President Obama says, 'No Excuse' for Riots in Baltimore
U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday said there's “no excuse” for Monday night's violence in the eastern U.S. city of Baltimore and called for those who looted and burned buildings "to be treated as criminals."
Riots erupted in the city after the funeral for 25-year-old Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died in police custody earlier this month.
Obama said what happened Monday in Baltimore "distracted" from the multiple days of peaceful protests that were focused on what he described as "entirely legitimate concerns" over Gray's death.
"There's no excuse for the kind of violence that we saw yesterday," Obama said, making his first public statement about the Baltimore case. "It is counterproductive."
He added, "It's a handful of people taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes."
The president's comments came after Maryland Governor Larry Hogan vowed Baltimore will not have "another repeat" of Monday night.
"It's not going to happen tonight," the governor told reporters Tuesday.
"We're going to make sure we get Baltimore back on track," said Hogan, stressing that the main goal is to make sure the city is brought back to peace.
Monday's violence began as hundreds of high school students marched toward a local mall after classes were dismissed for the day, then spread out across several neighborhoods, overwhelming the police department's ability to respond as the protests turned violent.
However, Obama acknowledged a "slow-rolling crisis" in community policing, saying there have been too many troubling police interactions with criminal suspects of color.
"We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals - primarily African-American, often poor - in ways that raise troubling questions," the president said at a White House press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
"I think there are police departments that have to do some soul-searching. I think there's some communities that have to do some soul-searching. I think we as a country have to do some soul-searching," he added.
"This is not new. It's been going on for decades," Obama added, referring to tensions in U.S. communities over police actions.
Obama described problems many communities struggle with - equal opportunity, poverty, education, single parenting, lack of male figures in the household, and drugs. Too many people expect to "send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems," he said.
Obama gave a six-point response to a pointed question about Baltimore, starting with extending sympathy to Gray's family, as well as police officers injured in Monday's violence. He then renounced the rioting as counterproductive and said its perpetrators were criminals and thugs.
He said if the country wanted to solve the problem, it needed not only to INVEST in police training, but also in early education and criminal justice reform.
Earlier Tuesday, National Guard troops deployed across Baltimore as authorities attempted to restore order after Monday's riots.
Source-VOA
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan declared a state of emergency, and said Tuesday he is temporarily moving his office from the state capital, Annapolis, to Baltimore.
“We're not going to have another repeat of what happened last night,” Hogan vowed Tuesday after a visit to a West Baltimore neighborhood where cars were burned and windows smashed. “We're going to make sure we get Baltimore back on track.”
He said there are “a couple of thousand” National Guardsmen and police officers in Baltimore, with more on the way.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who called the rioting "one of the darkest days the city has ever faced," has declared a weeklong nighttime curfew.
Public schools in the city of 620,000 people were closed Tuesday, as the city began to clean up after looters ransacked stores, pharmacies and a shopping mall and clashed with police.
Volunteers swept up charred debris in front of a CVS pharmacy as dozens of police officers in riot gear stood by and firefighters worked to damp down the embers.
Twitter reports disappointing sales
Twitter has reported lower than expected revenue for the first three months of the year, saying that new products sold less well than forecast.
The micro blogging firm warned that it expected the negative impact on its revenue to continue for the rest of the financial year.
"It is still early days for these products," said Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo.
The firm reported revenues of $436m, up 74% year-on-year, but below forecasts.
It also reported a net loss of $162m, an increase from the same period a year ago when it lost $132.4m.
However, monthly users of the service increased 18% year-on-year, totalling 302 million for the first quarter.
Mr Costolo said the firm remained confident in the firm's "long-term opportunity".
"We have a strong pipeline that we believe will drive increased value for direct response advertisers in the future," he added.
Twitter also said it was buying marketing technology firm TellApart, and announced a deal with Google to improve its advertising performance measurement.
The firm said it expected revenue for the full year to be between $2.17bn to $2.27bn, lower than the $2.3bn to 2.35bn range it forecast in December.
Shares fell 18% after the results were released earlier than expected and before US markets closed.
Source-BBC
US Official Confirms Iran Intercepted Cargo Ship
A senior U.S. official says Iranian naval ships and patrol craft fired shots at a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz before escorting it into Iranian territorial waters.
The official said the container ship, the MV Maersk Tigris, was tansiting the strait into the Arabian Gulf "on an internationally recognized maritime route" at the time of the incident.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren says the container ship was in Iranian waters when it was approached.
"The ship master was contacted and directed to proceed further into Iranian territorial waters," Warren said. "He declined and one of the IRGCN craft fired shots across the bridge of the Maersk Tigris. The master complied with the Iranian demand and proceeded into Iranian waters in the vicinity of Larak Island."
Pentagon officials say a U.S. guided missile destroyer, the USS Farragut, is en route to the area. U.S. Naval Forces Central Command has also "directed aircraft to observe the interaction between the Maersk vessel and the IRGCN [Iranian] craft."
U.S. officials have been in touch with representatives of the shipping company, who say Iranian forces have boarded the vessel.
A senior administration official says the container ship did issue a distress call but that the call came after shots had been fired.
The MV Maersk Tigris is a Marshall Island-flagged vessel. U.S. officials say no Americans were on board.
According to Iran's Farsnews agency, "The Iranian Navy has confiscated the American trade vessel with all its 34 crew for trespassing on Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf."
Iran has in the past sometimes threatened to block the strait to advance its opposition to sanctions imposed over its nuclear program.
The channel is a narrow strip of water separating Oman and Iran. It connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
At its narrowest point, the strait is 33 km (21 miles) across and consists of 2-mile wide navigable channels for inbound and outbound shipping and a 2-mile-wide buffer zone.
TORONTO 2015 Pan Am Games Football Schedule Released Following Official Draw
The highly anticipated TORONTO 2015 Pan Am Games football (soccer) schedule was determined today.
The men's and women's soccer schedules were determined in a live draw by representatives of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) in conjunction with the TORONTO 2015 Pan Am/Parapan Am Games Organizing Committee (TO2015).
The men's competition will feature traditional powerhouses such as Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay and host team Canada. The Mexican team enters the tournament as defending champion. Other teams in the men's tournament include Peru, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, and Paraguay.
On the women's side Canada is the defending champion, beating Brazil in 2011. Other teams in the women's tournament include Mexico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina and Trinidad and Tobago.
The TORONTO 2015 Pan American Games will take place July 10-26 and the Parapan American Games August 7-15. The TORONTO 2015 Games are funded by the Government of Canada, the Province of Ontario, as well as Lead Partner CIBC and other partners and sponsors
NBA to play first game in Africa
Britain's Luol Deng will captain Team Africa against Team World in the NBA's first game in Africa.
The match will take place on 1 August at Ellis Park Arena in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers will captain Team World.
"I am truly honoured to be part of this historic event," said Miami Heat's Deng, 30, who was born in South Sudan and represented Team GB at London 2012.
Team Africa will include players from Africa and second generation African players, while Team World will be represented by players from the rest of the world.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said: "The NBA has worked hard to grow the game of basketball in Africa, and I am excited to take this next step of playing our first game on the continent."
The game will support Boys & Girls Clubs of South Africa, S.O.S Children's Villages South Africa and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
Source-BBC
178 Haitian migrants detained in Bahamas
The Bahamas says 178 Haitian migrants have been detained by local authorities over the last several days.
In a Sunday statement, Immigration Minister Fred Mitchell said the archipelago off Florida’s east coast has been “dealing with a deluge of illegal migrants who have breached our borders over the past week.”
The Royal Bahamas Defence Force late Wednesday intercepted an overloaded boat with 168 Haitian migrants seeking a better life. The group was made up of 131 adults and 37 children. Mitchell says authorities are “working to expedite their immediate return to Haiti.”
He says 10 other Haitian migrants were also detained in Inagua, the islands’ southernmost district.
The Bahamas has sought over the past year to reduce illegal migration by increasing maritime patrols and imposing new restrictions on work permits.
Source-AP
EU Must Help With Migrant Crisis says Italian PM
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Wednesday pressed the European Union to help shoulder the burden of curbing migrant trafficking in African countries, after more than 800 migrants drowned when a ship capsized Sunday in the Mediterranean Sea.
And, overnight, the U.N. Security Council urged a more muscular response to combat trafficking and encouraged more financial aid and assistance to Italy and other southern European countries on the crisis’ front lines.
Renzi, addressing Italian lawmakers in Rome on Wednesday, said the 28-member European Union must prioritize the migrant crisis if it “wants to be more than a simple assembly of countries that are members of an economic club,” the Associated Press reported.
While Italy has rescued 200,000 migrants since early 2014, its “noble generosity alone isn’t enough,” Renzi said. “We are asking Europe to be Europe, not just when it’s time to devise a budget.”
Measures could include setting up refugee camps in Africa, with U.N. support, and expanding sea patrols to deter “21st-century slave drivers” preying on migrants, Renzi suggested, according to the AP.
European leaders have scheduled an emergency summit Thursday in Brussels to discuss how to halt human trafficking and bolster rescue efforts. Thousands fleeing violence and poverty in northern Africa and the Middle East have risked perilous Mediterranean crossings for relative safety in Europe.
With Sunday’s capsizing alone, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees “now believes the number of fatalities to have been over 800, making this the deadliest incident in the Mediterranean we have ever recorded,” spokesman Arian Edwards said in Geneva.
Italian Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti also said human traffickers must be targeted with military intervention.
The rights group Save the Children reported Wednesday that it has learned some 60 adolescents were on board the ship when it capsized off the Libyan coast. It warned that if current trends continue, some 2,500 migrant children could die in similar accidents on the Mediterranean this year.
A Save the Children It said four boys claiming to be younger than 18 survived Sunday’s accident, when the migrant ship’s captain mistakenly rammed his vessel into a merchant ship that was coming to its rescue.
Italian prosecutors in the Sicilian city of Catania said the Tunisian captain steered his overloaded boat into a Portuguese container ship just before it capsized off the coast of Libya on Sunday. Authorities say it is the Mediterranean's deadliest migrant disaster. There were only 28 survivors.
The prosecutors absolved the merchant ship of any responsibility for the tragedy.
Actor Ben Affleck: 'Embarrassed' by Slave-owning Ancestor
Actor Ben Affleck said Tuesday he regretted asking a PBS documentary show profiling his ancestors to exclude a relative who'd owned slaves, saying he was embarrassed by the revelation.
Affleck's ancestry was traced by Harvard scholar Henry Louis (Skip) Gates Jr. for an episode in the second season of "Finding Your Roots." In the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series, well-known personalities can discover more about their family history.
"I didn't want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves. I was embarrassed. The very thought left a bad taste in my mouth," Affleck said in a statement on his Facebook page.
"I regret my initial thoughts that the issue of slavery not be included in the story," he added.
Representatives for PBS and Gates did not respond to requests for comment.
The issue came to light after anti-secrecy website Wikileaks released a searchable database of more than 30,000 documents that were stolen by hacker from Sony Corp's Sony Pictures Entertainment in a massive cyber attack last year.
Affleck said in his statement that Gates had final say in what was included in the episode, which aired last October. He said he had "lobbied" Gates on what elements of his family history to use in the show.
The Oscar-winning actor-director added that he assumed the show "will respect your willingness to participate and not look to include things you think would embarrass your family."
"While I don't like that the guy is an ancestor, I am happy that aspect of our country's history is being talked about," he said.
Source-VOA
CARICOM task force on climate change meets in St Lucia
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Task Force on Climate Change meets here on Tuesday ahead of the May 9 summit in Martinique to be attended by French President Francois Hollande.
The meeting here is being convened by the Belize based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) and will be chaired by Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology Minister Dr James Fletcher.
A statement issued here said that the one-day meeting would focus on several areas including mitigation and adaptation, loss and damage, the CARICOM Preparations for Martinique Summit, the draft Martinique Declaration and the Road to COP 2015 in Paris.
The statement said that CARICOM is adopting a ‘strategic approach to prepare and present a coordinated position ahead of the twenty first Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP 21) scheduled to take place in Paris at the end of this year.
Source-CMC
Digicel WELCOMEs ANNOUNCEMENT BY ST. LUCIA NTRC OF PUBLIC CONSULtATION ON lime / flow MERGER
Digicel today confirmed its strong support for the announcement by the National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of St. Lucia (‘St. Lucia NTRC’) of a public consultation process in relation to the merger between Cable and Wireless Communications (‘LIME’) and FLOW / Columbus Communications Inc. (‘FLOW’). The St. Lucia NTRC has invited members of the public / all interested parties to make submissions on the merger to the NTRC by Thursday 30th April 2015.
Digicel has previously publicly called upon the Regulatory Authorities in St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada to be mindful of the conditions imposed by the Regulatory Authorities in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago; particularly in relation to the divestiture of duplicate fibre and related infrastructure assets created by the merger of LIME and FLOW’s networks. In its decision published on 27th March, the Barbados Fair Trading Commission (‘the FTC’) confirmed the view that the merger would create ‘… anti-competitive effects … in the Fixed-voice (landline) telephony and Fixed Data (broadband internet)….’ markets. Accordingly, the FTC imposed 14 separate significant conditions on its merger approval compelling LIME to promptly divest of significant overlap fibre assets in Barbados to a third party or parties to be approved by the FTC. These compulsory divestments include fibre assets relating to 27,000+ homes passed by the Karib Cable network and an additional 28,000+ homes outside of the Karib Cable network; but within the combined LIME / FLOW networks. The FTC also made its approval conditional on other specific conditions, including guaranteed consumer choice on service contracts, provision of pole and duct access to third party providers and retail price tariffing in the product markets affected by the strongly anti-competitive effects of the merger.
Digicel has submitted to ECTEL and to the NTRC’s in the affected countries that the merger of LIME and FLOW is, at the very least, every bit as serious a challenge to competition in key telecoms markets in St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada as it is in Barbados and that the anti-competitive effects of the merger are perhaps even more obvious in the OECS. Accordingly, Digicel submits that these OECS regulatory authorities must also very seriously consider the remedies of overlap assets divestiture in the OECS in order to address these obvious anti-competitive effects of the merger.
Digicel Group CEO, Colm Delves, commented; “We very much welcome this intervention by the St. Lucia NTRC and its commitment to a rigorous regulatory examination of the proposed merger. This matter needs to be very carefully examined and monitored by the regulatory authorities in the OECS countries.”