One of the island’s top plastic surgeons is advocating the establishment of a specialist registry in light of a significant increase in the demand for body contour surgeries across the island. Senior plastic surgeon at the University Hospital of the West Indies Dr Guyan Arscott also wants the Government to format legislation that would facilitate this registry, something, he said, the Jamaica Medical Council has been working on for some time now.

The issue came to the fore at yesterday’s Jamaica Observer Monday Exchangewhere Arscott told reporters that legislation to decide who can perform this procedure does not exist. Body contour surgery, Arscott said, includes surgery on the breast, liposuction of the stomach, back, buttocks, and thighs, among other areas.

“If we try to educate the public of what is available then they have a choice, and if I tell you that we have a training programme at the university with doctors…then the patient at least has a choice [about who operates on them],” he said.

“Not only can any other doctor go out there and inject whatever, but there are instances in this country where non-doctors and in fact even non-nurses fly into this country and inject all sorts of materials into buttocks all over the place,” Dr Arscott told editors and reporters at the Exchange held at the newspaper’s Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston.(stabroek news)…[+]

Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, has signalled he may abandon controversial plans to make his son ambassador to the United States, amid a fierce political backlash and growing signs Congress may block the move. “I’m not going to subject my son to failure,” Bolsonaro told reporters on Tuesday in what was the first public hint he may be reconsidering his nomination.

Bolsonaro’s bid to hand control of Brazil’s Washington DC embassy to his 35-year-old son, Eduardo, has outraged Brazil’s foreign service and set off a domestic political firestorm. A report prepared for senators who need to approve Bolsonaro’s move concluded it amounted to nepotism and identified three distinctly undemocratic precedents where leaders had made their children ambassadors: in Saudi Arabia, Chad and Uzbekistan.

Eduardo Bolsonaro’s appointment must be approved by a simple majority in Brazil’s 81-member senate, where such proposals are seldom challenged. But there are growing indications senators may block the nomination.(TheGuardian)…[+]

A 21-year-old woman acquitted of the aggravated murder of her baby in El Salvador has called on her supporters to fight for others like her. A judge said there was no evidence that Evelyn Hernández had killed her child, which was found dead in the septic tank of the toilet where she gave birth.

His ruling contradicted that of a 2017 trial, during which Ms Hernández was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years. Women’s groups hope the ruling will set a precedent for other jailed women. “I ask that justice and freedom be done for the other women,” Ms Hernández said, referring to at least 17 women who are currently in jail over similar cases. El Salvador has one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the world. Abortion is illegal in all circumstances and those found guilty face between two and eight years in jail.

But in many instances, including the case against Ms Hernández, the charge is changed to one of aggravated homicide, which carries a minimum sentence of 30 years. Evelyn Hernández was charged with aggravated murder, with prosecutors arguing that she had killed her baby in 2016. She has always maintained her innocence, saying that she had been raped by a gang member and had no idea that she was pregnant.(BBC)…[+]

The UK government has said rules allowing EU nationals to live and work freely in the UK will end in the event of a no-deal Brexit on 31 October. Theresa May had considered extending freedom of movement to 2021 or allowing EU citizens to stay for three months before applying for a longer stay.

Those options have now been dropped, in favour of a new approach to be set out later. Boris Johnson said the UK would not “become hostile to immigration”.

The PM added that “immigration into the UK will be democratically controlled”.

However, the Three Million group, which campaigns for the rights of EU citizens living in the UK said: “Ending freedom of movement without putting legal provisions in place for those EU citizens who have not yet successfully applied through the settlement scheme will mean that millions of lawful citizens will have their legal status removed overnight.”

Freedom of movement allows EU citizens to live and work in other European Union countries. In a statement, the Home Office said: “EU citizens and their families still have until at least December 2020 to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme and one million people have already been granted status.(BBC)…[+]

A woman and her child were the first two cases confirmed with Ebola in Congo’s South Kivu region last week, opening a new front in the fight against the outbreak.

Health officials said on Friday that the latest cases were more than 700 km (430 miles) south of where the outbreak was first detected. Ebola has killed at least 1,900 people in Democratic Republic of Congo over the past year. This is the second biggest toll ever and militia violence combined with local resistance have made the outbreak harder to contain.

The 24-year-old woman had been identified as a high-risk contact of another Ebola case in Beni, more than 700 km north, last month, according to a government statement issued on Friday. She traveled by bus, boat and road with her two children to Mwenga, in South Kivu, where she died on Tuesday night, according to a slide from a presentation by health officials.

The woman had been vaccinated, the slide said. The Ebola response team, headed by the Congolese government, identified 120 contacts and vaccinated 20 on Thursday, the slide showed. The latest cases show the difficulty of containing the latest Ebola outbreak, which has continued to spread in eastern Congo despite the deployment of a highly effective vaccine. (Reuters)…[+]

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says de­spite his achieve­ments over the last year in of­fice, mur­ders and the fear of crime con­tin­ues to be his biggest chal­lenges.

The mur­der count for this year has equalled the last year’s fig­ure with the lat­est killing tak­ing place on Thurs­day night in Mor­vant. Grif­fith ac­knowl­edged that had it not been for the good work of his of­fi­cers, it could have been worse.

“There have been some sit­u­a­tions where based on prop­er in­tel­li­gence and prop­er op­er­a­tions some­times over 10-15 per­sons could have been killed in one night,” said Grif­fith. “Per­sons will try to crit­i­cise the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice based on what you would have seen with the homi­cide rate, but I can as­sure you that the homi­cide rate in re­la­tion to the pop­u­la­tion if you look at the num­ber of firearms we have and the oth­er sig­nif­i­cant fac­tors that we en­counter on a dai­ly ba­sis. The homi­cide rate could be well have been over 1,000 per an­num,” said Grif­fith.(Stabroeknews)…[+]

Strong winds, accompanied by heavy rains blew the roofs of 15 homes, five in Point Fortin and ten in the Penal/Debe area on Thursday. Point Fortin mayor Abdon Mason said there are also reports of downed electricity lines and fallen trees in Egypt Village, Warden Road and in the vicinity of Heritage Petrotrin Company Ltd (formerly Petrotrin).

There have been no reports of injuries. “There were two episodes of strong winds, one around 12.45 pm and another around 2.30 pm. The second one came with a force and that’s when the damage was done,” Mason said.

He said he and the Disaster Management Unit (DMU) were on the ground assessing the damage while trying to provide assistance for approximately 25 people who are presently affected. He said the owners of two houses in Southern Gardens, one in Dam Road, Egypt Village, another Stafford Street, Warden Road and a fifth in Fanny Village would have suffered major losses as all household and electronic items were water-logged. He said one of the roof’s which blew off landed on the roof of a nearby house also causing some damage.(Trinidad Newsday)…[+]

“There were 15 of us on the boat and I am the only one alive,” says Mohammed Adam Oga from his hospital bed in Malta. The migrants had each paid a smuggler $700 (£575; €630) to make the journey from Libya to Europe in the scorching heat of the Central Mediterranean.

Then their fuel ran out. Then their food. Then their water. He is the sole survivor, he says, of the passengers, including a pregnant woman, who attempted the arduous journey in one of the deadliest stretches of water in the world.

“We were at sea for 11 days. We started drinking sea water. After five days, two people died. Then every day, two more died.” He was picked up in Maltese waters on Monday after the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, spotted a dinghy adrift at sea. Footage of the rescue by Malta’s armed forces showed him slumped over a man’s body, before he was airlifted to hospital. “God sent the Maltese to save me,” he told Times of Malta, while being attached to a drip and too weak to walk.(BBC)…[+]

Two unidentified women have filed a sexual abuse lawsuit in a Manhattan district court against the estate of wealthy financier and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein apparently killed himself in a New York jail cell last weekend where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The death of the playboy turned pariah has triggered feverish coverage in the US and abroad, in part due to the elite social circles the previously convicted sex offender moved in.

The new lawsuit targets Epstein’s estate and an unnamed alleged “recruiter” and is seeking a $100m claim for damages. The two unidentified women filed the lawsuit Thursday night. The suit, drawn up by the civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom, claims an unidentified recruiter, known in court papers as “Sue Roe”, lured the two into Epstein’s New York mansion in 2004, where he would sexually assault them.

“Though Epstein is recently deceased, the trauma and pain he caused plaintiffs remains,” the complaint continues. Bloom said on Twitter that in addition to the suit, she is currently “talking to five other victims currently and vetting their claims” and would “demand that Epstein’s estate to do right by all the girls and women he abused”. The latest suit claims that the two plaintiffs, both aspiring models, were working in a Manhattan restaurant when they were approached by a woman who offered hundreds of dollars to massage Epstein.(The Guardian)…[+]

Gibraltar has freed an Iranian oil tanker detained last month on suspicion of sanctions-busting, despite a last-minute plea by the US authorities. The UK territory received written assurances from Iran that the ship would not discharge its cargo in Syria.

Grace 1, carrying Iranian oil, was stopped by Royal Marines on 4 July, triggering a standoff with Tehran. Gibraltar’s chief justice, Anthony Dudley, said no US application was currently before the court. An independent legal body would make a determination on the American request, Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear when the tanker would put out to sea. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office said Iran must abide by the assurances it had given that the tanker would not proceed to Syria, which is under EU sanctions.Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif condemned the US attempt to stop the tanker’s release, accusing the Trump administration of attempted “piracy”.(BBC)…[+]