Bridgetown, Barbados – A potentially catastrophic Category 5 Hurricane Irma is bearing down on the Leeward Islands with maximum sustained winds that have now reached 180 miles per hour (Tuesday Sept 5), and it will move dangerously near or over portions of the island chain tonight and early tomorrow (Wednesday).
At 11 a.m on Sept 5, Irma was about 225 miles east of Antigua and 230 miles east southeast of Barbuda, and moving towards the west at 14 miles per hour.
That general motion is expected to continue today (Tuesday), followed by a turn toward the west northwest tonight. Forecasters say any delay in that shift could see Irma moving directly over the Leeward Islands as the strongest to hit the area since Lenny in 1999.
“On the forecast track, the extremely dangerous core of Irma is forecast to move over portions of the northern Leeward Islands tonight and early Wednesday…Irma is a an extremely dangerous category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Some fluctuations in intensity are likely during the next day or two, but Irma is forecast to remain a powerful category 4 or 5 hurricane during the next couple of days,” the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami said.
Destructive winds, capable of widespread tree damage, power outages, and structural damage can be expected. Storm-surge flooding, high surf and rip currents will also be dangers, and heavy rain could contribute to flooding and mudslides, as well.
Based on wind speed, Irma is the strongest Atlantic hurricane since Wilma in 2005 which had maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour. And, according to hurricane expert Dr. Phil Klotzbach from Colorado State University, it is only the 17th Atlantic hurricane to have maximum sustained winds of 175 miles per hour or greater.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 60 miles from Irma’s centre, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 160 miles.
Timing for Potential Impact of Hurricane Irma
Leeward Islands: Late Today-Wednesday
Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands: Wednesday- early Thursday
Dominican Republic/Haiti: Thursday- early Friday
Turks and Caicos: Late Thursday-Friday
Bahamas: Friday-this weekend
Cuba: Friday-this weekend
New hurricane watches have been issued for the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas, including the Acklins, Crooked Island, Long Cay, the Inaguas, Mayaguana, and the Ragged Islands; as well as the north coast of Haiti from the border of the Dominican Republic westward to Le Mole St. Nicholas. A tropical storm watch has also been issued from south of Le Mole St. Nicholas to Port-Au-Prince, Haiti.
Hurricane warnings remain in effect for Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saba, St. Eustatius, Sint Maarten, St. Martin, St. Barthelemy, the US and British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.
Both a hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning are still in place for Guadeloupe; Dominica is also still under tropical storm warning;
A hurricane watch is also still in effect for the north coast of the Dominican Republic, from Cabo Engano to the Haiti border; while a tropical storm watch is in effect for the Dominican Republic from south of Cabo Engao to Isla Saona and Haiti from south of Le Mole St. Nicholas to Port-Au-Prince.

Florida, United States – Even as the Leeward Islands prepares for the impact of a dangerous Category 5 Hurricane Irma, the 10th tropical storm of the 2017 Atlantic season has formed and based on current projections, it could impact that chain of islands as a hurricane as well.
The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) in Miami issued its first advisory on Tropical Storm Jose at 11 a.m., at which time it was about 1,505 miles east of the Lesser Antilles and moving west northwest at 13 miles per hour.
A movement toward the west or west-northwest at a slightly faster rate of forward speed is expected during the next two days. Maximum sustained winds are near 40 mph with higher gusts. Some strengthening is forecast during the next 48 hours and Jose could become a hurricane by Friday,” the NHC said.
It advised interests in the Leeward Islands to monitor the future progress of Jose.

Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana will be taught in the upcoming Fall semester at Harvard University. These great Sanskrit epics will be focus of the graduate level “Indian Religions Through Their Narrative Literatures: The Epics” and taught by Professor Anne E. Monius of Harvard Divinity School.
Ramayana, a narrative poem of about 25,000 slokas is divided into seven kandas. Mahabharata, the longest poem ever written, contains around 100,000 verses, and is divided into eighteen parvan and Bhagavad-Gita forms part of it.
Rajan Zed, President of Universal Society of Hinduism commended Harvard University for highlighting Hindu heritage and urged major universities of the world, including Oxford, Stanford, Cambridge, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Yale, Columbia, Toronto, Tokyo, Melbourne, etc., to offer Hinduism-focused classes and share the rich philosophy-concepts-symbols-traditions of this oldest religion with the rest of the world
Hinduism, the third largest religion of the world, has about 1.1 billion adherents and about three million Hindus in USA.
Prof. Monius is a historian of religion specializing in the religious traditions of India. Her research interests lie in examining the practices and products of literary culture to reconstruct the history of religions in South Asia, according to her profile on Harvard University website.
Her first book, Imagining a Place for Buddhism: Literary Culture and Religious Community in Tamil-Speaking South India, examines the two extant Buddhist texts composed in Tamil; her current research project, “Singing the Lives of ?iva’s Saints: History, Aesthetics, and Religious Identity in Tamil-Speaking South India,” considers the role of aesthetics and moral vision in the articulation of a distinctly Hindu religious identity in twelfth-century South India, according to her profile.
Her future research projects will explore the relationship of Hindu devotional and philosophical literature in Tamil to its Sanskritic forebears, as well as consider the transmission of South Indian strands of Buddhism and Hinduism to Southeast Asia.

Davan Maharaj, who was the highest ranking Indian American newspaper journalist, has been removed as the top editor and publisher of The Los Angeles Times in a shakeup of the publication’s leadership.
The newspaper reported on Aug 21 that Tronc, the parent company of the LA Times, had also removed three other high-level editors in what it described as a “dramatic shake-up” at the fifth largest newspaper in the US with a circulation of about 500,000.
Ross Levinsohn was named to succeed Maharaj as the publisher and Jim Kirk as the editor. Levinsohn is a former executive of Fox Interactive Media, owned Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, and interim CEO of Yahoo. Kirk was the editor and publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Maharaj, who began his editorial career at the Trinidad Express in his native Caribbean country, worked his way up the LA Times from an intern at to the top spot.
Along the way he was a foreign correspondent in Africa, assistant foreign editor, business editor and managing editor. He became editor in 2011 and added the title of publisher last year.
He also oversaw six local newspapers, two Spanish language newspapers and several websites.
Last year, another Indian American at the LA Times, S. Mitra Kalita, who was the Managing Editor for Digital Strategy, left the newspaper to become the vice president for programming at CNN Digital.
The parent company has been in a state of turmoil, weathering a bankruptcy, change in ownership and the split of the newspaper and television properties.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) released its Concluding Observations for Canada – a periodic review conducted at the 93rd Session of the CERD, which took place on August 14th and 15th, 2017 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Representatives of Colour of Poverty – Colour of Change (COP-COC), the Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic (CSALC), the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario (SALCO), the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OCASI), and the African Canadian Legal Clinic (ACLC) (the “coalition members”) were in attendance at Canada’s review by CERD. The coalition members were among a strong Canadian civil society presence at the CERD review, including a particularly large and dynamic First Peoples presence.

Specifically, the coalition called upon the Government of Canada to take concrete action on racial discrimination and growing race-based inequities and disparities – by acting on all 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, fully implementing the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN-DRIP), strengthening the Federal Employment Equity Act, revitalizing Canada’s Action Plan Against Racism, building capacity for more robust ethno-racial and other socio-demographic data collection and analysis, addressing systemic racism in immigration law and policy, strengthening protections for all temporary foreign workers, addressing racial profiling and Islamophobia, and reforming criminal justice, child welfare and education systems to address the specific racism that is the particular experience of the Indigenous and African Canadian communities.

“We are very pleased to see that the UN adopted almost all of the key recommendations proposed by the coalition members, including most importantly the recommendation that Canada develop and launch a new National Action Plan Against Racism, after meaningful consultations with Indigenous peoples and communities of colour,” said Avvy Go, Clinic Director of CSALC. “Our Prime Minister has demonstrated his commitment to gender equity and is now moving onto the (dis)ability issue with the current national consultation, it is time for him to stand up for racial equity as well,” added Go.
Another key recommendation by the UN – also at the urging of the coalition members – is to call on Canada to “[s]ystemically collect disaggregated data in all relevant ministries and departments to improve monitoring and evaluation of the implementation and impact of policies to eliminate racial discrimination and inequality.” “We know that without proper data, there is no way to implement an evidence-based strategy to tackle racism,” said Debbie Douglas, Executive Director of OCASI.
Citing the lack of mandatory employment equity for private employers at the provincial level who account for approximately 76% of Canada’s labour force, the Committee also called on Canada to “[c]onduct a comprehensive review of the existing employment equity regime” and to “restore the mandatory contractor compliance mechanism in the Federal Employment Equity legislation,” in order to address discriminatory hiring practices and discrimination in the workplace.
“We hope that all provinces and territories will heed the advice of the UN and start implementing employment equity laws within their respective jurisdiction,” said Vince Wong, Staff Lawyer of CSALC. “It is time that fair and equitable labour market outcomes become a priority for all orders of government in Canada.”
On the situation of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, the Committee made strong recommendations on an array of issues, including establishing “a legal time limit on the detention of migrants”, immediately abolishing the practice of the detention of minors, ensuring that immigration detention is only undertaken as a last resort, rescinding or suspending the Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S. and reforming policies to properly ensure the protection of temporary migrant workers.
“We raised the issue of indefinite detention of non-status immigrants and their children, and the Committee has listened,” said Shalini Konanur, Clinic Director of SALCO. “We hope that the Committee’s recommendations will come out of the Immigration and Refugee Board’s current audit of long-term immigration detention.”
“Canada should also start collecting disaggregated data on immigration detention as the Committee has suggested, so we know who are disproportionately harmed by these problematic practices,” added Konanur.
“Given the current xenophobic political climate in the U.S.A., it is no surprise that the Committee has called on Canada to rescind or at least temporarily suspend the Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S.A.; Canada cannot turn a blind eye to what is happening down South,” said Debbie Douglas of OCASI. “In addition, the Committee’s recommendation to strengthen and protect the rights of migrant workers is both welcome and necessary.”
The Committee also made a number of strong recommendations to address anti-Black racism, including measures to combat racial profiling and the over-representation of people of African descent in the criminal justice system, in spite of the Canadian government’s denial that such problems exist.
“This is not the first time the UN has called Canada out for its failure in this regard, hopefully it will be the last time that Canada needs to be reminded of its obligations to respect the rights of people of African descent in this country,” said Margaret Parsons, Executive Director of the ACLC.
The UN Committee made a number of other important recommendations as well, including calling on Canada to implement measures to combat hate crime against Muslims and the rise of Islamophobia, and measures to address racism and funding inequalities in the education system.
Most significantly, the Committee made a whole range of recommendations with respect to Indigenous peoples in Canada, including the need for a concrete action plan to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action, in consultation with Indigenous Peoples and to fully implement Jordan’s Principle.
The UN has spoken loud and clear, it is time for Canada to listen and act.
The coalition calls on all orders of Government in Canada to work with First Peoples and civil society on developing an action plan to implement all of the recommendations made by the UN CERD.

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