Yardee! Women Observer Blog

UNITED Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will arrive in Jamaica this weekend to attend the Caricom heads of Government meeting, beginning in Montego Bay on Sunday.Ki-Moon is to discuss regional efforts to achieve social and economic targets, better known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have a target of 2015.He is expected to tell Caricom leaders that the international community must act as one in dealing with the impact of the global economic crisis, particularly its effects on the world’s most vulnerable.They will also be told that Caribbean countries need to accelerate their progress in meeting the goals which necessitate, among other measures: poverty reduction, improving maternal health, fighting environmental degradation and boosting school attendance.In September the UN chief is hosting a high-level event at UN Headquarters in New York that is aimed at charting the progress so far towards the MDGs and determining where attention and resources should be devoted between now and 2015.He will also discuss UN support for Haiti following January’s catastrophic earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people and left at least one million others homeless.He will also have bilateral meetings with various Caricom leaders and representatives of regional organisations.

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HEAD of the Jamaica Environment Trust, (JET), Diana McCaulay is calling on the Government to enforce harsher penalties on litter bugs, especially those whose dispose of their solid waste in gullies.McCaulay’s call comes after recent rains have choked the Kingston harbour with tons of garbage from gullies. “We have a huge solid waste problem in Jamaica. I am not aware of any implemented plans to deal with solid waste in Jamaica. We need stronger enforcement, stiffer penalties. The same people who throw their garbage in the gullies is the same people who get the job to clean it, so there is actually an incentive,” a disgusted McCauley told the Observer.Recently taken photographs of the Kingston harbour paint a stomach churning picture. Thousands of plastic drink bottles, car tires, dead dogs, plastic bags, styrafoam containers, diapers, used condoms and other forms of filth can be seen floating in the harbour.Twenty One Corporate Area gullies all empty in the Kingston harbour.”We are treating the gullies like cesspools and it all goes into the sea. They don’t realise where it ends up or they don’t care,” McCauley said.The effluent and garbage eventually end up in the Port Royal mangroves and on Refuge Cay in the harbour. The mangroves serve as a breeding ground for a wide variety of fish and play an important role in stemming climate change and maintaining bio-diversity as well as being effective shoreline defences against storms and hurricanes.Refuge Cay is one of the top 10 breeding sites in the Caribbean for the endangered brown pelican.

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MAY PEN, Clarendon – Police here have said that one of the 64 persons detained in the ongoing curfew imposed in the sections of the parish since Monday, is wanted for a murder committed in St James some 10 years ago. Superintendent in charge of the parish, Dathon Henry said the man will be handed over to the St James police by tomorrow, where he will be formally charged and his name released. “He was identified by a member of the joint security forces as a man, who has killed a man in Catadupa, St James 10 years ago,” Henry told the Observer, “We are currently in touch with the St James police to have him sent to that locality for them to have him formally charged.”Henry also revealed that about four another of the detainees are wanted for crimes ranging from murder, shooting and robbery, committed in the parish. “Maybe about four or so are wanted for crimes committed in Clarendon and we are processing others based on intelligence coming in, but they give wrong names, so what we’ll have to do now is continue on our intelligence so that they can be formally interviewed, placed on identification parade and subsequently charged,” he said. Yesterday, police said 52 individuals were taken into custody by law enforcers in Clarendon, with over 200 rounds of 9-mm ammunition discovered in the Farm/Effortville area of May Pen. “They were found buried in bottles stored in cornmeal to preserve the sheen on the rounds so that they can be easily fit into the weapons and fired,” he said.

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SENIOR Cabinet minister Karl Samuda yesterday said that he told area leaders in his North Central St Andrew constituency that he will no longer utilise their help in upcoming election campaigns, even if it costs him his seat.

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THE US State Department has commended Jamaica for what it described as the swift and safe handover of alleged drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke last Thursday, just hours after he waived his right to an extradition hearing.

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UNITED Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza are among the officials scheduled to attend the 31st Caricom Heads of Government Conference, which begins on July 4.

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JAMAICA’S Honorary Consul to the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI) Allan Hutchinson believes his country has been too slow in reciprocating the visa requirement for Turks and Caicos islanders given that Jamaicans are required to have a visa to enter the British overseas territory.

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TWO respected pastors are maintaining that dictates of conscience should always take precedence over law.

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Craig Francis (right) of the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) addresses residents of Tivoli Gardens during a meeting in the West Kingston community on Sunday. The light and power company will, in short order, set up a temporary business office in the community to facilitate residents, whose illegal connections were disconnected following last month’s joint police/military incursion in the community. According to reports, only a handful of the more than 4,000 residents in the community were paying for electricity prior to the incursion. The company says it also plans to include some young Tivoli residents in their summer work programme. (Photos: Aston Spaulding)

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THE United States Embassy was not in a position to accommodate former fugitive Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, even if the Rev Merrick ‘Al’ Miller had succeeded in his mission to take him there, senior police officials have said.

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