The founder of Hear the Children’s Cry Betty-Anne Blaine says child poverty is one of the serious root problems affecting the nation’s children.
Blaine, who was addressing a virtual meeting of Kiwanis Club of New Kingston recently, noted that approximately 45 per cent of the nation’s children have experience poverty.
“If we are serious about fixing this problem of our children — the abuse, the neglect — we are going to have to understand what we are dealing with. Child poverty is one of the root problems. If there is an indicator in our country of the two Jamaicas in which we live, the child population is perhaps the most blatant indicator to me,” she argued.
Making reference to Secret Gardens, a monument in downtown Kingston which has the names of children who died violently since 2004, Blaine pointed out that there are some issues that affect the children of the poor and working class, but do not affect children from the middle and upper classes.
“I would say that over 90 per cent of the names of children on that monument are children of the poor and working classes in our country. Children who die in fires, who go missing, who are abducted and murdered and typically those children who die in motor vehicle accidents — a lot of them are in buses or taxis are mainly children of the poor and working classes. Those are the names on that monument,” said Blaine.
Blaine also used her address to renew her call for a child emergency summit.
“We are saying that the situation with Jamaican children now is so serious that we believe we need an Emergency Child Summit, where we can bring two groups of persons together. One group would include people working in the trenches, know the problems and have solutions, and the other group would include people who can provide resources,” she said
“It’s not a talk shop, it is a summit where we bring critical stakeholders together, to look at the problems and see if we can come up with one solution that will radically or dramatically change the situation for children in a positive way,” she added.
CNN- Several Canadian provinces are cautiously announcing reopening plans as the country slowly recovers from the third wave of Covid-19.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, said Tuesday that the infection rate has fallen about 40% since the peak of activity in mid-April.
However, she said that hospitalizations and critical care admissions have only dropped by 15% and 10%, respectively.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he was hopeful the accelerating pace of vaccination would enable the country to return to a more normal way of life by fall.
“We will have more than enough doses in Canada by the end of June to give a first dose to every Canadian who wants one, and second doses will continue to ramp up through June and into the summer,” Trudeau said during a press conference in Ottawa Tuesday.
Health Canada said more than half of all Canadians are now partially vaccinated but less 5 percent are fully accinated
With new, daily cases of Covid-19 dropping, both British Columbia and Quebec announced reopening plans Tuesday that were still cautious compared to the US and the UK.
In British Columbia, residents can now meet a few friends at a restaurant and dine indoors again and, significantly, people can start inviting visitors into their homes again.
The provincial government laid out a phased-in re-opening that will allow for more organized sports, travel and larger indoor gatherings later in spring and early summer.
Quebec announced it would finally lift a months-long curfew throughout the province this Friday, restaurant patios can also reopen everywhere and small social gatherings outside can resume.
But it was a different picture in Manitoba, where the province is in the middle of a devastating third wave. To cope with rising intensive care admissions, public health officials said they will continue to transfer patients out of province and are even looking into the possibility of sending patients to North Dakota for treatment, but only if absolutely necessary.
According to Johns Hopkins University data, Manitoba currently has the highest rate of infection of any province or state over the last seven days.
“This reckless behavior of some is threatening the ability of our health care system to care for those most in need including themselves,” Brian Pallister, Manitoba’s premier, said at a news conference Tuesday regarding people flouting Covid-19 restrictions.
Cuba charged has said the Biden administration has continued the policies of former U.S. President Donald Trump against Havana with a decision to maintain a Trump-era determination that it is not fully cooperating in the fight against terrorism.
“I hereby determine and certify to the Congress that the following countries are not cooperating fully with United States antiterrorism efforts,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a brief note, which listed Cuba along with Iran, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Syria and Venezuela.
The note was signed by Blinken on May 14 but was not released until Tuesday.
“The slander is surprising and irritating as are the application of Trump’s policy and his 243 sanctions,” the Communist-run country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, tweeted.
Asked to explain the U.S. decision, a U.S. State Department representative said on Tuesday: “In making the annual determination on ‘not cooperating fully,’ we undertake a review of a country’s overall level of cooperation in our efforts to fight terrorism.”
The State Department representative added the decision was made under a “separate statutory authority” than the one for state sponsors of terrorism.
U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, vowed during his campaign to reverse some of Republican Trump’s Cuba measures that “have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.”
He was vice president when former President Barack Obama agreed to a historic detente with then Cuban President Raul Castro and in 2016. Trump, after taking office in 2017, re-imposed many of the restrictions on Cuba business and travel that Obama had eased or lifted.
Those who supported detente on and off the Caribbean island had high hopes Biden would quickly reverse Trump’s policy, but his administration has said a shift in policy toward Cuba is not among its top foreign priorities.
Calling human rights a core pillar of U.S. Cuba policy, a senior White House official told Reuters this month that Biden remains committed to promises of loosening the flow of remittances from Cuban Americans and easing restrictions on family travel to the island. But the official declined to say when such moves might happen. read more
Trump designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism just before leaving office, a designation the Biden administration says it is reviewing. Trump set the stage for putting Havana on the U.S. blacklist when in May 2020 he placed it back on the list of countries that do not cooperate fully with U.S. efforts to counter terrorism.
“This is odd since Cuba is already on the state supporter of terrorism list, which is obviously a more severe designation than non-cooperating,” said William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University in Washington, referring to Blinken’s note. He added the listing only restricted arms sales and had to be renewed by May 15.
Nevertheless, numerous experts said it was one more signal that Biden was not Obama when it comes to Cuba.
“Biden has been largely inactive and silent on Cuba policy, indicating a lack of shift away from Trump’s posture,” said Andrew Zimbalist, a Cuba expert at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.
“To my knowledge, this is the first proactive policy step and, hence, appears to be a harbinger of a non-return to Obama’s engagement,” he added.
Vanesa protects herself from the hail of tear gas, rocks and fire hose streams that often mark protests in Colombia with just safety glasses, a helmet, a bandanna over her nose and mouth and a flimsy black wooden shield.
The mother-of-three is part of a group of 10 women calling themselves “Front Line Moms” who attend the protests to protect youth from alleged police violence.
The Andean country has seen nearly a month of demonstrations and thousands of road blockades. Though protest leaders reached pre-agreements for talks with the government late on Monday, they have promised marches against inequality and police abuse, among other issues, will continue. read more
“If our children go to fight, if our children go to march, we mothers will support them and together with them struggle,” the group chanted at a recent protest.
Vanesa, 39, lost her job as a tango dancer because of the coronavirus pandemic and began selling coffee on the street.
“We’re a group of single moms who are now trying to fight for the violated rights of young people,” said Vanesa, who declined to share her surname.
The group has appeared in social media videos, one of which shows a sound grenade thrown by police exploding near them during a demonstration.
Vanesa said the moms were inspired to take action after they attended a protest where the national riot squad tear-gassed a group of protesting mothers and children.
“That was the spark to decide we were going to do something different,” she said.
The government says just 17 deaths are directly connected with marches, while human rights groups claim dozens more. The attorney general’s office says it has found 290 people reported missing and is seeking 129 others.
Entire families have joined marches galvanized by poverty, which shot up to 42.5% last year, and high unemployment which have aggravated already-deep inequalities.
“We’re tired of there not being work, of there not being healthcare, of the violation of our rights even to protest,” Vanesa said, as protesters lined up for a meal in southern Bogota, observed by police.
Other similar mothers’ groups have sprung up in cities, including western Pasto.
Sinaloa’s state security secretary, Cristóbal Castañeda, said Soto had been on leave and was returning from a trip to see his family when he was ambushed.
Mr Castañeda said Soto was travelling with his bodyguards but had decided to keep a “low profile” and travelled in a “discreet car” when he was attacked.
Last year, more than 500 police officers were murdered in Mexico with many targeted by the country’s powerful criminal gangs and drug-trafficking cartels.
BBC- Sixteen people, including at least two children, have been killed in a rebel attack in Peru, the country’s defence minister has confirmed.
The far-left Shining Path guerrilla group says it was behind the attack.
It left pamphlets at the scene ordering people not to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
The Maoist rebel group lost much of its power after the arrest of its leader in 1992 but remnants are still active in Peru’s coca-producing region.
The government says the Shining Path has since turned into a criminal group engaged in drug trafficking.
What happened?
A local official said he had been alerted to an attack in the village of San Miguel del Ene on Sunday evening local time.
He said he found bodies strewn across the floor of two bars on opposite banks of a small river. He told local media that the bodies had bullet holes and that some of them, including those of two children, had been burned.
Initial reports spoke of 18 bodies, which was later revised down to 14. But Defence Minister Nuria Esparch said that following the arrival of the security forces at the site on Monday, she could confirm that 16 people had been killed.
Peru’s armed forces said that next to the bodies pamphlets signed by the Central Committee of the Militarised Communist Party of Peru – the official name of an offshoot of the Shining Path – had been found warning people not to vote in the upcoming presidential election on 6 June.
The pamphlets also said that the group would “clean” the area of “informants and traitors” and other “parasites”.
Moderna moves closer to offering vaccine to 12- to 17-year-olds
Moderna announced on Tuesday that studies had found that its COVID-19 vaccine was 100 percent effective at stopping infection in adolescents aged 12 to 17.
The company intends to submit its data for the age group to global regulators, including the FDA, in early June.
The studies included 3,732 participants aged 12 to 17 and no cases of COVID-19 were found in any vaccinated participants. “No significant safety concerns” were identified.
The vaccine was 93 percent effective after the first dose and 100 percent effective after the second.
“We are encouraged that mRNA-1273 was highly effective at preventing COVID-19 in adolescents,” Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a statement. “It is particularly exciting to see that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine can prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
What this means: FDA’s emergency authorization for Moderna to be given to 12- to 17-year-olds would open up more opportunities for older students to get vaccinated before the next school year starts. The FDA has already granted emergency authorization for the Moderna vaccine to be given to those 18 and older and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to be given to those 12 and older. Pfizer and its partner BioNTech received the emergency authorization for 12- to 15-year-olds about two weeks ago, after the FDA permitted it to be given to those 16 and older in December.
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Big Bucks Vaccine Lottereies Grow
States are increasingly turning to lotteries as a way to try to get hesitant people vaccinated against the coronavirus and boost lagging numbers.
New York and Maryland on Thursday announced that residents who get the COVID-19 vaccine will be eligible for prize money, with Oregon unveiling similar plans on Friday. All three states are following in the footsteps of Ohio, which launched a lottery-focused campaign earlier this month.
Health officials in the Buckeye State are already reporting some promising results: Vaccinations for people 16 and older increased 28 percent the weekend after the lottery announcement, compared to the previous weekend.
Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), said vaccinations had been trending down before the lottery.
“Really the only thing that has changed was the availability of the Vax-a-Million incentive,” Tierney said.
Vaccinated residents in Ohio will be entered to win one of five $1 million prizes.
The approach is garnering interest in other parts of the country. About 10 other states have talked to DeWine or his staff about the lottery incentive, Tierney said.
The White House also gave its support to the idea on Friday.
“From the data we’ve seen, they appear to be working,” White House senior adviser for the COVID-19 response Andy Slavitt said during a press briefing.
“I think the reason they work is because the vast number of people who are not yet vaccinated are actually not opposed to getting vaccinated,” he added. “They’re just not prioritizing it very high. There are other things going on in their lives. Things that draw attention to it, like the lotteries in those states you mentioned, are, not surprisingly, very effective. And so we’re enthusiastic.”
Health officials are looking for new ways to spur people to get vaccinated, now that the most eager Americans have already received their shots. Nationally, vaccinations have fallen from over 3 million per day in April to about 1.8 million per day, according to Our World in Data.
Still, some experts cautioned that the lotteries are not a cure-all. While lotteries can prompt people who have not gotten around to getting a vaccine yet, they do not address underlying issues like concerns about safety or worries about taking time off work to get vaccinated.
“It doesn’t at all deal with the structural obstacles that might still be there,” said Micah Berman, associate professor of public health and law at The Ohio State University.
“It certainly creates a buzz. It just can’t be the only thing that the state does,” he added.
While there appears to be a short-term increase in vaccinations after the announcement, he noted, it is also unclear whether that will be sustained over the longer term.
“If someone is concerned about the safety of the vaccine, will a lottery push them over that tipping point such that they would get the vaccine? I think we’ll need to see,” said William Moss, executive director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University. “My guess right.
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US achieves full vaccinations for half of adults
CDC data showed the U.S. reached a huge milestone with its COVID-19 vaccination effort on Tuesday, with half of the nation’s adults being considered fully vaccinated.
Fifty percent, or more than 129 million, of Americans 18 and older are considered fully vaccinated.
A person is considered fully vaccinated in the U.S. two weeks after receiving their second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines or two weeks after receiving the only dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
What’s next: President Biden’s next target is to ensure that 70 percent of adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine by the Fourth of July. Tuesday’s data shows 61.6 percent of adults, amounting to more than 158 million, have received at least one dose.
The U.S. is also nearing half of its total population having received at least one dose of the vaccine, as Tuesday’s data shows 49.5 percent of Americans have reached this point.
But vaccinations have slowed in recent weeks after the most eager recipients received their vaccines, prompting states to institute incentives, including lotteries, to encourage unvaccinated people to get their shots.
CDC identifies only 10,000 COVID-19 infections in fully vaccinated, but likely an undercount
More than 10,000 fully vaccinated people in the U.S. have experienced a “breakthrough” COVID-19 infection, according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study.
According to the CDC, a total of 10,262 vaccine breakthrough infections had been reported from 46 U.S. states and territories as of April 30, out of the approximately 101 million people who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 at the time.
The agency noted, however, that the breakthrough number in the report is likely a substantial undercount.
State health departments voluntarily report vaccine breakthrough infections to the CDC, and people voluntarily report infections to states, so the data might not be complete or representative.
Many people with vaccine breakthrough infections, especially those who are asymptomatic or who experience mild illness, might not seek testing, CDC said.
Going forward, the CDC is limiting the monitoring of people who have been infected while vaccinated. The agency is only sequencing a limited number of the cases, which has drawn concern from scientists. CDC said only 5 percent of breakthrough cases were sequenced.
In addition, beginning May 1 the CDC shifted from monitoring all reported breakthroughs to only those that result in hospitalization or death. The agency said the narrowed focus means only the cases of “highest clinical and public health significance” get reported.
Why it matters: Tracking and sequencing help identify who might be more at risk, and whether certain variants can escape the vaccine’s neutralizing effects. Scientists have questioned the benefit of limiting surveillance, when casting a wider net would likely be more beneficial.
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Trump on Wuhan lab: Now everyone agrees ‘I was right’
Former President Trump on Tuesday took a victory lap for his assertion that the coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, and defended using the term “Chinese virus,” which has been criticized as racist and blamed in part for a spike in violence against Asian Americans.
“Now everybody is agreeing that I was right when I very early on called Wuhan as the source of COVID-19, sometimes referred to as the China Virus,” Trump said in a statement.
Top U.S. public health officials and experts are increasingly lending credibility to the need for a deeper investigation into the origins of the coronavirus, but so far there is no definitive proof the virus leaked from a lab.
Experts and officials have also noted that even if the virus escaped from a lab, that doesn’t mean it was manufactured in one.
Still, Trump says he’s vindicated.
“To me it was obvious from the beginning but I was badly criticized, as usual. Now they are all saying ‘He was right.’ Thank you!” Trump added.
Keeps using that term: The World Health Organization last February urged people to avoid terms like the “Wuhan virus” or the “Chinese virus,” fearing it could spike a backlash against Asians.
Trump never followed that advice though, and researchers have found his tweets led to an increase in anti-Asian backlash. Last week, he was sued by a civil rights group for calling COVID-19 the “China virus.”
The Manhattan district attorney has convened a grand jury that is expected to weigh any criminal evidence against former President Trump, the Trump Organization and top executives of his company and decide whether to issue indictments, according to The Washington Post.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s office has reportedly been investigating an array of potential financial misconduct, including criminal fraud.
News of the grand jury is the latest sign of a quickening investigative pace for Vance’s probe, which is unfolding alongside an overlapping inquiry by the New York attorney general, whose offices are now coordinating efforts.
Representatives for Trump and the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A spokesman for Vance’s office declined to comment when asked by The Hill, and New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The grand jury is expected to hear several legal matters in addition to potential evidence of questionable financial activity linked to the former president and the Trump Organization, according to the Washington Post, which said the panel will gather three days a week for six months.
Among the millions of pages of documents in evidence are eight years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns, which Vance’s office obtained in February after a long legal battle.
One theory is that the company inflated the value of assets to get more favorable terms for bank loans, insurance and tax breaks, and deflated their value to reduce the amount owed in real estate taxes.
Investigators are also looking into possible tax fraud related to Seven Springs estate, a New York property in the Trump Organization’s portfolio, as well as hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, an adult film star who says she had an affair with Trump, which he denies.
Another angle prosecutors are reportedly pursuing is whether Trump’s business gave employees benefits instead of higher salaries as a way to lower the company’s payroll tax burden.
Among the alleged recipients are Trump’s longtime chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and his family members, who reportedly received heavily discounted or free access to Trump-owned apartments in Manhattan.
Prosecutors reportedly aim to “flip” Weisselberg, meaning gain his cooperation as a witness against the former president and his company. As a top Trump executive for four decades, Weisselberg is thought to be a potentially key source of information for investigators.
An attorney for Weisselberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Senate has voted to confirm Kristen Clarke as the new head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division in a tight 51-48 vote, with Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) the only Republican to cross party lines and vote for her.
Clarke will be the first Black woman to lead the influential wing of the Justice Department and will serve as assistant attorney general for civil rights.
The civil rights division’s tasks include investigating local law enforcement agencies and taking on state voting restrictions around the country.
The confirmation was held on the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was convicted in April.
Republicans opposed Clarke’s nomination, painting her as anti-police and radical, while Democrats dismissed such arguments as smear tactics.
The nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee was deadlocked at 11-11, but that does not prevent Clarke’s nomination from going to the floor.
Clarke during her confirmation hearing in April said she did not support “defunding the police.”
“I do support finding strategies to ensure that law enforcement can carry out their jobs more safely and effectively, and channeling resources to emotional health treatment and other severely under-resourced areas, I think, is one path forward,” she said at the time.
Until being nominated for the senior Justice Department position, Clarke was the president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
In that role, she was a staunch advocate for the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would revise the formula that drove the federal preclearance present in the original Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court in 2013 ruled the formula outdated and therefore unconstitutional, though Chief Justice John Roberts gave Congress the green light to update the formula.
The battle over Clarke’s nomination echoed the fight over Vanita Gupta’s confirmation battle for the No. 3 slot at Justice.
Gupta was confirmed in a 51-49 vote, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) the only GOP crossover vote.
Gupta and Clarke both had the backing of law enforcement groups, even as conservative lawmakers sought to paint them as anti-police.
St. Kitts and Nevis will undergo a nightly curfew Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Dr Timothy Harris has announced from 11:00 pm to 5:00 am starting Tuesday night.
Dr Harris addressing the nation Tuesday made the announcement noting it came from recommendations from health experts.
He said the recommendations included 50% passengers on public transport, strict adherence to non-pharmaceutical measures a suspension of contact spots are suspended for the next two weeks.
Dr Harris announced that School closed for the next two weeks and no local exams will be administered. He said alternative arrangements for CXC exams are being discussed.
He also noted that no mass events will be allowed and that funerals must adhere to COVID-19 protocols.
Dr Harris also disclosed that only fully vaccinated travellers will be allowed entry into SKN with an exemption to be considered for citizens and residents.
He noted they have also extended hours for administering vaccines.
