BAHAMAS – The Bahamas has rejected a proposal from the US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team to receive deported migrants as the former president looks to fulfil promises to ‘control immigration’. Bahamian Prime Minister Philip Davis “firmly rejected” a proposal from the incoming Trump administration to take in flights of migrants deported from the United States.   In a statement released by his office, the Bahamian premier says his government has reviewed the proposal carefully and could not approve the plan. “The Bahamas simply does not have the resources to accommodate such a request.” It continued saying prime minister Davis is firmly committed to policy of priority to the Bahamian people and tackling issues that are of concern to them. Since the rejection, there has been no further dialogue or discussion between Davis’ government and the Trump transition team.

A report by US media outlet NBC says the president-elect’s team have reached out to several Caribbean countries with the same proposal. Their findings indicate that Trump’s incoming administration contacted the governments of Turks and Caicos, Panama, Grenada, the Bahamas and potentially others.   Last month, Donald Trump secured a victory in what was dubbed as the most crucial election in recent US history. (Euronews)

Foto: Bahamas’ Prime Minister Philip Davis attends the second annual CARICOM-India Summit, in Georgetown, Guyana.

TEXAS  –  A United States federal judge has rejected a deal that would have let Boeing plead guilty to a felony conspiracy charge and pay a fine for misleading US regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed, killing 346 people.

US District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas last Thursday said that diversity, inclusion and equity – or DEI – policies in the government and at Boeing could result in race being a factor in picking an official to oversee Boeing’s compliance with the agreement.

The ruling creates uncertainty around the criminal prosecution of the aerospace giant in connection with the development of its bestselling airline plane.

The judge gave Boeing and the Justice Department 30 days to tell him how they plan to proceed. They could negotiate a new plea agreement, or prosecutors could move to put the company on trial.

The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the ruling. Boeing did not comment immediately.

Paul Cassell, an attorney for families of passengers who died in the crashes, called the decision an important victory for the rights of crime victims.

“No longer can federal prosecutors and high-powered defense attorney craft backroom deals and just expect judges to approve them,” Cassell said. “Judge O’Connor has recognized that this was a cozy deal between the government and Boeing that failed to focus on the overriding concerns – holding Boeing accountable for its deadly crime and ensuring that nothing like this happens again in the future.”

Many relatives of the passengers who died in the crashes, which took place off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, respectively, have spent years pushing for a public trial, the prosecution of former company officials, and more severe financial punishment for Boeing.

The deal the judge rejected was reached in July and would have let Boeing plead guilty to defrauding regulators who approved pilot-training requirements for the 737 Max nearly a decade ago. Prosecutors said they did not have evidence to argue that Boeing’s deception played a role in the crashes.

In his ruling, O’Connor focused on part of the agreement that called for an independent monitor to oversee Boeing’s steps to prevent violation of anti-fraud laws during three years of probation.

O’Connor expressed particular concern that the agreement “requires the parties to consider race when hiring the independent monitor … ‘in keeping with the [Justice] Department’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.’”

O’Connor, a conservative appointed to the bench by former President George W Bush, questioned Justice Department and Boeing lawyers in October about the role of DEI in the selection of the monitor. Department lawyers said selection would be open to all qualified candidates and based on merit.

The judge wrote in last Thursday’s ruling that he was “not convinced … the Government will not choose a monitor without race-based considerations”.

“In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency. The parties’ DEI efforts only serve to undermine this confidence in the government and Boeing’s ethics and anti-fraud efforts,” he wrote. (Al Jazeera)

Photo: A  737 Max jetliner. (Bloomberg)

TRINIDAD – PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.5 rocked Trinidad and Tobago just before midnight on Thursday. The Seismic Research Center of the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies reported that the quake, which occurred at 11:30 p.m., was located Latitude 10.97N and Longitude 62.20W at a depth of 33 km. It was felt in the capital Port of Spain, Arima, and San Fernando in south Trinidad. There were no immediate reports of injury or damage. (The Gleaner)

MORADABAD  –  A Muslim couple in India have been hounded out of their newly-purchased home by their Hindu neighbours who said they would not allow them to live there because of their religion. Hindu residents of the posh TDI City – an upscale residential bloc in the northern city of Moradabad – began protesting after news of the sale became public. The incident resulted in a huge outrage in India after a video from the protest went viral. It showed one of the residents Megha Arora saying that Dr Ashok Bajaj, a resident, had sold his house to a Muslim family without consulting them.

“We cannot tolerate a Muslim family living right in front of our local temple. This is also a question of the safety of our women,” she said. “We want the sale to be revoked and are asking the administration to cancel the registration of the house in the name of its new owners. We cannot allow people from another faith to come and live here. We will not allow them to enter and continue to protest as long as they don’t go away,” she added. Many of the residents also visited the district magistrate’s office to lodge a complaint. Outside, they shouted slogans against Dr Bajaj and the Muslim couple.

The protests have had their intended effect. On Friday, Dr Bajaj told the BBC that a resolution, mediated by the city’s elected representative, had been reached and the new Muslim owners would re-sell the house to a Hindu family already living in the housing society. Dr Bajaj, who runs an eye hospital in the city and had lived in the society for more than six years, said he had sold the house to the Muslim couple who are both doctors and that their families had known each other for 40 years. The Muslim couple, he said, were no longer comfortable moving into the house.

He added that the furore over the sale was “uncalled for” and that he had not expected it to become national news.

But there is evidence that incidents of violence and discrimination against India’s Muslim community have grown in the past decade under the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Anti-Muslim hate speech incidents have surged, with a majority reported from states ruled by the BJP – Moradabad is also located in the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh. The BJP has consistently denied these claims. Tanvir Aeijaz, professor of politics and public policy at Delhi University, says the incident in Moradabad “shows that religious polarisation has sunk in, that it’s working at the ground level”.

Dr Bajaj says the protest started after he introduced the Muslim couple to his neighbours as a gesture of goodwill. The backlash to the sale of the house, he said, “has come out of nowhere” as there are other Muslim families already living in the colony and that “we had always had a good rapport with our neighbours”. “The controversy is changing the fabric of the city. Our intention was not to create any kind of unrest with this transaction,” he said, adding that “there is no law” against this transaction. The colony also did not have a residents’ association that would need to approve the sale, he said. “Now they have woken up to make it.” (BBC)

Photo: Protesting residents raised slogans against the former owner Dr Ashok Bajaj, asking him to take the house back. (AK Mishra)