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British singer Adele is reportedly engaged to sports superstar agent Rich Paul. News of the engagement was shared on Sunday by a celebrity gossip blog,
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Retired dancehall artist Mr. Lexx says Beenie Man didn’t just bite his style but also came for his head back in the day.
Mr. Lexx claims that Beenie Man was not a big fan of him coming into the game, changing things up, and even opening doors for younger artists, and he also tried to start a feud that he decided to squash.
While speaking on the Tongue Talk Podcast with Razor B, the artist shared that there was a lot of gatekeeping before he had his “buss” in music, but he decided to change things up after finding success. This did not come across well with others, he said.
“It was a lot of first in the industry. First of all, before me buss, ah one artist them use to buss a year. Thru the impact that him (Bounty Killer) and Beenie Man dem have on the industry, them level one artist a year. Before me buss, it was zebra, before Zebra buss it was Vegas, before Vegas buss it was Red Rat, before Red Rat buss it was Goofy…when me buss mi come change that. Me come say ‘yow, eh eh, seven or eight ah we can be hot at the same time’… me start par wid artist Chaka Diamond, Danny English, Kiprich,” Mr. Lexx says.
Mr. Lexx added, “me come in and change da whole thing deh weh dem feel that one artist can buss… it cause three big artists [to] come at me. Three of the biggest artists. Two of them, me go back to them and say ‘yow bredda you ah mi don and suh.’”
The artist revealed that Beenie Man also started a feud with him over the changes he made and even directed a diss song at him, “World Gone Mad,” released in 1999.
Mr. Lexx says Beenie Man stole his style of using “the God voice” by deejaying like him and even recorded a song that sounded like him.
“Beenie Man shoot at me and ah deejay like me… Beenie Man yuh ah my Gad but me and you can’t have that problem there bad man,” Mr. Lexx says was his response to Beenie Man, which quickly fizzled the beef.
The other artist who came at him was Mad Cobra, he revealed, but he quickly quashed any tensions from becoming a feud.
“You see this thing when them say when you get to a certain level your idols become your rivals, that’s true. I lived that,” the dancehall veteran said.
Mr. Lexx did not name the other artist, whom he referred to only as ‘such man.’
Dancehall artist Mr. Lexx, formerly known as Lexxus, is one of the most recognized names in the dancehall genre from the late 1990s to the early 2000s era. The veteran deejay, whose real name is Christopher George Palmer, was one of the most prolific deejays to rise out of Kingston in the late 90s when dancehall was at its peak. His sudden emergence on the scene at the time earned him a lot of enemies, including his famous feud with Bounty Killer.
Lexx is best known for songs like “Full Hundred,” “Ring Mi Cellie,” “Cook,” and “Good Hole.” Over the years since the peak of his career, the artist has transitioned into acting, modeling, and TV, among other segments of the entertainment industry.
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When machine gun fire erupts outside the barbed-wire fences surrounding Fontaine Hospital Center, the noise washes over a cafeteria full of tired, scrub-clad medical staff.
And no one bats an eye.
Gunfire is part of daily life here in Cit? Soleil – the most densely populated part of the Haitian capital and the heart of Port-au-Prince’s gang wars.
As gangs tighten their grip on Haiti, many medical facilities in the Caribbean nation’s most violent areas have closed, leaving Fontaine as one of the last hospitals and social institutions in one of the world’s most lawless places.
“We’ve been left all alone,” said Loubents Jean Baptiste, the hospital’s medical director.
Fontaine can mean the difference between life and death for hundreds of thousands of people just trying to survive, and it offers a small oasis of calm in a city that has descended into chaos.
The danger in the streets complicates everything: When gangsters with bullet wounds show up at the gates, doctors ask them to check their automatic weapons at the door as if they were coats. Doctors cannot return safely to homes in areas controlled by rival gangs and must live in hospital dormitories. Patients who are too scared to seek basic care due to the violence arrive in increasingly dire condition.
Access to health care has never been easy in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. But late last year it suffered a one-two punch.
One of Haiti’s most powerful gang federations, G9, blockaded Port-au-Prince’s most important fuel terminal, essentially paralyzing the country for two months.
At the same time, a cholera outbreak made worse by gang-imposed mobility restrictions brought the Haitian health care system to its knees.
The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker T?rk, said this month that violence between G9 and a rival gang has turned Cit? Soleil into “a living nightmare.”
Reminders of the desperation are never far away. An armored truck driven by hospital leaders passes by hundreds of mud pies baking in the harsh sun to fill the stomachs of people who can’t afford food. Black spray-painted “G9” tags dot nearby buildings, a warning of who’s in charge.
In a February report, the U.N. documented 263 murders between July and December in just the small area surrounding the hospital, noting that violence has “severely hampered” access to health services.
That was the case for 34-year-old Millen Siltant, a street vendor who sits in a hospital hallway waiting for a checkup, her hands nervously clutching medical paperwork over her pregnant belly.
Nearby, hospital staff play with nearly 20 babies and toddlers — orphans whose parents were killed in the gang wars.
Normally, Siltant would travel an hour across the city by colorful buses known as tap-taps for her prenatal checkups at Fontaine. There she would join other pregnant women waiting for exams and mothers cradling malnourished children in line for weigh-ins.
All the clinics in the area where she lives have closed, she said. For two months last year she couldn’t leave the house because gangs holding the city hostage made travel through the dusty, winding streets nearly impossible.
“Some days, there’s no transportation because there’s no fuel,” she said. “Sometimes there’s a shooting on the street and you spend hours unable to go outside … Now I’m worried because the doctor says I need to get a C-section.”
Health care providers told the Associated Press that the crisis has caused more bullet and burn wounds. It has also fueled an uptick in less predictable conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and sexually transmitted infections, largely because of slashed access to primary care.
Pregnant women are disproportionately affected. Gynecologist Phalande Joseph sees the repercussions every day when she leaves her hospital dormitory and pulls on her light blue scrubs.
The young Haitian doctor snaps on a pair of white surgical gloves and makes an incision into a pregnant patient’s belly with a steady hand that only comes with practice.
She works swiftly, conversing with medical staff in her native Creole, when a burst of wailing erupts from a baby girl nurses swaddle in pink blankets.
Operations like these have grown more common, Joseph explains in between C-sections, because the very conditions that have intensified amid the turmoil can turn a pregnancy from high risk to deadly.
This year, 10,000 pregnant women in Haiti could face fatal obstetric complications due to the crisis, according to U.N. data.
Those risks are only compounded by the fact that many of Joseph’s patients are sexual violence survivors or widows whose husbands were killed by gangs. Permeating the struggle is an air of fear.
“If they start having contractions at 3 a.m., they are terribly scared of coming here because it is too early, and they are scared something might happen to them because of the gangs,” Joseph said. “Many times when they arrive, the baby is already suffering, and it is too late so we need to do C-section.”
That became most evident to Joseph last October when four men came rushing to a hospital carrying a woman giving birth stretched out on top of a door. Because of gang lockdowns, the woman couldn’t find any transportation to the hospital after her water broke.
“These four men were not even her family. They found her delivering on the street … When I heard she lost the baby, it shook me,” she said. “The situation in my country is so bad, and there is not much we can do about it.”
Started as a one-room clinic to provide basic medical services to a community with no other resources, Fontaine Hospital Center was opened in 1991 by Jose Ulysse.
Ulysse and his family have worked to expand the hospital year after year. They fight to keep their doors open, Ulysse said.
Even when firefights arrive at the doors of Fontaine, the hospital reopens few hours later. If it were to close for longer, administrators worry that it could lose momentum and would be hard to reopen.
Today, it’s the only facility to perform C-sections and other high-level surgeries in Cit? Soleil.
Because most of the people in the area live in extreme poverty, the hospital charges little to nothing to patients even as it struggles to purchase advanced medical equipment with funds from UNICEF and other international aid providers. Between 2021 and 2022, the facility saw a 70% jump in the number of patients.
The hospital possesses a certain level of protection because it accepts all patients.
“We don’t pick sides. If the two groups face off, and they arrive at the hospital like any other person, we treat them,” Jean Baptiste said.
Even the gangs understand the importance of medical care, he added. Yet the walls still feel like they’re closing in.
Rising carjackings of medical vehicles have made it impossible for Fontaine to invest in an ambulance. When ambulance operators are called from areas like Cit? Soleil, they offer a simple response: “Sorry, we can’t go there.”
Fontaine’s mobile clinic can now travel little more than a few blocks outside the facility’s walls.
Doctors worry, but they keep working, just as they’ve always done.
“You say, well, I have to work. So let God protect me,” Jean Baptiste said. “As this situation gets worse, we go out and decide to face the risks. … We have to keep pushing forward.”
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday stressed the importance of legal challenges against “climate-wrecking corporations” like fossil-fuel producers, ratcheting up his call for the fight against climate change — this time before the U.N.’s top human rights body.
Guterres opened the latest session of the Human Rights Council, part of an address that decried summary executions, torture and sexual violence in places like Ukraine; antisemitism, anti-Muslim bigotry and the persecution of Christians; inequality and threats to free expression, among other issues.
Guterres also sought to undergird the concept of human rights — which have faced “public disregard and private disdain — and tie them together with environmental concerns.
“Human rights are not a luxury that can be left until we find a solution to the world’s other problems. They are THE solution to many of the world’s other problems,” he said. “From the climate emergency to the misuse of technology, the answers to today’s crises are found in human rights.”
Guterres has previously said that fossil-fuel producers need to be held to account, but pressing the issue before the U.N.’s top human rights body — made up of 47 member countries, plus scores of observer states — raises the stakes.
Nearly half the world’s population — 3.5 billion people — live in “climate hot spots” that are “fast becoming human rights disaster zones where floods, droughts and storms mean people are 15 times more likely to die of climate impacts,” he said.
Then, he emphasized the role of the International Court of Justice, the U.N.’s main judicial body, to improve accountability for the most serious crimes — and said he welcomed moves toward accountability for human rights abuses “including those committed by the private sector.”
“Legal challenges against climate-wrecking corporations are an important step forward,” Guterres said.
“Fossil fuel producers and their financial backers need to understand a crucial truth: pursuing mega-profits when so many people are losing their lives and rights, today and tomorrow, is completely unacceptable,” he added.
The comments came as the council opened its “high-level segment” at the start of its longest-ever session — more than five weeks. The presidents of Congo, Montenegro and Colombia were also speaking Monday, followed by envoys including the foreign ministersof France, Germany and Iran.
The session comes as the world grapples with rights concerns including Russia’s war in Ukraine, repression of dissent in Russia and Belarus, new violence between Palestinians and Israelis, and efforts to solidify a peace deal in Ethiopia that ended two years of conflict between the national government and rebels in the Tigray region.
Proponents say the Geneva-based rights body has grown in importance as a diplomatic venue because the U.N. Security Council in New York has been increasingly divided in recent years because of a major rift between affiliations among its five permanent members: China and Russia on one side, and the U.K., France and the U.S. onthe other.
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Three countries, this week alone, have reported outbreaks, WHO cholera team leader Philippe Barboza told reporters at a press conference on Friday.
For the first time, WHO is asking donors for help to fight the outbreaks, he said.
Right now, 22 countries across the world are fighting outbreaks of the acute diarrhoeal infection caused by eating or drinking contaminated food or water. Cholera cases climbed in 2022, following years of falling numbers of cases, and the trend is expected to continue into this year, he said.
He said cases have been reported in five of the six regions where WHO operates. The latest WHO global overview published in early February showed the situation has further deteriorated since 2022.
Poverty, disasters, conflict and climate change consequences continue to be driving factors alongside a lack of access to safe water and sanitation, Dr. Barboza said.
Limited vaccine supplies
“An unprecedented situation requires an unprecedented response,” he said, drawing attention to the limited availability of vaccines, medicines, and testing kits.
Only 37 million doses are available in 2023, he said. More doses are expected to be available by next year.
As a result of the current global surge, WHO is, for the first time ever, appealing to donors to support a $25 million fund to help to address cholera outbreaks and save lives, he said.
Prevention is key, he said, noting that nearly half of the world lacks access to safely managed sanitation.
“Access to safe drinking water and sanitation are internationally recognized human rights,” he said. “Making these rights a reality will also end cholera.”
Outbreak in Africa
An exponential rise in the number of cholera cases in Africa includes an outbreak in Mozambique, which is also grappling with severe storms brought on by cyclone Freddy. The first case of cholera in the current outbreak was reported to the Ministry of Health and WHO from Lago district in Niassa province in September.
As of 19 February, Mozambique reported a cumulative total of 5,237 suspected cases and 37 deaths. All six cholera-affected provinces are flood-prone areas, and WHO anticipates that more will be affected as the rainy season continues.
Considering the frequency of cross-border movement and the history of cross-border spread of cholera during this outbreak, WHO considers the risk of further disease spread as very high at national and regional levels.
An estimated 26,000 cases and 660 deaths have been reported as of 29 January 2023 in 10 African countries facing outbreaks since the beginning of the year, WHO said. In 2022, nearly 80,000 cases and 1,863 deaths were recorded from 15 affected countries.
Multiple countries affected
Neighbouring Malawi is facing the deadliest cholera outbreak in two decades, and cases are being reported in other countries, including Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, WHO reported.
The UN health agency said challenges include climate change, which has led to drought or flooding in parts of Africa, resulting in increased population displacement and reduced access to clean water.
Worldwide, people in Haiti, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and Syria, among others, are also affected by outbreaks.
Global threat
Cholera remains a global threat to public health, WHO said. In 2017, affected countries, donors, and partners of the Global Task Force on Cholera Control launched a renewed global cholera control strategy, Ending Cholera: A Global Roadmap to 2030. It aims at reducing cholera deaths by 90 per cent over the next decade.
While the number of cases had been declining, WHO remains concerned about the current surge. Researchers estimate that every year, there are between 1.3 and 4 million cases and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths worldwide due to the infection.
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One month after the government of Guyana demolished homes in a community called Cane View on the outskirt of the capital city, Georgetown, affected residents have instructed their lawyers to move to the court.
Cane View is an African-Guyanese community that developed on a stretch of abandoned land that was formerly used for sugar cane cultivation. To make matters worse, the residents claim the land is part of ancestral lands snatched from their fore parents by a sugar estate.
On January 5, this year the Government deployed heavily armed police and heavy-duty equipment to demolish the homes of residents who rejected overtures to relocate. The community which had more than 36 families, is now flattened.
The residents are claiming that they acquired legal rights to remain on the disputed plots of land which are now prime real estate with the construction of a four-lane highway that runs through the area coupled with Guyana’s oil boom. They have rejected the government’s contention that they are squatters without rights.
About nine of the residents have retained New York based International Lawyer, Dr. Vivian Williams, along with Lyndon Amsterdam to fight their case. After failed efforts by the lawyers to initiate mediation with the government, the affected residents have decided to take their grievance to the court.
Dr. Williams says that it was proper to give the government an opportunity to resolve the issue before resorting to litigation. The lawyers stress the value of conflict resolution, noting that the government could still grasp the opportunity to engage in sensemaking.
Candacie Williams looks at land where the only place she called home for all her life once stood.
The crux of the matter is whether the laws of Guyana permit the government to mow down an entire community that existed for decades and after residents expended substantial sums, merely because title was not formally acquired by the residents.
“The precedent that will be established when all the facts and circumstances are considered is that laws of Guyana protect against the wanton destruction of a well-established community such as Cane View” says Dr. Williams.
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Former president of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism and Association (CHTA) Patricia Affonso-Dass believes the 41st annual Caribbean Travel Marketplace, to be held in Barbados May 9-11, can be a defining moment for the travel trade body.
The Barbados-based hotelier, who runs Ocean Hotels Group on the island, said Caribbean Travel Marketplace has special significance this year because “it represents and showcases our region’s and association’s ability to transform, change and reinvent to meet the ever-changing needs, demands and realities of this dynamic industry.”
For only the second time in its history, the event will be hosted in the Eastern Caribbean.
Affonso-Dass noted that the new format of the event provides the opportunity for hoteliers and tourism stakeholders not only to connect with hospitality buyers and suppliers across the region, but also to “highlight the link with artisans, manufacturing, agriculture and the smaller but critically important players that make up the fabric of Caribbean tourism.”
Affonso-Dass, who served as CHTA president from 2018 to 2020, stated that the 33 Caribbean destinations comprising the association reflect different cultures, languages, cuisines and a phenomenal collection of experiences.
“Caribbean Travel Marketplace allows us to bring this all together and showcase the region to our partners and the world in a way that is very difficult to do individually,” said Affonso-Dass, who was born in Dominica, raised in Guyana, and now lives in Barbados.
“Each of our members is unique, special and compelling, but all together this region represents tremendous value and importance not just to our individual economies, but also to the revenues of the partners who sell the Caribbean – both land-based and cruise,” remarked the respected hotelier, as she invited the world to come and do business at Marketplace 41 in Barbados.
Marketplace will be preceded by the second annual Caribbean Travel Forum and will be held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
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The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has been designated a prescribed holder of Special Drawings Rights (SDRs), by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
SDRs are an international reserve asset created by the IMF to help meet the long-term global need to supplement reserves.
Prescribed holders can use SDRs for loans, swaps, pledges, in exchange for currency, or for settlement of financial obligations, among other purposes. The designation affords CDB an additional avenue to pursue funding for sustainable development solutions for the Caribbean. This is in-keeping the Bank’s objective of increasing access to adequate and affordable finance for its Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs).
President of the CDB, Dr Hyginus “Gene” Leon said, “Recognising the extensive resources required for financing development in the Caribbean, CDB has sought to significantly expand the sources of funding available for our BMCs, and through this designation from the IMF, we now have additional options for building out a financial ecosystem to meet the varied needs across the Region.”
He added, “The CDB is also advocating for developed countries to re-allocate a percentage of their excess SDR holdings to finance development in regions like the Caribbean where countries are facing an uphill task trying to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and securing financing climate action. As the region’s Multi-Lateral Development Bank, we are uniquely positioned to marshal finance for these, and other objectives and we look forward to progress on these matters in near future.”
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The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), with central offices located in Santiago, Chile, is celebrating 75 years since its creation with a commitment to continue working for a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future for the region.
The Economic Commission for Latin America was established by a resolution of the United Nations Economic and Social Council on 25 February 1948 and began work in Santiago that same year. Later, in 1984, the Council decided that its name would be changed to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the five regional commissions of the United Nations.
In a video message, the ECLAC Executive Secretary, Costa Rican economist Jos? Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, noted that “we have reason to celebrate because the Commission’s contribution to the theory and practice of economic and social development in the region over the past seven and a half decades has been widely recognized in the region and throughout the world.”
According to the institution’s highest representative, “over the years, ECLAC has updated its thinking in accordance with changing realities, creating roadmaps and shedding abundant light on the options and priorities for the progress of our nations.”
Today, the regional commission launched a website that provides an overview of its origins, the evolution of its thinking and current institutional priorities. The site describes the centre-periphery and industrialisation model of the 1950s; the structural reforms for regional development in the 1960s; the development styles of the 1970s; the debt crisis of the 1980s; the productive transformation with equity of the 1990s; the triad of globalisation, development and citizenship of the 2000s; equality at the centre of sustainable development of the 2010s; and the transformation of the development model into one that is more productive, inclusive and sustainable in the 2020s.
“As we commemorate these 75 years, we begin a new phase in which we will carry out a series of activities that will allow us not only to celebrate our 75th anniversary but also to strengthen our abilities to continue our work and better serve Latin America and the Caribbean to build a more productive, inclusive and sustainable future,” stated Jos? Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, who took on his role on 3 October 2022.
The website also offers a section with photos of distinguished guests, personnel and the ECLAC building, considered a benchmark of modern Latin American architecture, as well as other resources with information on this regional commission of the United Nations.
ECLAC was founded to contribute to the economic development of Latin America, coordinate actions aimed at promoting this development and strengthen the economic relations between countries in the region and other nations around the world. Later, its work was expanded to the countries in the Caribbean.
In addition to its main headquarters in Santiago, ECLAC has two sub-regional sites, one for the Central American subregion located in Mexico City and the other for the Caribbean subregion in Port of Spain, established in June 1951 and December 1966, respectively. It also has national offices in Buenos Aires, Brasilia, Montevideo and Bogota, as well as a liaison office in Washington, D.C.
The 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean are members of ECLAC, along with some nations in North America, Europe and Asia, which maintain historical, economic and cultural ties with the region. In total, there are 46 member states and 14 associate members, a legal status granted to some non-independent territories in the Caribbean.
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A powerful gang has taken over numerous communities in central Haiti in recent weeks, killing at least 69 people and forcing authorities to abandon several police stations, the United Nations said Friday.
An additional 83 people have been injured amid a surge in violence reported in the Artibonite Valley that officials blame on a local gang called “Baz Gran Grif,” which roughly translates into “Big Claw.”
The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti known as BINUH said the gang has “established a climate of terror, characterized by looting, assassinations, kidnappings, destruction, extortion, hijacking of goods and trucks and acts of rape on young girls and women.”
BINUH said it is “alarmed by the speed with which the gang has extended its activities to new areas, and by the fleeing of police in multiple communities.”
The gang is accused of killing seven officers with Haiti’s National Police in a single day in late January as part of continuing attacks that have forced one hospital that serves some 700,000 people in the region to suspend all services a week ago. Schools also remain closed, while commercial activity and public transportation have slowed, the U.N. said.
Gang activity had been largely confined to Port-au-Prince, with gangs controlling an estimated 60% of the capital, but they have become increasingly powerful and violent elsewhere.
U.N. officials said that thousands of people in the central communities of Liancourt, Verrettes, Petite Rivi?re de l ‘Artibonite and Est?re have fled to other neighborhoods to escape the ongoing violence.
“This cycle of violence absolutely must be stopped,” BINUH said. “We urge the authorities to do everything to protect the inhabitants of the region as well as their property.”
The increase in violence in Haiti’s central region comes as Prime Minister Ariel Henry continues to plead for the deployment of foreign troops, a request first made in October. The international community has instead opted to impose sanctions and send military equipment and other resources.
Last month, U.N. officials reiterated that gang violence in Haiti has reached a level not seen in decades, and that gangs have grown more powerful since the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Mo?se.
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