News

Airport inquiry to start over 15 years later

The pro­tract­ed “Pi­ar­co Two” pre­lim­i­nary in­quiry in­to fraud charges aris­ing out of the con­struc­tion of the $1.6 bil­lion Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port has to be restart­ed.

The de­ci­sion to restart the in­quiry, which is quite pos­si­bly the longest-run­ning and largest fraud case in the coun­try’s his­to­ry, was based on the re­tire­ment of for­mer Se­nior Mag­is­trate Ejen­ny Es­pinet, who left the Ju­di­cia­ry last year with the in­quiry at an ad­vanced stage, but still in­com­plete. Read more here…

Barry the victim of $m robbery in Couva

Member of Parliament for Princes Town Barry Padarath was the victim of an armed robbery in Couva on Thursday night. Padarath, who lives in Couva, stopped at a Chinese restaurant on the Southern Main Road, at around 8.15p.m

He was approached by a man with a gun. The man’s face was covered in a white bandana. Padarath handed over his wallet which contained US $100 and TT$200. He handed over his Samsung cell phone worth $7,000. The criminal left in Padarath’s Toyota Prado SUV valued at $1.1million. Read more here…

Political

Moonilal: UNC had no contact with CA

Call­ing the Cam­bridge An­a­lyt­i­ca scan­dal a hoax and a set of hog­wash, Oropouche MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day de­nied that the UNC had any con­tract or con­tact with the com­pa­ny to spy on cit­i­zens.

Speak­ing at the UNC's cot­tage meet­ing at Soledad Road, Clax­ton Bay on Thurs­day night, Mooni­lal said Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young were try­ing to cre­ate mass hys­te­ria by mak­ing un­found­ed al­le­ga­tions. Read more here…

Now AG loses Ayers-Caesar appeal

THE Privy Council has dismissed the Attorney General's appeal against the refusal of the Court of Appeal to remove former president Anthony Carmona from former chief magistrate Marcia Ayers-Caesar’s lawsuit. Read more here…

UNC slams Government on Yara closure

Na­pari­ma of Par­lia­ment Rod­ney Charles, is call­ing on PM Row­ley to stop "man­u­fac­tur­ing dis­trac­tions" and pro­vide plans to ad­dress grow­ing un­cer­tain­ties in the petro­chem­i­cal in­dus­try in light of Wednes­day's an­nounce­ment by Yara Trinidad Ltd to close one of its am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion plants at Point Lisas. Read more here…

Business

Riley: BHP gas find ‘not small’

FORMER bpTT president Robert Riley has said BHP may have challenges with its recent gas find.

He was speaking on Thursday at the Institute of Chartered Accountants of TT's annual international finance and accounting conference at Hyatt Regency, Port of Spain. Read more here…

Khan: Service stations important in rural communities

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan says that rur­al ser­vice sta­tions serve an im­por­tant eco­nom­ic func­tion and they are a ne­ces­si­ty.

He said, “If you have a fixed mar­gin busi­ness, the on­ly way you can make mon­ey is to in­crease vol­ume and keep your op­er­at­ing cost in check. But if you are run­ning Peake’s Gas Sta­tion in the West, you can in­crease vol­ume be­cause thou­sands of cars pass every day. But if you are run­ning a gas sta­tion in Tabaquite in To­co, there is no po­ten­tial to in­crease your vol­ume so some due con­sid­er­a­tion has to be giv­en to rur­al ser­vice sta­tions be­cause rur­al peo­ple are peo­ple too. You can­not keep shut­ting down gas sta­tions in rur­al ar­eas and say that it is not eco­nom­ic.” Read more here…

Regional

Bolstering capacity for first oil

PRESIDENT David Granger, who also has oversight of the Department of Energy, on Thursday met with a team from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) at State House, to discuss the strengthening and capacity building of the Department of Energy as the country prepares for first oil. Read more here…

BOJ Can Track US$ Sales To End-Users – Source

The Bank of Jamaica can track greenback sales to ensure obedience of its stipulation that the US$70 million it used to intervene in the foreign exchange market so far this week be transacted with end-users or non-financial commercial entities that are funding obligations for goods and services, The Gleaner understands. Read more here…

International

Democrats hope latest witness will detail Trump's abuse of power

Donald Trump called Marie Yovanovitch "bad news." In a televised impeachment hearing Friday, the US ambassador to Ukraine that the President ousted for apparently thwarting his rogue foreign policy scheme, may prove him right.

Democrats called for the foreign service veteran's testimony to lift the lid on what they say is a black diplomatic operation set up to push Trump's political goals rather than America's interests and to churn up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden. Read more here…

A rubbish story: China's mega-dump full 25 years ahead of schedule

The Jiangcungou landfill in Shaanxi Province, which is the size of around 100 football fields, was designed to take 2,500 tonnes of rubbish per day.

But instead it received 10,000 tonnes of waste per day - the most of any landfill site in China. China is one of the world's biggest polluters, and has been struggling for years with the rubbish its 1.4 billion citizens generate. Read more here…

15th November 2019

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