NEWS

Autopsy: Blow to head killed kidnap victim

Rudven Prout died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head according to his autopsy report. The 56-year-old was beaten on the head and thrown over a precipice on November 6 and found 200 plus feet below, two days later. Prout, of Real Street, San Juan, was picked up from his home by a man he knew and taken to a secluded area along the North Coast Road where he was beaten and left for dead. His cries for help were first thought to be a hunter “playing the fool” but after two days of his cries being heard in the Blazney Road, La Pastora, Santa Cruz area, residents sought out the source of the cries and found the bleeding and battered man. He was pulled to safety and taken to the Port of Spain General Hospital where he underwent surgery on Saturday but died Sunday night never having regained full consciousness. His autopsy showed there was heavy bleeding in the brain as a result of the beating coupled with him being thrown down the hill. Read more here

Yara Trinidad to close at year’s end

Un­able to cope with high­er nat­ur­al gas prices from the NGC and low­er glob­al prices for am­mo­nia, Yara Trinidad Lim­it­ed has de­cid­ed to shut down one of its plants tak­ing with it five per cent of the coun­try’s am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion and lead­ing to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of job loss­es. In an in­ter­view with the Guardian last night Pres­i­dent and Plant Man­ag­er of YTL, Richard De La Bastide, said the com­pa­ny could not reach agree­ment with the NGC for a new gas price af­ter 16 months of ne­go­ti­a­tions and while it is hope­ful it could reach agree­ment for Trin­gen 1 and Trin­gen 2, it is still with­out agree­ment and there­fore un­cer­tain. He said: “We think it is high­ly un­like­ly we will get at a price that will al­low us to op­er­ate the plant, there­fore it is our in­ten­tion to close the plant.” Read more here

POLITICS

Rohan on Licensing bust: There are more files

WORKS and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan has responded to the recent arrest of licensing officials and said that there are more files before the Commissioner of Police. He was speaking with the media Wednesday following the concrete pouring for the construction of the Guaico Licensing Office in Sangre Grande. He reported over the last three years there was a programme to fully computerise Licensing Office. "(Through) that exercise we uncovered a lot of things that we considered to be unethical and we felt, based on our preliminary investigations, that we should forward these files to the Commissioner of Police...and they would do their investigations and take whatever actions that they felt that they had to do and were required. Read more here

Criminal probe to be launched into the UNC for spying on citizens

Min­is­ter Young says he is very con­cerned about the in­for­ma­tion brought to light in Christo­pher Wylie's book about how the UNC sanc­tioned a breach of cit­i­zens pri­va­cy. He says he is al­so alarmed at how the in­for­ma­tion was used by a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and not the State. As such the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter says he will ask for the launch of a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. Read more here

BUSINESS

Davyn on cloud nine

Converting to the cloud saves a lot. It saves important and sensitive information and documents, even if hardware gets damaged. It saves office space and money by not having to invest in hardware and device maintenance. It saves time when the information stored on the cloud is paired with algorithms that can process the data. It saves money as cloud storage is affordable and does not require expensive equipment to run. It automatically saves work in progress so information does not get lost. Davyn, a software company that sells business applications, knows a lot about the cloud. The company recently won Microsoft Partner of the year award for 2019 and is one of the largest organisations in the region that pushes Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing service created for building, testing, deploying and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centres. Most of Davyn's products operate on the cloud. Read more here

REGIONAL

Sugar Fight - Manufacturers, Farmers At Loggerheads Over Tax On Refined Sweetener Imports

President of the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association (JMEA), Richard Pandohie, has vowed that his organisation will resist any attempt to centralise the importation of refined sugar, through the Sugar Industry Authority (SIA), which a senior technocrat announced yesterday as settled policy that the Government would implement. The plan, as articulated by director in the Strategic Planning Division of the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries (MICAF), Delroy Coley, a last-minute stand-in for portfolio minister Audley Shaw, would route the importation of refined sugar through the Sugar Industry Authority (SIA), which would be stored in a bonded warehouse. From there, it would be distributed to individual manufacturers. Read more here

Dengue in the Americas reaches highest number of cases ever-PAHO

Dengue in the Americas has reached the highest number of cases ever recorded, with more than 2.7 million cases and 1,206 deaths so far this year, according to a new epidemiological update from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). The largest previous dengue epidemic was in 2015, but the number of cases registered until October this year is 13 percent higher. Despite the increase in number of cases, the fatality rate, or proportion of deaths in dengue cases, was 26 percent less in 2019. The four dengue virus serotypes are present in the Americas and co-circulation of all four was reported in Brazil, Guatemala, and Mexico in 2019. Simultaneous circulation of two or more types increases the occurrence of severe cases of dengue. Brazil, given its large population, had the highest numbers in this update, with 2,070,170 cases reported. Mexico had 213,822 cases, Nicaragua reported 157,573 cases, Colombia had 106,066 and Honduras 96,379 cases. Read more here

INTERNATIONAL

Trump impeachment inquiry: New claims amid public hearing

President Donald Trump directly asked about a Ukrainian investigation into his Democratic rival Joe Biden, a top US diplomat has unveiled. Bill Taylor, the acting ambassador to Ukraine, told an impeachment inquiry that a member of his staff was told Mr Trump was keen to push for the probe. Mr Trump says he does not recall making the remark. He denies any wrongdoing. Mr Biden hopes to run against Mr Trump next year. It is illegal to ask foreign entities for help to win an election. He is accused of withholding US military aid to Ukraine in order to pressure the country's new president to publicly announce a corruption inquiry into Mr Biden. Mr Trump has called the inquiry a "witch-hunt". Read more here

Student protesters fortify campus occupations as Hong Kong braces for more violence

The threat of violence hung over Hong Kong Thursday evening as thousands of student protesters prepared to face off with riot police, amid a continued occupation of several of the city's most prestigious universities. The level of unrest and destruction in the almost six-month-long protest movement has reached new and unnerving heights in recent days, with several people critically injured and Chinese state media warning radical protesters, "You are on the edge of doom." Sporadic clashes broke out Thursday morning, as police fired tear gas at protesters near the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Kowloon. While on Hong Kong Island, roads surrounding the University of Hong Kong were blocked by protesters, resulting in traffic delays. Read more here

14th November 2019

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