Clashes Erupt in Yemen's Capital
Fierce clashes erupted on two fronts in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, on Saturday, a day after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution condemning the government's crackdown on dissent.
Witnesses say security forces have raided neighborhoods that are home to family members of an opposition tribal leader, Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar. They say plumes of smoke have been seen rising from several areas.
In another part of Sana'a, government forces have clashed with loyalists of Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a Yemeni general who joined the opposition.
Friday's Security Council measure was the body's first resolution on Yemen since widespread protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh began earlier this year.
It calls Yemen's use of force against protestors excessive and says "those responsible for violence, human rights violations and abuses should be held accountable."
The resolution also reaffirms support for a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative that calls for Saleh to transfer power to a deputy in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Saleh has agreed to the plan several times, but each time, he has backed away without signing the deal.
For the past ten months, opposition activists have been demanding an end to Saleh's 33-year autocratic rule. Dozens of people have died in protest-related unrest over the past few days.
Yemen has also been plagued by violence linked to al-Qaida militants.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
Iraqi PM: U.S. Withdrawal Triggered by Immunity Issue
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says the U.S. decision to withdraw troops from Iraq by the end of the year came after the Iraqi government refused to guarantee legal immunity for U.S. service members in Iraq.
Mr. Maliki spoke to reporters Saturday, a day after U.S. President Barack Obama announced the withdrawal. The United States had asked for immunity for a small group of U.S. troops to remain in Iraq to help with training and counter influence of neighboring Iran.
About 39,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, down from a high of about 165,000 in 2008.
Also Saturday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed that the withdrawal of troops will not end the U.S. commitment to Iraq.
Clinton said the pullout marks a new phase of Washington's relations with Baghdad. She said the U.S. would go on to have a “robust” and “continuing” presence in the region.
Clinton commented from Tajikistan, a stop on her tour of Central Asia.
Mr. Obama said Friday that U.S. troops in Iraq would “definitely be home for the holidays.” He said he and Mr. Maliki were in agreement on that decision.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said later Friday that the United States will negotiate with the Iraqi government after the end of 2011 about a possible American role to train Iraqi forces.
About 150 U.S. troops will stay in Iraq after the end of the year, where some will be part of the U.S. embassy's security force — which is common at U.S. diplomatic posts worldwide.
Before Friday's announcement, the possibility had remained that U.S. troops would extend their presence in the nation beyond the December 31 deadline set in 2008.
The war, begun in March 2003, is one of the longest military conflicts in U.S. history. More than 4,400 U.S. troops have died in the conflict.
DIGICEL BLACKBERRY CUSTOMERS TO BE REIMBURSED
Following on from RIM’s unprecedented announcement that BlackBerry customers will be able to avail of up to US$100 worth of premium BlackBerry apps in the coming weeks, Digicel is pleased to announce that it will also reimburse those customers affected during last week’s outage.
As such, Digicel prepaid BlackBerry users whose service was active during the outage will be reimbursed for the hours of interruption to their internet subscription during that period in the form of credit – whilst Digicel postpaid BlackBerry customers will receive a credit on their monthly bill for the equivalent duration of the outage of BlackBerry services.
All affected Digicel BlackBerry customers will be contacted by text message next week with the details of their individual reimbursement – and credited accordingly. Digicel is committed to providing its customers with the best service and the best value and would like to apologise to its valued customers for the inconvenience caused to them.
We trust that this gesture of goodwill to our customers goes some way to making up for the inconvenience they experienced and would like to thank them for their continued loyalty to Digicel.
Police Certificate of Character unit relocates
The Royal Turks & Caicos Islands Police in Providenciales wishes to inform the public in Providenciales that in an attempt to improve client service they are moving the unit responsible for receiving and processing applications for Police Certificates of Character (Police records).
After Tuesday 25th October 2011 no further applications for Police Records will be processed at the Five Cays Police Station, Providenciales.
Effective 10:00am on Wednesday 26th October 2011 applications for Police records will be processed at the Providenciales Police Headquarters located on the Second Floor of 34B Williams Plaza, Old Airport Road, Providenciales. This location use to be referred to as the Police CID HQ building and is directly above the 911 Emergency Communications Centre offices.
The Royal Turks and Caicos Police continue in their efforts to provide improved customer service as part of their daily operating procedure.
Mark Glusing of Canada dies in the TCI
The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police in Providenciales have identified the body found in the water on Sandpiper Avenue beach, Leeward, Providenciales on Monday 17th October 2011 as a Mark Glusing, a 41 year old male Canadian national residing here in Providenciales.
Results of the autopsy have shown that Mr Glusing died of natural causes.
Foul play has been ruled out.
German Rosat spacecraft to make uncontrolled re-entry
A big German spacecraft is about to make an uncontrolled fall from the sky.
The Roentgen Satellite (Rosat) is due to come back to Earth at some stage over the weekend - possibly Sunday.
Just as for Nasa's UARS satellite, which plunged into the atmosphere in September, no-one can say precisely when and where Rosat will come in.
What makes the redundant German craft's return interesting is that much more debris this time is likely to survive all the way to the Earth's surface.
Experts calculate that perhaps as much as 1.6 tonnes of wreckage - more than half the spacecraft's launch mass - could ride out the destructive forces of re-entry and hit the planet.
In the case of UARS, the probable mass of surviving material was put at only half a tonne (out of a launch mass of more than six tonnes).
The difference is due to some more robust components on the German space agency (DLR) satellite.
Rosat was an X-ray telescope mission and had a mirror system made of a reinforced carbon composite material. This mirror complex and its support structure are expected to form the largest single fragment in what could be a shower of some 30 pieces of debris to make it through to the surface.
But again, as was the case with UARS, any Rosat wreckage is strongly tipped to hit the ocean, given that so much of the Earth's surface is covered by water.
Destructive design
UARS' final resting place was tracked to a remote region of the Pacific, north-east of the Samoan islands.
Rosat could come down anywhere between 53 degrees North and South latitude - a zone that encompasses the UK in the north and the tip of South America in the south.
Future spacecraft sent into orbit may have to meet stricter guidelines that limit the amount of debris likely to fall back on to the planet, but these rules are still some way from being introduced said Prof Richard Crowther, an expert on space debris and adviser to the UK Space Agency.
"Up until now we've designed satellites to survive the harsh environment of space, and we haven't given much thought to designing them for destructive re-entry," he told BBC News.
"But in future, we will have to consider whether we have got this balance right, and perhaps satellites should be designed in such a way that we can ensure more of what comes down is destroyed in the atmosphere and doesn't hit the surface.
"Unfortunately, there is a whole legacy of spacecraft - 50 years of satellites - and we are going to have to put up with this situation for quite some time, I'm afraid."
Science success
Rosat was launched in 1990 to survey the X-ray sky. It mapped more than 100,000 sources of this high-energy radiation. X-rays tend to come from the hottest and most violent parts of the cosmos, such as the regions around exploded stars and the "edges" of black holes.
The spacecraft worked for eight-and-a-half years before its star tracker failed and it could no-longer work out its position and point correctly. It was shut down in February 1999, and has been in descent ever since. Controllers do not have any contact with the craft; all they know is its altitude and path across the sky through radar tracking.
The fall to Earth has accelerated in recent months and weeks as the spacecraft has experienced increased drag as a result of its passage through residual air molecules still found more than 200km above the planet.
The deeper it reaches, the faster Rosat will be pulled in. But without a propulsion system, the precise timing and location of its impact cannot be influenced by controllers.
Tough materials
Rosat will start to tumble rapidly when it engages the thicker parts of the atmosphere, about 80km up.
Mechanical forces will first rip off its flimsiest structures, such as its solar arrays and antennas.
The heating the satellite then experiences as it plunges downwards will deform and melt low-temperature materials and vaporise them.
Only high-temperature metals such as stainless steel and titanium will put up much resistance.
Tracking stations will typically witness the uncontrolled return of at least one piece of space debris every day; and on average, one intact defunct spacecraft or old rocket body will come back into the atmosphere every week.
Something the size of Nasa's UARS satellite is seen to enter uncontrolled perhaps once a year.
Much larger objects such as space station cargo ships return from orbit several times a year, but they are equipped with thrusters capable of guiding their dive into a remote part of the Southern Ocean.
source-BBC
Cold Case Unit has charged a male suspect
The recently formed Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police, Cold Case Unit in Providenciales, has charged a male subject in relation to the murder of Wensley Joseph which occurred on Sunday 12th April 2009.
Mr. Wensley Joseph was 16 years of age at the time of his death. He was on his way home from a private function when he and his friends became embroiled in a dispute with other males. This resulted in Wensley Joseph being shot; he later succumbed to those injuries.
On Wednesday 19th October 2011 officers from the Cold Case Unit arrested a 26 year old male subject in connection with the murder and on the 20th laid a charge of murder.
The male subject is scheduled to appear in the Providenciales Magistrate’s Court # 2 on Wednesday 26th October 2011 to be arraigned.
Gayle must apologise
The West Indies Cricket Board says estranged batsman Chris Gayle will have to apologise if he wants to wear maroon colours again.
That was the decision taken by the board of directors who met last weekend in St Lucia, and it comes after several unsuccessful attempts to resolve the highly contentious issue.
"Having received reports and reviewed correspondence between Chris Gayle and the West Indies Cricket Board and the West Indies team management and taking into consideration public statements made by Gayle with regard to the board and its officers, the board requires that Gayle withdraws his comments in order to be considered for selection to the West Indies team," a WICB media statement said yesterday.
The Board said it had communicated the decision to Gayle and was currently awaiting his response.
Attempts to reach West Indies Players Association chief executive, Dinanath Ramnarine, for comment, were unsuccessful.
In the statement, the WICB said it viewed Gayle as an experienced player who "can contribute meaningfully to the performance of the West Indies team" and hoped that he would "comply with the standards and requirements set by the board".
The board said it would be happy to comply with a request from the Jamaica Cricket Association to engage the services of facilitator in order to help Gayle meet its requirements.
Gayle has not featured in a West Indies side ever since making highly controversial comments about the board and head coach Ottis Gibson earlier this year, following the World Cup on the Asian subcontinent.
He missed the Pakistan series to play in the Indian Premier League but on his return to the Caribbean, was told by the WICB he needed to explain his comments before he could be considered for selection for the series against India in June-July.
However, a June meeting in Jamaica involving Gayle, WICB and West Indies Players Association officials failed to resolve the matter and ended in acrimony.
NBA mediation to resume Thursday
A second lengthy day of mediation between the NBA's owners and locked-out players ended Wednesday without a deal, but talks are scheduled to resume Thursday, federal mediator George Cohen said.
A third day of talks is set to begin at 2 p.m. ET. The league's board of governors was meeting Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
After a 16-hour session with a federal mediator that lasted until after 2 a.m. ET Wednesday morning, the sides resumed negotiations aimed at ending the lockout at about 10 a.m. and continued meeting until about 7 p.m. The two sides met for more than 24 hours in a 32-hour span.
Cohen said players and owners met in a variety of settings during mediation, sometimes in subcommittees, other times in groups as large as 40 people.
"Everyone is extremely focused on the core issues, the difficult issues that confront them," he said.
Sources told ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard that the owners are once again offering a 49-51 range of the basketball-related income to the players. That is essentially where the players would get a minimum of 49 percent of BRI or a max of 51 percent depending on how much revenue the league takes in that year.
Although some of the system issues differ in this offer by the owners, the players are likely to reject a 49-51 band just as they did two weeks ago.
Also, while the sides haven't agreed to anything, the owners have been open to accepting a $5 million midlevel exception, sources told Broussard. That's down from $5.8 million under the old agreement but up from the $3.4 million the owners had been offering.
At about 5:15 p.m., commissioner David Stern, league president Joel Litvin and Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck left the talks to attend an owners' planning committee at another midtown hotel. That meeting had been postponed so that the owners and players could meet with the mediator.
Talks between the league and union continued, however, with deputy commissioner Adam Silver and San Antonio Spurs owner Peter Holt, and the other owners on the league's labor committee.
Grousbeck chairs the planning committee, which is charged with developing a new revenue sharing system for basketball. More robust revenue sharing is a key aspect of the economic reforms the NBA intends to implement this offseason.
Stern has said owners will have an expanded revenue sharing package among teams once the collective bargaining agreement with the players has been completed.
Stern had wanted to bring a deal to his owners this week, otherwise he warned more games might be canceled. Already the first two weeks of the season -- exactly 100 games -- have been lost.
The sides have been divided mostly by two issues, the division of revenues and the structure of the salary cap system.
Players believe owners' attempts to make the luxury tax more punitive and limit the use of spending exceptions will effectively create a hard salary cap, which they say they will refuse to accept. Also, each side has formally proposed receiving 53 percent of basketball-related income after players were guaranteed 57 percent under the previous collective bargaining agreement.
With the sides unable to make any real headway in recent weeks on those two divisive issues, they welcomed the presence of Cohen, who also spent 16 days trying to resolve the NFL's labor dispute in February and March.
"The discussions have been direct and constructive, and as far as we are concerned, we are here to continue to help assist the parties to endeavor to reach an agreement," Cohen said.
Their first day with him produced a bargaining session that was more than twice as long as any previous one since owners locked out players when the old collective bargaining agreement expired June 30.
Neither side commented on Tuesday's talks at Cohen's request, and NBA spokesman Mike Bass said Cohen asked that request be honored Wednesday as well.
Without a deal this week, Stern might have to decide when a next round of cancellations would be necessary. The season was supposed to begin Nov. 1, but all games through Nov. 14 have been scrapped, costing players about $170 million in salaries.
Sources-ESPN.com TrueHoop writer Henry Abbott, ESPN The Magazine's Chris Broussard and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Early childhood sector calls for Caribbean family literacy policy
Participants at a recently-concluded two-day family learning symposium held on October 13 and 14 in Gros Islet, Saint Lucia, unanimously agreed on the need for the swift drafting and implementation of a regional family literacy policy.
The symposium, dubbed, ‘Making the Connections: Adult Literacy, Family Literacy and Early Childhood Development, organised by the Caribbean Child Support Initiative, through its Family Literacy Programme (FLP) and UNICEF’s Kingston Office, saw representatives from eight Caribbean islands gathering to discuss the way forward for family literacy in the Caribbean.
The forum was organised within the context of the Belem Framework for Action, which was adopted in Belem, Brazil, on December 9, 2009, by participants at the Sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA). This framework affirms that literacy is the most significant foundation upon which to build comprehensive, inclusive and integrated lifelong and life-wide learning for all young people and adults.
Most key note presenters, including Dr Didacus Jules, registrar at the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) and board chairman for the Foundation for the Development of Caribbean Children (FDCC); Fortuna Anthony, regional FLP coordinator; and Martina Augustin, dean of teacher education at the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College in St Lucia, spoke to the urgent need for the region to abandon the practice of defining literacy as simply the ability to read and write.
Instead, they argued that literacy should be seen as the process whereby children and indeed families are provided with the tools they need to function effectively in all aspects of life.
St Lucian Minister for Education and Culture, Arsene James, in his opening remarks, said literacy should be redefined as “the ability to function in a globalised world.”
Another key point raised during the symposium was that any attempt at family literacy in the Caribbean must be rooted in the region’s culture.
Executive director of the St Lucia Folk Research Centre, Kennedy ‘Boots’ Samuels said the Caribbean, through its history of struggle and hardships, has a vast reservoir of culture, spanning unique traditions and indigenous Creole languages. These he said, were vital tools that must be included in any literacy attempt in the region.
He underscored the importance of storytelling in literacy, and also emphasized the need for local languages to be used in this process.
“The harder it is for children to speak their natural language, the more they go silent,” he said.
Jules urged the participants to create a groundswell and generate interest in family literacy even as they attempt to appeal to governments for policy changes.
“This demands the creation of alliances”, he said, “We need to create a groundswell that will leave them no choice.”
Realising the severe need for an inter-generational approach to literacy in the Caribbean and the immediate end to programmes which attempt to educate children and adults separately, it was concluded that a policy relating to the specific needs and context of the region needs to be drafted.
This is especially important in light of research showing that children who learn along with their parents do better in school and that allowing parents to learn with their children, engenders a sense of hands-on parenting, which is key to the development of the region’s youngest citizens.
Since parents are often children’s first teachers, it was determined that they too need to be included in any attempt to make children literate.
The need to create a model that is particular to the Caribbean and which is sensitive to the region’s realities and culture and which builds on the Caribbean perspective of literacy was also established.
Augustin charged the participants to come together even outside of the symposium to draft a policy that addresses family literacy in the Caribbean, focusing on what needs to be done and how to go about doing it. She also urged them to develop a research agenda that focuses on family literacy policy, training and support.
Source-Caribbean News Now