News

BRASILIA, (Reuters) – Brazil’s economy contracted sharply in 2015 as businesses slashed investment plans and laid off more than 1.5 million workers, official data showed yesterday, setting the stage for what could be the country’s deepest recession on record.

ISLAMABAD, (Reuters) – A powerful Pakistani religious body that advises the government on the compatibility of laws with Islam yesterday declared a new law that criminalises violence against women to be “un-Islamic.”

HARARE, (Reuters) – Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe said yesterday that his government would take possession of all diamond operations because existing miners had robbed the country of its wealth.

TORONTO, (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Honduras must do more to protect land rights activists, campaign groups said, after the killing of an award-winning indigenous environmentalist yesterday.

(Barbados Nation) Large quantities of cocaine and cannabis were seized at Carlisle Bay (Browne’s Beach), St Michael  by the Drug Squad  in an early morning operation yesterday.

Rayon Paddy is among 16  prisoners who died today from burns sustained in fresh unrest at the Camp Street jail  after a ruckus started last night.

At about 0730h. today, a police rank, who is also a licensed firearm holder, was walking along Robb Street, Georgetown, when he was attacked by  Sherwin Monka of Albouystown, Georgetown, who took away his gold chain.

(Trinidad Guardian) Prisons officer Fitzalbert Victor Jr knew his life was in danger and reported to his colleagues that he was being threatened by an inmate at one of the nation’s prisons.

Once the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI) report has been reviewed by Cabinet it will be laid in the National Assembly and made public, President David Granger said yesterday even as he said that all aspects of the truth were not explored.

Chaos broke out at the Georgetown Prison last night after prisoners lit a fire but quick action by the authorities prevented what could have been a major disaster.

Almost 4,000 acres of rice have died so far, owing to El Nino and farmers siphoning off the limited water, and Mahaicony farmers are pleading with the MMA-ADA or other authorities to assist them in their time of dire need.

Residents of Lighttown Village, East Bank Berbice are peeved over the unnecessary loss of their cash crops, as a result of a recently built dam along the riverside in the agricultural community.

William Bassant, who was on trial for carnally knowing a young girl, has died after ingesting a poisonous substance bringing the legal proceedings against him to an end.

Ron ‘Andel’ Forde, one of the men accused of killing sex worker Noel Wilson Luthers, called ‘Nephi,’ was committed to stand trial at the next sitting of the assizes by Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan.

President David Granger yesterday conferred Brazil’s Minister of External Affairs, Mauro Luiz Iecker Vieira with the Order of Roraima, Guyana’s second highest National Award.

After several months of agony and public humiliation in trying to retrieve money she was owed from a mining claim she had leased to a family friend, a Bartica mother was yesterday paid in full following the intervention of the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Mexico is to establish protocols under which the Guyana Rice Development Board can enable paddy exports to that country.

Acting Chief Justice Yonette Cummings-Edwards was yesterday sworn in as a member of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) and President David Granger says that it was significant since it is a step forward towards fulfilling important constitutional needs.

A 32-year-old Guyanese man who was arrested at the John F Kennedy Airport  in New York in February 2014 by United States federal agents as he was about to leave the country after failing to declare over US$35,000 has been jailed for a year and a day over conspiracy to import cocaine.

The US Embassy’s Humanitarian Assistance Program (HAP), working with regional government officials has presented a variety of aid to isolated indigenous communities throughout Regions 1 and 7.