An Indian businessman has been jailed for life after planting a fake hijacking letter in the toilet of a Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Mumbai. Birju Salla said he had hoped the air carrier would close its Delhi operations and his girlfriend – a Jet Airways air stewardess – would have to move to live with him in Mumbai.

He was also fined 50 million rupees ($720,725; £650,877). Salla is the first person to be tried under India’s new anti-hijacking laws. The legislation carries a minimum sentence of life imprisonment, and a death sentence at its most severe. The businessman confessed to writing and printing the threat note in his Mumbai office before catching the flight in October 2017. It said 12 hijackers and several explosives were onboard, and demanded that the flight be diverted into Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. Salla was arrested after the plane made an emergency landing in Ahmedabad, 483 miles (778km) from its intended destination. At the time, he was having an extra-marital affair with an air stewardess from Delhi.(BBC)…[+]

The former Catalan vice-president Oriol Junqueras has used the last day of landmark proceedings against him and 11 other separatist leaders to defend the failed push for regional independence but also to plead for a political solution to the crisis. The trial, which has lasted four months and heard testimony from 422 witnesses, has examined the events leading up to the unilateral independence referendum on 1 October 2017 and the Catalan parliament’s subsequent declaration of independence.

Nine of the 12 defendants – who include Junqueras; the former speaker of the Catalan parliament Carme Forcadell; and two influential grassroots activists, Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez – are accused of rebellion, which carries a prison sentence of up to 25 years. Other charges include sedition and the misuse of public funds.

Addressing the judges at the supreme court in Madrid on Wednesday afternoon, Junqueras said: “Voting, or defending the republic in parliament, cannot constitute a crime. When it comes to human rights and fundamental freedoms, having the will to talk, to negotiate, to find agreement, should never be a crime.” He said that although he understood the court had a decision to make, the Catalan question required a political, rather than judicial, answer. “I genuinely believe that the best thing for all of us – for Catalonia, for Spain, for everyone – would be to see this issue returned to the sphere of politics – good politics – an area it should never have left,” he said.(TheGuardian)…[+]

PORT OF SPAIN/ BRIDGETOWN – The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) presented yesterday a study on the status of agriculture in the Caribbean as part of the 49^th Annual Meeting of the Bank’s Board of Governors in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The study highlights the critical role that agriculture plays to end poverty and build economic resilience.

“Growth in agriculture is the most efficient way to lift poor people in rural areas out of poverty,” said Luther St. Ville, CDB Senior Operations Officer (Operations). In the joint publication with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, entitled “Study on the State of Agriculture in the Caribbean”, CDB shows that the Region has undergone dramatic changes in past decades. Since 2000, the food import bill of CDB’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) has more than doubled from USD2.1 billion to USD4.8 billion. Food imports account for 60% of the food consumed in the Region. On the other hand, food exports of traditional crops dropped from 60% in 1990 to less than 20% in 2018. At the same time, agri-processed food exports increased from about 10-15% to 50%.

The picture is mixed across the Region. While the four BMCs Dominica, Guyana, Haiti, and Suriname are heavily dependent on agriculture, which accounts for 12%-17% of gross domestic product (GDP) and represents 10%-50% of employment, the contribution of agriculture is marginal in 10 BMCs, where the sector accounts for less than 4% of GDP. The study concludes that the agriculture sector needs to overcome a number of challenges if the agri-food system is to become more competitive, inclusive, and sustainable.

Productivity growth in the Caribbean is low. The value per worker has remained stable at less than USD25,000 for the last 30 years. In contrast, the value doubled in Europe and tripled in the United States over the same time period. Natural hazards also play a major role: while 40% of the sector is frequently hit by mild draughts and 10% by severe draughts, less than 5% of the farmers have irrigation…[+]