NEWS
Kiss bread up 11% from July 1
By next week Friday, the Kiss Baking Company will raise the price of its products by an average of 11 per cent, it said in a statement on Thursday. Kiss said the National Flour Mills (NFM) on Tuesday had announced a 33 per cent rise in the wholesale price of flour to commercial bakeries as of Wednesday. It said, "This increase will have a severe impact on Kiss Baking Company Ltd as flour is our primary raw material input. Read more here
Help Save Sanjay- Brother pleads to energy companies
hey live in Mafeking, Mayaro, a place where many oil and gas companies operate. Now relatives of cancer-stricken Mayaro youth Sanjay Sampat are making a stirring appeal to energy companies to help save his life. Thanks to the support of good Samaritans, Sanjay has flown to the Max Super Speciality Hospital in New Delhi, India where he is undergoing treatment. Read more here
POLITICS
Gopee-Scoon slams retailers for unfair mark-ups on food
Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon said her ministry knew the identities of those retailers making excessive mark-ups or trying to pass off old stock as new stock on which to charge higher prices to consumers. "I can tell you who they are," she said on Thursday at the post-Cabinet briefing at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann's. "Be reasonable" Gopee-Scoon urged retailers. Gopee-Scoon advised that a genuine hike in the price of flour should be 10-33 per cent, equivalent to a $2-4 hike per two kilogramme bag. Read more here
Chief Sec presents budget, THA to foot $16,800 daily bill to open airport later
The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) has agreed to foot a $16,800 daily bill for the ANR Robinson International Airport in Crown Point to open as late as 1.30 am, with hopes that it will drive more local tourists to the island. The move will come at the expense of Virgin Atlantic, however, as the THA plans to redirect funds from the subvention the airline gets to pay the Airports Authority $5.6 million annually for the extended opening hours. This was just one of many measures announced by Chief Secretary Farley Augustine as he delivered an ambitious, near four-hour long $3.97 billion THA Budget in Scarborough yesterday. Read more here
BUSINESS
NFM looks at sweet potato, cassava as alternative sources to wheat flour
Chief Executive Officer of National Flour Mills Ian Mitchell says the company has been looking at using sweet potato and cassava as alternative sources to wheat flour but it may not be economically viable to produce at this time. Speaking during a recent television programme Mitchell said, “Cassava flour is twice as expensive when processed as wheat flour. While it is an option and it is something we want to look at because it gives us that security of growing that component of what we already eat at home, the cost to grow cassava, to extract the starch and process it into a flour is just significantly expensive at this time,” Mitchell explained. Additionally, NFM’s chairman Nigel Romano said if cassava has to be used as a source it must be “reliable and that quality is assured.” Read more here
Farley presents $3.97b 2023 budget
Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Chief Secretary Farley Augustine delivered his first Tobago budget yesterday. This was the first budget under the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP) administration, which took office in December. Augustine said his $3.97 billion budget was “a budget for the people of Tobago”. He said he remains hopeful Tobago would get all of it, when the national budget is read later this year by Finance Minister Colm Imbert. Read more here
REGIONAL
Potential exists for vaccine-production plant in Guyana
President Dr. Irfaan Ali has said that Guyana will work with countries like Rwanda to put the necessary framework in place for the establishment of a local vaccine-producing plant. “We want people to come to Guyana and develop vaccine and treatment for diseases like malaria. It is important, as a country, that we respond to the needs and makes ourselves vaccine secure,” Dr. Ali said on Thursday, following a sod-turning ceremony for a new mRNA vaccine factory in the special economic zone of the Gasabo District, Rwanda. Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Capitol riot hearing: Lawyers threatened to quit over Trump election pressure
US government lawyers threatened to quit en masse as then-President Donald Trump hounded them almost daily to help overturn his 2020 election defeat, a congressional inquiry has heard. Justice department officials said they told Mr Trump there was zero evidence for his claims of mass voter fraud. The attorneys also testified that the president's plan to reverse his loss in key states was "a murder-suicide pact". The panel is investigating last year's US Capitol riot as an attempted coup. The House of Representatives select committee is seeking to build a case that Mr Trump's efforts to stay in power in the lead-up to the violent raid by a horde of his supporters on Congress on 6 January 2021 amounted to illegal conduct. Read more here
24th June 2022