标签： Jamaica

PORTLAND, Jamaica — A shocking child tragedy has rocked the rural parish of Portland, after a body believed to be that of missing 12-year-old Christal McLean was recovered earlier this week from the Grants Level stretch of the Rio Grande. Isat Buchanan, the Member of Parliament for Portland Eastern, has spoken out this week, expressing a mixture of deep grief and furious outrage over the circumstances of the minor’s death, while pushing law enforcement to move quickly to solve the case. In an official public statement released Friday, Buchanan called on Portland’s police force to accelerate their investigation into what he labeled an unconscionable, horrific act of violence.

“Every resource at the disposal of law enforcement must be deployed to unearth the full truth of what happened, track down every person responsible for this crime, and deliver justice both quickly and fairly,” Buchanan stated. “The residents of Portland have a right to clear answers. Most of all, Christal deserves to have justice done on her behalf.”

McLean, a 12-year-old resident of Portland’s Berrydale community, was first reported missing to authorities on Friday, June 12. Four days later, on Wednesday, searchers located a body in an advanced state of decomposition in the Rio Grande, which forensic officials have provisionally identified as the missing child.

Beyond pushing for a swift investigation, Buchanan used the tragedy to issue a urgent call to action across Jamaica, urging the public not to grow desensitized to the rising tide of violent crimes targeting children. He emphasized that the senseless death of the 12-year-old must force every segment of Jamaican society to confront its shared responsibility to keep minors safe.

“This tragedy must compel us to reflect on our collective responsibility to protect our children. Parents, educators, churches, community leaders, law enforcement, and elected officials all have a non-negotiable duty to ensure that our children can grow up safe. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to violence, nor can we write off these senseless tragedies as unavoidable. Our children deserve protection,” Buchanan said.

He went on to urge all Jamaican residents to renew their commitment to building safer local communities: spaces where children are shielded from harm, violence is universally rejected, and every young person has the space to dream, grow, and thrive without fear. Speaking in his dual role as the national Opposition’s spokesperson on youth and human rights, Buchanan issued an unreserved condemnation of the killing.

“As Member of Parliament for Eastern Portland and Opposition spokesperson on youth and human rights, I unequivocally condemn this horrific act of violence against one of our nation’s children,” he said. “Our children are our country’s greatest treasure. They are inherently entitled to safety, protection, love, and the chance to grow into adulthood without living in fear of harm.”

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Amid growing public health concerns over skyrocketing childhood obesity rates across the island, the Fi We Children Foundation (FWCF) has publicly thrown its weight behind the Jamaican Ministry of Education’s ongoing push to expand school gardens, framing the initiative as a practical, evidence-backed strategy to nurture lifelong healthy eating habits among the nation’s youth.

The foundation’s public endorsement came in a formal statement released Saturday, which aligned FWCF’s position with recent comments from Winnie Berry, Deputy Chief Education Officer for Core Curriculum and Support Services. Berry recently reaffirmed the government’s commitment to rolling out the National School Garden Project, emphasizing its outsized role in embedding sustainable healthy lifestyle habits into student communities from a young age.

Jamaica has struggled for years with escalating rates of childhood obesity and a corresponding rise in diet-related non-communicable diseases (NCDs) that place long-term strain on the country’s public health system. Against this backdrop, FWCF stressed that community-centered initiatives that give children the knowledge and tools to make intentional, nutritious food choices are not just useful—they are urgent and necessary to reverse current trends.

The foundation noted that tackling childhood obesity cannot be achieved through single-focus interventions. Instead, it requires a comprehensive, multi-pronged framework that integrates evidence-based nutrition education, widespread access to affordable fresh produce, consistent opportunities for physical activity, and institutional environments that actively support healthy decision-making. This holistic need, FWCF argued, further highlights why full, nationwide implementation of the National School Nutrition Policy is so critical. School gardens, the organization explained, offer students immersive, hands-on learning opportunities that go far beyond growing food: they deepen young people’s understanding of agricultural systems, food supply chains, environmental responsibility, and the direct link between diet and long-term wellness.

FWCF also acknowledged that Jamaica has a long-standing precedent for this kind of youth agricultural outreach, pointing to the decades of work carried out by local 4-H Clubs across the country. In parishes like Hanover, for example, 4-H programs have long engaged young people in hands-on agricultural education and small-scale food production, laying groundwork for the national school garden initiative.

“Children have a right to the highest attainable standard of health,” the statement read. “Programmes such as the National School Garden Project help foster positive relationships with healthy foods from an early age and can contribute significantly to reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases among future generations.”

Looking ahead, FWCF is calling for aggressive expansion of school garden programs across Jamaica, with a particular focus on low-income, underserved communities that currently lack access to nutrition-focused infrastructure and fresh produce. The organization is also urging sustained public and private investment in three key areas: school-based nutrition education, subsidized healthy school meal programs, and broad child wellness initiatives. Finally, FWCF emphasized the need for consistent, effective enforcement of the existing National School Nutrition Policy to ensure all Jamaican schools can build and maintain environments that support long-term student health.

BEDFORD, United Kingdom (AFP) – A day after a devastating collision between two passenger trains outside Bedford, a town 55 miles north of Central London, UK transport and law enforcement investigators launched a full probe on Saturday to pinpoint what caused the incident that has already claimed one life and left dozens of passengers hospitalised. The crash, which unfolded on Friday afternoon, involved two London-bound services operated by East Midlands Railway (EMR) that were travelling along the same track, the company confirmed.

In immediate response to the incident, UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander stressed that it remained too early to draw unsubstantiated conclusions about the root cause of the collision, while committing to a full, transparent inquiry that would identify gaps and ensure critical safety lessons are implemented across the national rail network. British Transport Police Chief Constable Lucy D’Orsi, updating reporters Saturday from the crash site, confirmed that the driver of one of the two trains was pronounced dead at the scene. To date, more than 80 injured passengers have received medical care at local hospitals, with 28 still admitted for treatment and nine remaining in critical condition, D’Orsi added.

Joint investigation efforts are being led by specialist detectives from British Transport Police working alongside inspectors from the Rail Accident Investigation Branch (RAIB), the national body tasked with probing rail safety incidents, to piece together a full timeline of the crash and identify contributing factors. Buckingham Palace issued a public statement shortly after the incident confirming that King Charles III was greatly saddened by the tragedy, extending his deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased driver and all passengers who have been harmed.

Firsthand accounts from survivors paint a chaotic picture of the moments immediately after the collision. Paul Cavin, a passenger on the leading train, told the BBC that the train had come to a stop before being struck hard from behind by the second service. “There were people injured on my carriage,” Cavin said, noting he saw multiple wounded people evacuating the wreckage, many with visible traumatic injuries including broken facial bones. Another survivor, Brett Byatt, told BBC Radio he felt a sense of surrealism in the hours after the crash, but that feeling had quickly shifted to unmoored anger over the incident.

“I don’t know at whom [the anger is] directed,” Byatt said, “But it’s more about the fact we’ve got one of the oldest railway networks and signal failures happen a lot… Why wasn’t that signalled to my train?” To date, officials have not confirmed whether signalling faults contributed to the collision, and have declined to comment on ongoing speculation ahead of the full probe.

Emergency services deployed a massive rapid response to the crash site immediately after the incident. The East of England Ambulance Service confirmed Saturday that a total of 11 passengers sustained very serious injuries, 32 suffered serious wounds, and 56 others were treated for minor injuries. In total, the service dispatched more than 20 ground ambulances, six air ambulances, and specialist hazardous area rescue teams to extract trapped passengers and provide urgent on-site care. Local fire and rescue services also mobilised more than 20 specialist vehicles, with over 70 firefighters and officers working at the peak of the rescue operation.

Will Rogers, managing director of train operator EMR, described the incident as “a profoundly sad day for the railway community.” “We are deeply saddened that our driver has tragically died, and a number of other people have suffered injuries,” Rogers said, speaking from the crash site alongside senior emergency and government officials. He confirmed that the company is offering full cooperation and support to the ongoing RAIB investigation, and is supporting affected staff and passengers.

Major train collisions remain a relatively rare occurrence on the UK’s national rail network, though this incident joins a small number of high-profile fatal crashes in recent years. In September 2023, a collision at the Aviemore station on Scotland’s Strathspey Railway – a privately run heritage railway separate from the national public transit network – left several people injured after a moving train collided with a stationary carriage. In August 2020, an Aberdeen-to-Glasgow passenger service derailed near Stonehaven in northeast Scotland after a rain-triggered landslide swept across the tracks, killing three people and injuring six more. In 2023, Network Rail, the government-owned body that manages the UK’s national rail infrastructure, pleaded guilty to safety failings connected to the Stonehaven incident and was fined £6.7 million ($8.4 million).