CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IN THE CAYMAN ISLANDS MEETING – UPDATE!!!!

UPDATE: MEMBERS OF THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND JOURNALISTS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED – PLEASE SEE INEWS CAYMAN BREAKING NEWS STORY”ICCI SAYS YOU CAN’T COME TO CATRON’S PRESENTATION”

Local activist, Sandra Catron, is having a special presentation on the state of Child Sexual Abuse in the Cayman Islands on Wednesday, September 4, 2013 at the International College of the Cayman Islands in Friends Hall 2 starting at 7:30pm.

Ms. Catron is a local entrepreneur, lawyer, and social activist, who recently started a sex offender’s registry page on Facebook.  She also started an online petition to protest a recent sentence of a convicted sex offender who received a six month sentence. As a result of her petition and activism, that sentence is now being appealed.

Catron is urging everyone to come and receive valuable and helpful information about how to advocate, and help create change in your country.

IN ECUADOR, A RAPE SURVIVOR MUST BE “AN IDIOT OR DEMENTED” TO GET AN ABORTION

By Mindy Townsend From Care2

Ecuador’s draconian abortion laws put the lives of rape survivors at risk, according to a Human Rights Watch report issued this week.

As the law stands in the South American country, a woman can only obtain an abortion if she is deemed to be “an idiot or demented,” or if the health or life of the woman is at risk, regardless of how she got pregnant. Otherwise, women and girls have no access to a legal abortion. In fact, it’s a crime both for a woman to seek and abortion and for a doctor to provide one.

According to Human Rights Watch:

The criminal code imposes penalties including prison terms ranging from one to five years for women and girls who obtain abortions. Medical professionals who provide them are subject to harsher penalties. These penalties drive some women and girls to have illegal and unsafe abortions, thwarting Ecuador’s efforts to reduce maternal mortality and injury.

Ecuador has a relatively high maternal mortality rate, with 110 deaths per 100,000 births according to data from 2010. For comparison, the United States has 21 deaths per 100,000 births.

This is a problem for all women in Ecuador, to be sure, but it’s especially acute for rape survivors. A 2011 government survey showed that one in four Ecuadorean women have been victims of sexual violence. If a pregnancy results from a rape, the survivor is really between a rock and a hard place.

“Ecuador’s abortion law drives women who are rape victims to take desperate measures. Doctors by law have to deny an abortion to a woman who has been raped and who is not considered an idiot or demented. The language is from the 1930s,” Amanda Klasing, Americas women’s rights researcher at HRW, told Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview in Washington.

“A woman or girl who has suffered the trauma of rape shouldn’t have to face the prospect of going to jail if she chooses to get an abortion. They shouldn’t be in a position where they are seen as criminals by the state,” she added.

Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Ecuador’s abortion restrictions will be lifted, or even eased, anytime soon. The country’s president, Rafael Correa, has been vocal about his opposition to easing abortion restrictions and he has a lot of support for that position among lawmakers.

Even though access to legal abortion services is severely restricted, women and girls are still getting the procedure illegally. According to HRW, complications from abortion killed at least 10 women or girls in Ecuador in 2011. However, that number could be higher because the deaths may be attributed to medical conditions related to the abortion, but not the abortion itself.

Restrictive abortion laws haven’t been shown to decrease the numbers of abortions, just the numbers of safe and legal abortions. According to a 2008 study by the World Health Organization and the Guttmacher Institute, Latin America has some of the highest abortion rates in the world. The region also happens to have some of the most stringent abortion restrictions.

For more on this story go to:

http://www.care2.com/causes/in-ecuador-a-rape-survivor-must-be-an-idiot-or-demented-to-get-an-abortion.html

STALKER FOUND LIVING IN JENNIFER LOPEZ’S POOL HOUSE

From Caribbean360

The 49-year-old former firefighter reportedly told police that he was the father of the Puerto Rico-born singer’s children and that she had left the property open for him.

NEW YORK, United States, Friday August 30, 2013 – John Dubis, a retired firefighter who was found living in the pool house at Jennifer Lopez’s mansion in the exclusive Hamptons area of New York, has been charged with stalking, among other things.

The 49-year-old from Rhode Island was also charged with burglary, criminal contempt and possessing burglary tools.

According to police, the 44-year-old singer had a restraining order against Dubis before he was found by workers at her home. The order was reportedly issued on March 27 in Westchester County after he tried to contact Lopez’s mother.

Dubis nevertheless made himself at home at the property where he lived for a week while Lopez was away.

During that time, he appeared to be a legitimate guest, even parking his car in plain view out front and acting as if he were a welcomed friend of the Puerto Rico-born superstar.

According to the New York Post, which first broke the story, the unwanted tenant told cops that he was the father of J.Lo’s children and that she had left the pool house open for him.

He reportedly went so far as to turn her mansion into his private summer getaway and set up an online pseudonym – David A Lopez – and posted pictures and messages about his stay. He even did small tasks around the property including clearing an overgrown pathway.

According to the felony complaint documents obtained by “OMG! Insider,” Dubis engaged in “lewd acts” during his time at the mansion.

Police said that the court ordered an exam to determine if Dubis was fit to proceed in reference to the criminal charges, adding that Dubis had pleaded not guilty following his arrest.

Lopez, who was a judge on American Idol for two seasons in 2010 and 2011 and has recently confirmed that she will be returning to the show, reportedly bought the eight-bedroom mansion in the Southampton hamlet of Water Mill in May for about US$10 million.

For more on this story go to: http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/949575.html?utm_source=Caribbean360+Newsletters&utm_campaign=c311cf4958-Vol_8_Issue_155_News8_30_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_350247989a-c311cf4958-39393477#ixzz2dV1fmfCG

HURRICANES & HAMS

By Gerald Burton From ICT Update

Jamaican amateur radio operators serve their communities as extreme weather events increase in frequency across the Caribbean.

Although no one can say that any individual hurricane is the direct result of climate change, there is general consensus amongst scientists that global warming has exacerbated the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, and has led to an increased incidence of so-called super-hurricanes.

The Caribbean is particularly susceptible to hurricanes and storms. On a small island, a single bad one can undo years of development work in the space of a few hours. The agricultural, forestry, and fisheries sectors are particularly vulnerable.

Effective communication both in the lead-up to and aftermath of a storm is vital to minimizing the damage to the livelihoods of affected communities.

Every Caribbean country has its own national coordinating agency for disaster preparedness, and beyond the services one expects – police, fire, the Red Cross – amateur (ham) radio and citizens’ band (CB) radio operators are also often part of these emergency networks. In Jamaica, amateur radio operators have a history of aiding hurricane preparedness and emergency communications dating back to the fifties, but with the increase in extreme weather events in the region caused by climate change, it is likely that hams will be called on to provide services ever more frequently.

In 1981, we at the Jamaican Amateur Radio Association formed the Jamaica Amateur Radio Emergency Corps (JAREC), following an extensive upgrading of our high frequency (HF) equipment. This established Jamaica’s first island-wide very high frequency (VHF) repeater system. We are a specialized team that offers hurricane monitoring and emergency communications services to the Red Cross, the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), and the Salvation Army.

Our portable stations consist of an HF and VHF transceiver and a battery that operates the equipment, as well as two operators who can relieve each other. The HF radio links us internationally to the US National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami. We assist the emergency services by passing messages between them and the NHC. While hurricanes often cause disruptions to the electricity and telephone systems, deep cycle and auto batteries ensure that our repeater system can continue to operate. This is complemented by our HF radio network through which we can relay messages. Often, the NHC in Miami is bombarded with messages from the islands, causing the phone system to become quickly overwhelmed. Ham radio thus offers an alternative channel for getting information through.

We have come a long way in the last two decades. Today, we are able to place a portable two-man station in any community on the island. Thus we can also pass on messages relating to health and welfare and routine messages between communities and the various agencies.

Over the past few years, we have augmented our service with the internet, using it to link distant radio sites via voice over internet protocol (VOIP), as part of the Internet Relay Linking Project (IRLP). We connect the VHF radio to a computer and the radio then links into a repeater system. Any local person with a VHF radio can talk across the miles by accessing the repeater system. The repeater then connects to the computer allowing communications via VOIP to a distant repeater. This gives global coverage to frequencies that are normally only locally accessible.

Regional coordination of these activities has been enhanced through the Caribbean Amateur Radio Meteorological Emergency Network (Carmen). This is a joint project between Caribbean amateur radio operators, the NHC, and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association. We ham operators provide supplemental surface weather data to forecasters at the NHC whenever a hurricane approaches land in order for them to refine the forecasts they produce.

Carmen runs five weather stations, which gather data on wind speed, rainfall and atmospheric pressure. They are posted at ham radio operators’ homes on different parts of the island. The operators pass on the data via IRLP or HF radio. Set up to run manually – the Carmen radio operator takes a reading and sends it to the NHC – efforts are underway to establish automatic reporting using solarpowered Automated Position Reporting System (APRS ) units. These would allow operators more time to secure their homes and family, as the units could be placed in critical locations that are usually evacuated when a storm is approaching. The ultimate goal is to install a large number of weather stations across the region, all connected via APRS and automatically sending weather data to the NHC.

In this era of the internet and mobile phones, we hams are often asked why we are still around. Yet, in times of crisis, our communities and even state-of- the-art facilities such as the Hurricane Centre come to depend on us. It may seem like ‘just’ a hobby, but we are proud to serve our nation.

Gerald Burton is the president of JARA. His call sign is 6Y5AG.

For more on this story go to:

http://ictupdate.cta.int/en/layout/set/print/Feature-Articles/Hurricanes-and-Hams