardian)…[+]

Port of Spain – The Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) in collaboration with the Green Economy Coalition (GEC) today released the Eastern Caribbean Green Economy Barometer 2018. A major finding from this ground-breaking document is that the traditional approach of a one-dimensional focus on development through a narrow profit or GDP only “bottom line” has not worked for the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS). Overall, the status of the transition to a truly green and fair economy in the Eastern Caribbean is below average.

The Barometer is based on a study by renowned Saint Lucian economist McHale Andrew, prepared by CANARI in collaboration with the OECS Commission.

Since 2010, CANARI has been engaging Caribbean stakeholders in dialogues to explore principles and pathways for transformation of Caribbean economic development to be more environmentally sustainable, inclusive and resilient. These ideas are reflected in the global models of “green economy” and “blue economy”, with the latter reflecting a specific focus on economic development through use of coastal and marine resources.

But the Eastern Caribbean Green Economy Barometer 2018 notes that, “a Caribbean response cannot be simply a reaction to externally imposed concepts or models – the new economy needs to be based on the region’s reality, innate attributes, indigenous talents and specific conditions.” In the Caribbean, a Green-Blue economy is one which creates better well-being and social equity, while at the same time reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. So, it is a means to creating a resilient economy which provides a better quality of life within established ecological limits.

The study notes that there is already consensus that a new approach is needed to redress the creeping environmental degradation, general economic and social malaise in the OECS and the high vulnerabilities to natural hazards revealed by the monster 2017 hurricanes. It suggests opportunities to build on “green shoots” of positive initiatives in the OECS by: including the value of nature in national economic decision-making; greening key sectors, including energy, tourism and agriculture; enhancing support to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to provide economic opportunities, including for poor and vulnerable groups; reforming fiscal policy to support a new approach to development; and mobilising public and private financing…[+]

An Indian biographer of Mahatma Gandhi will no longer teach at a university in the independence leader’s home state after the institute came under pressure from critics including Hindu nationalist student groups complaining his work was “anti-national”.

Ramachandra Guha, an Indian public intellectual whose works have covered cricket, the environment, contemporary Indian history and the life of Gandhi, had been announced in September as the newest faculty member at Ahmedabad University in Gujarat state. Last week, after a student union affiliated with India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party complained about Guha’s appointment, the writer said on Twitter he was no longer joining the university.

“Due to circumstances beyond my control, I shall not be joining Ahmedabad University,” he wrote, adding: “May the spirit of Gandhi one day come alive once more in his native Gujarat.”

The Guardian understands the newly established university faced political resistance over the appointment and asked Guha to defer the start of his post until after parliamentary elections, scheduled to take place before May. Since the appointment had already been announced, Guha decided not to take up the post rather than delay its commencement without explanation, sources said. His selection as a professor of humanities had earned the ire of members of Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a student group affiliated to the ruling party of the prime minister, Narendra Modi.(theguardian)…[+]

Jamal Khashoggi’s sons have appealed to the Turkish and Saudi authorities to find and return their father’s body for a family burial, as more details emerged about alleged Saudi attempts to cover up the truth about the dissident journalist’s killing.

Salah, 35, and Abdullah, 33, broke their silence a month after their father disappeared at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in an interview with CNN on Sunday, describing how difficult the last few weeks had been for the family and paying tribute to a man they called “courageous, generous and very brave”.

Salah, who was believed to have been subject to a travel ban preventing him form leaving the kingdom, flew to Washington DC with Abdullah, their two sisters and respective families two weeks ago, just after he was pictured shaking hands with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after being summoned to one of Riyadh’s royal palaces.It is alleged that the powerful heir to the throne must have at a minimum been aware of the plan to kill Khashoggi, who had become increasingly critical of the Saudi royal family since moving to the US in self-imposed exile in 2017.(theguardian)…[+]

QUOTING calypsonian Mighty Sparrow’s lyrics, “Age is Just a Number,” Curtis Thomas, 84, of Dow Village in South Oropouche on Sunday collected his Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communication from COSTAATT’s Ken Gordon School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “I feel great, having achieved one of my milestones,” Thomas told reporters at the graduation ceremony at the National Academy of the Performing Arts in Port of Spain. “I’m a positive thinker. Age is just a number. I don’t see it as a stumbling block, once you have good health. I look forward to what is possible.” He advised that senior citizens should be persistent, constructive and confident and know what they want in life. “I pray quite a lot.”Thomas said it is important to eat a balanced diet, adding that up to five years ago he used to regularly exercise, having once done athletics at a national level. “I never drank,” he added.(Trinidad Newsday)…[+]

The body of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was “dissolved” after his murder and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an adviser to the Turkish president has said. “We now see that it wasn’t just cut up; [the Saudi suspects] got rid of the body by dissolving it,” Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and an official in Turkey’s ruling party, told the newspaper Hurriyet on Friday.

“According to the latest information we have, the reason they cut up the body is it was easier to dissolve it. They aimed to ensure no sign of the body was left,” said Aktay, who was a friend of the dissident Saudi writer. “Killing an innocent person is one crime, the treatment and extent of what was done to the body is another crime and dishonour.”

The remarks represented the first official statement from a Turkish authority about what allegedly happened to Khasoggi’s body. Turkish investigators have been trying to determine whether Khashoggi’s remains could have been dissolved in acid at the nearby consul general’s house. An unnamed official also told the Washington Post “biological evidence” in the consulate’s garden suggested that because of acid “Khashoggi’s body was not in need of burying”.(theguardian)…[+]

BRASILIA-– Brazil’s environment and agriculture ministers yesterday criticized President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s plans to merge their departments, saying it would hurt the country’s agenda on both fronts.

Bolsonaro has pledged to roughly halve the number of existing ministries in an effort to reduce bureaucracy and government bloat. He also vowed to merge the planning, finance and industry ministries into one super ministry. Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi said in a statement he is against the proposed merger. The move would cause losses to the country’s farm trade as European countries – key importers of Brazilian agricultural products – have pushed Brazil to protect the environment, he said.

Maggi said the environmental ministry’s portfolio includes areas that deal with energy, infrastructure and a wide variety of subjects that do not fit with the agriculture ministry’s mandate. “How will a minister of agriculture comment on an oil field or mineral exploration?” the statement quoted him as saying. Earlier in the day, Environment Minister Edson Duarte said that he was surprised and concerned by the announcement of the plan to combine the portfolios.(Reuters)…[+]

The Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) hosted the Regional meeting on Ending AIDS in the Caribbean: expanding equitable, effective, innovative and sustainable HIV responses towards the 2020 Fast Track targets on the way to elimination in Kingston, Jamaica on 1 and 2 November 2018.   

The purpose of the meeting is to sensitize Caribbean stakeholders on policy approaches that are required to reduce health inequalities.  The meeting encompasses the creation of a set of concrete actions to implement the Call To Action that emanated from the Third Latin America and Caribbean Forum on HIV and Sustainability (10 November 2017) for inclusion in the post 2018  Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework on HIV and AIDS (CRSF). These actions will support expanding equitable access to health and social services while strengthening health system responses to HIV and its sustainability.

 Mr. Dereck Springer, Director of PANCAP welcomed participants and shared the expectations of the meeting. In her opening remarks, Sannia Sutherland, Programme Coordinator, Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC) highlighted that civil society groups have been increasingly advocating for mechanisms to address issues that affect key populations and increased accountability.

She stated, “We have been working assiduously to promote the legal empowerment of key populations (KPs) to improve access to health and justice and reduce human rights violations with a view to promoting an enabling environment as we join fast track efforts”.

Ms. Sutherland underscored that throughout the Caribbean, Community-based organizations (CBOs) and the communities they work in are key players in the delivery of health services, as they have unique advantages in advocacy, demand creation and linkage of communities to services, building an understanding of what treatment, prevention, care and support are, and keeping governments, and donors accountable. However, they often deliver services without stable and predictable funding or systemic linkages to formal public health facilities. She further stated that building effective responses to priority health challenges with Key Populations, particularly in the face of the 90-90-90 commitments is a key priority for all civil society groups that work in the trenches contributing to the HIV response in the region. She noted that current actions by stakeholders to end AIDS included strengthening linkages throughout the Treatment Cascade, improving linkages to reach Key Populations, defining further and implementing task shifting and task sharing policies, considering the added value of CBO Interventions at each step in the Treatment Cascade and reaching underserved Youth…[+]

SEOUL-South Korean President Moon Jae-in vowed to pursue a peaceful Korean Peninsula and an inclusive society during his budget speech in the National Assembly Thursday. Moon said the two Koreas and the United States would achieve the peninsula’s complete denuclearization and the settlement of permanent peace based on a firm trust among the three parties.

He noted the trust was being built, citing the inter-Korean summits held three times in 2018 alone and the historic summit in June between the leaders of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the United States. South Korea and the DPRK, Moon said, completely eliminated the danger of military conflicts on the peninsula via the comprehensive military agreement which defense chiefs of the two Koreas signed during the latest inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang in September.

To implement the military agreement, the two sides started to stop all hostile acts in border areas along the military demarcation line (MDL) from Thursday. Moon said the second DPRK-U.S. summit was just around the corner while top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un’s return visit to Seoul would be made “soon.”

During the Pyongyang summit, the DPRK leader promised to visit the South Korean capital city in the near future. Moon hoped the return visit would happen within this year. “A historical starting point toward co-prosperity on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia is just ahead of us,” said Moon who described it as an “opportunity that came like a miracle and should never be missed.”

Moon also vowed to make South Korea an “inclusive country where (all people) live well together.” Though South Korea achieved a surprising economic development, it had a long way to go to become the inclusive society, Moon noted. The country’s export was forecast to top 600 billion U.S. dollars for the first time this year as the outbound shipment already surpassed 500 billion dollars for the first 10 months of this year. As the economy has excessively focused on growth, the income and wealth inequalities got extremely severe in the South Korean society, the president said.(Xinhua)…[+]

Amsterdam’s mayor is planning to issue sex worker permits for locations outside the city’s historic centre in an attempt to encourage women working from behind windows in the De Wallen red-light district to move out of the area. Femke Halsema, the Dutch capital’s first female mayor, will launch a fresh push to change the face of the streets around the city’s docks next year, after the failure of a series of attempts to clean up the red-light district and make life tolerable for the women working there.

Women working in the area are increasingly unable to make a living, and are instead subjected to gawping and abuse from tourists, according to councillors from the GroenLinks, D66 and Socialist party, three of the parties in the city’s governing coalition. The fourth governing party, the Dutch Labour party, has said it would prefer to continue a policy devised in 2014 to buy out the windows over a period of time, but has not ruled out giving its support.

Alexander Hammelburg, a councillor for the liberal D66 party, told the Het Parool newspaper that women would be able to “work in anonymity, freed from tourists who constantly take pictures” in the proposed locations. “The De Wallen is simply no longer the ideal place,” Hammelburg said. The GroenLinks council member Femke Roosma said: “Think of a kind of hotel with rooms, equipped with an alarm button, a safe for the money and cameras outside.”(theguardian)…[+]