NEWS
Teen girls killed in Tobago crash
Two teenaged girls lost their lives in a vehicular accident along the Auchenskeoch Buccoo Bay Road shortly after 4am yesterday. Shiann Thomas, 13, of Patience Hill, Tobago and Lariann Perez, 19, of Signal Hill, Tobago, were in a car which was proceeding towards the roundabout at the Claude Noel Highway when, according to witnesses, Perez, the driver, lost control as the car went around a bend near the Carnbee Gas Station. The car crashed into the embankment on the opposite side of the road, hit a road sign and flipped several times. Eyewitness reported that Thomas was thrown from the car and landed in a drain. Read more…
Bronze just as good as gold
That was the word used by Keshorn Walcott’s mother yesterday, as she lashed out at social media critics of her son’s Olympic bronze medal effort at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Saturday night. “People are ungrateful. It’s a medal, it’s the only one. It would have been so much happier if he had gotten gold,” Beverly Walcott said during an interview at her L’anse Noire, Toco home. Walcott became T&T’s last hope of securing a medal at the Games after the women’s and men’s 4x100 metres team failed to medal and the 4x400 metres relay team failed to advance to the final on Friday night. Read more…
Five Trinis still in V'zuela jail three months after 'agreement'
Three months after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visited Trinidad and Tobago and an announcement by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley that a bilateral agreement had been reached to repatriate citizens in detention, five Trinidadian men detained in a Venezuelan prison have yet to be released. The five men, all Muslims, were part of a group of 25 men and women detained on March 19, 2014, while attempting to process visa applications for a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Read more…
POLITICS
Moonilal: Fire the EBC
Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Moonilal is urging President Anthony Carmona to fire the Chairman and Commissioners of the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) following last Friday’s ruling, by Justice Mira Dean-Amorer, on five elections petitions lodged by the United National Congress (UNC). The High Court judge dismissed the UNC’s call to invalidate the results in five key marginal seats, saying that while the EBC’s one-hour extension of voting was unlawful, it had not materially affected the results. Yesterday, in a statement titled “Crisis of confidence”, Moonilal urged Carmona to remove the EBC heads due to the ruling that they acted illegally in the discharge of their duties, in what he termed, “a critical indictment”. Read more…
PM: Olympic dream still alive
The Rio Games is not the end of T&T’s Olympic dream, says Prime Minister Keith Rowley, in his congratulatory message to bronze medallist Keshorn Walcott. In a statement yesterday, Rowley said while the team may have suffered mixed fortunes in Brazil, the nation can be justifiably proud of our athletes who were able to reach the finals in several disciplines. “We must also remember that for the first time Trinidad and Tobago also competed in boxing, gymnastics and rowing. Swimming, sailing and cycling also continue to give us hope for medalling in future Olympic Games. This is not the end of our nation’s Olympic dream. It is only the beginning,” the statement said. Read more…
Ministry 'not doing enough to fight Zika'
Member of Parliament for Couva North Ramona Ramdial has called the Zika virus an “epidemic” in the country, and criticised Minister of Health Terrence Deyalsingh for his handling of the mitigation of the virus. In a news release yesterday, Ramdial said regional borough corporations have had little resources to rely on for clean-up campaigns despite a funding exercise announced by Deyalsingh. The release read: “The alarming increase in the number of pregnant women with Zika and the thousands of unconfirmed citizens with Zika, as recently stated by Minister Deyalsingh and Chief Medical Officer Dr Clive Tilluckdharry, can now only be described as an epidemic in our country. “At the beginning of August, there were 60 confirmed cases of pregnant women with Zika, but on Thursday the Ministry of Health announced that this number has increased to 144—more than doubling the previous figure in less than three weeks. Read more…
BUSINESS
Republic appoints two new directors
Republic Bank Limited (RBL) on Friday announced the appointments of Edward J.L. Ince and Ian L. Benjamin to its board of directors, effective August 17. Edward Ince is the Founder and Joint Managing Director of PRISM services; specialising in financial services, mail processing, records management and customer loyalty in the Central American and Caribbean regions. “He has extensive knowledge of the Caribbean region, coupled with a background in technology, and is the former General Manager, Eastern Caribbean, Fujitsu ICL Caribbean, where he had oversight of the company’s operations in Barbados, Grenada, St. Vincent and Dominica,” RBL stated. Ince holds a B.Sc (Hons) Computer Science from York University, Toronto, Canada, and is a former National Aubrey Collymore Scholarship Recipient for Sciences. Fellow appointee, Ian Benjamin, is the Head of Bethany Chambers, Port-of-Spain. He is a career advocate attorney with over 25 years experience in practicing and teaching law in Trinidad and Tobago, the United Kingdom and Australia. Read more…
Anger in the delta keeps much Nigeria oil offline
Oil companies and even Nigerian officials are losing faith in a deal anytime soon with militants who have slashed the nation’s oil output, casting doubt on a production recovery in what is typically Africa’s largest oil exporter. In the six months since the first major attack on Nigeria’s oil—a sophisticated bombing of the subsea Forcados pipeline—dozens of attacks have pushed outages to more than 700,000 barrels per day (bpd), the highest in seven years. Talk in the country has shifted from ceasefire optimism, and oil companies’ assurances that repairs were underway, to hedged comments from the government and radio silence from oil majors. yesterday, the Niger Delta Avengers militants, which have claimed several major pipeline attacks, said in a statement they were ready to give dialogue a chance. Read more…
Trinidad and Tobago signs inter-governmental FATCA agreement with US
An agreement that will pave the way for the implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) between Trinidad and Tobago and the United States has been signed. On Friday, Finance Minister Colm Imbert and US Ambassador John Estrada signed the agreement that was enacted in the United States in 2010. The agreement is a model IA Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA), which is designed to improve international tax compliance through mutual assistance in tax matters based on an effective infrastructure for the automatic exchange of information. In a statement , the Ministry of Finance described the signing of the IGA as “another milestone in the relationship between both countries on tax matters.” The signing brings to an end about three years of negotiations between the countries on the Agreement. “The signing is also timely as it was completed before September 30 deadline set for the exchanging of information between both countries.” Read more…
REGIONAL
No Saving Probe - Bunting Says He Tried To Rescue Investigation Of Official
Former National Security Minister Peter Bunting has revealed that shortly after taking office in January 2012, he tried to salvage a police investigation that targeted a Jamaican official. The probe was being led by Les Green, then assistant commissioner of police (ACP), who has claimed publicly that police investigators found sufficient evidence to bring criminal charges against the official. However, in a letter to The Gleaner and in an article published in the Miami Heraldnewspaper, Green charged that the case collapsed in late 2011 after the Ministry of National Security refused a request to have two key witnesses placed on the Witness Protection Programme. Added to that, the former ACP revealed that he was completely surprised by what he described as a "last-minute" decision not to renew his contract. Bunting could not recall seeing the documents related to the request made by the police, but said when he took charge of the ministry and learnt of the situation, he gave Green two clear commitments. Read more…
St Lucia PM caught in tangled web, says opposition
In his efforts to extricate Saint Lucia from the sanctions imposed by the United States as a result of still unresolved allegations of extra-judicial killings by the local police, new Prime Minister Allen Chastanet has been caught in a “tangled web” of unrealistic promises, the opposition St Lucia Labour Party (SLP) said in a statement last week. “Prime Minister Chastanet has now been caught in a ‘tangled web’ as a very direct result of his calculated efforts to make unrealistic promises to the police force and the public at large,” the SLP said. The killings took place in 2010 and 2011 during a security initiative called Operation Restore Confidence (ORC), which was aimed at reducing violent crime. During the period between 2008 and 2010, Saint Lucia had experienced an unprecedented wave of homicides and violent crimes, particularly in the northern half of the island. Read more…
INTERNATIONAL
Turkey suicide bomb victims 'mostly children'
Most of the victims of the bombing of a Kurdish wedding party in the Turkish city of Gaziantep on Saturday were children, media reports say. Twenty-nine victims were under the age of 18, reports said, with one official saying 22 were under the age of 14. The death toll rose to 54 on Monday. The suicide bomber himself was a child aged 12-14, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. Mr Erdogan has blamed so-called Islamic State (IS) for the attack. Gaziantep, near the Syrian border, is known to contain several IS cells. On Monday, Turkish officials were awaiting the results of DNA tests as they tried to identify the suicide attacker, the Hurriyet newspaper said. It added that the type of bomb, which contained scraps of metal, was similar to those used in previous attacks on pro-Kurdish gatherings. Kurdish fighters, backed by the US-led coalition, have been at the forefront of the fight against IS in Syria. Prosecutors said a search was also under way for two people believed to have accompanied the suspected attacker to the wedding party but who left before the blast. Read more…
Ethiopian marathoner makes protest gesture at Rio finish line
Feyisa Lilesa of Ethiopia may have turned himself into a political exile because of the way he won a silver medal in the Olympics marathon on Sunday. He strode across the finish line with his arms crossed over his head in a sign of solidarity for the Oromo people, his native group and the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia. He repeated the sign at a press conference. In an interview after the race, Lilesa said he wanted to draw attention to the government's ongoing persecution of the Oromos. By speaking out, he said, he put himself into such danger that he can't go home. Read more…
22nd August 2016