French police officers patrolled Martinique’s capital late on Wednesday after vandals burned cars and looted stores overnight as protests over high prices, low pay and alleged neglect by officials in Paris spread to a second Caribbean island.
Nearly 30 people were detained following the outburst in Fort-de-France, the French island’s chief city, police headquarters said.
Dozens of protesters gathered at city hall on Tuesday night to demand results from slow-moving negotiations there over demands for pay increases. Around midnight, some began hurling rocks and bottles at police guarding the building, and officers responded by firing tear gas.
PHOTO: AFP
Protesters burned at least five cars, several garbage bins and a small grocery store. Several stores were also looted, but no one was injured, a police statement said.
On Wednesday evening, a phalanx of French police officers were helping patrol the capital to enforce order.
Martinique has not seen the same degree of violence as that on the nearby French island of Guadeloupe, where weeks of strikes degenerated into rioting last week in which one labor activist was shot dead. Business on both islands has been largely frozen.
In Guadeloupe’s biggest city of Pointe-a-Pitre, strikers assembled on Wednesday night outside a seaside building where bargaining talks were taking place cheered apparent improvements in negotiations aimed at ending the more than month-long general strike.
Government representatives have offered to add an 80 euro (US$102) monthly raise to islanders making 900 euros a month in order to end the unrest in the French Caribbean island, said Nicolas Desforges, Guadeloupe’s top Paris-appointed official.
“This is a big contribution by the French government to get out of this crisis,” Desforges told reporters.
Added with the pledged contributions of business owners, strikers now have a 180 euro raise offer on the table — just 20 euros less than the 200 euro monthly increase they have been seeking.
But Guadeloupe protest leader Elie Domota said on Wednesday evening that it was too early to say whether the new offer would be acceptable.
“This is a proposal on the table we are going to review,” he told reporters.
Government negotiators in Point-a-Pitre had left the bargaining table on Monday night, saying they were not prepared to agree to a 200 euro monthly raise for those making 900 euros a month.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy last week announced a 580 million euro financial package to help development in the Caribbean regions of his country. But strikers complained that proposals were vague and did not directly address their demand for higher pay.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
RSS