From protecting fishing communities to regrowing coral reefs, Guardian readers and environmentalists share how they’re working to defend the ocean
World Oceans Day, which took place on Monday, is marked by hundreds of beach cleans and events globally. Despite Covid-19 restrictions, environmentalists and readers from around the world shared how they are continuing to work to protect the ocean, and told us about the local marine issues that matter to them.
Continue reading...Producer who worked with artists such as Shabba Ranks, Garnett Silk and Morgan Heritage was a maverick of the dancehall era
Renowned Jamaican record producer Robert “Bobby Digital” Dixon died in a Kingston hospital on 21 May, aged 59. The cause of death was kidney disease.
One of the most respected producers of the dancehall era, Dixon transformed contemporary reggae several times over, enjoying tremendous international success with Shabba Ranks, Garnett Silk, Sizzla Kalonji and Morgan Heritage. He is also considered as an architect of the reggaeton genre that swept Latin America in the early 1990s, since some of its earliest hits sampled his work with Ranks.
Continue reading...Vincent Brown’s military history sheds precious light on a brutally suppressed revolt which paved the road to abolition
By 1690, Jamaica was the jewel of Britain’s American possessions. An economy largely based on the production of sugar brought wealth and led to the beginnings of an imperial system.
Related: Another Mother review: Jamaica memoir skips island's darker history
Continue reading...Chevon Brown was sent to country where he has no close relatives after committing a driving offence
When Chevon Brown was 21 he was convicted of dangerous driving and spent seven months in prison. He admits he was speeding at over 100 miles an hour in an uninsured car and acknowledges he behaved irresponsibly, but feels the consequences have been wholly disproportionate.
As a result of that conviction he was deported to Jamaica a year ago, a country he left as a teenager and where he has no close relatives. He has been separated from his father and three younger brothers in Oxford, and is struggling to readjust to life without his family.
Continue reading...Court of appeal orders Home Office not to remove anyone scheduled to be deported from two detention centres on 6.30am flight
A group of about 50 people due to be deported to Jamaica on Tuesday morning won a last-minute reprieve on Monday night following an emergency ruling by the court of appeal.
The court ordered the Home Office not to remove anyone scheduled to be deported from two detention centres near Heathrow on the 6.30am flight to Jamaica – “unless satisfied [they] had access to a functioning, non-O2 sim card on or before 3 February”.
Continue reading...Up to 50 people are due to be forcibly returned to Jamaica on a flight leaving this week
Dozens of Jamaicans in the UK are mounting last-minute legal challenges to try to halt their deportation on a Home Office charter flight scheduled for Tuesday.
Up to 50 people are due to be put on the flight, which is only the second the Home Office has chartered to Jamaica since the Windrush scandal broke. A group legal action and a flurry of individual legal actions are under way.
Continue reading...A powerful magnitude 7.7 earthquake has struck in the sea south of Cuba, shaking a vast area from Mexico to Florida and beyond, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or major damage.
Tsunami warnings for Cuba, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands were issued but lifted shortly afterward with no reports of major damage.
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...O’Neil Wallfall refused leave to remain for failing to show his life would be at risk in country he has never visited
A man caring for his terminally ill partner has been told he faces deportation from the UK to Jamaica because the Home Office concluded that he “failed to demonstrate that his life would be at risk in Iraq”.
O’Neil Wallfall, 49 – who has never been to Iraq – received a refusal letter that appeared to indicate his case had been confused with someone else’s. The government also said it would not be “unreasonable” or “unduly harsh” to expect his British partner, 56-year-old Karen McQueen, to relocate to Jamaica with him.
Continue reading...Oswald Dixon served in RAF in second world war and died at care home in Salford
A care home is inviting members of the public to attend the funeral of a second world war veteran from Jamaica with no family in the UK.
Oswald Dixon died on 25 September aged 100 after living his last four years at a home for retired service personnel in Salford, Greater Manchester.
Continue reading...In 2015, James became the first Jamaican writer to win the Man Booker. His new novel is a hotly anticipated African fantasy epic and here he talks about loving the X-Men, coming out and writing about violence
It’s two days before the US release of Marlon James’s much-hyped fourth novel, Black Leopard, Red Wolf and the prizewinning Jamaican author has an air of baffled, exhausted ebullience about him. He’s no stranger to critical success: he won the 2015 Man Booker prize for his violent, multi-voiced epic, A Brief History of Seven Killings. But it feels like this new book will propel James into a new galaxy of literary stardom.
We’ve arranged to have lunch – on a balmy Sunday in early February – at the Commodore, a carefully shabby Williamsburg diner near his Brooklyn apartment. Brawnily broad-shouldered, his dreadlocked hair tied back in a ponytail, James has arrived before me. We’re shown to seats at the bar where low winter sun slants through the blinds on to the bar top. James tells me it feels like summer to him – he spends much of his time teaching creative writing at Macalester College in Minnesota – and as if to prove it asks the waiter for an Aperol spritz.
Continue reading...Campaigners raise concerns about ‘ad hoc reprieves’ as 29 offenders are deported
Last-minute legal interventions have led to a number of detainees being removed from a deportation flight to Jamaica, but the Home Office said 29 others were onboard the chartered plane.
More than 50 foreign national offenders who were being held in detention centres were reported to be due to be placed on the flight. But many of them were able to have their removal cancelled after their lawyers took action.
Continue reading...Summons to spare Joseph Nembhard, 37, who came to UK from Caribbean as teenager
A man who came to the UK from the Caribbean as a teenager is set to be granted an 11th-hour reprieve from being placed on a deportation flight to Jamaica.
About 50 people are thought to have been booked on to Wednesday’s secretive charter flight, the first to Jamaica since the Home Office suspended the flights last April the Windrush scandal.
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