Black Immigrant Daily News

The annual Notting Hill Carnival has returned to the streets of London for the first time since 2019, with more than a million people expected to take in the music, spectacular parades, dancing and food offerings at Europe’s largest street party on Sunday and Monday.

The carnival, which celebrates Caribbean culture at the end of August every year, had to take place online for two years due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The carnival traces its history back to 1958 when Trinidadian human rights activist Claudia Jones began organising a gathering to unify the community after a series of racially motivated attacks on West Indians in west London’s Notting Hill neighbourhood.

The event has grown from a festival drawing several hundred people to a huge annual street party, with tens of thousands of performers in the colourful parade and more than 30 sound systems.

Celebrations began on Saturday night, as more than 1,000 people gathered to watch a steel band competition in west London.

Crowds of young children blowing whistles danced down the streets with their parents on Sunday, traditionally a more family-friendly day than Monday. Some children stood on the doorsteps of their houses waving Jamaican flags.

Pepe Francis heads the Ebony Steelband Trust, which has been performing at the carnival for decades.

“Since the band has started, I’m on my fifth generation of people and there’s been a lot of changes,” he said.

“But our members look forward to the carnival every year and practice takes place regularly from year to year.”

“A lot of people have been waiting for it to come back,” Francis added.

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Scrap Iron Dealers Association president Allan Ferguson. – File photo/Marvin Hamilton

SCRAP Iron Dealers Association president Allan Ferguson said the association had nothing to do with protests along the Solomon Hochoy Highway near Claxton Bay early on Monday morning.

Steel Workers Union president Timothy Bailey said the same on behalf of the Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM).

They made these statements at a news conference in Kelly Village on Monday, in response to comments the Prime Minister made earlier in a Facebook post.

Dr Rowley said, “So they have made their move. Dump truckloads of sand and debris on both sides of the highway and block traffic!

“What a wonderful idea of leadership from Roget and the followers including the UNC!

“The marauding gangs of metal thieves threatened to, but did not complete the job of shutting down the country, so the leaders are helping them to get that done.”

Ferguson said the association is not about shutting down the country.

“I am not a criminal.”

Ferguson also said he was not following anyone else’s agenda other than his association’s ongoing call to urge Government to lift its six-month ban on scrap-iron export.

While he controls some people affected by the ban, which is seen as tantamount to a closure of the industry, Ferguson admitted he does not have control over others.

Speaking on JTUM’s behalf, Bailey said, “We were not part of any action taken this morning.”

He reiterated a previous position stated publicly by JTUM president Ancel Roget that JTUM does not condone any illegal action, and its actions take place within the ambit of the law.

Bailey said he was appalled by Rowley’s post, and urged the PM to demonstrate more mature leadership.

“We can’t broad-brush everyone for the actions of a few.”

Ferguson also announced that on Friday, the association will stage a motorcade from the Caroni Bird Sanctuary at 10 am to Port of Spain, to continue its campaign for the industry’s reopening.

“Let them try to stop that.”

The association tried to stage a motorcade from the Brian Lara Stadium in Tarouba to Port of Spain on August 24 but was only given police permission to go as far as Barataria.

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Maryland’s highest court has ruled that Washington, DC-area sniper Lee Boyd Malvo must be resentenced, because of US Supreme Court decisions relating to constitutional protections for juveniles made after Malvo was sentenced to six life sentences without the possibility of parole.

In its 4-3 ruling, however, the Maryland Court of Appeals said it’s very unlikely Malvo would ever be released from custody, because he is also serving separate life sentences for murders in Virginia.

“As a practical matter, this may be an academic question in Mr Malvo’s case, as he would first have to be granted parole in Virginia before his consecutive life sentences in Maryland even begin,” Judge Robert McDonald wrote in the majority opinion released Friday.

McDonald wrote that it’s ultimately not up to the Court of Appeals to decide the appropriate sentence for Malvo, or whether he should ever be released from his Maryland sentences.

“We hold only that the Eighth Amendment requires that he receive a new sentencing hearing at which the sentencing court, now cognizant of the principles elucidated by the Supreme Court, is able to consider whether or not he is constitutionally eligible for life without parole under those decisions,” McDonald wrote.

Malvo, 37, is now confined at the Red Onion State Prison in Virginia.

Malvo and his mentor, John Allen Muhammad, shot people in Virginia, Maryland and Washington as they pumped gas, loaded packages into their cars and went about their everyday business during a three-week period in 2002. Malvo was 17 at the time; Muhammad was 41.

Muhammad was sentenced to death and was executed in Virginia in 2009.

In Maryland, Malvo voluntarily testified against Muhammad. In 2006, Malvo pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder in Montgomery County in the suburbs of the nation’s capital.

At his sentencing that year, the prosecutor stated that Malvo, once under the sway of an “evil man”, had changed and “grown tremendously” since his participation in the crimes, according to the Court of Appeals ruling.

The ruling said Malvo’s sentence was “consistent with the pertinent State statute and with the advisory State sentencing guidelines at that time.”

“Since then, however, the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment does not permit a sentence of life without parole for a juvenile homicide offender if a sentencing court determines that the offender’s crime was the result of transient immaturity, as opposed to permanent incorrigibility,” the ruling said.

The ruling also noted that the Supreme Court has held that the legal constraint applies retroactively and applies to Malvo’s case.

Judges Jonathan Biran, Brynja Booth and Joseph Getty joined McDonald in the majority. Judges Shirley Watts, Michele Hotten and Steven Gould dissented.

Watts wrote that the sentencing court took Malvo’s status as a juvenile into account.

“The record demonstrates that Mr Malvo received a personalised sentencing procedure at which his youth and its attendant characteristics were considered, and the circuit court was aware that it had the discretion to impose a lesser sentence,” Watts wrote.

Hotten wrote that any alleged finding of corrigibility “did not render petitioner’s sentences unconstitutional disproportionate as applied”.

“Rather the proportionality of Petitioner’s sentences must be weighed against the severity of his crimes,” Hotten wrote. “Petitioner committed some of the worst crimes in the history of the State. It was not grossly disproportionate that a heavy penalty was imposed.”

By BRIAN WITTE

Associated Press

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Veteran broadcaster, Francois St Juste has died

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