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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — More than 8,500 persons in St. Kitts and Nevis who were negatively affected due to the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic, have benefited from a pay-out of more than EC $22.7 million from the Social Security COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund.

This was revealed by Minister with Responsibility for Social Security, the Honourable Eugene Hamilton, during his February 1 speech marking the 43rd Anniversary of St. Christopher and Nevis Social Security Board.

“Over 8,500 persons were provided with the COVID-19 fund grants, which served as stimulus payments in respect of the period, April to June 2020 in the first instance, and again in September 2020,” said Hon. Hamilton. “This was a significant complement to the overall stimulus regime, orchestrated by our Team Unity government, as its initial early response, to the financial challenges facing so many of our people, when international and local commerce and industry, began to buckle, under the weight of the pandemic.”

Hamilton said that Social Security’s response to COVID-19 was highly ranked when compared to similar initiatives.

“This support, unmatched by any other institution, was instrumental in keeping our economy afloat and provided much-needed support to the insured populace,” he said. “This level of support is unprecedented, and I am advised, that it has been the only one of its kind across the region. It underscores the importance of Social Security as a crucial social safety net and the fundamental economic pillar of our society. Indeed, it also bears out our mantra that Social Security touches lives ‘from the cradle to the grave.’”

Each insured person who was laid off or unemployed, including self-employed persons, as a result of the impact of COVID-19, was paid up to $1,000 per month for three months in the first instance from the relief programme.

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Jamaican winter Olympians Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian and Carrie Russell secured second and third places during Monday’s Monobob World Series race.

Monobob is a one-person bobsled discipline.

The event, which took place in Lake Placid, New York, was won by American Nicole Vogt.

Vogt clocked 59.81 seconds on her first run, followed by 59.37 on her second. She recorded the fastest times in both runs which gave her a combined time of 1min 59.18sec, as she claimed overall victory by 0.53 seconds.

The more experienced Jamaican slider Jazmine Fenlator-Victorian ended second with a total time of 1 minute, 59.71 seconds with Russell taking third 0.88 seconds behind her compatriot on 2 minutes, 00.06 seconds.

Russell previously secured podium spots at two other meets. The former sprinter won in Park City on January 17, a day after she ended second at the same venue.

The February 1st race was the third event in the monobob series at Lake Placid. The final race will take place on February 2.

Women’s monobob has been added to the program for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing, which is scheduled for February 4-20, 2022.

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President Biden will sign three executive orders on Tuesday focused on reforming the immigration system and undoing actions of the Trump administration, including establishing a family reunification task force and calling for a review of the public charge rule.

One of the orders will create a task force focused on identifying all of the minor children separated from their parents or guardians due to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in 2018, which a senior Biden administration official called a “moral failure and a national shame.”

The task force will be charged with reuniting the hundreds of migrant children who still have yet to be brought together with their families, and it will provide regular updates to the president on how to prevent future family separations.

The task force will be led by Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s pick for secretary of Homeland Security.

Mayorkas is expected to be confirmed to the position on Tuesday. The task force, a key campaign promise for Biden, was originally planned to be announced on Friday, but was delayed while Mayorkas’s nomination was held up.

Thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents at the southern border during the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. Images of children being held in separate detention facilities sparked bipartisan outrage, eventually forcing former President Trump to halt the separations.

But the Trump administration struggled to reunite many families, and court documents released in October found that the parents of 545 of the separated migrant children still had not been found.

Biden will also sign an order on Tuesday to address the public charge rule put into place by Trump that limits immigrants ability to get green cards if they were deemed likely to rely on public services like food stamps or other social safety nets.

The rule has been branded a wealth test for immigrants by critics and has been heavily litigated by opponents.

While the orders rescind Trump’s memorandum requiring family sponsors to repay the government if relatives receive public benefits, it stops short of doing so with the public charge rule, instead directing Homeland Security to review the rule.

The third order to be signed on Tuesday is aimed at addressing the root causes of migration that draw individuals from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The situation at the border will not transform overnight, due in large part to the damage done over the last four years,” an administration fact sheet states. “But the President is committed to an approach that keeps our country safe, strong, and prosperous and that also aligns with our values.”

The order also promises a replacement for Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, which forced migrants to apply for asylum from Mexico rather than in the U.S.

The Trump administration returned more than 60,000 asylum-seekers to Mexico under the program, leaving people waiting at the border while their case is adjudicated.

The White House on Monday asked the Supreme Court to cancel its upcoming hearing on the policy, but Tuesday’s orders offered few details on the scope of the policy that would replace it.

One White House official said they would seek a policy “that enables them to pursue their cases and does not mean that they simply languish in Mexico.”

Tuesday’s orders build on initial actions Biden took upon taking office to undo key Trump administration policies. The president rescinded the Trump administration’s travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries and ended a national emergency declaration that had allowed funds to flow to construction of a wall along the southern border.

Biden has also sent a legislative proposal to Congress that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants, invest in technology at the border and send resources to Northern Triangle countries to address poverty, violence and causes of migration.

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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — After five segments of play in the first round of the St. Kitts National Domino Association (SKNDA) tournament currently taking place at the New Town Community Centre, Terminal Boyz Domino Club players remain unbeaten.

When the 12 teams taking part in the competition met on Sunday January 31, Terminal Boyz extended their winning streak by beating Newcomers II Domino Club 26-18 in a game in which Terminal Boyz’s Selwyn Anno and Vincent Bowry won six games and lost two.

Two highly exciting games of the evening saw Til Ah Marning Domino Club fight tooth and nail to overcome a hard-fighting Poor Man Pocket Domino Club 26-24, and Latecomers Domino Club coming through with a narrow 26-23 win over Newcomers I Domino Club.

In other games on Sunday evening, Masters Domino Club beat Spartans Fig Tree Domino Club 26-14, Los Fuertes del Domino beat Eagle Claws Domino Club 28-12, and Lodge Domino Club defeated King Balang Domino Club 28-10.

Points standing after five segments of play: Terminal Boyz 26 points; Poor Man Pocket 21; points; Masters 20 points; Newcomers I 16 points; Til Ah Marning 16 points; Latecomers 15 points; Lodge 15 points; Los Fuertes del Domino 11 points; Eagle Claws 5 points; Spartans Fig Tree 5 points; Newcomers II 5 points: and King Balang 0 points.

The competition, which has been sponsored by the Development Bank of St. Kitts and Nevis – Platinum Sponsor, First Federal Credit Union, Best For Less Trading Ltd, The Craft House, and NAGICO Insurances, will continue on Thursday February 4 at the New Town Community Centre starting at 5:00 p.m. with the teams meeting in the sixth segment of play.

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Jamaica Observer– Jamaica should start getting its shipments of COVID-19 vaccines this month, based on discussions between the Government and the Pan American Organization (PAHO), according to Health and Wellness Minister Dr Christopher Tufton.

He told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that discussions are now under way to iron out the details. Expectations are that the country will be receiving at least enough doses to cover the more than 440,000 people in the categories of Jamaicans health authorities want to receive the shots first.

At a required two doses per person, an estimated 677,033 doses of the vaccine would be needed. Health officials said last week that the use of fixed vaccination centres at hospitals and health centres, as well as mobile teams at outposts to get persons immunised will be utilised.

Jamaica is among 36 countries from the Latin American and Caribbean region that have now received letters from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) notifying them of the estimated number of doses of AstraZeneca vaccine that they could be receiving from the second half of this month through the second quarter of 2021.

PAHO advised on the weekend that the AstraZeneca vaccine, which will be deployed through the COVAX mechanism, is still under review by the World Health Organization (WHO) for emergency use approval.

It said the number of doses and the delivery schedule are still subject to emergency use approval and manufacturing production capacity, as well as subject to establishing supply agreements between the producers, PAHO and UNICEF.

An estimated 35.3 million doses is to be dispatched across the Americas in this first stag

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FLOATING IN A MOST PECULIAR WAY
By Louis Chude-Sokei

NY Times– I was about 10 when I found out that my whole life I’d been saying my name wrong. A friend of my father’s — an “uncle” — had come to town, and my white mom had dressed us up for the occasion in traditional Nigerian dress. My top and wrap skirt were of a gorgeous orange- and red-printed fabric, hand-sewn by a woman from my father’s village in Rivers State. But when this uncle asked me my name, I embarrassed myself and my family by mispronouncing it “Joma.”

“That is not your name,” he replied. “Your name is Ijeoma. You have to know how to say your name. It is a very good Nigerian name.” Suddenly my clothing felt tight and uncomfortable, as if my uncle could see that none of this — the clothing or the name — fit me.

To this day, when people ask me how to pronounce my name, part of me knows that no matter how much I’ve practiced, I still don’t say it right. It is a good Nigerian name, and my father was a good Nigerian, while I am floating in this space just outside.

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In his debut memoir, “Floating in a Most Peculiar Way,” Louis Chude-Sokei writes from that space outside, detailing with unflinching directness the confusion, isolation, horror and bizarre humor of his life as a child born to a high-ranking Biafran major father and a Jamaican mother in the midst of civil war in Nigeria.

Born the day that war was declared in 1967 — “Family legend had it that while she was in labor she could hear the first fruits of the federal government’s bombing campaign against Biafra” — Chude-Sokei, the director of the African-American studies program at Boston University, doesn’t remember being carried away by his mother to Jamaica. By 6 he was living in a “home for left-behind children” in Montego Bay while his mother tried to find work in the United States. “America was a place where people disappeared all the time,” Chude-Sokei writes, “mothers in particular.”

But eventually, after years in this austere and often abusive environment, he joined his mother as an adolescent in Inglewood, Calif.

Chude-Sokei’s prose is both direct and poetic, describing horrific trauma with such flat immediacy that at times I had to set the book down for a moment, just to process what I was reading.

This is a story of a young Black man trying to find himself in a world where he never quite seems to belong. Too African for Jamaica, too Jamaican for America, too American for Nigeria, Chude-Sokei grows up grasping at these various identities in the hopes of finding a Blackness that fits him, as each of these realms places its own, often contradictory, expectations upon him.

I cringed with recognition as Chude-Sokei attempts and fails to escape American racism by embracing his African forebears’ prejudice against Black Americans. But Chude-Sokei resists editorializing. There are no life lessons, no rationalizations of the bigotry and violence that exist in a diaspora so ravaged by white colonialism.

We must look at the author’s story, see how messy it is, and try to figure out why alongside him. Reading this book I wondered if white readers would get its complexity, if they’d be able to reserve judgment. As I reached the end I was anxious for a satisfying resolution, a clear takeaway, to soothe the pain of this uncomfortable journey.

But as I sat with that discomfort I began to laugh at the absurdity of my expectations. How very American to expect a story so wide, so vast, so nuanced to be tied up in a bow. This is not a Hollywood movie; this is a man’s life, and a life like those of so many of us who make up the African diaspora. Herein lies the beauty of “Floating in a Most Peculiar Way”: It reveals how we carry trauma with us, how that trauma can cause us to hurt one another, and how we still love and carry one another with wounds unhealed. I finished this book wanting to know more — about Chude-Sokei’s mother’s story, about my own father’s. There were times when I enjoyed this book and times when I felt like I survived it, but there was never a time when I did not find myself within it. These are words in which those of us who have floated outside for so long can touch down for a bit, and connect.

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HYThe deadliest month of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. ended with some encouraging signs of progress: new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations were plummeting, while vaccinations were picking up speed.

The critical question remains whether America can stay ahead of the fast-spreading mutations of the virus, report Michael Kunzelman and Michelle Smith.

The U.S. death toll has climbed past 443,000, with over 95,000 lives lost in January alone. Deaths are running at about 3,150 per day on average, down slightly, by about 200, from their peak in mid-January.

U.S. Teachers: The pandemic has cut instruction time in America’s schools by as much as half, and many middle school and high school teachers have given up on covering all the material they normally do. Instead, they are cutting lessons. English teachers are deciding which books to skip. History teachers are condensing units. Science teachers are often doing without experiments. Certain topics must be taught because they will appear on important exams. But teachers are largely on their own to make difficult choices on what to prioritize and what to sacrifice, Michael Melia reports.

Italy Reopening: Much of Italy is gingerly reopening from pre-Christmas closures. The Vatican Museums welcomed a trickle of visitors to the Sistine Chapel and locals ordered their cappuccinos at outdoor tables for the first time in weeks. While many European countries remain in hard lockdowns amid surging infections and virus variants, most Italian regions graduated to the coveted “yellow” category of risk.

But Italy is by no means out of the woods. The country is averaging around 12,000-15,000 new confirmed cases and 300-600 COVID-19 deaths each day. But it appears to have avoided the severe post-Christmas surges in Britain and elsewhere thanks to tightened restrictions over the holidays. Trisha Thomas and Elisa Colella report from Rome.

• Tanzania’s health ministry says it has no plans to accept COVID-19 vaccines, just days after the president of the country of 60 million people expressed doubts about the vaccines without offering evidence. The East African government has been widely criticized for its approach to the pandemic.
• World Health Organization experts have visited an animal disease center in the Chinese city of Wuhan as part of their investigation into the origins of the virus.

Does wearing two masks provide more protection?

It depends, but it’s possible that doubling up could help in some situations.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing a cloth mask made with two or more layers, and ensuring it covers your nose and mouth. The agency says it should fit snugly so there aren’t any gaps at the sides of your face.

Wearing just one mask should be enough for most situations, as long as it fits well and isn’t loose, said Dr. David Hamer, an infectious disease expert at Boston University.

“Starting out with a good mask to begin with is going to be key,” Hamer said.

Still, some people might want extra protection if they’re at risk for severe illness if infected or will be in situations where they expect to be around others for extended periods, such as on a plane.

One option in scenarios when you want extra protection is to wear a cloth mask as well as a regular surgical mask, said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco.

Gandhi said that combination — with either mask on top — could help achieve a similar effect as the N95 mask. She recommended the added protection for people who will be indoors in areas where transmission rates are high — which could reflect the circulation of more contagious variants.

Another option Gandhi and a colleague recommend for situations where you want “maximum” protection: A two-layer cloth mask that has a filter material in between.

With single cloth masks for everyday use, Gandhi noted it’s important that they’re made of tightly woven material and have at least two layers, which creates “an obstacle course” that makes it harder for virus-carrying particles to break through.

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