NEWS
CoP: Domestic violence cause of half of murders of women
Almost half of the women killed in Trinidad and Tobago so far in 2020 were killed through domestic violence. Commissioner of Police Gary Griffith shared this at a press conferenceat the Police Administration Building in Port of Spain on Tuesday. Griffith said 46 women were killed this year and 21, or 45 per cent, were killed in domestic-violence situations. Read more here
TTUTA: Training needed to help parents cope with online learning
The school term is almost at an end. However, educational stakeholders have agreed it was far from perfect, having been marred by limited devices, poor internet connectivity, power outages and inadequate training. But as the country gets prepared for a term of blended learning next year, president of the T&T Unified Teachers Association Antonia Tekah-De Freitas says the lessons learnt from this term must be applied going forward. Read more here
POLITICS
Procurement Bill passed by one vote
The Senate on Tuesday night passed the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Property (Amendment) Bill 2020, as amended in committee stage, with the help of one Independent Senator, Dr Maria Dillon-Remy. All eight other Independent Senators abstained. The Opposition voted against. Read more here
PNM picks candidates for 2021 by-elections
Another set of elections are ahead – the ruling People’s National Movement has selected five prospective candidates for five Local Government by-elections. A party release yesterday stated screening was done at Balisier House on Monday – the day after the Opposition United National Congress’ internal polls. The PNM announced its candidates yesterday although no date has yet been announced for the LG by-elections. The by-elections are expected to be early next year and are necessary to fill vacancies left by certain councillors who were general election candidates and went on to become Members of Parliament. Read more here
BUSINESS
The trials of taxi-drivers
Registered taxi-drivers at several taxi stands say they have noticed an increase in the number of private (PH) cars plying for hire since the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more here
REGIONAL
Westmoreland Warning! - Infections, Deaths Soar As Country Readies For Vaccine Roll-Out
Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton all but declared the parish of Westmoreland Jamaica’s new COVID-19 epicentre, telling the nation’s Parliament on Tuesday that with more than 100 new confirmed cases, including 12 deaths in the last two weeks, the situation threatened to reach crisis proportions. The alert came amid the revelation of a planned roll-out of the coronavirus vaccine for 2021, with 16 per cent, or approximately 432,000 of Jamaica’s 2.7 million population, set to be inoculated against the disease that has killed 265 people here and infected almost 11,300. Global infections have topped 63 million and fatalities 1.5 million. Read more here
Exxon pumped $2.7B into economy
Global oil giant, ExxonMobil, has expended more than $2.7 billion over the past five years on social programmes across all 10 administrative regions, in Guyana. ExxonMobil is firmly established in Guyana, operating an office in Georgetown with numerous ongoing exploration and development operations offshore. The company has made 18 discoveries since May 2015 and began production in December 2019 from its Liza Phase one development project. Outside of its commercial operations, the company has contributed heavily to social programmes in Guyana, with its most recent donations in 2020 reaching more than $285 million. According to a statement from ExxonMobil, those funds were invested through contributions and sponsorships of various organisations and activities, in 2020. Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Brexit: Boris Johnson to meet Ursula von der Leyen for trade deal talks
Boris Johnson will fly to Brussels later for talks on a post-Brexit deal with the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Time is running out to reach a deal before 31 December, when the UK stops following EU trading rules. The pair will hold talks over dinner, after negotiations between officials ended in deadlock. Major disagreements remain on fishing rights, business competition rules and how a deal will be policed. Read more here
Trump's false crusade rolls on despite devastating Supreme Court rebuke
The only questions now are how many more times President Donald Trump wants to lose the election to President-elect Joe Biden and whether his Republican acolytes on Capitol Hill will wake up and recognize reality. Trump's dangerous delusions about a stolen election represent the most overt attempt in modern history by a President to overthrow the will of the voters. But they have reached the point of no return after the conservative-majority Supreme Court largely crushed what remaining hallucinatory hopes Trump harbored of reversing his defeat. Read more here
9th December 2020