National Emergency Management Organisation warned residents to leave and said ash plume had reached 20,000ft
The Caribbean island of St Vincent has been rocked by a string of explosive eruptions at La Soufrière volcano, which spewed clouds of ash miles into the air a day and forced thousands to flee for safety.
Related: Saint Vincent orders evacuations as volcanic eruption appears imminent
Continue reading...Seismologists have warned La Soufrière could erupt in a matter of hours or days and the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent has declared a red alert and issued an evacuation order.
Video posted on social media showed a plume of smoke towering above the volcano, which is the highest point in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Monitoring stations reported long earthquakes, which suggested that fresh magma was trying to reach the surface, and indicated that the volcano was moving to 'an explosive stage'
Continue reading...Analysis: revelations may be used in member state debates about becoming republics, say experts
In the 1980s, it was the question of apartheid-era South Africa that threatened to drive a wedge through the Commonwealth.
But while some credit the Queen then with a heroic role behind the scenes – dramatised with more than a dollop of artistic licence in season four of The Crown – in 2021 the threat comes from a row over alleged racism within the royal family itself.
Continue reading...Security expert claims Chinese surveillance may have affected tens of thousands of Americans
China appears to have used mobile phone networks in the Caribbean to surveil US mobile phone subscribers as part of its espionage campaign against Americans, according to a mobile network security expert who has analysed sensitive signals data.
The findings paint an alarming picture of how China has allegedly exploited decades-old vulnerabilities in the global telecommunications network to route “active” surveillance attacks through telecoms operators.
Continue reading...Storm may bring dangerous winds, storm surge and as much as 30in of rain to Nicaragua and Honduras
Tropical Storm Iota was brewing in the Caribbean early on Saturday, threatening a second tropical strike for Nicaragua and Honduras, countries recently ransacked by Eta, a category 4 hurricane.
Related: Devastating 2020 Atlantic hurricane season breaks all records
Continue reading...Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala worst affected with scores dead and more than 200,000 people evacuated from their homes
Central America is braced for further storms this weekend as the region reels from the devastation caused by Hurricane Eta, the Red Cross has warned.
Forecasters believe a weather front forming in the Caribbean has a 90% chance of becoming a cyclone, making it the 30th named Atlantic storm of 2020 in a record-breaking hurricane season, shattering the previous worst year of 28 storms in 2005.
Continue reading...One of the first cruise ships to ply through Caribbean waters since the pandemic began ended its trip early after five passengers tested positive for Covid-19.
The SeaDream is carrying 53 passengers and 66 crew, with the majority of passengers hailing from the US, according to Sue Bryant, a cruise ship reporter who is aboard the ship.
Continue reading...The decision to drop the Queen had long been planned, but the shameful Windrush scandal altered perceptions of the ‘mother country’
Barbados’s recent announcement that it will become a republic, ending the tenure of the Queen as head of state by November 2021, is noteworthy not only for what is said about the island but also about changes in perception of Britain and its monarchy.
There is legitimacy in the stance taken by the prime minister, Mia Amor Mottley. A toddler in 1966 when “Little England” (as Barbados was referred to) achieved independence, this highly regarded Caribbean leader has strong nationalist and regional instincts. With many leading Commonwealth Caribbean countries already republics, she, like others born in the independence era, sees republicanism as a coming of age.
Continue reading...The Caribbean island’s leader says its people want a ‘Barbadian head of state’ and aim to achieve the goal by November 2021
Barbados has announced its intention to remove the Queen as its head of state and become a republic by November 2021.
A speech written by its prime minister, Mia Mottley, quoted a warning by the Caribbean island nation’s first premier, Errol Barrow, against “loitering on colonial premises”.
Continue reading...Experts say they are concerned as two potential hurricanes head north – and coronavirus is complicating matters
Two potential hurricanes are heading towards the northern Caribbean and mainland United States – with a third building in the Atlantic – in apparent confirmation of meteorologists’ predictions that the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season will become one of the worst on record.
Related: US faces threat of two Caribbean storms hitting simultaneously as hurricanes
Continue reading...Ten-track record samples recordings of endangered, vulnerable or near threatened birds by artists from same country
The song of the black catbird – with its flute-like chirps and screeching single-note squalls – was once heard across Guatemala, Belize and southern Mexico until large-scale farms began to destroy its habitat.
Now, thanks to a collective of musicians, producers and DJs, the tiny bird’s song – and that of nine other endangered species from the region – could be heard on dancefloors around the world, with proceeds going to conserving the endangered birds.
Continue reading...Hanna is first hurricane of 2020 Atlantic season and could bring 6in to 12in of rain through Sunday night
Hurricane Hanna rumbled toward the Texas Gulf coast on Saturday, lashing the shore with wind gusts and rain and threatening to bring storm surge and tornadoes to a part of the country trying to cope with a spike in coronavirus cases.
Related: 'A summer unlike any other': heatwaves and Covid-19 are a deadly combination
Continue reading...If discredited president refuses to accept imminent ruling over March vote, investors likely to be scared off
Allegations of mass vote fiddling in the former British colony of Guyana may lead to the country’s discredited government being ostracised unless a court hearing next week can resolve a bitter dispute over election results.
The political stakes in Guyana have risen massively since May 2015 when Exxon Mobil discovered oil reserves potentially worth more than $100bn (£80bn) 200km (124 miles) off the coast – a find big enough to transform a Latin American country of fewer than 1 million people with a GDP of $3bn largely based on sugar, timber, molasses and bauxite. Its current income of $5,250 per head is projected to rise to above $10,000 next year alone.
Continue reading...A large dust cloud has travelled from the Sahara and blanketed parts of the Caribbean in a weather event not seen for 50 years. Dubbed the 'Godzilla dust cloud', it has limited visibility and lowered air quality throughout the region. The mass of dusty air is known as the Saharan Air Layer and forms over the Sahara desert before typically moving across the North Atlantic in the northern hemisphere’s late spring to early autumn
Continue reading...The lawyer representing 200 victims of the Windrush scandal says systemic racism is at the root of the problem
For the past three months, Jacqueline McKenzie says her front room has been covered with Windrush compensation files. Since lockdown, she has stopped going to the offices of the law firm she co-founded in 2010 and has been working from home. But her study is too small to accommodate the huge amount of paperwork that goes with the 200 separate claims she is filing on behalf of people affected by the Home Office citizenship scandal, during which thousands of people were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants because they could not prove they were British citizens.
“I think they are treating people with contempt,” she says. She is frustrated at the slow progress towards paying compensation to people who lost their jobs or their homes, were denied healthcare or the right to travel, or who were, in extreme cases, detained and deported. Part of the problem, she says, lies with the structure of the scheme, which requires claimants to gather large amounts of documentary proof of the losses they have incurred as a result of being miscategorised as unlawful residents (a problem that often arose because those affected were unable to gather the large amounts of documentary proof required to show that they had been living legally in the UK since the 1960s).
Continue reading...Many bank directors received compensation after slavery was made illegal in 1833
The slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807 but it was not until 1833 that the Slavery Abolition Act finally banned the ownership of other human beings. However, 46,000 slave owners continued to benefit financially as the subsequent Slave Compensation Act provided £20m in payments – a sum worth billions in 2020 terms. Despite the name of the act, the former slaves were not compensated.
University College London’s Legacies of British Slave Ownership project shows that 10% to 20% of Britain’s wealthy can be identified as having had significant links to slavery. The amount of money borrowed to pay off slave owners was so large that the government only repaid it fully in 2015. Companies with links to slavery in their past include:
Continue reading...Thousands in limbo around the world as vessels seek a port at which to dock
As countries scramble to close their borders in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of cruise ship passengers are stranded on the high seas while their vessels seek a port at which to dock.
The Norwegian Jewel, sailing under the flag of the Bahamas, has been refused permission to dock in French Polynesia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, and is piloting to American Samoa to refuel.
Continue reading...All cemeteries have stories to tell, and the one on Mucurapo Road in Port of Spain, Trinidad, is no exception. Among the names carved on headstones are Irene and Oscar Huth, Erna Marx, Karl Falkenstein, Willi Schwarz and Otto Gumprich. Hebrew inscriptions are adorned with a Star of David.
Five years ago, Hans Stecher joined his mother, father and aunt in the Jewish section of Mucurapo cemetery. Aged 90 when he died, he was the last of about 600 Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who ended up in Trinidad as they sought sanctuary from persecution and violence.
Continue reading...Roy Harrison, who came to Britain from Jamaica aged six, fighting deportation notice
A man caught in the Windrush scandal has resorted to sleeping in a freezing bin shed because the Home Office has not regularised his status and is trying to deport him.
Roy Harrison, 44, arrived in the UK as a six-year-old. He had been abandoned as a newborn in Jamaica by his mother and left on his grandmother’s doorstep.
Continue reading...Aerial footage taken on Wednesday shows utter devastation in Marsh Harbour, one of the first places in the Bahamas ravaged by Hurricane Dorian. The video recorded over the Bahamas' Great Abaco Island showed mile upon mile of flooded neighbourhoods, pulverised buildings, upturned boats and shipping containers scattered like toys. Many buildings that had not been flattened had walls or roofs partly ripped away. “We are in the midst of a historic tragedy,” said the Bahamian prime minister, Hubert Minnis. “The devastation is unprecedented and extensive.”
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