The body of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi was “dissolved” after his murder and dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, an adviser to the Turkish president has said. “We now see that it wasn’t just cut up; [the Saudi suspects] got rid of the body by dissolving it,” Yasin Aktay, an adviser to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and an official in Turkey’s ruling party, told the newspaper Hurriyet on Friday.

“According to the latest information we have, the reason they cut up the body is it was easier to dissolve it. They aimed to ensure no sign of the body was left,” said Aktay, who was a friend of the dissident Saudi writer. “Killing an innocent person is one crime, the treatment and extent of what was done to the body is another crime and dishonour.”

The remarks represented the first official statement from a Turkish authority about what allegedly happened to Khasoggi’s body. Turkish investigators have been trying to determine whether Khashoggi’s remains could have been dissolved in acid at the nearby consul general’s house. An unnamed official also told the Washington Post “biological evidence” in the consulate’s garden suggested that because of acid “Khashoggi’s body was not in need of burying”.(theguardian)…[+]

BRASILIA-– Brazil’s environment and agriculture ministers yesterday criticized President-elect Jair Bolsonaro’s plans to merge their departments, saying it would hurt the country’s agenda on both fronts.

Bolsonaro has pledged to roughly halve the number of existing ministries in an effort to reduce bureaucracy and government bloat. He also vowed to merge the planning, finance and industry ministries into one super ministry. Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi said in a statement he is against the proposed merger. The move would cause losses to the country’s farm trade as European countries – key importers of Brazilian agricultural products – have pushed Brazil to protect the environment, he said.

Maggi said the environmental ministry’s portfolio includes areas that deal with energy, infrastructure and a wide variety of subjects that do not fit with the agriculture ministry’s mandate. “How will a minister of agriculture comment on an oil field or mineral exploration?” the statement quoted him as saying. Earlier in the day, Environment Minister Edson Duarte said that he was surprised and concerned by the announcement of the plan to combine the portfolios.(Reuters)…[+]

The Pan-Caribbean Partnership against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) hosted the Regional meeting on Ending AIDS in the Caribbean: expanding equitable, effective, innovative and sustainable HIV responses towards the 2020 Fast Track targets on the way to elimination in Kingston, Jamaica on 1 and 2 November 2018.   

The purpose of the meeting is to sensitize Caribbean stakeholders on policy approaches that are required to reduce health inequalities.  The meeting encompasses the creation of a set of concrete actions to implement the Call To Action that emanated from the Third Latin America and Caribbean Forum on HIV and Sustainability (10 November 2017) for inclusion in the post 2018  Caribbean Regional Strategic Framework on HIV and AIDS (CRSF). These actions will support expanding equitable access to health and social services while strengthening health system responses to HIV and its sustainability.

 Mr. Dereck Springer, Director of PANCAP welcomed participants and shared the expectations of the meeting. In her opening remarks, Sannia Sutherland, Programme Coordinator, Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition (CVC) highlighted that civil society groups have been increasingly advocating for mechanisms to address issues that affect key populations and increased accountability.

She stated, “We have been working assiduously to promote the legal empowerment of key populations (KPs) to improve access to health and justice and reduce human rights violations with a view to promoting an enabling environment as we join fast track efforts”.

Ms. Sutherland underscored that throughout the Caribbean, Community-based organizations (CBOs) and the communities they work in are key players in the delivery of health services, as they have unique advantages in advocacy, demand creation and linkage of communities to services, building an understanding of what treatment, prevention, care and support are, and keeping governments, and donors accountable. However, they often deliver services without stable and predictable funding or systemic linkages to formal public health facilities. She further stated that building effective responses to priority health challenges with Key Populations, particularly in the face of the 90-90-90 commitments is a key priority for all civil society groups that work in the trenches contributing to the HIV response in the region. She noted that current actions by stakeholders to end AIDS included strengthening linkages throughout the Treatment Cascade, improving linkages to reach Key Populations, defining further and implementing task shifting and task sharing policies, considering the added value of CBO Interventions at each step in the Treatment Cascade and reaching underserved Youth…[+]