标签： Jamaica

A massive 7.8-magnitude offshore earthquake that struck the southern Philippines on Monday has killed at least 35 people, injured 134 more, and left a dozen others missing, local and national disaster officials confirmed. The quake, which hit south of General Santos – a coastal city home to roughly 720,000 residents – triggered immediate tsunami warnings across the wider Southeast Asia-Pacific region and reduced multiple buildings to rubble.

Within just two hours of the initial shock, the United States Geological Survey recorded a string of powerful aftershocks across the affected area, with the strongest registering a magnitude of 6.5, prolonging danger for local communities. In General Santos, the local command center has recorded 12 fatalities so far, with rescue efforts stretched thin across the disaster zone.

As darkness fell on the city, Agence France-Presse reporters on the ground witnessed rescue workers digging through the collapsed concrete of a well-known local grocery chain with their bare hands, locked in a desperate race to reach two employees trapped under the debris. For 35-year-old security guard Morphy Angcad, the waiting has been agonizing: his sister is one of the two missing workers. Refusing an offered hotel room to stay at the site, he told reporters, “I don’t want to leave this site until I see the body of my sister… (but) I’m hoping against hope that she is still alive.”

Dioslinda Deluvio, mother of the second missing employee Joey, shared her grief with AFP. Weeks before the disaster, her son had visited her and asked, “Ma, what is your plan for your life? Are you OK?” Now, she said, “All I can do is cry now, imagining the good things he did in the world.”

A few kilometers from the collapsed grocery store, hundreds of residents who fled their damaged structures prepared to spend the night out in the open, terrified of further aftershocks that could topple unstable buildings. “I’ll be sleeping here outside even if it’s uncomfortable, because I’m scared there will be an aftershock,” 34-year-old sales clerk Johnson Alerta told AFP. “I feel safer here.”

In Sarangani province, one of the hardest-hit local government areas, disaster chief Rene Punzalan reported that 14 people alone died in the coastal municipality of Glan, where a landslide triggered by the quake buried homes at the base of a mountain. “The landslide happened immediately after the earthquake, so many lives were lost,” Punzalan explained, adding that many remote communities have not yet been able to report casualty numbers. Outages have disrupted communication across large parts of the affected region, slowing the flow of information and complicating rescue coordination. “The greatest challenge is communication. The power was cut, so it’s hard to get updates,” he said.

Social media videos verified by AFP have captured the full scale of the destruction: a busy General Santos shopping center housing a popular Jollibee fast food outlet completely flattened, an empty school building crumpled into a heap of concrete, and young schoolchildren screaming as they clung to their teachers while the ground violently swayed during the quake.

After the quake struck, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued an advisory warning that hazardous tsunami waves could reach coastlines across the Philippines, Indonesia, Palau, Taiwan, and Papua New Guinea. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. immediately ordered an evacuation of all at-risk coastal communities, suspended classes across Mindanao – which was supposed to mark the first day of the school year Monday – and urged residents to prioritize safety over property. “Move to higher ground now. Do not wait,” he said. “Your life is more important than anything left behind.”

By mid-afternoon Monday, all tsunami warnings had been canceled across the region. More than 2,000 people who evacuated their coastal homes following the advisory remain in evacuation centers, awaiting official clearance to return to their properties as authorities continue to assess structural and geological safety risks.

The Philippines experiences near-daily seismic activity due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, a seismically active arc that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia across the entire Pacific basin. This latest major quake follows a string of deadly seismic events in recent years: in October 2023, two back-to-back quakes of 7.4 and 6.7 magnitude hit eastern Mindanao, killing at least eight people, just days after a 6.9-magnitude quake in central Philippines’ Cebu province claimed 76 lives.

UNITED NATIONS – In an official announcement made Monday by United Nations Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will embark on a high-stakes solidarity visit to Haiti starting next Tuesday, a trip designed to bring global attention to the Caribbean nation’s spiraling security and humanitarian emergency.

During his time on the ground, Guterres will engage directly with Haitian men, women, and children whose daily lives have been upended by rampant gang violence. The visit will give the UN chief a first-hand look at the overlapping humanitarian and security challenges that have brought the country to its knees, as well as an opportunity to evaluate ongoing work by Haiti’s national government and the broader international community to reestablish stability and deliver critical aid to vulnerable populations.

A core part of Guterres’ itinerary will be a comprehensive assessment of UN support to Haiti as it confronts its deepening multidimensional crisis. This includes the organization’s logistical and operational backing for the new Gang Suppression Force (GSF), deployed under the parameters of UN Security Council Resolution 2793.

Haiti’s security situation has deteriorated dramatically in recent months, with well-armed criminal gangs now exercising control over as much as 85% of the capital Port-au-Prince. The gang occupation has crippled access to food, clean water, medicine and other basic necessities for the capital’s population, while fighters have carried out a wave of brutal violence that includes a sharp recent rise in gender-based violence and sexual assault.

To address the crisis, the UN Security Council recently approved a restructured international security mission, transforming the previous Kenya-led Multinational Security Support mission into the expanded Gang Suppression Force. The new force, which can deploy up to 5,500 uniformed personnel, is mandated to disarm and neutralize gang factions, and secure critical public infrastructure including schools, hospitals, and seaports that are essential to the country’s survival.

The scale of human suffering in Haiti already reaches historic levels: more than 1.45 million people have been internally displaced by violence across the country, and an estimated 6.4 million Haitians – nearly half the total population – require life-saving urgent humanitarian assistance, according to UN data.

Guterres is also scheduled to hold formal talks with Haitian Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, as the country prepares to hold general elections that are widely anticipated to take place before the end of 2025. The visit comes as Haitian authorities work to transition back to stable democratic rule after years of political and institutional collapse.

According to Haq, Guterres will travel to Haiti from the neighboring Dominican Republic, and will hold pre-visit meetings with Dominican authorities in the capital Santo Domingo before wrapping up his trip and returning to UN Headquarters in New York on June 17.

QUEENS, N.Y. — At the 17th annual Fundraising and Awards Banquet hosted by the Ex-Correctional Officers Association of Jamaica, a 35-year veteran of the Jamaica Constabulary Force delivered an impassioned call to action, urging the hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans living in the diaspora to join the fight against violent crime and weapons trafficking back home.

Superintendent Errol Adams, a former correctional officer who survived being held hostage by death row inmates during a 1998 prison uprising at the St Catherine District Prison in Spanish Town, framed crime not as a localized Jamaican issue, but as a collective emotional weight carried by Jamaican communities spanning every corner of the globe. Even for families who have built new lives in New York, Toronto, London, Miami, or Fort Lauderdale, the fear of harm hitting elderly relatives, children, or loved ones who remain on the island weighs heavily, he said.

“Crime therefore has become more than a local issue, it has become an emotional burden carried by Jamaicans everywhere,” Adams told the gathered crowd of attendees, who included community leaders, diaspora organizers, and former Jamaican law enforcement officers.

Central to Adams’ address was the revelation that criminal networks have systematically exploited one of the diaspora’s most beloved traditions: the decades-long practice of sending barrels packed with household goods, food, and school supplies to support family members back home. What began as an act of love and mutual aid, he explained, has been manipulated by transnational criminal groups to smuggle illegal firearms into the country.

Adams outlined how traffickers hide weapons in seemingly ordinary shipments, stashing guns inside refrigerators, generators, industrial equipment, and shipped furniture. Contraband moves through a variety of channels, including commercial shipping containers, official cargo ports, private courier services, national postal systems, and unmonitored informal coastal landing spots scattered along Jamaica’s extensive shoreline. These operations are not opportunistic, Adams stressed; they are planned, strategic, and directly tied to global transnational criminal networks.

Adams called for the diaspora to take intentional, concrete steps to disrupt these networks. “The Diaspora must never allow love for family to be manipulated into support for criminality,” he said. Key steps for community members include rejecting unregulated proxy or informal shipping arrangements, verifying both the contents and intended recipient of every shipment they arrange, only using official, legal trade and shipping channels, and refusing any requests to participate in even seemingly minor illegal activities. He added that diaspora members also hold a unique role in sharing critical intelligence with law enforcement to help track and break up trafficking rings.

The veteran law enforcement officer acknowledged the ongoing challenges Jamaican security forces face in stemming the flow of weapons. Traffickers are highly adaptable, he noted: every time authorities upgrade security protocols at ports or entry points, criminals quickly pivot to exploit new vulnerabilities. Jamaica’s more than 1,000 kilometers of jagged coastline also creates nearly insurmountable logistical hurdles, as monitoring every remote beach, small fishing dock, and informal entry point is logistically impossible for even the most well-resourced security teams.

“When criminal creativity combines with organised trafficking networks, the consequences usually become deadly,” Adams emphasized.

He also laid out the far-reaching economic and social damage that persistent crime inflicts on Jamaica’s long-term development. Each year, the Jamaican government spends billions of dollars on policing, security operations, judicial processing, incarceration, and emergency medical response to violent crime — resources that could otherwise be invested in public education, critical infrastructure, universal healthcare, technological innovation, and youth development programs that lift communities across the country.

Adams did highlight recent progress in Jamaica’s crime reduction efforts, sharing official data showing significant gains between 2024 and 2025. In 2024, Jamaican security forces seized 833 illegal firearms, while recording roughly 1,141 murders and more than 1,000 non-fatal shooting incidents. By comparison, 2025 saw 1,201 illegal firearms seized, and the national murder count dropped to 673 — the lowest recorded total in 30 years. To continue this downward trend, Adams argued, Jamaica’s crime-fighting strategy must remain holistic, coordinated, and centered on partnership between security forces and communities at home and abroad.

Beyond the keynote address, the 2026 banquet served as a celebration of diaspora giving and community support. Three students from Copiague High School on Long Island were awarded the association’s annual 2026 scholarships, and the organization distributed monetary donations to three causes: the youth soccer team of the North Bronx Seventh-day Adventist Church, Team Jamaica Bickle, and the Tulloch Legacy Foundation’s Hurricane Melissa recovery efforts.

The night’s top honor, the 2026 Community Service Award, was presented to Caribbean Food Delights, the food conglomerate founded by iconic Jamaican entrepreneur and philanthropist Vincent HoSang. The organization was recognized for decades of sustained investment in community development projects across both the Jamaican diaspora and Jamaica itself. Janice Julian accepted the award on behalf of Caribbean Food Delights from association president Ronnie Hammick.