NEWS
Scrap iron dealers face hard battle to buy Petrotrin’s old steel
Officials at state-owned Heritage Petroleum have been accused of preventing the TT Scrap Iron Dealers Association from legitimately buying scrap metal from the company’s predecessor Petrotrin. The association’s president Allan Ferguson told reporters during a news conference at Signature Hall, Longdenville on Thursday, they have been sidelined after investing heavily in a proposal for the materials. Read more here
No ransom request for Sangre Grande businesswoman
Relatives of a Sangre Grande businesswoman, who was kidnapped outside her family’s supermarket on Wednesday morning, are yet to receive a ransom request. Police sources told Guardian Media, that relatives of Mary Ali, the co-owner of the Cost Cutters chain of supermarkets, had not received a call from kidnappers to confirm she is in their custody or to demand payment for her safe release, up to late yesterday. Concerned relatives decided yesterday afternoon to offer a reward for valid information that will lead to her recovery. Read more here
POLITICS
Gadsby-Dolly: We will address CSEC/CAPE concerns
Minister of Education Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly says the ministry will address the concerns of students who have joined their regional counterparts in an online petition querying their grades in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examination (CAPE). In the meantime, she is advising students and schools to use the established protocols in making the necessary queries. Since the results were released on Wednesday, there have been mounting calls from students in several Caricom territories for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to urgently review the results. Read more here
UNC MP slams Ministry official’s call to adapt to flooding
“Completely unacceptable, Mr David - citizens must never accept flooding as the new normal!” That’s the view of UNC Oropouche West MP Devendranath Tancoo regarding comments by Local Government Ministry official Jerry David that citizens must accept the occurrence of flooding and adapt to its devastating effects on their lives. Tancoo, in a statement yesterday noted that in a recent media report, the Ministry’s Senior Disaster Management Coordinator David, said because of climate change and other factors, flooding has become a worldwide phenomenon. Read more here
BUSINESS
Nudge moves entrepreneurs forward
If you ever doubted the creativity of the people of TT, look no further than Marcia Seales-Rodney. She's always loved head wraps and would often tie her hair. Her husband, Merrell Rodney, would help her every time, except one day when she had an important meeting to attend; he refused to do it. She told Business Day, “I tied my hair in this crazy way and went to my meeting but I told him, ‘You know what’s going to happen? I’m going to create something to wear so that I’ll never have to ask you to tie my hair again.’ And that’s where the idea was born to have this pre-tied headwrap or turban.” Read more here
ECLAC sees digitalisation as gateway to regional economic reform
Digital transformation can help Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region recover more quickly from the COVID‑19 crisis, according to the Latin American Economic Outlook (LEO) 2020: Digital Transformation for Building Back Better. LEO 2020 documents the pandemic’s dramatic impact on the most vulnerable and marginalised. According to the report, microenterprises have been hit particularly hard with 2.7 million of them likely to close, resulting in the loss of 8.5 million jobs. Read more here
REGIONAL
Review the results
Backed by the support of the Ministry of Education, their parents and their schools, scores of students from Queen’s College and The Bishops’ High protested, on Thursday, outside of the Examinations Division, QC Compound, calling on the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) to review their results from the 2020 examinations. The Ministry of Education (MoE) in a statement on Thursday registered “dissatisfaction” with the “apparent poor grading of students at the 2020 CSEC and CAPE examinations”. Read more here
Homer Davis Commits To Mandate
New Minister of State in the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, Homer Davis, has pledged his commitment to aid the Ministry in achieving its mandate through his assigned areas of responsibility. “I can say to the senior members of staff that we will move local government to its rightful place. We need local government to be the premier ministry of government. My commitment is to go the extra mile to make sure that we achieve the mandate of this Government, so we will be joining all efforts to make sure that local government delivers on its mandate,” Davis told senior management members at the Ministry during an introductory meeting on Tuesday. Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Trump foments mistrust of election he claims won't be honest
President Donald Trump and top aides are responding to the uproar over his failure to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power by intensifying their efforts to create election chaos he can use to cling onto power should he lose in November. In the wake of Trump's stunning warning on Wednesday that "we're going to have to see what happens," questions are also growing about the willingness of Republican lawmakers to stand up to Trump if he refuses to accept the will of voters. Read more here
Kim Jong-un 'apologises for killing of South Korean official'
25th September 2020