NEWS

Gary slams ‘irresponsible parents’

While Police Commissioner Gary Griffith was expected to speak about youth at the Carenage Improvement and Empowerment League/Carenage Youth Club’s breakfast meeting on Sunday, he instead shared some strong words for parents. He told business leaders, residents and educators at the Carenage Police Youth Club and Homework Centre, Constabulary Street, Carenage, “We don’t have a problem with youths in this country, we have a problem with some of our adults. Read more here

Chinese businessman shot, robbed of $.1m

Po­lice are again is­su­ing an ap­peal to busi­ness own­ers not to car­ry large sums of cash af­ter a Chi­nese na­tion­al was shot in the face and robbed of $100,000 on Sun­day. Po­lice said Jinyuan Ye, 24, was shot twice in the head and re­mains ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the shoot­ing oc­curred around 10.30 a.m. at the Club 2000 bar at Dun­can Vil­lage, San Fer­nan­do. The mon­ey came from the earn­ings of roulette ma­chines op­er­at­ed the night be­fore. Read more here

POLITICS

‘Piracy’ kidnappings probed for criminal links

Minister of National Security Stuart Young says recent incidents of reported on-sea piracy and kidnappings of locals were being investigated for possible criminal links. He was responding to a question in the House of Representatives on Friday. He was asked whether the Coast Guard has sufficient resources to treat with increased incidents of piracy in TT's territorial waters. Young replied: "It is not factually accurate to state that there is an increase in incidents of piracy in our territorial waters. This is simply not true." He said from time to time there had been isolated incidents of citizens being subject to, what may be described as, acts of piracy. Read more here

Kamla to Weekes: Hold hand on Pemberton

The fight to re­move Jus­tice Chair­maine Pem­ber­ton from the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vices Com­mis­sion (JLSC) is cre­at­ing a war of words be­tween the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, with the for­mer sug­gest­ing a hold be put on Per­ber­ton’s ap­point­ment for now. In a se­ries of cor­re­spon­dence be­tween the two of­fices be­tween Feb­ru­ary 25 and March 13, 2019, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes seemed to butt heads over the Pres­i­dent’s in­ten­tion to re-ap­point Pem­ber­ton to the JLSC. Read more here

BUSINESS

Equity markets advance — Q1 2019

This week, we at Bourse review the performance of the local and international equity markets for the first quarter (Q1) of 2019. Domestically, the Trinidad and Tobago Composite Index would have advanced modestly, while the Cross Listed Index fell marginally. Internationally, equity markets rallied during Q1 2019 in the face of a more challenging economic environment. Read more here

REGIONAL

Vaz Leads - Poll Shows JLP Candidate In Command Of East Portland By-Election Race

The People’s National Party (PNP) could find itself losing a parliamentary seat it has held for the past 30 years come Thursday as the Jamaica Labour Party’s (JLP) Ann-Marie Vaz is leading her rival, Damion Crawford, in the East Portland race. This was revealed in the latest RJRGLEANER-Don Anderson poll conducted in the consti-tuency last week. Eastern Portland is considered by many to be a PNP safe seat, with the party having won it by more than 2,000 votes in the February 2016 general election and by considerable margins over the past 30 years. Read more here

INTERNATIONAL

Turkey local elections: Setback for Erdogan as his party loses capital

The party of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost control of the capital, Ankara, in local elections in a setback to his 16 years in power. The opposition is also ahead in the contest for mayor of the largest city, Istanbul, the election commission says. Nationally, the president's AKP-led alliance has won more than 51% of the vote in the municipal elections. The vote, seen as a verdict on Mr Erdogan's rule, has been taking place during an economic downturn. The currency, the lira, has been losing value recently and the economy went into recession in the last three months of 2018. The president had previously said the poll was about the "survival" of the country and his party. Read more here

Brexiteers cry betrayal but they're the ones to blame for this mess

Even with the Brexit countdown clock reset, the new deadline of April 12 suddenly doesn't seem very far away. In 11 days from now, unless something changes this week, the UK is leaving the European Union without a deal. Over the next few days, politicians from Prime Minister Theresa May downwards will scramble to get a deal through -- either the one the prime minister has spent months trying to get approved by the House of Commons only for it to be defeated three times, or a softer Brexit plan that is picking up support among lawmakers of all parties. Read more here

1st April 2019

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