Daily Archive: Friday, June 5, 2009

-Narcotics had been secreted in logs (Barbados Nation) Six Guyanese who have been on a prolonged trial in Barbados on a charge of smuggling ganja and cocaine into that country in 2005 were yesterday found guilty and will be sentenced on June 15.

Local television pioneer Anthony Vieira has sold his station to the Ramroop Group.

The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) soldiers who are now in police custody following allegations of armed robbery reportedly demanded work permits and licences from miners at a Brazilian mining camp before robbing them of money and gold last Thursday at Five Star, Barima/Waini, Region One.

Gunmen snatched him from boat Less than a day after being grabbed by five hijackers from a Surinamese “back track” boat, the body of a 44-year-old Guyanese businessman was fished out of the Corentyne River yesterday.

…Luncheon says ‘comprehensive disclosure’ needed A “comprehensive response” to the alleged links between government and jailed Guyanese drug kingpin Roger Khan depends on “comprehensive disclosure,” according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon.

Nineteen more employees of the financially troubled CLICO (Guyana) yesterday had their services terminated.

Distinguished Guyanese linguist Dr Richard Allsopp has died. He passed away on Wednesday evening at a hospital in Barbados following a long illness.

A single blood drive two Saturdays ago netted 240 units to set a new record in Guyana and the English-speaking Caribbean  when  Swami Aksharananda of Cornelia Ida, West Coast Demerara  spearheaded the activity.

– annual target still doable if plan stuck to, Gopaul says There was a shortfall in sugar production by some 6,000 tonnes during the first crop which recorded just over 83,000 tonnes, largely as a result of poor weather conditions, Chairman of the Guyana Sugar Corporation board Dr Nanda Gopaul said yesterday.

-child protection unit steps in Welfare officers attached to the Child Protection Unit of the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security (MHSS) yesterday met with a 15-year- old girl who was severely beaten by her father at the family’s East Coast Demerara home on Wednesday.

The Cliff Anderson Sports Hall will become a basketball haven as  37 schools from around the country compete for the right to be called  National Schools Basketball Champions beginning June 26.

Golden Jaguars to seek  redemption It’s day two of the 2009 Parbo Bier Cup in Suriname and team Guyana after losing their opening game on Wednesday will be coming out looking for a much needed victory when they face the hosts today at the Andre Kampervene Stadium at 4 pm local time.

-administration would be able to pick all members of key commission Following criticism by the opposition, the government yesterday tabled two more bills in Parliament for local government reforms and the one catering for the establishment of the local government commission would enable the PPP/C administration to pick all six members.

LONDON, England, CMC – West Indies batting ace Ramnaresh Sarwan has shrugged off his team’s below par performances in England on their current trip and declared the Caribbean side as positive ahead of the ICC World Twenty20 Championship.

Man was killed while speaking to friend Ashnie Williams was being taken for a pre-birthday walk while Salim Mohamed was standing on the roadway speaking to a friend who was in a parked motor car when both of them died on the Kilcoy Public Road, Corentyne after a speeding car crashed on Saturday afternoon.

For the first time in the history of the Guyana Defence Force Coast Guard, ten officers are undergoing local training at the induction stage.

LONDON, (Reuters) – In contrast to the ebullience of  some of the other Twenty20 World Cup contenders, England open  the tournament today almost apologising for their presence.

WELLINGTON, (Reuters) – New Zealand Cricket (NZC)  have agreed to allow players returning from the ‘rebel’ Indian  Cricket League (ICL) to be selected for their national team  with immediate effect.

Director of Norway’s Climate and Forest Initiative, Ambassador Hans Brattskar says that recent talks with President Bharrat Jagdeo included trying to advance the memorandum of understanding the two countries have signed on a rainforest deal and the amount of financial aid this country could get for its programme.

…past economic policy failures also a factor President of the Caribbean Development Bank, Dr Compton Bourne has said that while the global economic and financial crisis currently affecting  the bank’s Borrowing Member Countries (BMC’s) is a consequence of severe external economic shocks,  vulnerability to the  crisis has been accentuated by past economic policy failures.

Dear Editor, I refer to the letter written by Mr MS Baksh about noise in the minibuses published in your June 1 edition (‘Loud music in buses is back’).

First quarter bauxite production plunges “Tentative” production figures released to Stabroek Business by the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) indicate a drastic reduction in bauxite production for the first quarter of 2009, a circumstance which GMSA President Ramesh Dookhoo says reflects the dramatic shrinkage in the world market demand for the commodity.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Unbeaten Barbadian cruiserweight boxer Shawn “The Sniper” Cox will defend his Caribbean Boxing Federation (CABOFE) title later this month against the rising Guyanese prospect Cleveland Fraser.

CAIRO,  (Reuters) – President Barack Obama sought to  change Muslim perceptions of the United States yesterday in a  speech that urged Arabs and Israelis to declare in public the  realities he said they accept in private.

A Corentyne man won the coveted first place in the senior male category in the semi-finals and is among 28 persons chosen to represent Guyana at the Eighth International Qaseeda Competition.

Dear Editor, One of the major shortcomings of Guyanese political culture is the stubborn refusal to learn from history or to totally ignore it.

The sense of disappointment, even frustration over the slow pace at which the hoped-for creation of a strong regional agribusiness sector is proceeding was evident in the presentations at last week’s regional agribusiness forum by Caricom Secretary General Edwin Carrington, Agriculture Minister Robert Persaud and, at the end of the two-day forum, by President Bharrat Jagdeo.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Twenty20 has made a virtue of  challenging cricket convention and if an English inventor is  right the next thing to be abandoned will be the long-standing  design of the bat itself.

A 38-year-old man who allegedly had carnal knowledge of a 15-year-old girl was remanded to prison on Wednesday when he appeared before Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.

HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC – Retired International Cricket Council (ICC) umpire Steve Bucknor is the new president of the West Indies Cricket Umpires Association (WICUA).

Dear Editor, Many people today criticize the West Indies board for the downfall of the team.

LONDON, (Reuters) – A third senior minister quit the  British government yesterday, calling on Prime Minister Gordon  Brown to quit to improve his party’s chances at a general  election due within a year.

Dear Editor, During the beginning of the week I noticed that Mr CN Sharma was casting doubts on the progress within the agriculture sector.

By Rawle Lucas (Rawle Lucas is a Guyanese-born Certified Public Accountant and Assistant Vice President of the Lending Services Division.

-court hears Two security guards who allegedly dealt another man several blows about his body resulting in him being hospitalized were both remanded to prison on Monday when they appeared before Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson.

FERNANDO DE NORONHA, Brazil, (Reuters) – Brazilian  search crews fished the first debris from a crashed Air France  flight out of choppy Atlantic waters yesterday amid concern  the plane may have flown through a storm at the wrong speed.

DUBLIN, Ohio, (Reuters) – Britain’s Luke Donald  produced a spectacular burst of six consecutive birdies to  surge into a commanding three-shot lead in yesterday’s opening  round at the Memorial tournament.

PIKALYOVO, Russia, (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister  Vladimir Putin publicly humiliated a top oligarch yesterday,  accusing him and other factory owners in a crisis-hit town of  greed and likening them to “cockroaches”.

PARIS, (Reuters) – Dinara Safina and Svetlana  Kuznetsova, the world’s best women claycourters in 2009, relied  on their wealth of experience to set up an all-Russian final at  the French Open yesterday.

Stabroek Business has agreed to publish a series of articles prepared by the Guyana Manufacturers and Services Association (GMSA) on issues of interest to the manufacturing sector and to the business community as a whole.

Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson remanded to prison a technician charged with break and enter and larceny after he was allegedly found under his neighbour’s bed with items he had been about to steal.

Dear Editor, Travelling on Guyana’s roads today has become something of a nightmare.

President Jagdeo calls for less talk and more action Caricom SG urges greater Secretariat role In the face of growing impatience on the part of  President Bharrat Jagdeo over the slow pace of progress towards the creation of a viable regional agribusiness sector, Caribbean Community Secretary General Dr Edwin Carrington is advocating a more central role for the Georgetown-based Caricom Secretariat in hastening the pace towards the realization of the regional objective.

Dear Editor, We are living in an age of advanced technology; an age of cell phones, television, internet, computers, ipods, DVD players and an unending list of modern inventions which baffle the intellect and confuse the mind.

Basketball is set to take centre stage in Linden over the weekend when the Linden Amateur Basketball Association (LABA) recommences its Pioneer Construction-sponsored First Division League at the Mackenzie Sports Club hard court.

HAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba welcomed the lifting of a Cold War-era ban on its membership in the Organization of American States as “a major victory” yesterday, but made clear Havana does not want to rejoin the group.

Dear Editor, I wish to inform the general public at Mabaruma in Region One that at no time have I written to the Commissioner of Police, Mr Henry Greene to make a complaint incriminating or implicating anyone.

Some Caricom states deliberately restricting free flow of trade – GMSA President The promulgation of a Caricom Single Market more than two years ago has done little so far to accelerate fair and equitable access to regional markets by member countries of the Community, according to President of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) Ramesh Dookhoo.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Australia all-rounder Andrew  Symonds is being sent home from the World Twenty20 tournament in  England for disciplinary reasons, Cricket Australia (CA) said yesterday.

CARACAS, (Reuters) – Venezuela is preparing to  nationalize petrochemical projects and yesterday said it  seized property of a U.S.

Third quarter deadline for new electricity plant `unacceptable’ – GMSA President The protracted periods of power outage that have gripped parts of the country over the past few weeks have evoked angry responses from sections of the Georgetown business community backed by calls from the Heads of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA) for the Guyana Power and Light Company (GPL) to seek to bring forward its announced time frame for ending the power supply woes.

Dear Editor, There is a perception that if the law is seen as a toothless tiger it will continue to be flouted.

(Reuters) – Test-match crowds have steadily dwindled  throughout much of the cricketing world while fans turn instead  to 50-over and Twenty20 matches      In advance of the Twenty20 World Cup opening at Lord’s today, Reuters correspondents examine attendances in the major  countries: AUSTRALIA Melbourne regularly attracts crowds of more than 200,000 for  each test match and Sydney generally pulls in between 100,000  and 200,000.

LONDON, (Reuters) – Two British men were handed jail  sentences totalling 75 years yesterday for the torture and  murder of two French students during what prosecutors described  as an “orgy of bloodletting” in the students’ London flat.

(Trinidad Express) – No one could say why a responsible mother of four would travel to a deserted beach to meet a man she had never seen before.

(Trinidad Guardian) – It was total chaos at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the Port-of-Spain General Hospital on Wednesday afternoon, after a power failure.

Dear Editor, The issue of a land title for myself and son has come to standstill again after years of effort for an amicable closure.

BANGKOK, (Reuters) – U.S. actor David Carradine was  found dead, naked and hanging from a rope in the closet of his  luxury Bangkok hotel room yesterday, Thai police said.

GASCI (www.gasci.com/telephone Nº 223-6175/6) reports that session 306’s trading results showed consideration of $249,400 from 18,450 shares traded in 7 transactions as compared to session 305 which showed consideration of $822,195 from 4,567 shares traded in 6 transactions. 

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – Trinidad and Tobago are back as the top team in the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) for the first time in eight months, unseating Jamaica in the latest ratings.

Dear Editor, As the Biennial Congress of the People’s National Congress Reform draws near, there is a need for reconciliation in the party.

(Prepared by the Guyana Marketing Corporation and published by Stabroek News Business as a public service.)

LOS ANGELES, (Reuters) – Pop diva Whitney Houston will  release a new album in September, her first in seven years, Arista  Records said yesterday, announcing the long-awaited comeback for  the talented but troubled star.

Turn which other cheek? Violence in the stations This is motivated both by the daily doses of violence on the streets of our country as reflected on newspapers’ front pages –and  by two features on domestic violence published in Arnon Adams’ May 2009 Guyana Review.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is probably not enjoying the job he openly craved while serving as Tony Blair’s Chancellor for so long.

(Trinidad Express) – A woman has tested positive for the H1N1 or “swine flu” virus, the Ministry of Health has said.