NEWS

CoP moves police to Red alert

Hours after Minister of National Security Stuart Young said he intends to “push back” against crime, Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith raised the policing alert from amber to red, in light of a series of murders and gang-related activities, a police release revealed yesterday. At around 11 am, members of various units including the Special Operations Response Team (SORT), led by Griffith, went on raids in areas in Laventille and the Beetham Estate. Read more here

Teen fisherman tells of kidnap ordeal in Venezuela...

Af­ter be­ing kid­napped at sea and held cap­tive in a Venezue­lan for­est for over a month, 17-year-old Ken­rick Mor­gan has height­ened his am­bi­tion to join the Coast Guard so that he can pro­tect oth­ers from suf­fer­ing the same fate. Mor­gan, a stu­dent of the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School, is ex­pect­ed to write this year’s CSEC ex­am­i­na­tion. He said with pira­cy be­com­ing more fre­quent and his ex­pe­ri­ence as a vic­tim, he wants to pro­tect the na­tion’s bor­ders. Al­though he has lost a whole month of class­es, he said he will be push­ing hard­er with his stud­ies. Read more here

POLITICS

We must know our children’s caregivers

Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon said a public sex offenders registry is important because people need to know who is caring for their children. She was contributing to debate on the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill in the Senate on Tuesday. She recalled the story of Mano Benjamin “The Beast of Biche” who was convicted and served 20 years for kidnapping, raping, torturing and abusing two sisters in the 1960s. Gopee-Scoon said after Benjamin was released everyone knew where he lived in Point Fortin and schoolchildren would run and scamper away when they saw him. She stressed it was important for communities to know of the existence of sex offenders for protection. Read more here

Young warns of inconvenience during crime drive

In the com­ing days, the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will launch an in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven op­er­a­tion to take down the crim­i­nal el­e­ments and pro­vide safe­ty to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. This was the word from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at his Port-of-Spain of­fice yes­ter­day, as he warned cit­i­zens that they in­tend to make a “hard push back” against crim­i­nals which would re­sult in in­con­ve­niences at undis­closed ar­eas across the coun­try. The ex­er­cis­es will be spear­head­ed by mem­bers of the TT Po­lice Ser­vice, T&T De­fence Force and oth­er agen­cies. Read more here

BUSINESS

Methanol, good mix for fuel

As of November30, 2018, Trinidad and Tobago ceased being a producer of fuel. Now the country will have to import fuel on the open market, leaving it vulnerable to the volatility of commodity prices. The methanol lobby, however, believes it has a solution to help lower the fuel import bill and save the country up to half a billion dollars annually. All it takes is a small substitution. Read more here

Port Authority gets $200m subsidy

It could take another ten to 15 years for the Port’s revenues to match its expenditure, chairman of the Port Authority of Trinidad and Tobago (PATT) retired Colonel Lyle Alexander disclosed to a parliamentary committee yesterday. Read more here

REGIONAL

Go For Growth - Sector Leaders Look To Today’s Tabling Of 2019-2020 Budget

Business leaders across several industries have suggested that this year’s Budget should signal the Government’s commitment to growth-inducing strategies, low inflation, crime reduction, social intervention, and human-capital development. The suggestions come as Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke is today scheduled to table the Estimates of Expenditure for the 2019-2020 fiscal year in the House of Representatives. Last year, lawmakers approved a $773.7 billion Budget for the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31. That amount was increased to $802.5 billion by the time the Second Supplementary Estimates were presented last month. Read more here

INTERNATIONAL

End of the superjumbo: Airbus is giving up on the A380

Airbus will stop making the A380, pulling the plug on its iconic superjumbo jet that once promised to revolutionize commercial air travel but failed to deliver on outsized expectations. The European plane maker said Thursday that it will stop delivering A380s in 2021 after its key customer, Dubai-based airline Emirates, slashed its orders for the world's largest airliner. "It's a painful decision," Airbus CEO Tom Enders said during a conference call with analysts. "We've invested a lot of effort, a lot of resources and a lot of sweat into this aircraft." Read more here

Shamima Begum: Ex-Bethnal Green schoolgirl who joined IS 'wants to come home'

One of three schoolgirls who left east London in 2015 to join the Islamic State group says she has no regrets, but wants to return to the UK. In an interview with the Times, Shamima Begum, now 19, talked about seeing "beheaded heads" in bins - but said that it "did not faze her". Speaking from a refugee camp in Syria, she said she was nine months pregnant and wanted to come home for her baby. She said she'd had two other children who had both died. She also described how one of her two school friends that had left the UK with her had died in a bombing. The fate of the third girl is unclear. Read more here

14th February 2019

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