NEWS
No Miracle
In the end, there was to be no miracle. After a six-week battle for life, baby Miracle Cross breathed her last and gave up the fight lying on a cot during the early morning hours yesterday at the San Fernando General Hospital. For her, it was simply a waiting game, as feverish attempts were made both at home and abroad, to raise roughly US$200,000 to fund an overseas trip for surgery to repair congenital defects to her tiny heart. “The miracle that we prayed for... the miracle we needed for our Miracle was not to be,” cried Chrystal Cross in a brief interview yesterday. Chrystal said she and her husband Kerwin were at their daughter’s side when she closed her eyes for the last time, at 3.13 in the morning. Read more...
Trini’s ‘gun’ heels seized at airport
Trinidadian Kashma Maharaj made headline news all over the world yesterday, as the woman who tried to go through an international airport checkpoint with gun-themed shoes and two bracelets lined with realistic-looking bullet figurines. Maharaj is a partner at Fashionista Trinidad, owner-operator at kashmamaharaj.com and owner at Supernova Sports Ltd. She is also a fitness instructor and personal trainer. According to international reports, Maharaj was stopped at the Baltimore-Washington Thurgood Marshall Airport on Saturday by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents, after they found the shoes and bracelets in her carry-on bag. Read more...
Nelson: Petrotrin may be naive, not negligent
The Malcolm Jones-led Petrotrin board may have been naive and duped, but was not negligent. This is what a court would have been likely to find, according to Queen's Counsel Vincent Nelson. And it is this advice, tendered to Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi, that caused the Government to endorse and uphold the decision of present Petrotrin board to withdraw the US$109 million lawsuit against Jones. “There is a reasonable likelihood that a judge will be persuaded that there was a bad business decision, but (that there was) no negligence by Malcolm Jones in the billion dollar GTL project,” Nelson stated in an opinion dated October 11, 2015, after he viewed the witness statements of Petrotrin former directors in the arbitration proceedings in 2012 and 2014. The advice was released by the Attorney General yesterday. According to Al-Rawi, these witness statements were the “cyanide pill” which caused Nelson to take a fresh perspective on the Jones lawsuit. Read more...
POLITICS
Rowley ‘uncomfortable’ with FCB
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley yesterday said a clear breach of confidentiality occurred in the leak of Planning and Development Minister Camille Robinson-Regis’ details from First Citizens Bank (FCB). He said whatever the transaction, the bank has a duty of confidentiality. “I’m sure the bank is not happy, because the story is out there. In this case it’s a Minister of Government, but it could easily be somebody else.” Speaking yesterday at the weekly post Cabinet press conference held at the Magdalena Grand Hotel in Tobago, Rowley added, “You ask if I’m comfortable and the answer is ‘no’. I have a credit card at FCB and suppose I go and buy some underwear for my wife and I didn’t deliver it in time to her, and somebody tells the press, then you have another ‘story’.” As to his FCB credit card, he said, “Your question is, what do I do? I’m thinking about it.” After the story broke on details of her finances, Robinson-Regis closed her FCB bank account. Dr Rowley said he once felt compelled to close his account at FCB - successor to the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) - when a false news story that he had given an ADB loan to former minister, Wendell Mottley, had led a past minister of finance to “reason” that the government of the day had the right to private client details at a State-owned institute. Read more...
AG dismisses criticisms over Jones
Attorney General Faris Al-Rawi is dismissing criticisms by some over the State’s decision to discontinue the lawsuit against former executive chairman of Petrotrin Malcolm Jones. The billion dollar case for negligence over the company’s failed low sulphur diesel plant was brought against Jones under former attorney general Anand Ramlogan. Opposition Senator Wayne Sturge and others have criticised Al-Rawi for the discontinuance of the case, saying Jones had questions to answer. However, Al- Rawi, in a statement, said those views of Sturge and former attorney general Garvin Nicholas were “entirely unsustainable.” Read more...
Rowley stands by his Attorney General
Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley stood up for his Attorney General's decision to drop a US$109 million case against former Petrotrin chairman Malcolm Jones. Rowley also called on former attorney general, Anand Ramlogan, to explain why evidence in the matter had been suppressed. Saying it was the taxpayers who were footing the bill, which AG Faris Al-Rawi has pegged at around $45 million, with the matter yet to reach the court, Rowley questioned the sum of the eventual bill should it have been allowed to proceed to the end. Read more...
BUSINESS
TT$ hits new low against US$
A depreciated Trinidad and Tobago dollar makes it more expensive to purchase United States currency to import foreign commodities and “this will do more harm than good, especially in the short and medium term”, The University of the West Indies financial economics lecturer Vaalmikki Arjoon has said. The TT dollar (TTD) hit a new low against the US dollar yesterday at three of the country's four largest retail banks. Read more...
REGIONAL
Dominica minister resigns over alleged sex scandal
Ian Pinard, Dominica’s minister of public works, resigned his cabinet post on Wednesday following allegations made against him of inappropriate sexual conduct with a 15-year-old high school student. Pinard released the following videotaped statement in which he said, "In light of these allegations, I consider my continued presence in the cabinet can adversely impact the important work this government is doing and must continue to do for the people of Dominica." He continued that, in order more to appropriately address the allegations against him and also in order to focus on other very important personal matters, he had earlier on Wednesday tendered to the prime minister his resignation as a minister of government with immediate effect. Read more...
'No Margin For Error' - PM Holness Appeals For Bipartisan Cooperation For Good Of Country
Acknowledging that the razor-thin majority of his administration will mean no easy cruise, Prime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday extended the hand of partnership to the Opposition as he was sworn into office. "This historic election delivered the smallest majority but also the clearest mandate," declared Holness after he took the Oath of Office at King's House. "With this mandate, there is no majority for arrogance, no space for selfishness, no place for pettiness, no room for complacency, and no margin for error," added the youngest person to be twice sworn in as prime minister. Holness delivered his inauguration speech in a poignantly harmonious atmosphere brought about, for the most part, by religious and patriotic music, under cloudy skies. He reiterated his campaign vow that he would be keeping along the straight and narrow path to economic growth. With former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller sharing the platform, Holness made it clear that he was acutely aware that the new Government would be in need of a partnering hand. Read more...
INTERNATIONAL
Scientists 'find cancer's Achilles heel'
Republican debate turns dirty
The Republican presidential race got dirty Thursday night. Donald Trump opened the GOP debate here by boasting about the size of his genitals. He responded to recent comments from Marco Rubio in which the Florida senator joked about the size of Trump's hands and said "you know what they say about men with small hands." On the debate stage, Trump stretched his hands out for the audience to see -- then insisted the suggestion that "something else must be small” was false. Read more...
4th March 2016