NEWS
Met Office: Prepare for wetter wet season
With the announcement of a wetter-than-normal 2021 wet season by the Meteorological Service, people are being urged to monitor information from the Met Office and the ODPM to make sure they aren’t caught off guard. It said there is a new climate normal, as 1981-2010 was the reference for the last ten years. The new reference is the 1991-2020 climate normal representing today’s climate. It said in this new normal, the average rainfall has decreased, but there are an increased number of single-day "rainfall events, " when the frequency remains steady, and 50 millimetres or more of rain. It said days which come with unusually very heavy rainfall have increased steadily. Read more here
CoP: Too many people still outside in daytime
Police Commissioner Gary Griffith says since the State of Emergency was implemented last weekend, more citizens have been leaving their homes during the non-curfew hours. However, he is urging citizens to desist from this type of behaviour, saying this is exactly what led to the recent surge and what the SoE is meant to prevent. In an interview with Guardian Media yesterday, Griffith said the police have observed that more people are out on a daily basis. “That is totally going to defeat the value and the purpose of the State of Emergency, because having a virtual ghost town during the night and then persons are then coming out en masse during the day, it means that the same concerns that we have about the virus spreading will just be intensified during the day period,” Griffith said. Read more here
POLITICS
Rambharat slams UNC MP over ignorant claim
Chaguanas East MP Vandana Mohit has come under heavy criticism from the Agriculture Minister over questions she raised about cheques from the National Agricultural Marketing and Development Corporation (NAMDEVCO) during a media conference yesterday. Speaking at a United National Congress virtual conference, Mohit said she had been sent two cheques, dated May 21, which showed payments being made by NAMDEVCO. She asked if the state entity was providing any COVID-19 food support other than the food baskets that are currently being distributed to needy citizens. Read more here
BUSINESS
New Payments Systems Bill coming
The Central Bank last week issued a policy proposal document on the development of a modern and comprehensive Payments Systems Bill and accompanying regulations for Trinidad and Tobago. Read more here
REGIONAL
4-y-o girl eager to dance again after shot thrice in gang war
Imagine helplessly witnessing your four-year-old child being shot a few steps away from you and having to crawl on her belly to escape her heartless attackers after being shot in both legs, with the impact breaking her right foot. Read more here
State owed millions of dollars
Vice-President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo, has highlighted some glaring infractions on the part of contractors who benefitted from duty-free concessions under the previous A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) Government. “Some people connected to the [then] Government, if they have a contract from the Ministry of Public Works for $2 million, they get a Landcruiser for duty-free for the project,” Jagdeo told a press conference hosted at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on Friday. He explained that when vehicles are acquired under such duty-free terms, there are certain guidelines that apply in relation to a person/company keeping the imported item. Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Samoa's first female PM locked out of parliament by losing opponent
Samoa's first female prime minister has been sworn into office in a tent after she was locked out of parliament by her opponent, who has refused to step down. Fiame Naomi Mata'afa took the oath of office in a marquee in the parliament's gardens, leaving uncertainty over who controls the Pacific island nation. Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who has been prime minister for 22 years, has ignored a court order to step down. Ms Mata'afa, 64, arrived at parliament on Monday expecting to be sworn in. But the former deputy prime minister, who arrived alongside the country's chief justice, found herself barred from the building, which had been locked by allies of Mr Malielegaoi in advance of her arrival. Read more here
Indian media have gone easy on Modi. That's changing because of the pandemic
Om Gaur is in the middle of the most heart-wrenching story of his career as a journalist. Earlier this month, Gaur — the national editor at Dainik Bhaskar, one of the world's biggest-selling newspapers — got a tip that dead bodies had been spotted floating in the Ganges River in Bihar, a state in eastern India. Given how decomposed the corpses were, officials in Bihar suspected they had come from further upstream — possibly from Uttar Pradesh, the highly populated state where Gaur is based. So he sent a team of 30 reporters to over 27 districts to investigate. Read more here
24th May 2021