Trinidad and Tobago : News

News : Trinidad and Tobago : News

By Paras Ramoutar, Port-of-Spain, Nov 6 : The Trinidad and Tobago police have found pages of the Hindu holy book Bhagvad Gita soaked in millions of dollars worth of liquid cocaine in a laboratory in Couva, Central Trinidad.

Health Minister Jerry Narace was accused yesterday of being ’on the warpath...firing CEOs in the South and firing doctors...without just cause’. (TrinidadExpress)

Michael Harris, chief executive officer of the South West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA), and Dr Stephen Ramroop, medical director of the San Fernando General Hospital, have both resigned, the SWRHA said yesterday. (TrinidadExpress)

Government is making a ’concerted attempt to anger and stress out’ the people of Trinidad and Tobago, Oropouche East MP Roodal Moonilal said yesterday. (TrinidadExpress)

THE FIRST gym of its kind for any corporation was opened yesterday at the San Fernando City Corporation. (TrinidadExpress)

Independent Senator Dana Seetahal was yesterday severely rebuked by Deputy Speaker Pennelope Beckles, for her statement about House Speaker Barry Sinanan in her weekly column in the Guardian. But she was not sent to the Privileges Committee for alleged contempt of Parliament. (TrinidadExpress)

House Speaker Barendra Sinanan threatened to suspend last evening’s House of Representatives sitting for close to two hours, due to loud exchanges between Government and Opposition MPs when Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira was responding to a motion on the Trinidad and Tobago International Financial Centre (TTIFC). (TrinidadExpress)

The United National Congress’s (UNC) internal elections, scheduled for January 24, may be in limbo. (TrinidadExpress)

The clandestine laboratory, where cocaine was being converted into a liquid form to be packaged and exported, was set up opposite a primary school. (TrinidadExpress)

NO one can explain the pain a mother feels when she loses a child, Imam Haji Ahamad Mohammed said yesterday. (TrinidadExpress)

TWO of the five people in police custody in connection with the murder of German national, Peter Taut, were last night at the Scarborough Regional Hospital receiving attention. (TrinidadExpress)

A new bill has been laid in the Parliament that seeks to ’provide for cases to be tried without a jury where there is the danger of jury tampering’. In addition, the bill, which is meant to amend the Criminal Procedure Act, will also seek to allow ’the court to provide assistance to intimidated witnesses or jurors when giving evidence or deliberating in proceedings respectively’. (TrinidadExpress)

A series on the homeless and an exploration of female drug addiction were the compelling pieces of Express journalism that have captured an award from the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO). (TrinidadExpress)

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO will be the first Caribbean country to get vaccines for the influenza A/ H1N1 vaccine. (TrinidadExpress)

ATTORNEY for Alutrint Timothy Straker QC yesterday argued that High Court Justice Mira Dean-Armorer, who ruled to quash the Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC) for the proposed aluminium smelter, misunderstood the material before her regarding hazardous spent pot liners (SPL) from the project. (TrinidadExpress)

THE search for this country’s next top cop has stalled because of Cabinet’s inability to approve a recommendation to have the Pennsylvania State University Justice and Safety Institute contracted as the firm that would screen potential applicants for the position of this country’s next police commissioner. (TrinidadExpress)

PC Arnold Deonarine was yesterday described as a dedicated, ambitious young man who gave up an opportunity to work in the field of civil engineering to become a police officer. (TrinidadExpress)

Prime Minister Patrick Manning should apologise to the Trinidad and Tobago Muslim Organisation and the government of Saudi Arabia. (TrinidadExpress)

National shame. (TrinidadExpress)

A SECURITY officer is seeking the public’s assistance in finding a pawn ticket which he misplaced while travelling on his way to work earlier this week. (TrinidadExpress)

A LAVENTILLE man was committed to stand trial for the murder of another Laventille resident on Thursday by Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls in the Port of Spain Magistrates’ Court. (TrinidadExpress)

To those who follow our parliamentary proceedings it must be obvious that each Parliament develops and therefore projects its own sort of collective image and signature. Possibly this is what former parliamentarian and founder-member of the PNM Kamaluddin Mohammed had in mind in a television interview about earlier parliamentary personalities when he opined that the quality of the debates on both sides was not up to par with earlier parliaments. There can be no doubt that there will be differences as people come and go, times change and political attitudes shift. (TrinidadExpress)

It was another sweltering afternoon of the rainy season. I happened to be close to a radio and it came at last. It was a media conference as strange as the burning heat in the midst of the rainy season. (TrinidadExpress)

Parliamentarians throughout the world are often chided for exhibiting, while at their appointed or elected task, a childish obsession with the trivial and sexual. However, they reached their nadir in Trinidad last week. According to a report, they talked sheet and more sheet and then continued to talk sheet. For the record, the report was in plain unvarnished English and not a verbal summary by someone with a Mexican accent. It was actually an excellent cover story. (TrinidadExpress)

Regrettably, the standing of Caricom, both regionally and internationally, is now at one of its lowest points when the people of the region need it to be at its strongest. (TrinidadExpress)

It is said there is no greater tragedy than for a parent to lose a child. Yet how much sharper the sting must be when the child dies from a preventable cause. In the past week, three children have been killed-in a car accident, by electrocution and from pneumonia. They were aged, respectively, six years, three years, and 13 months. Every death was accidental, but they were all accidents where, if the adults had perhaps been more knowledgeable, these children might still be with them. (TrinidadExpress)

Sports Minister Gary Hunt has been getting a lot of stick for his remark that ’you can’t put a price on national pride.’ Leading commentators like radio talkshow host Anil Roberts have pointed to the fact that the $2 million spent on a giant Trinidad and Tobago flag could have paid for an operation to save the life of a nine-year-old girl in Sea Lots, whose mother is trying to raise money to get the child an operation overseas. Retired diplomat Reginald Dumas stated bluntly in a TV6 interview that he had ’never heard such rubbish coming from a Minister of Government in this country or in any other country for a long time.’ (TrinidadExpress)

One needs to tidy up these things. It’s all wonderfully over now bar T&T winning the final, but you may remember my writing in that first Champions League column (October 13): (TrinidadExpress)

’Mr Matthews predicted this development.’ Gideon Hanoomansingh, host of Heritage Radio’s Morning Sunrise show, made the comment to Vasant Bharath as I sat with them on a 90-minute programme as an intruder, ’excited’ as one listener so aptly said. And why should I not be when the perspective I had offered just 24 hours before was not so much prophecy as the manifestation of the power of opinion clearly stated? (TrinidadExpress)

A constitution is a contract between an abstract entity called the State and a living entity called ’the people’. That being the case, we hope that PNM leader Patrick Manning and UNC leader Basdeo Panday realise that their agreement on constitutional reform must come from the people and that, as leaders, their primary duty is to implement the desired relationship between State and citizens. (TrinidadExpress)

THE Government’s proud move to provide autonomy, decentralisation and modernisation in the country’s education system, with the attractively titled School-based Management Initiative, does not reach as far as allowing school principals to talk freely with reporters. (TrinidadExpress)