NEWS

Coast Guard to get Cedros fishermen

Three Trinidadian fishermen were who were detained by Venezuela’s Guardia Nacional on April 5 are staying with relatives in Tucupita after arrangements to bring them home on Sunday were cancelled. In a release yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the TT Coast Guard were en route to a meeting point in TT waters to pick up Nicholas Hajarie, his father Awardhath Hajarie and Shami Seepersad when they were told the meeting was off. Read more here

Smooth return for Spirit

Passengers who travelled on board the T&T Spirit yesterday praised its return to the seabridge after they arrived on board at the Port in Port-of-Spain, following what was a smooth return run. The seabridge collapsed last month after the Port Authority of T&T was forced to take the T&T Express from the inter-island service on March 13 for an overdue dry-docking. The T&T Spirit had already been out of service for dry docking since June 6 last year, then experienced a series of issues with sea trials before finally getting the go-ahead to return to the route on Saturday. Read more here

E-mail threat closes three schools

An e-mailed threat to ASJA Boys’ College in San Fernando led to three schools being evacuated and dismissed yesterday. The first day of the school term was effectively over around 9 a.m. when police were alerted. Read more here

POLITICS

Roget: Govt plans to sell World GTL plant

Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) president general Ancel Roget has questioned whether government’s plan to restructure state-owned oil company Petrotrin would see them selling off assets including the controversial World Gas-to-Liquids (WGTL) plant. Speaking yesterday at the union’s San Fernando head office, Roget said a “sweetheart deal” to give away the plant to a US based energy company, is evidence of governmental interference in Petrotrin. Read more here

Foreign Ministry: Cedros fishermen free to leave Venezuela

T&T’s Foreign Affairs Ministry says the Cedros fishermen detained in Venezuela were free to return home if they chose since last week Wednesday and are not in the custody of the Guardia Nacional. In a surprising twist which left relatives baffled, Keren Israel from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying the men—Awardnath Hajarie, 52, son Nicholas Hajarie, 26, and friend Shammi Seepersad, 36, had been freed since April 11 having appeared in court and granted a Certificate of Voluntary Abandonment of Venezuela which allows them safe legal passage out of the country. Read more here

BUSINESS

OWTU warns against WGTL sale

Officials of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU) warned yesterday that reports of Petrotrin finalising the sale of its failed World Gas to Liquid (WGTL) plant to NiQuan Energy Trinidad Limited could threaten the progress of working on restructuring the State-owned energy company. At a media conference at the union’s headquarters at Paramount Building in San Fernando, OWTU raised the issue of an agreement “shrouded in secrecy” just one week after signing a memorandum of agreement to work on the energy company’s future. Read more here

Union slams late-pay Stechers

The All Trinidad General Workers’ Trade Union has called on the management of luxury merchandise retail store, Stechers Limited, to immediately pay its employees. President general of the union, Nirvan Maharaj said the employees have not been paid for the month of March. Read more here

REGIONAL

No Problem With Gays In My Cabinet - Holness

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has indicated to the international community that he would have no objection to gay persons being part of his executive. Holness' response to journalists in Brussels, Belgium, contradicted a strident position by then Prime Minister Bruce Golding, during a May 2008 interview with the BBC's 'HARDtalk's' host Stephen Shakur, that he would not allow gays in his Cabinet. "Certainly it's not my business ... . Whatever is in my interest to distribute politically, a person's sexuality, sexual orientation is not a criterion for the use of my discretion. It's not an issue that we are afraid to address. The truth is that in the past, like many developed countries, there was a very conservative view on the matter ...." Holness explained. Read more here

INTERNATIONAL

France's Macron: EU in 'civil war' over democracy

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that "there seems to be a European civil war" between liberal democracy and rising authoritarianism. He urged the EU to renew its commitment to democracy, in a passionate speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. "I don't want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers that has forgotten its own past", he said, recalling how the EU arose after World War Two. He is launching debates with voters, aimed at re-engaging them with the EU. In his speech he condemned what he called "a fascination with the illiberal" in Europe. Last year Mr Macron and his new liberal party, La République en Marche (LREM), triumphed in French elections with a strongly pro-EU platform. Read more here

Trump's tabloid past may come back to haunt him

Donald Trump's tabloid lifestyle made him rich, famous and ultimately built the persona that made him President. Yet his back-to-the-future encounter with his sensational and melodramatic past might become his Achilles' heel. Given his history, it's perhaps no surprise that Trump's presidency is now entwined in legal theater peopled by outsize characters, including a porn star, a Playboy model, hustling lawyers and a mystery celebrity. Those staples of a tabloid tale thickened the plot in court Monday in New York in the first step of a legal battle with potentially grave consequences for Trump, following the stunning FBI raid last week on his personal attorney Michael Cohen. Read more here

17th April 2018

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