CAMPBELLTON, Hanover — The police have in their cus­tody one of the prime sus­pects fin­gered in Thursday night’s blood­bath in this rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, where 10 mem­bers of a fam­i­ly were shot, six fatal­ly, by gun­men who sprayed bul­lets on their five-bed­room board house, then fire­bombed it. The sus­pect was hand­ed over to the police by a rel­a­tive late Friday after­noon, after the police went to his home and did not find him. Reports say that the police were prepar­ing the process for an inter­ro­ga­tion of the detainee, who had not been charged up to late yesterday.

The deceased have been iden­ti­fied as Linett Bloomfield, 62, Mark Bloomfield, 40, Brian Mangaroo, 29, Kerrian Bloomfield, 36, and her two chil­dren Alliah Mahabee, 17, and Davian Mahabee, 15. Linett is the moth­er of Mark and Kerriann, while Brian is her nephew. The 62-year-old’s hus­band, said to be over age 70, is among the four hos­pi­talised. The father of Alliah and Davian is also in hos­pi­tal. Reports are that mem­bers of the Hanover police divi­sion were sum­moned to the Campbellton com­mu­ni­ty around 11:00 pm after res­i­dents report­ed that they heard a bar­rage of gunshots.Upon their arrival in the com­mu­ni­ty, the police team spot­ted a house engulfed in flames and the fire brigade was called in.

Firefighters, after car­ry­ing out cool­ing down activ­i­ties, found the charred remains of six fam­i­ly mem­bers in the rub­ble. Four oth­er occu­pants of the house who were severe­ly burnt were rushed to the Noël Holmes Public General Hospital in the parish cap­i­tal of Lucea, where they were admit­ted. Up to late yes­ter­day after­noon the police were still main­tain­ing a strong pres­ence in the trou­bled com­mu­ni­ty where res­i­dents con­tin­ue to reel from shock and dis­be­lief over the action that they described as “heart­less”. In the mean­time, some of the grief-strick­en res­i­dents are point­ing fin­gers at one of the vic­tims, who is accused of being the tar­get of the onslaught which claimed the lives of inno­cent fam­i­ly mem­bers. “Everybody is say­ing because of that guy, the inno­cent peo­ple dead. Him and some peo­ple inna ‘rup­tion and I under­stand that them send threat that they are going to kill him,” a res­i­dent told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

That the­o­ry was also put for­ward by police inves­ti­ga­tors. The police con­firmed that before the shoot­ing ensued, the shoot­ers called out two per­sons who were at the house, one of whom was among the six lat­er killed, and anoth­er who was includ­ed in the four hos­pi­talised. During his vis­it to the com­mu­ni­ty on Friday with Commissioner of Police Dr Carl Williams, Minister of National Security Peter Bunting appealed to com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers that asso­ci­a­tion with crim­i­nal ele­ments can result in expo­sure to harm. “I want to use this oppor­tu­ni­ty to appeal to res­i­dents of Hanover and indeed all Jamaica, when­ev­er you asso­ciate with crim­i­nals, whether vio­lence pro­duc­ers or scam­mers, those who have ille­gal guns, you put your entire fam­i­ly at risk,” Bunting stated.

He added: “When we do the analy­sis of vic­tims of gun mur­der, the vast major­i­ty of them are either per­sons involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty or the close fam­i­ly or asso­ciates of those involved in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. So I would appeal to the ladies, stay away from these gang­sters, they come to vis­it, they will put the rest of your fam­i­ly at risk. As you have seen when they get into this reprisal and counter-reprisal vio­lence, they are indis­crim­i­nate. They don’t care who is the tar­get from who is col­lat­er­al damage.”

Dr Williams point­ed out that the iden­ti­ties of the killers and arson­ists are known to the police. “There were some dis­putes from weeks ago; I am not going to speak on the details of them now because those mat­ters are still under inves­ti­ga­tion but suf­fice it to say we have a very good sense, based upon our inves­ti­ga­tion, on what led to these killings here and we are going to use it to aid us to catch the per­pe­tra­tors,” Williams said. He also expressed con­cern over the surge of vio­lence that has dogged Hanover in recent months, lament­ing that the onslaught of the fam­i­ly unfold­ed even as the police have pro­vid­ed addi­tion­al resources to the parish.

“I was here two weeks ago because I was very con­cerned about the trend that was hap­pen­ing in the parish and I sought to put some things in place, some addi­tion­al resources, we sought to strength­en the com­mand in Hanover, we gave them some vehi­cles and we saw what we saw last (Thursday) night so we know we need to mount a stronger response, as the min­is­ter indi­cat­ed ear­li­er. We are going to have to ensure that the cit­i­zens of Hanover can be safe when you go to bed at nights,” the police com­mis­sion­er pledged. Bunting was also wor­ried over the unprece­dent­ed 54 mur­ders record­ed in the nor­mal­ly peace­ful parish since the start of the year.

“Ironically, I was speak­ing at a nation­al secu­ri­ty sem­i­nar at the University of the West Indies yes­ter­day (Thursday) and I was bemoan­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Hanover (where) we are see­ing such rapid dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion here in a parish with less than 70,000 peo­ple. “But since the begin­ning of September I think we have had more mur­ders in Hanover since the begin­ning of the month than in Kingston and St Andrew com­bined,” Bunting bemoaned.
Read more here : Police hold mas­sacre suspect

Moments before he died, Charly Keunang took a swing at a cop. This was­n’t an ordi­nary jab or hook. In cell phone video filmed by a bystander in March, the 43-year-old home­less man can be seen spin­ning toward a group of Los Angeles police offi­cers, arms flail­ing. He looks more like the Tasmanian Devil than Mike Tyson. The whirl­wind attack lasts a few sec­onds, and then ends just as quick­ly as it began. Keunang, a Cameroonian immi­grant who was known as “Africa” on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, careens wild­ly into the incom­ing fist of one of the offi­cers. The cop punch­es Keunang in the face and takes him to the ground, where the scuf­fle con­tin­ues. “Stop resist­ing,” offi­cers yell as they try to sub­due Keunang. Four offi­cers blan­ket him, and you can hear the sound of one of their stun guns click­ing. “He has my gun. He has my gun,” screams one. The offi­cers then open fire. An autop­sy lat­er shows that two bul­lets struck Keunang in the chest at close range. Two entered else­where on his tor­so, and two hit his left arm. Keunang was pro­nounced dead at the scene, his name among at least 61 unarmed black men killed by police this year, accord­ing to a data­base com­piled by The Guardian.

The eye­wit­ness video of Keunang’s death went viral, spark­ing protests from Angelenos who argued the shoot­ing was fur­ther proof that the city’s police depart­ment should over­haul its use of force pol­i­cy and rethink its approach to deal­ing with the men­tal­ly ill. More than 1,000peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es are esti­mat­ed to live on the streets of Skid Row, an expanse of down­town Los Angeles that has one of the nation’s biggest pop­u­la­tions of home­less peo­ple liv­ing on the streets. Tensions between police and civil­ians in the area run high.

As the pub­lic search­es for answers about what hap­pened on that after­noon in March, a new set of con­cerns has emerged about police offi­cers’ use of body cam­eras — and how, or if, the devices will pro­mote account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy if the poli­cies that gov­ern the footage are over­ly restric­tive. Two of the offi­cers involved in Keunang’s killing were equipped with body cam­eras that were record­ing dur­ing the episode. Although inves­ti­ga­tors have that footage in their pos­ses­sion, the LAPD has not pub­licly released it. Under recent­ly adopt­ed pol­i­cy, the depart­ment like­ly won’t release the videos unless it’s com­pelled to do so in a crim­i­nal or civ­il court pro­ceed­ing. Without the body cam­era footage, a num­ber of ques­tions linger. What hap­pened before the con­fronta­tion became phys­i­cal? Could offi­cers have done a bet­ter job of de-esca­lat­ing? Does the body cam­era video pro­vide a clear­er pic­ture of how and why offi­cers resort­ed to dead­ly force?

The exist­ing bystander footage has pro­vid­ed lit­tle con­clu­sive evi­dence. LAPD offi­cials have claimed the most-watched video shows Keunang grab­bing an offi­cer’s firearm dur­ing the strug­gle, caus­ing the offi­cer to fear for his life. More than sev­en months lat­er, the Los Angeles County dis­trict attor­ney, Jackie Lacey, has­n’t announced whether charges will be filed against any of the offi­cers. To com­pli­cate mat­ters fur­ther, the few jour­nal­ists who have seen the body cam­era footage say it chal­lenges the offi­cial police account and calls the depart­men­t’s tac­tics into ques­tion. At GQ,Jeff Sharlet wrote that the video nev­er shows Keunang gain con­trol of the offi­cer’s weapon. Gale Holland and Richard Winton of the Los Angeles Times report­ed that offi­cers repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to use a Taser on Keunang before he got vio­lent, while he was try­ing to talk with them. It’s unclear if the body cam­era videos will affect the deci­sion about whether to charge the offi­cers in Keunang’s death. If the LAPD gets its way and the footage is not released, the pub­lic will be asked to trust that Lacey made her deci­sion cor­rect­ly and impar­tial­ly. In oth­er words, the pres­ence of body cam­eras will have changed very lit­tle in this case, at least outwardly.

With more and more police depart­ments begin­ning to adopt offi­cer-worn cam­era tech­nol­o­gy, Keunang’s death and its after­math should serve as a warn­ing. When the White House announced a $75 mil­lion ini­tia­tive last year to expand body cam­era pro­grams around the nation, it said the devices would help “build and sus­tain trust between com­mu­ni­ties and those who serve and pro­tect these com­mu­ni­ties.” But the equip­ment can only achieve this goal if the poli­cies gov­ern­ing the use of body cam­eras and dis­clo­sure of the footage don’t get in the way. Critics say the LAPD’s body cam­era pol­i­cy is prob­lem­at­ic because it allows the depart­ment to with­hold its footage from the pub­lic, it requires offi­cers to review footage before they write police reports, it does­n’t lay out clear pun­ish­ment for offi­cers who fail to turn on their cam­eras dur­ing crit­i­cal inci­dents, and it does­n’t pro­vide clear pri­va­cy pro­tec­tions to lim­it pub­lic sur­veil­lance. This is a trou­bling list of com­plaints. But at their core is an essen­tial prob­lem: Giving police the pow­er to block the release of body cam­era footage deprives the pub­lic of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to bet­ter for­mu­late an opin­ion about police tac­tics and to push back with facts, should com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers find an offi­cer’s actions to be inap­pro­pri­ate. In many places, bad body cam­era pol­i­cy is threat­en­ing to under­cut pub­lic demands for account­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy before pro­grams even get off the ground.
Here are a few sce­nar­ios to look out for.

Your community might not get to decide whether it wants police to use body cameras in the first place.

Before civil­ians weigh in on how body cam­era pro­grams should work, they need to decide if they want police to have the devices at all. People are already being left out of this most basic deci­sion-mak­ing process, says Nadia Kayyali, an activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non­prof­it that focus­es on dig­i­tal rights and technology.

“Where body cams are being adopt­ed, it’s real­ly impor­tant that com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers — par­tic­u­lar­ly those who come from the com­mu­ni­ties that are most affect­ed by police account­abil­i­ty issues — need to be involved in that deci­sion. They need to have a dis­cus­sion,” Kayyali said. “And what we’re already see­ing is that instead, law enforce­ment agen­cies are apply­ing for this mon­ey with­out that dis­cus­sion.” Last month, the Justice Department announced grants to help 73 local and trib­al agen­cies in 32 states expand their body cam­era pro­grams. Many oth­er cities and towns had already start­ed to do so, though a num­ber of major met­ro­pol­i­tan police forces have been slow­er to move, often due to dis­putes over the costs of equip­ment and data stor­age, as well as resis­tance­from police offi­cers themselves.

But while many depart­ments have either begun equip­ping offi­cers with body cam­eras or have out­lined plans to begin the process, most of them have not yet released offi­cial guide­lines on how the cam­eras will be used. Some depart­ments are in the process of draft­ing pol­i­cy for the use of body cam­eras. Others are wait­ing for pilot pro­grams to con­clude before mov­ing for­ward. Activists and police offi­cials reg­u­lar­ly tout the acqui­si­tion of body cam­eras as a key step toward reform, but many peo­ple are still skep­ti­cal, believ­ing the devices could fail to prompt mean­ing­ful change and even make cer­tain issues worse. “There is con­cern that body cam­eras can be mis­used, are going to pro­vide more ammu­ni­tion in court for pros­e­cu­tion, rather than account­abil­i­ty for law enforce­ment them­selves,” said Kayyali. “There is con­cern that they are real­ly cre­at­ing per­va­sive surveillance.”

Your community might not be included in the policy-making process.

Even if res­i­dents agree that police should be equipped with body cam­eras, they most like­ly won’t get final say over the poli­cies that will ulti­mate­ly deter­mine how effec­tive the pro­grams can be. A coali­tion of more than 30 groups, includ­ing the American Civil Liberties Union and the EFF,signed a let­ter in May that out­lined a set of body cam­era prin­ci­ples for depart­ments to con­sid­er. First among them: “Develop cam­era poli­cies in pub­lic with the input of civ­il rights advo­cates and the local com­mu­ni­ty.” Many depart­ments have tak­en this advice to heart, at least in the­o­ry, by hold­ing lis­ten­ing ses­sions and seek­ing pub­lic input about body cam­eras. But just because they’re ask­ing peo­ple to sub­mit rec­om­men­da­tions does­n’t mean they’re actu­al­ly includ­ing them in the result­ing poli­cies. Cities like Los Angeles have already come under fire for not allow­ing suf­fi­cient pub­lic input before draft­ing poli­cies, and for putting forth pro­pos­als that crit­ics say have failed to incor­po­rate civil­ian pri­or­i­ties. In September, the ACLU sug­gest­ed that the Justice Department should deny fed­er­al grant mon­ey to Los Angeles due to defi­cien­cies in its body cam­era pol­i­cy. But the LAPD end­ed up receiv­ing a $1 mil­lion grant, putting it among the top fund­ing recipients.

Police could make it difficult or impossible for the public to access critical body camera footage.

This is the biggest con­cern for civ­il rights groups and the pub­lic, who have pushed for the adop­tion of body cam­eras large­ly in the belief that they can make police more trans­par­ent and account­able. But in some places, law enforce­ment is already severe­ly restrict­ing the footage it will release pub­licly. In Los Angeles, for exam­ple, body cam­era footage is explic­it­ly exempt­ed from pub­lic records laws. The chief of police can decide to release video as he or she sees fit. The District of Columbia is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing a pro­pos­al not to pub­licly release body cam­era footage if there are pend­ing crim­i­nal charges against a sus­pect or an offi­cer. In mat­ters of great pub­lic inter­est, how­ev­er, the may­or would have the author­i­ty to decide whether or not to unseal relat­ed video. This pol­i­cy was sug­gest­ed after Mayor Muriel Bowser attempt­ed ear­li­er this year to make all body cam­era footage exempt from pub­lic records requests.

In Las Vegas, which has tak­en a more open stance on body cam­era footage, police will be allowed to with­hold video per­tain­ing to ongo­ing crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions or inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions. While this may make sense in some cas­es, many of the most con­tro­ver­sial inci­dents — shoot­ings, in-cus­tody deaths, use of force com­plaints — typ­i­cal­ly result in these types of probes, mean­ing police could use this pro­vi­sion to sup­press the major­i­ty of con­se­quen­tial footage until after the inves­ti­ga­tion has been com­plet­ed. Together, such mea­sures have the effect of pre­serv­ing the exist­ing sys­tem, in which the pub­lic must sim­ply trust that law enforce­ment will prop­er­ly resolve any issues with­out exter­nal over­sight. That’s not help­ful. “If you’re using body cam­eras for account­abil­i­ty, you can’t then depend on police dis­cre­tion for the footage to be used for that pur­pose,” said Kayyali.

Police may end up using the footage only for their own benefit.

Another emerg­ing point of con­tention is whether offi­cers will be allowed to view record­ed footage before fil­ing their reports or mak­ing state­ments about an inci­dent. Law enforce­ment offi­cials in a num­ber of cities, includ­ing San Francisco, San Diego andDenver, have said their offi­cers should be able to do so. A Justice Department report on body cam­eras released in 2014 sup­ports this prac­tice, claim­ing it will help ensure accu­ra­cy, though as The Washington Post recent­ly report­ed, the direc­tor of the group that authored the report has since changed his mind. In Los Angeles, any offi­cer accused of exces­sive use of force or grave mis­con­duct will be required to review rel­e­vant body cam­era footage before giv­ing any state­ment to inves­ti­ga­tors. Civil rights groups like the ACLU, how­ev­er, see this as a move that will taint the inves­tiga­tive process before it begins and pro­tect offi­cers from poten­tial reper­cus­sions for misconduct.

“It will allow offi­cers to lie and tai­lor their sto­ries to the video,” said Jay Stanley, a senior pol­i­cy ana­lyst for the ACLU’s speech, pri­va­cy and tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram. “But even for most offi­cers who don’t lie, video is not an objec­tive record, and even mem­o­ry is not an objec­tive record. The offi­cer might see things or expe­ri­ence things the video does­n’t cap­ture, depend­ing on light­ing, cam­era angle, when the video was turned on or turned off.” Beyond that, there’s the more basic mat­ter of pref­er­en­tial treat­ment. A civil­ian under police inves­ti­ga­tion would not get to review an offi­cer’s body cam­era footage before being ques­tioned. Some argue that police deserve cer­tain priv­i­leges in the legal process, but Stanley says that if the goal is equal jus­tice under the law — even for the law — this should­n’t be one of the ben­e­fits. “An inves­ti­ga­tion is sup­posed to be a search for truth. The fam­i­lies of a per­son who’s been shot or beat up, they deserve the truth,” he said. “This is not a pol­i­cy that will yield truth most accurately.”

Officers may not face significant punishment for failing to enable cameras or for disabling them.

While police are push­ing for a vari­ety of mea­sures that may end up mak­ing body cam­eras less help­ful to the pub­lic, the equip­ment is com­plete­ly use­less if it’s not being used prop­er­ly in the first place. To make sure that offi­cers can’t sim­ply snuff out evi­dence of mis­con­duct by switch­ing cam­eras off or by tam­per­ing with footage after it’s record­ed, the coali­tion of civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions rec­om­mends that depart­ments out­line clear poli­cies about when and where offi­cers must turn body cam­eras on, and enforce strict dis­ci­pli­nary pro­to­cols for any vio­la­tions. Many depart­ments have estab­lished spe­cif­ic guide­lines to deter­mine which kinds of inter­ac­tions with civil­ians should be record­ed, but the pun­ish­ment for fail­ing to fol­low pol­i­cy may not fit most peo­ple’s def­i­n­i­tion of “strict.” In Los Angeles, the city’s body cam­era pol­i­cy does­n’t lay out spe­cif­ic sanc­tions for an offi­cer who fails to acti­vate the device, though it does say that any tam­per­ing with the footage will be “con­sid­ered seri­ous mis­con­duct and sub­ject to dis­ci­pli­nary action.”

In oth­er cities, the dis­ci­pli­nary response is less vague. In Denver, the first fail­ure to adhere to body cam­era record­ing require­ments in a 12-month peri­od will result in a writ­ten rep­ri­mand. A sec­ond vio­la­tion in the same peri­od means will result in the offi­cer being fined a day’s pay and sub­ject­ed to an in-depth audit of his or her body cam­era use. A third vio­la­tion will trig­ger a for­mal dis­ci­pli­nary case, while “pur­pose­ful, fla­grant or repeat­ed vio­la­tions will result in more severe dis­ci­pli­nary action.” It’s not clear what lev­el of dis­ci­pline is nec­es­sary to ensure that offi­cers are com­pli­ant with body cam­era pro­grams, but there’s rea­son to believe they’ll need some pres­sure. Over the years, we’ve seen a num­ber of con­tro­ver­sial inci­dents in which dash­board or sur­veil­lance cam­eras sup­pos­ed­ly “mal­func­tioned” at crit­i­cal moments. Important footage has also sim­ply gone “miss­ing,” mak­ing it impos­si­ble to prove alle­ga­tions of misconduct.

And in the past year, there have been at least a few instances of offi­cers not acti­vat­ing body cam­eras before fatal encoun­ters. Pilot pro­grams have pro­vid­ed some insight into how this prob­lem could play out when more offi­cers are equipped with body cam­eras. In Denver, an inde­pen­dent mon­i­tor’s review found that over six months, many offi­cers failed to record inci­dents in which they used force. At the time of the report in March, police offi­cials dis­put­ed the find­ings and refused to clar­i­fy if those fail­ures were a result of pol­i­cy vio­la­tions or faulty equipment.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R‑Calif.) pulled out of the run­ning for House speak­er on Thursday,accord­ing to mul­ti­ple reports.

McCarthy was con­sid­ered the top con­tender to replace House Speaker John Boehner (R‑Ohio), who will retire from Congress at the end of this month.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R‑Calif.) pulled out of the run­ning for House speak­er on Thursday.

McCarthy announced his with­draw­al dur­ing a meet­ing in which the House Republican Conference was sched­uled to pick its can­di­date for speak­er. The elec­tion for the Republican can­di­date for the next speak­er has also been postponed.

“If we are going to unite to be strong, we need a new face to help do that,” McCarthy said at a press con­fer­ence Thursday after­noon. McCarthy added that he felt good about the deci­sion and would stay on as major­i­ty leader.

In a state­ment, McCarthy said it had become clear that House Republicans are divided.

“Over the last week it has become clear to me that our Conference is deeply divid­ed and needs to unite behind one leader,” McCarthy said in a state­ment. “I have always put this Conference ahead of myself. Therefore I am with­draw­ing my can­di­da­cy for Speaker of the House. I look for­ward to work­ing along­side my col­leagues to help move our Conference’s agen­da and our coun­try forward.”

McCarthy with­drew his name from con­tention in a two-minute speech, accord­ing to one Republican who was in the room. McCarthy was con­sid­ered the top con­tender to replace House Speaker John Boehner (R‑Ohio), who had said he would retire from Congress at the end of this month.

“He asked for the floor, and it was a two-minute speech,” Rep. Robert Pittenger (R‑N.C.) said. “He said the coun­try is ask­ing for a new face, new lead­er­ship, and he said I’m going to pull out. I’m not the right per­son for this job. I think we’re all in shock.”

Boehner was among those who were sur­prised at the announce­ment, accord­ing to Rep. Trent Franks (R‑Ariz.).

Rep. Charlie Dent (R‑Pa.) said he was­n’t sure whether McCarthy could muster enough votes to become speaker.

“I sus­pect had this gone to the House floor, it might have been uncer­tain as to whether Kevin could get 218 Republican votes,” he said.

McCarthy has been haunt­ed by recent com­ments in which he praised the House Select Committee on Benghazi for hurt­ing Hillary Clinton polit­i­cal­ly.

“That was­n’t help­ful. I could’ve said it much bet­ter,” McCarthy said Thursday, adding that the com­ments had become a “dis­trac­tion from the com­mit­tee” and fac­tored into his deci­sion not to run for speaker.

Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R‑Utah) and Daniel Webster (R‑Fla.) were also run­ning for speak­er. On Wednesday, the con­ser­v­a­tive House Freedom Caucus endorsed Webster.

GOP Reps. Paul Ryan (Wis.), Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Trey Gowdy (S.C.) all quick­ly said Thursday that they were not inter­est­ed in run­ning for speaker.

“I think the Freedom Caucus just want­ed to move the coun­try in the best direc­tion pos­si­ble for America, and I believe that coin­cid­ed, iron­i­cal­ly, direct­ly, with Kevin McCarthy’s own agen­da,” said Franks, who is a mem­ber of the Freedom Caucus.

Jennifer Bendery and Michael McAuliff con­tributed reporting.

HOUSE ON FIRE: MCCARTHY DROPS OUT

SECURITY Minister Peter Bunting says Britain’s £25 mil­lion towards the con­struc­tion of a new prison in Jamaica is a con­di­tion­al offer.

“… It’s not a gift. They have been very clear that this sub­stan­tial con­tri­bu­tion towards the build­ing of the new prison is con­di­tion­al upon us pass­ing leg­is­la­tion, suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ing a pris­on­er trans­fer agree­ment, and then mak­ing it oper­a­tional,” Bunting told reporters at yes­ter­day’s Jamaica House press briefing.

However, despite the rag­ing debate, it could take up to a year before the coun­try knows if Britain will give Jamaica the promised £25 mil­lion to build the new penal facil­i­ty, Bunting indi­cat­ed yesterday.

He said all that time may be need­ed for Parliament to fin­ish its con­sul­ta­tions and decide whether or not to allow Britain to send up to 300 Jamaican con­victs back here to fin­ish their sen­tences. The Government, how­ev­er, is expect­ed to use its par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty to push the mat­ter through the House.

“It may or may not occur. The key ele­ment is whether Parliament will approve the frame­work leg­is­la­tion. We know it is a sen­si­tive issue for the soci­ety, so we would want to allow as much par­tic­i­pa­tion as pos­si­ble, so that would take a few months,” said the secu­ri­ty minister.

If the Government does not agree to this one-way pris­on­er exchange pro­gramme Britain could with­draw its £$25-mil­lion offer to help build a new prison, which the Jamaican Government insists that the coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs.

The min­is­ter told the House of Representatives on Tuesday that a spe­cial select com­mit­tee is to be set up to receive sub­mis­sions on this issue from tech­ni­cal experts and all inter­est­ed par­ties, includ­ing civ­il soci­ety and the dias­po­ra. He said the result­ing report could either rec­om­mend aban­don­ing the pro­pos­al due to the strong sen­ti­ments around the issue, or to pro­ceed with leg­is­la­tion and the nego­ti­a­tion on the pris­on­er trans­fer agreement.

Although main­tain­ing that the announce­ment made by British Prime Minister David Cameron last week had giv­en the impres­sion that an agree­ment was in place, Bunting said the arrange­ment could ben­e­fit both sides.

“We are not going to sign some­thing that at the end of the day would rep­re­sent a net trans­fer of finan­cial respon­si­bil­i­ty from the UK to Jamaica. There can be a win-win sit­u­a­tion in this because it costs about £6,000 to keep a pris­on­er in a Jamaican facil­i­ty ver­sus £25,000 in a UK facil­i­ty, so there is suf­fi­cient scope for there to be a win-win if and when we get to nego­ti­at­ing the pris­on­er trans­fer agree­ment itself,” he said.
Read more here :It’s not a gift’

Extinguishing hope that the car­go ship that went miss­ing near the Bahamas could have sur­vived a Thursday encounter with Hurricane Joaquin, the Coast Guard announced Monday that the ship, El Faro, sank, accord­ing to the Associated Press. The Coast Guard also found an uniden­ti­fied body of one crew mem­ber. Several “sur­vival suits” were spot­ted float­ing in the water, one of which con­tained the body. In addi­tion, an emp­ty, heav­i­ly dam­aged lifeboat was found. Barry Young of Jacksonville, Fla., whose grand-nephew, Shawn Riviera, was a crew mem­ber on El Faro, said his fam­i­ly is tem­per­ing their hope that Riviera could be alive with the real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion. He spoke with Jessica Palombo of WJCT, Jacksonville’s NPR mem­ber sta­tion.

“The Coast Guard did say that they are still see­ing debris. They’ve found oth­er sur­vival suits, they called them gum­my suits, so they’re try­ing to find each and every one to make sure there’s not a per­son in that suit who’s alive, who they can res­cue and take back to their fam­i­lies,” Young said, adding that the Coast Guard is now adding ves­sels to the search. “It does give you hope, but to be hon­est with you, the real­i­ty of it, we don’t see it as com­ing out any oth­er way than trag­ic.” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor told the media that the search has shift­ed from find­ing the ves­sel to res­cu­ing pas­sen­gers who may still be alive. “We are still look­ing for sur­vivors or any signs of life,” he said. “The search for sur­vivors continues.”

The ship, owned by Tote Maritime, set out from Jacksonville, Fla., on Sept. 29 laden with com­mer­cial goods and 33 crew mem­bers — 28 Americans and five from Poland. On Thursday, the ship lost pow­er and com­mu­ni­ca­tion and began to take on water as it passed an island in the south­east­ern Bahamas, about 10 miles from the cen­ter of the hur­ri­cane, accord­ing to the AP. Fedor says it appears that the crew was forced to aban­don the sink­ing ship in a Category 4 hur­ri­cane. “So you’re talk­ing up to 140 mile an hour winds, seas upwards of 50 feet, vis­i­bil­i­ty basi­cal­ly at zero. Those are chal­leng­ing con­di­tions to sur­vive in.”

Laurie Bobillot of Maine, whose 24-year-old daugh­ter, Danielle Randolph, was a crew mem­ber on the ship, said she received a mes­sage from her daugh­ter before the ship went down. “Not sure you’ve been fol­low­ing the weath­er at all,” Bobillot read dur­ing an inter­view with WGME, Portland’s CBS affil­i­ate. “But there’s a hur­ri­cane out here and we are head­ing straight into it, Category 3. Last we checked, winds are super bad and seas are not great. Love to every­one.” On Friday, the Coast Guard deployed a res­cue heli­copter to look for El Faro, but found no sign of it.

The CEO of a Tote Maritime sub­sidiary in Jacksonville, Phil Greene, says Captain Michael Davidson thought he could pass in front of the storm, but the ship had a prob­lem with its propul­sion sys­tem and end­ed up with­out pow­er in Joaquin’s path.

On Saturday, the Coast Guard report­ed find­ing a life ring from the ship and Navy and Air Force planes and ships joined the search. The fol­low­ing day, the Coast Guardfound large debris that appeared to include mate­r­i­al from the ship, along with oil on the sur­face of the water. Joseph Murphy, a for­mer mas­ter of com­mer­cial ships and now an instruc­tor at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, told Here & Now that he can under­stand why the tragedy occurred. “Unfortunately, while peo­ple may think we have per­fect infor­ma­tion, we do not. When they sailed, it was report­ed as a trop­i­cal storm, some­thing that ship has gone through many times in that very same areas,” he said. “What was not antic­i­pat­ed or known was the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of the storm and its devel­op­ment into a Category 4.”

Murphy said that one of the acad­e­my’s grad­u­ates was aboard the ship. He char­ac­ter­ized the loss as one of the “per­ils of the sea. He said the ship “had the best of equip­ment, it was well inspect­ed. The crew were well trained. They were sim­ply over­whelmed by the force of nature.” But for the fam­i­lies of those lost at sea, these words are small com­fort. Young says his fam­i­ly is strug­gling with the sit­u­a­tion. “My fam­i­ly as a whole, we’re just band­ing togeth­er to sup­port each oth­er. That’s all we can do right now,” Young says. He says Riviera was a cook on the ship and describes his grand-nephew as a “go-get­ter” with two chil­dren and one on the way. Young said the tragedy has been hard on his fam­i­ly, espe­cial­ly his niece — Shawn is her only child. Story orig­i­nat­ed here : Coast Guard Says Cargo Ship Sank; Body Of 1 Crew Member Found

The news that Utah con­gress­man Jason Chaffetz has decid­ed to throw his hat into the ring for speak­er shouldn’t have sur­prised the denizens of the Beltway as much as it did. After all, it had been Chaffetz week on Capitol Hill. If you had checked in on pol­i­tics for the first time sev­er­al months, you’d have thought Chaffetz was the ris­ing super­star in Republican pol­i­tics. He was every­where. At the begin­ning of last week, it looked as though the he couldn’t win for los­ing. As the chair­man of the House Oversight and Government Reform com­mit­tee, he presided over an inter­ro­ga­tion of the pres­i­dent of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, in a per­for­mance that was both bul­ly­ing and inef­fec­tu­al — which may be the worst of all pos­si­ble worlds. Progressives were out­raged at Chaffetz’s aggres­sive ques­tion­ing of Richards and inter­rupt­ing her before she could answer, while con­ser­v­a­tives were angry that he nonethe­less failed to land any punches.

If you’re won­der­ing why Boehner was days away from get­ting canned, today’s non­sense is why. Case study in inep­ti­tude of fail­ure theater.

Can you imag­ine if this band of incom­pe­tent morons had been in charge of pros­e­cut­ing the Nuremberg tri­als? My good­ness what a farce.

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) September 29, 2015

It’s unknown what they expect­ed, but pre­sum­ably they had hoped to some­how van­quish Planned Parenthood with one put-away shot that failed to mate­ri­al­ize. At the end of the hear­ings, with Richards hav­ing clear­ly pre­vailed, Chaffetz looked to be the week’s GOP goat. (Well, assum­ing one of the pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates didn’t say any­thing dumb.)

But as luck would have it, just as Chaffetz’s rep­u­ta­tion looked to be seri­ous­ly frayed, his star rose once again when the Washington Post report­ed that the direc­tor of the Secret Service had want­ed to release per­son­al infor­ma­tion on Chaffetz in retal­i­a­tion for his con­tentious over­sight of the agency in the wake of the var­i­ous tabloid scan­dals that have plagued it in recent years. Needless to say, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans and elect­ed offi­cials on both sides of the aisle were appalled by such an abuse of pow­er and Chaffetz was back on TV, this time as the vic­tim of gov­ern­ment abuse, instead of as the abuser.

And then came pre­sump­tive Speaker, Kevin “Loose Lips Sink Ships” McCarthy, with his now-infa­mous admis­sion that the Select Committee on Benghazi was a polit­i­cal enter­prise which was being used to dam­age Hillary Clinton. (As he said to Jake Tapper on CNN: “Have the select com­mit­tee get all the infor­ma­tion, all the hear­ings, so the pub­lic can see that. You win the argu­ment to win the vote.“)

It was already obvi­ous that the select com­mit­tee was mis­us­ing its author­i­ty since there had already been eight ear­li­er inves­ti­ga­tions which had thor­ough­ly exam­ined the facts and issued numer­ous reports, but McCarthy’s admis­sion pulled back the very thin veil of legit­i­ma­cy and exposed the Republicans to charges of malfea­sance. But among the first to rush to the cam­eras was none oth­er than Jason Chaffetz, the man who had just hours before been just­ly rail­ing against the Secret Service ille­gal­ly using its author­i­ty to dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion, defend­ing the Benghazi com­mit­tee for doing the same thing and crit­i­ciz­ing his friend Kevin McCarthy for acci­den­tal­ly speak­ing the truth.

Everywhere you turned, it seemed Jason Chaffetz was on tele­vi­sion, so much so that if you didn’t know bet­ter you might think he was run­ning for speak­er him­self. Lo and behold, by the week­end, he was. A week that start­ed off with him brow-beat­ing the direc­tor of Planned Parenthood end­ed with him on “Fox News Sunday”and explain­ing to Politico that his ratio­nale for run­ning for Speaker was his supe­ri­or com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills. (And truth­ful­ly, com­pared to McCarthy, he’s Winston Churchill.)

Chaffetz is a well-known fig­ure on Capitol Hill but the aver­age mem­ber of the pub­lic, if they know him at all, prob­a­bly remem­bers him main­ly as the guy who sleeps on a cot in his office rather than spring for a room some­where. But he’s been marked for star­dom since he was a col­lege foot­ball star: In the words of Dave Weigel in this 2010 arti­cle, “when [Chaffetz] start­ed to make it in pol­i­tics, his team­mates would recall how, after suc­cess­ful kicks, he would remove his hel­met to reveal a per­fect head of hair for the TV cameras.”

The son of a man once mar­ried to Kitty Dukakis, wife of 1988 Democratic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Michael, Chaffetz start­ed off as a Jewish Democrat, then con­vert­ed to Mormonism dur­ing his last year of col­lege in Utah — and Republicanism when for­mer President Ronald Reagan was hired as a moti­va­tion­al speak­er for Nu Skin, the “mul­ti-lev­el mar­ket­ing” com­pa­ny (think Amway) which employed Chaffetz for a decade before he entered pol­i­tics. He worked as chief of staff for the famous­ly mod­er­ate Gov. Jon Huntsman and then beat the very con­ser­v­a­tive Representative Chris Cannon by run­ning against him from the right in the 2010 Tea Party elec­toral blood­bath. On Election Night, Cannon said, “the extrem­ists who don’t want to win elec­tions have tak­en over the par­ty. We don’t want that to hap­pen in Utah. Politics is way too impor­tant to leave to the boors.” See sto­ry here :Jason Chaffetz, grand­stand­ing char­la­tan: What you need to know about the GOP’s shame­less up-and-comer

Nigerian troops have arrest­ed a sus­pect­ed financier of the extrem­ist sect, Boko Haram, the army said Tuesday. Mohammed Maina, who sells and sup­plies stim­u­lants used by the insur­gents, was arrest­ed in Bama, Bama Local Government Area (LGA) of Borno State,

the army said. “The sus­pect a native of Ngurosoye came from Shuari vil­lage in Bama LGA, he was arrest­ed with the sum of One Million Naira cash and some items,” the army said in a state­ment by its spokesper­son, Sani Usman, a colonel.

“Investigation revealed that Mohammed sup­plies them Kolanuts and oth­er items espe­cial­ly stim­u­lants. He fur­ther revealed that kolanuts is in high demand among the ter­ror­ists as it keeps them active at night.“It is appar­ent also that he plies Maiduguri-Dikwa-Kulli axis where he gath­ers mon­e­tary and oth­er mate­ri­als con­tri­bu­tions from Boko Haram sym­pa­thiz­ers along that axis and send same to the ter­ror­ists camps,” the state­ment said. Separately, the army said troops of 112 Battalion and Special Forces in Mafa and Dikwa raid­ed a Boko Haram camp at Bulungwa Naibe in Dikwa Local Government Area of Borno State on Monday.

“During the oper­a­tion, quite a num­ber of the Boko Haram ter­ror­ists were killed and the fol­low­ing items were recov­ered; 1 Buffalo vehi­cle mount­ed with an Anti-Aircraft Gun, a Rocket Propelled Grenade, 2 Machine Guns and 1 Sub-machine Gun. Others include 5 AK-47 rifles, 1 Fabrique Nationale rifle and 2 Sewing Machines used for sewing uni­forms by the ter­ror­ists,” the state­ment said.
Story orig­i­nat­ed here :http://​allafrica​.com/​v​i​e​w​/​g​r​o​u​p​/​m​a​i​n​/​m​a​i​n​/​i​d​/​0​0​0​3​9​1​4​1​.​h​tmlhttp://​allafrica​.com/​v​i​e​w​/​g​r​o​u​p​/​m​a​i​n​/​m​a​i​n​/​i​d​/​0​0​0​3​9​1​4​1​.​h​tml

Cape Town — The dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices of the apartheid era had a neg­a­tive impact on the med­ical edu­ca­tion of

black stu­dents, the care of black patients in pri­vate as well as pub­lic insti­tu­tions, and the careers of black med­ical doc­tors. Medical stu­dent train­ing pro­grammes at most uni­ver­si­ties ensured that white patients were not exam­ined by black med­ical stu­dents either in life or after death. Post-mortems on white patients were con­duct­ed in the pres­ence of white stu­dents only; stu­dents of colour were per­mit­ted to view the organs only after they were removed from the corpse.

Public and pri­vate hos­pi­tals reflect­ed the mores of apartheid South Africa. Ambulance ser­vices were seg­re­gat­ed, and even in emer­gen­cies a des­ig­nat­ed “white ambu­lance” could not treat and trans­port crit­i­cal­ly ill or injured patients of colour. Public hos­pi­tals had sep­a­rate wings for white and black patients and med­ical staff. Many pri­vate prac­tices had sep­a­rate entrances and wait­ing rooms for patients with med­ical insur­ance and those pay­ing cash, effec­tive­ly seg­re­gat­ing white and black. Doctors treat­ing polit­i­cal pris­on­ers faced dual loy­al­ties on a reg­u­lar basis. Some, like Dr Wendy Orr, resist­ed the gross human rights vio­la­tions, while many were com­plic­it. In par­tic­u­lar, the abhor­rent treat­ment of med­ical stu­dent and polit­i­cal activist Steve Biko received inter­na­tion­al attention.

The con­duct of dis­trict sur­geon Dr Ivor Lang and chief dis­trict sur­geon Dr Benjamin Tucker in the Biko affair was inde­fen­si­ble. They failed to exam­ine Biko ade­quate­ly, did not attempt to elic­it even a basic his­to­ry from him, and did not pro­vide ade­quate care or treat­ment. Instead, they acqui­esced to the instruc­tions of the secu­ri­ty police, neglect­ing to place the best inter­ests of their patient above all oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions. This unpro­fes­sion­al con­duct may be explained by the con­flict of the doc­tors caught in a clas­si­cal “dual-loy­al­ty” sit­u­a­tion — one in which their duty to their patient, Biko, con­flict­ed with their (per­ceived) duty to the state. In fact, Tucker sub­se­quent­ly admit­ted: “I had become too close­ly iden­ti­fied with the inter­est of the organs of the state, espe­cial­ly the police force, with which I dealt prac­ti­cal­ly on a dai­ly basis… I have come to realise that a med­ical practitioner’s pri­ma­ry con­sid­er­a­tion is the well-being of his patient.”

GR McLean and Trefor Jenkins make the point that the Biko case is an exam­ple of a dif­fi­cult ethics case not because it is dif­fi­cult to know what the moral­ly cor­rect course of action is, but “because it is hard to do what one ought to do”. The duty of the doc­tors involved in Biko’s case was clear, but per­form­ing that duty was dif­fi­cult. They had become so accus­tomed to work­ing with the secu­ri­ty police and regard­ing the detainees as dan­ger­ous ter­ror­ists rather than patients that they had dis­en­gaged from the duties and the respon­si­bil­i­ties of their pro­fes­sion. Neither the Medical Association of South Africa (Masa) nor the South African Medical and Dental Council (SAMDC) sup­port­ed charges of mis­con­duct or uneth­i­cal con­duct against the doc­tors involved in the Biko case.

The Biko affair marked a moral thresh­old in pub­lic life. The rep­u­ta­tion of the med­ical pro­fes­sion had nev­er sunk as low. Confidence had evap­o­rat­ed. It was no longer just a mat­ter of moral wrong­do­ing by a few med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers. Through the actions of Masa and the SAMDC, the whole organ­ised med­ical pro­fes­sion became impli­cat­ed in that wrong­do­ing. It was only after a small group of doc­tors (Frances Ames, Edward Barker, Trefor Jenkins, Leslie Robertson, and Phillip Tobias) suc­cess­ful­ly obtained a Supreme Court rul­ing to force the SAMDC to re-open the case against the Biko doc­tors that the coun­cil did so in 1985. Ultimately, Lang was found guilty of improp­er con­duct and received a cau­tion and a rep­ri­mand; Tucker was found guilty of improp­er and dis­grace­ful con­duct and was lat­er struck from the med­ical roll.

Other human rights vio­la­tions occurred at the hands of physi­cians, many of them in pris­ons and the mil­i­tary. In par­tic­u­lar, Dr Wouter Basson joined the South African Defence Force as head of Project Coast — the chem­i­cal and bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gramme of the apartheid gov­ern­ment. It was only in 1998, dur­ing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hear­ings, that the details of the activ­i­ties of Project Coast emerged: the man­u­fac­ture of bio­log­i­cal weapons, secret stock­piles of lethal bac­te­ria to kill peo­ple with pig­ment­ed skin selec­tive­ly, and chem­i­cals and drugs devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for use against ene­mies of the apartheid South African gov­ern­ment. Although Basson gave evi­dence at the TRC hear­ings for 12 hours in 1998, he did not apol­o­gise, he did not show remorse, and he did not request amnesty. Finally, after a 13-year-long case with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA), Basson was found guilty of uneth­i­cal con­duct in December 2013. Although he argued that he had act­ed as a sol­dier and not a doc­tor, that med­ical ethics were dif­fer­ent for mil­i­tary doc­tors, and that he had no doc­tor-patient rela­tion­ship with those he harmed, among oth­er argu­ments, a long-await­ed guilty ver­dict was reached.

Although the Sama issued a state­ment in sup­port of this ver­dict, Basson retains his mem­ber­ship in the organ­i­sa­tion Apartheid cor­rupt­ed the moral fibre of South African soci­ety in a man­ner that per­me­at­ed and broke the core eth­i­cal covenants of the med­ical pro­fes­sion. Separation between the pro­fes­sion and the state became opaque and ambigu­ous. Through this dense veil of con­fu­sion, a minor­i­ty of health pro­fes­sion­als were able to see their way clear and rebel against injus­tices in health care in the pris­ons and secu­ri­ty forces. However, the stance of many was one of indif­fer­ence or, worse still, com­plic­i­ty. Public hos­pi­tals are now ful­ly inte­grat­ed. HPCSA man­dat­ed that ethics train­ing for all reg­is­tered pro­fes­sion­als become com­pul­so­ry. All med­ical schools are now com­pelled to pro­vide train­ing in ethics, law, and human rights as a com­pul­so­ry part of their curricula.

Medical under­grad­u­ate train­ing ensures equi­ty in stu­dent intake and train­ing, except for a minor­i­ty of apartheid insti­tu­tions that con­tin­ue to use lan­guage as a bar­ri­er to entry, there­by deny­ing access to non-Afrikaans-speak­ing stu­dents, who are typ­i­cal­ly black. We hope that this bleak chap­ter of med­ical his­to­ry will nev­er be repeat­ed. * This is an edit­ed extract from a paper Dual Loyalties, Human Rights Violations, and Physician Complicity in Apartheid South Africa first pub­lished in the AMA Journal of Ethics. Story orig­i­nat­ed here: Apartheid cor­rupt­ed the med­ical pro­fes­sion October 6 2015 at 03:44pm

**

Sam Champion tried to return to ABC News when it became clear that his Weather Channel morn­ing show was a fail­ure, but his for­mer “Good Morning America” boss­es told him there was no room for him at the net­work any­more, sources tell Confidenti@l. “He thought he’d be show­ered with mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige” when he ditched “GMA” at the height of its pop­u­lar­i­ty for the Weather Channel in 2013, a TV indus­try insid­er told us. “Instead, he’s been left high and dry.”

“We love Sam and he’ll always be part of the ABC fam­i­ly, but we’ve got the best weath­er team in the busi­ness already in place,” said an ABC rep. The Weather Channel, which is part-owned by NBC and two large equi­ty funds — Blackstone Group and Bain Capital — has been mak­ing major changes as it seeks to cut costs in the wake of reports that the funds are try­ing to sell their stakes. Among the most vis­i­ble moves in recent days: a plan to focus more on weath­er and less on lifestyle and real­i­ty pro­gram­ming. That includes clos­ing the company’s New York City stu­dio, can­cel­ing Al Roker’s ear­ly-morn­ing show and remov­ing Champion from the low-rat­ed “AMHQ.”

Champion, who is said to be paid around $2 mil­lion a year, will now focus on prime-time weath­er report­ing and “dig­i­tal prod­ucts,” accord­ing to a Weather Channel staff memo. His final “AMHQ” tele­cast is Oct. 30. Fifty staffers will lose their jobs as a result of the changes. “He is pissed!” says a source close to Champion. According to our insid­er, “He left ‘GMA’ for this job with tons of promis­es, includ­ing get­ting a per­cent­age of mer­chan­dise sold with his name on it — umbrel­las, boots, hats, etc. None of it hap­pened.” The chan­nel very pub­licly lured him away in December 2013. “Brand Champion” was promised more mon­ey and influ­ence as well as the right to mar­ket mer­chan­dise under his own name, which his con­tract at ABC pro­hib­it­ed. “This is not true,” said a Weather Channel rep. “There is no such lan­guage (about mer­chan­dis­ing) in his contract.”

Though Champion will remain with the Weather Channel “to cre­ate reg­u­lar prime-time shows that high­light the inter­sec­tion of new tech­nolo­gies and weath­er,” accord­ing to the chan­nel, it is clear that his chance to become “the face of the net­work” — as he was promised — has passed.

“They’d love to get rid of him and his big salary,” a source said, but right now they’re stuck with each oth­er. We’re also told Champion remains close to his for­mer “GMA” col­league Josh Elliott, who left ABC short­ly after Champion to work for NBC Sports. “They are both start­ing to think they were played,” a source told Confidenti@l. “NBC want­ed to destroy the ‘GMA’ fam­i­ly. They didn’t care about Sam or Josh.”

NBC and ABC have been locked in a morn­ing-show rat­ings war that saw ABC take a lead in May 2013 that it hasn’t relin­quished. NBC has nar­rowed that gap since Champion and Elliott’s depar­tures. But Elliott’s future at NBC has become uncer­tain, and he’s rarely been seen on air. Worse, he got a luke­warm endorse­ment from his boss, NBC Sports chiefMark Lazarus, in an inter­view Thursday with The Wrap. “Josh is still at this point a part of the com­pa­ny and we’re work­ing to see what kind of sched­ules can work,” Lazarus said. Asked if there was a “good chance” Elliott won’t be part of NBC in the near future, Lazarus respond­ed, “Don’t know.”

TV insid­ers not­ed there were many com­mon denom­i­na­tors between Champion and Elliott, includ­ing both being rep­re­sent­ed by pow­er agents at CAA likeOlivia Metzger and Alan Berger, who “played to Sam and Josh’s big egos” and talked both men into leav­ing “Good Morning America” for lucra­tive deals “that have since gone nowhere.” Read more here :Sam Champion, his Weather Channel show tank­ing, tried to go back to ABC

Ocho Rios, St Ann:

Faced with an increase in mur­ders in St Ann, over last year, recent­ly installed com­man­der for the parish, Superintendent Wayne Cameron, has appealed to cit­i­zens to coöper­ate with the police to reduce the mur­der rate. Speaking with The Gleaner at a wel­come recep­tion for 23 new police per­son­nel, host­ed by the St Ann Justices of the Peace Association, at the John McDowell Conference Centre at the St Ann Chamber of Commerce com­plex at Pineapple, Ocho Rios, Cameron high­light­ed three areas in which res­i­dents could assist. “I am say­ing to the cit­i­zens of the parish that, one, where they have domes­tic issues call upon the police to assist them to work­ing through it. We have had too many domes­tic sit­u­a­tions that have esca­lat­ed into mur­ders, so the police are will­ing to work with you. “Two, where you have observed that strange peo­ple are enter­ing and leav­ing your com­mu­ni­ties, call the police.

Gun Campaign

“And, final­ly, we are on a get-the-gun cam­paign, so if you know where ille­gal guns are kept, or of peo­ple who are car­ry­ing ille­gal guns, please let me have the infor­ma­tion. You have my full con­fi­dence.” Turning to the new offi­cers, Cameron said where­as they have to be prop­er­ly super­vised, they are expect­ed to per­form well and main­tain a high lev­el of dis­ci­pline. “And we ask cit­i­zens of the parish to coöper­ate with us,” he urged. Meanwhile, chair­man of the asso­ci­a­tion, Pixley Irons, used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to encour­age the police. He pre­dict­ed that one of them would, one day, rise to become com­mis­sion­er of police. “We would like to get a suc­cess sto­ry from this group,” he encour­aged them. “I might not (be around to) know, but you can men­tion it in your inau­gur­al speech, if a com­mis­sion­er comes from this group.” Irons described the meet­ing as being “good”. “We decid­ed to meet with them, to intro­duce them and let them know what we expect of them; to tell them some of the con­cerns that we are hav­ing, and what we are look­ing for­ward to from them in the future.” “We hope we can do anoth­er ses­sion like this lat­er on, to guide them along Read more here :St Ann Justices Of The Peace Welcome New Cops To St Ann: Superintendent Urges Citizens To Coöperate With Police