Homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said American soldiers have “no intention” of shooting migrants who try to cross into the US from Mexico – at least for the time being – but they will all be apprehended, as Donald Trump moves towards a plan to close the border. The Trump administration on Thursday announced it is planning to dispatch at least 800 active duty troops to the southern border, at the direction of a president who has sought to transform fears about immigration into electoral gains in the November midterms, as a caravan of thousands of migrants makes its way through Mexico.

The US defense secretary, Jim Mattis, is expected to sign an order sending the troops to the border, bolstering national guard forces already there. And on Thursday evening, in an interview with Fox News while visiting the border in Arizona, Nielsen said: “We do not have any intention right now to shoot at people, but they will be apprehended, however.” The government is weighing an order to deny even asylum applications at a fortified border, by asserting emergency powers that would almost certainly face challenges in the US courts, the Washington Post reported. Nielsen added: “But I also take my officer and agent, their own person safety, extraordinarily seriously. They do have the ability of force to defend themselves.”(theguardian)…[+]

TRINIDAD-Screams and cries res­onat­ed from the hills of Laven­tille on Thurs­day night, af­ter po­lice shot and killed five men who opened fire on them. The in­ci­dent is ex­pect­ed to trig­ger a blood war be­tween of­fi­cers and crim­i­nal gangs in the hotspot com­mu­ni­ty and po­lice are al­ready tak­ing pre­cau­tions to safe­guard their lives.

Two of the men killed were iden­ti­fied as Me­shack “Crash” Dou­glas and Kadeem Williams, while an­oth­er was iden­ti­fied on­ly as Shaquille. The killings took place around 10.21 pm at Trou Macaque, Laven­tille. Of­fi­cers of the In­ter-Agency Task Force Strike Team were on pa­trol in thre com­mu­ni­ty when the men al­leged­ly opened fire on them from a ve­hi­cle, hit­ting one of the po­lice of­fi­cer’s in the chest. His bul­let­proof vest saved him. His col­leagues re­turned fire at the men, killing them. Four died on the scene while a fifth was sent to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal where he was pro­nounced dead on ar­rival.(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN)…[+]

Three Caribbean countries will benefit from disaster training workshops over the last quarter of this year. Between October and December 2018, a team of experts from the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) subregional headquarters for the Caribbean, led by the Coordinator of the Sustainable Development and Disaster Unit, Dr. Omar Bello, will conduct Damage and Loss Assessment (DaLA) trainings in Anguilla, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos islands.

The training courses are offered as a follow-up to the disaster assessment missions carried out last year to quantify the economic, social and environmental effects and impacts of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in those countries.

Disaster preparedness and risk management have important implications for policy making, and impact in a variety of ways the decisions and choices made by people in their daily lives. It is in this context that the workshops carried out by ECLAC Caribbean aim to equip national officers in Anguilla, the Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos islands with the skills and resources necessary to support their governments’ future efforts to incorporate prevention, estimation and risk reduction in public investment plans and development programmes.

The workshops will focus on the methodology and tools necessary to assess the impacts of a disaster on the social, infrastructure and productive sectors. Moreover, the ability to carry out a sectoral estimation of the impacts of a disaster in terms of damage, losses and additional costs will enable countries to determine the resources needed to restore social and economic activities, as well as the investments required to ensure a resilient reconstruction process.

ECLAC Caribbean and CCRIF SPC (formerly the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility) have joined forces to promote these DaLA trainings, as well as to promote financial protection mechanisms for disasters in the three countries. In the Bahamas, the workshop will be organized with the support of the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB)…[+]