Kaieteur News

Monday May 06, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Letters... Where your views make the news... Letters... Where your views make the news

I prefer to live a middle class life in America than be extremely wealthy in Guyana DEAR EDITOR, I have a question: Would you rather be very wealthy but live in Guyana, or not be so wealthy but live in America a comfortable middle class life?

I have friends who live in Guyana who are extremely wealthy and enjoy living there. They have no problem living in a developing country with all of the bribery, corruption, lawlessness, unethical behaviour, garbage problems, flooding problems, poverty, and sexual abuse of young girls.

My friends tell me that they are happy as long as t h e y ’ r e m a k i n g m o n e y.

They don’t let any of the weaknesses of the country bo t h e r t h e m . T h e y g e t u s e t o it because they lived their entire lives in it.

They don’t like it but, they adapt to it. The bottom line for my friends is the money they’re making. For them, the money triumphs over everything else.

On the other hand, I’m not as wealthy as my friends, but I live comfortably in America.

Even though I was born in

Guyana, I have lived most of my life in America, so I’m not use to living a developing country. For example, I’m not used to blackouts, bribery, lawlessness, and seeing young girls taken advantage of by rich men just because of poverty. This is why I prefer to live a middle class life in America than be extremely wealthy in Guyana.

I have a difficult time understanding how my friends can drive expensive vehicles and everyday see so many poor people and garbage everywhere. I have a hard time understanding how they can live an affluent lifestyle while so many live in deep poverty. I suppose a person can adapt to anything, if you live in it for a long time. If I was living in Guyana, I would have adapted too.

But when you’re not used to living in a developing country, it’s more difficult to adapt. In Guyana, they understand how things work. They don’t understand how things work in America. I understand now how my

friends would choose to live in Guyana rather than America despite all its negatives.

This is what one of my wealthy Guyanese friends told me, explaining why he preferred to live in Guyana: he likes living in Guyana because in Guyana he is a big fish in a little pond. But in America, he is a little fish, in a big pond. I agree with him because I witnessed the experience of a wealthy and prominent businessman traveling from Guyana to New York.

At Guyana’s airport, he was able to bypass Immigration, and he was given special treatment because everybody knew him. On the other hand, I wasn’t given special treatment and I had to go through Immigration because nobody knew me.

At Guyana’s airport, he sat in the VIP lounge before he boarded the plane, while I sat in the general waiting area with all of the nobodies. On the plane, he was seated in first class while I sat in

Granger has remained a sleeping...

From page 4 for directives from the political directorate. This is a fact that became known during the Linden Commission of Inquiry. No one can dispute that the banishing of Assistant Commissioner of Police David Ramnarine to a dead-end position in the Force is directly linked to the involvement of political directives at the Ministry of Home Affairs.

We need to be committed to the building of Guyana in

order to save our country’s beleaguered image abroad and to encourage and embolden the people to become entrepreneurs and steer Guyana on the path to success. The youths are becoming restless and anxious to have a decent job to support themselves and but because they are unable to find jobs due to the high youth unemployment rate, many have decided to “harass,” “hustle” and become criminals if that what it takes to survive.

We implore our fellow Guyanese, particularly the youths, not give up hope but actively reject and resist these acts of abuses unleashed on them by the Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal. We cannot allow the masters of corruption to win over our sacred values and in the process destroy the country.

We must actively take charge of our country from the wicked and decadent dictatorial regime.

Dr. Asquith Rose and Harish S. Singh

economy with everyone else.

But when we arrived at the New York’s airport, things were different for this businessman and me.

He had to join a line, which he didn’t have to do before.

There were two lines for incoming passengers. The longer lines were for noncitizens. The shorter for US-Citizens. Because I am

a US citizen, I was given the preferential treatment to join the shorter lines. He had to join the longer lines.

I wonder how this businessman must have felt being given special treatment in Guyana and no special treatment in New York.

In Guyana, he was treated like a celebrity but not in New York. In New York, no one knew him. He

was a little fish in a big pond. He wasn’t given any special treatment like he was given in Guyana.

This is why I believe many wealthy people in Guyana remain in Guyana b e c a u s e i n N e w Yo r k they’re not given any special treatment but treated like everyone else.

Which do you prefer, let’s hear your thoughts?

Anthony Pantlitz

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Kaieteur News

Monday May 06, 2013

Letters... Where your views make the news... Letters... Where your views make the news

Ms. Anthony was simply the apparent beneficiary of an act of crude and thoughtless nepotism DEAR EDITOR, In the wake of the brief exchange between yours truly and Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan on the issue of the AFC’s support of the Sports and Arts Fund, I am happy to announce that the Party has reengaged me in advising where I can, and I am qualified to do so.

Now, with regard to a related issue, in the wake of my criticisms and interrogation of Frank Anthony’s mismanagement of governmental cultural affairs, the charge has been repeatedly leveled privately – never publicly where it can be

challenged – that I have “attacked” Jessica Anthony, the Minister’s daughter, over the publication of her book by the Caribbean Press.

Indeed, during a workshop held by UK-based Peepal Tree Press at Moray House on Wednesday last, in speaking about the challenges facing local writers, I cited nepotism, specifically the example of the Minister of Culture using the state-owned Caribbean Press to publish his daughter’s work, as a challenge in establishing the sort of fair and competitive system that

Peepal Tree founder Jeremy Poynting recommended for the development of writing.

In response, Ms. Vanda Radzik repeated the charge that I was insulting Ms. Anthony; one I had to challenge and correct by pointing out that in not a single letter did I say anything about the young girl directly.

I’ve had two key experiences in working with young people involved in creative writing. The first was the GEMS Theatre workshop in 2007 where I was scriptwriting teacher f o r a group of children ranging in age from about seven to seventeen, who developed from scratch, stories, some of which, over the course of a few weeks, became plays which were produced, one eventually being turned into a short film.

The second was a one-day clinic, not workshop proper, facilitated by myself, Elly Niland and her son, hosted ironically enough, under the aegis of the Caribbean Press. In my recommendations to coordinator, Petamber Persaud, I suggested that

such a clinic was inadequate to develop some of the excellent story ideas that were put forward during the workshop.

A Stabroek News article, published a few months before the workshop was held, noted: “Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr. Frank Anthony, during his presentation on the 2010 Budget, said that a special essay competition would be held in schools during the academic year and the 30 best essayists would be chosen to attend a workshop in August with Professor Dabydeen.

Dr Anthony explained that during the workshop, these young writers would develop creative pieces which they would perform in December at the Festival of Words in honour of National Poet, Martin Carter. These creative pieces would also be published the Minister said.”

No such competition has ever been held, neither such festival, and no such publication has been undertaken by the Press. However, the one young writer that has had her work published by the Caribbean

Press is the Minister’s daughter, and that is what is glaring and worthy of comment.

If I am wrong, the people associated with the Press are free to publicly correct me, instead of whispering behind closed doors, facile interpretations of my asking for fairness and transparency.

As I’ve had to say to people privately, this embarrassment could have been avoided had Anthony had a genuine interest in the development of writing in Guyana and the writing of children in particular.

Early last year, Jessica Anthony, introduced by Ms. Radzik at a Moray House function, re a d a w e l l received piece of work, as w a s t h a t o t h e r children present, after which Ms. Radzik announced the young girl’s intention to be a writer.

I ran into the Minister the next day, along with his wife, who I have tremendous respect for, and offered, in light of his daughter’s desire for a literary career, to work together to get some initiatives off the ground to

benefit young writers. His response to me was simple, and direct, “I have nothing to say to you.” I asked him if he was sure, and he replied in the affirmative.

I’ll close off by stating that Ms. Anthony was simply the apparent beneficiary of an act of crude and thoughtless nepotism that really benefited the person instigating it more than anyone else.

Any young person who shows the commitment that she has in finishing a book at such a young age should have been exposed to the best possible developmental environment, wherein her craft could be cultivated in the sort of dynamic that existed, for example, during the GEMS Theatre workshop, honed by the critique of her peers under some sort of expert guidance.

I’ve made the case that other young citizens were not afforded the best the country could have offered with regard to the Caribbean Press, but, to be clear, neither was Jessica Anthony.

Ruel Johnson

Monday May 06, 2013

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Kaieteur News

Minibus operators pledge softer music in wake of passenger’s death - extend condolences to family

The route 42 bus park

By Kiana Wilburg About a week ago, minibus passenger Basdeo Mangra was pronounced dead on arrival at the Georgetown Public Hospital after an altercation with a Route 44 minibus conductor over loud music.

Now, several minibus operators have vowed that the 52-year-old Vryheid’s Lust resident will not be forgotten.

Though a post mortem examination by Government Pathologist, Dr. Nehaul Singh revealed that the Mangra succumbed from a heart attack, many minibus operators believe that the assault he suffered at the hands of the conductor caused his demise.

Yesterday, several of these operators said they wished to extend their condolences to Mangra’s family and are determined to ensure that the dreadful event does not repeat itself. They are making a pledge to play softer music, or none at all.

Some operators said they have even gone to the extent of removing their music systems from their vehicles.

“It is very sad what happened to that man,” one route 44 operator told Kaieteur News. “We don’t wana hear about that post

mortem, we believe that the argument cause de man fo dead. Some of these conductors does really embarrass we. I never see this happen in my life and it’s really sad that a life went down the drain over music. But things will change and I will make a difference cause from now on no music will be playing in my bus.”

His colleague, who is also minibus driver stated: “It was real shocking when I hear the news, I was really hurt by it because me and he carry the same age. It could have been any one of our family members, and this jus goes to show the amount of respect some of these young people got for their elders. But I love my music, I won’t take out my music set but I definitely won’t be playing loud music, not ever. And just imagine, the police deh behind we wid this loud music ting long now.

And look wah really motivate most of us to make a change – the death of a passenger.

This is wuh the country coming to? In order to see change somebody got to dead first? This shouldn’t be.”

As most minibus operators sympathize with the Mangra family, they implore other operators to pay attention to the life that was lost and realize that as minibus operators they have a responsibility to ensure that their passengers are safe at

all times and as they continue to provide a service, ease the distress they cause with the loud music.

It is alleged that Mangra and his wife, Kumarie Chintaman, had just joined a minibus on the Vryheid’s Lust Public Road and were heading to the city, when her husband complained about the loud music emanating from the vehicle.

The man’s wife said an argument broke between her husband and the conductor, and when the vehicle reached the Russian Embassy, the conductor pulled out an icepick and threatened her husband that he would stab him. It is alleged that the conductor began to punch Mangra behind the head until the driver intervened and took away the ice pick.

The couple was then ordered out of the minibus and quickly boarded another minibus and headed to the Stabroek Market bus park.

Chintaman said that while at Eccles, East Bank Demerara, her husband, who was sitting next to her, told her he was feeling hot and dizzy.

According to Chintaman, her husband’s body began to stiffen as though he was getting a stroke and other passengers in the minibus pleaded with the minibus driver to take him to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). He died shortly after.

Monday May 06, 2013

Orealla residents call for removal of Toshao All is not well in the Amerindian village of Orealla.

Residents, in keeping with the Amerindian Act, have voted for the removal of their Toshao. But though the matter was raised with the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, nothing is being done.

This is according to a resident, Carl Peneux, who said that at least 140 residents signed a recent petition in which they cited several reasons, including the alleged misappropriation of Presidential Grants, for not wanting the Toshao.

Peneux said that residents sent the petition to Minister of Amerindian Affairs Pauline Sukhai.

Providing a background of the issue at Orealla, Peneux said in September 2011, the former Toshao passed away and a new Toshao took over. He was re-elected in April 2012 and has three years in office.

However, with several discrepancies and the state of the village, at a general meeting in December 2012, several residents decided that they no longer had confidence in the Toshao. A petition was signed and sent to the Minister.

In response, the Minister sent her advisor, Ms. Yvonne Pearson, who listened to the complaints. According to Peneux, Pearson said she was unable to provide a solution to the matter since she was only sent to listen to the

- claim Presidential Grants misappropriated concerns and submit a report.

Peneux related that residents were of the opinion that swift action would have been taken but months have passed since that meeting. He said that in April 2013 another letter referenced “Deteriorating situation in Orealla and another request for urgent investigation into the Orealla Village Council’s (O.V.C.S) accounts and records- Residents may take own course of action” was sent to the Minister for intervention.

The letter stated, “…there were a number of imbalances and discrepancies in the financial reports for the period of April 2012 to July 2012 and these discrepancies have remained the same to date.”

In addition, it is alleged that no report on the council’s bank transactions was given to residents for the period.

Citing several examples of financial irregularities, the letter stated that white sand is sold to dealers in Corriverton, and the levies for the sand should be shared equally between Orealla and Siparuta. However, when records were checked, Siparuta did not benefit for that period and the cash was not accounted for.

In addition, $3M was

allegedly given to the village as Presidential Grant to construct a guest house. But, the letter signed by Peneux claimed that the grant was misspent and not all of the lumber for the building was purchased.

“These materials have been lying in the open- in the yard of a Councilor on the hill now for one year and three months- the building not yet startedthe money evaporated”, he said.

He also claimed that $5M given to the village as Presidential Grant for enhancing the pure water system was misappropriated.

Peneux said that the Toshao who assumed the position as the official purchaser of the Council bought 16 black tanks and a quantity of pipelines.

However, the villagers had planned to build an elevated concrete water reservoir on the hill to supply the entire village with water.

Instead, the Toshao allegedly constructed a wooden trestle on the hill holding eight tanks, and laid eight tanks to the ground level to store water.

Efforts by Kaieteur News to reach the Minister of Amerindian Affairs by telephone were unsuccessful.

Woman’s body found near koker The body of an unidentified woman in her early forties was discovered floating near a koker at Vriesland, West Bank Demerara around 15:00 hrs yesterday.

Reports revealed that a female resident from Vriesland spotted the body and notified other residents.

Thereupon, a boat loaded with fishermen immediately ventured out into the river to confirm the report.

The victim was clad in a white tee-shirt and white underwear. Immediately after it was taken out of the water, a bus transported it to the Ezekiel Funeral Home.

Junior Garnett, a resident told Kaieteur News that when he heard about the discovery, he went into the river in a fishing boat with police to escort the body to shore.

“It looks like it was there

The body being taken to the funeral home for long because her knees were kinda reddish and her belly was swollen,” Garnett said.

According to reports, the body was earlier in the week

spotted at a koker in Grove, East Bank Demerara (EBD) but fishermen refused to report the matter to the police.

“The fishermen them see the body but them na want go to the station because when you report that, you does have to wait long, long at the station like if you kill the person,” a Grove resident said. The victim was still unidentified up to yesterday evening.

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Kaieteur News

Radio and cable licences distribution...

President Ramotar must correct this wrong Veteran broadcaster Enrico Woolford is maintaining his strong stance against how the radio and cable licences were distributed by former President Bharrat Jagdeo.

In a recent television interview, Woolford described the radio frequencies as a natural resource of the country and one must defend what it is being used for. According to Woolford, there is the need for guidelines to be put in place.

He explained that the problem lies with the management and the people who are at the forefront of the distribution. Woolford said that those people who are at the front know nothing about the issue and the people who know about it are at a different end of the political spectrum.

Woolford dismissed claims of him being bitter, saying that Guyanese need to understand that the former President did not use his discretion when handing out these licences. He further stated that the entire process was “badly administered,” adding that the wrong has to be unwritten by President Ramotar.

M e a n w h i l e , Parliamentarian Cathy Hughes described the entire situation as a travesty which was done to Guyanese, adding that President Donald Ramotar should immediately review and reverse it. Hughes further noted that if the Private Sector Commission

- Enrico Woolford

Enrico Woolford and Chamber of Commerce who have an important role to play, this is when we need to hear them say the licences need to be revoked.

The issue of limited spectrum has also been a cause of much concern in Guyana after former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, used his executive powers to grant several persons, including his party’s newspaper, The Mirror, five frequencies to broadcast across the country.

Representing Mirror is Dharamkumar Seeraj, a PPP Parliamentarian.

This happened days before his Presidential term was due to end in November 2011 when General Elections were held.

The move has widely been seen as carefully

planned by Jadgeo and the ruling party to control the airwaves of Guyana. Jagdeo also granted five radio frequencies to his personal friend, Dr. Ranjisinghi “Bobby” Ramroop and another five to Omkar Lochan, Permanent Secretary of Natural Resources Minister, Robert Persaud.

Persaud happens to be the nephew-in-law of Jagdeo.

The former President did not stop there. He also granted two television cable licences to close associates–Brian Yong and Vishok Persaud.

Persaud is the son of the late former Government Parliamentarian and Agriculture Minister, Reepu Persaud, while Yong was a candidate for the ruling party during the 2011 elections.

Reportedly, the 2.5 Gigahertz band to Persaud and Yong are capable of offering other services, including catering to smart phones and the popular tablets computers. Radio and telephone services could also be offered using this band.

There have been several protests by local media houses which had applications in for radio licences but were inexplicably sidelined when Jagdeo made his decision. There are indications that no procedures were followed and that the former President merely used his executive powers, knowing he had days left in office.

The Donald Ramotar administration, hard pressed to recall the licences, has defended Jagdeo, saying he did nothing wrong. The administration was silent on accusations that one businessman – Maxwell Thom- was granted a licence although he was facing financial problems in 2011.

One of the criteria was for the applicant to show that he/ she has the finances. Both Kaieteur News and Stabroek News, two independent newspapers, were sidelined

by Jagdeo.

They and others are now being asked to submit fresh applications. Radio and television licences have been a sore issue between the Opposition and Government with an agreement brokered in early 2000 for no new ones until reforms in the broadcasting legislations.

This was passed in the National Assembly during 2011.

Jagdeo did not wait on the mandated Broadcast Authority to handle the licence despite the new law.

Monday May 06, 2013

“I am not afraid of my sickness”

To many, being told that your illness is in its final stage and there’s nothing left to do, is the ultimate breaking point.

Depression sinks in, faith deteriorates and the little sanity that remains is like dust in the wind.

But that is not the case with 53-year-old Desiree Kalamadeen, of 573 South Cummings Lodge. She is prepared to fight. And with faith and courage by her side, the mother of five has every intention, by all means possible, to prevent breast cancer from shortening the years of her life.

“I am prepared to fight. I am not afraid and I want to tell other women like myself that they too do not have to be afraid. I am not ashamed or afraid of my sickness; you must have courage...and faith.” Kalamadeen sat with Kaieteur News on Saturday to tell her story because she said almost daily one hears of cancer and the different types that exist, but the seriousness or the effects of the disease is not recognized until it hits home, “and that is why I can tell my story.”

Kalamadeen said it all started with a lump in her right breast. Towards the end of 2010, she said the irregularity with her breast was noticed and as time passed, the lump seemed to be getting larger.

Over time, it then began to ooze and as she described it, “became very awful.”

On her first visit to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, Kalamadeen said she was advised to take an ultrasound. This she did, as well as having a mammogram at the East Bank Demerara Regional Hospital.

The test however showed nothing and doctors now recommended that a needle biopsy be performed. At that time, the doctor to perform the test was out of the country and to have it done elsewhere was too expensive.

The fight, she said, continued when the doctor returned about a month later, but the biopsy test too came back negative for cancer. For almost three months Kalamadeen had to consume antibiotics, but during that time, she said the breast got worse. “It got harder and harder although there was no pain.”

Following that, doctors now recommended that the 53-year-old quit her job as her illness would not permit her to continue with her cooking job. The pressure mounted, Kalamadeen indicated, as her second daughter, Onise Solomon, had the full burden of the home along with having to raise her two kids since the passing of her husband eight

- says mom battling cancer Kalamadeen and her loving daughter at home

years ago.

Another needle biopsy test was recommended, Kalamadeen recalled. This time she was admitted to the hospital on February 21, 2011.

When the test results came seven weeks later she said that she took it to her doctor and remembers those grave words: “It is too big. Last stage; It won’t get better.”

Kalamadeen said that she remembered saying, “No doctor, not by the grace of God.” She said that subsequent to that she started chemotherapy. To her, it is the worst of the healing process, Kalamadeen told Kaieteur News.

“I had long beautiful hair, but ‘chemo’ makes your hair drop off and your hands and feet black.”

As she showed her hands and feet, Kalamadeen recalled the times when her palms and insteps were black, but now, she said it is slowly regaining its natural colour.

She remembered how awful but necessary the treatment was, despite the vomiting, the hair loss and various other side effects.

After Chemo, Kalamadeen said that the breast started to get soft once again. By that time, she said she was already receiving treatment at the Guyana Cancer Institute where she underwent six cycles of chemotheraphy.

Subsequent to that, Kalamadeen said the inevitable came. Her doctor informed her that the breast was to be removed. Not knowing what to expect, Kalamadeen remembered gearing herself to have her right breast removed, vowing to be courageous and desperate to not have breast cancer take her life.

In the fourth stage of her illness, Kalamadeen said she was admitted to the hospital where the regular heart, lung and chest inspection was performed, “And by the grace of God everything was clear and okay to have the operation.”

Following the removal of the breast, Kalamadeen underwent four more cycles of Chemotherapy, along with other recommended medication. She is now gearing for Beam Radiation Therapy which is scheduled for the coming weeks. After conducting more internal testing Kalamadeen is in the clear for the radiation therapy and there is no fear, she said.

“I am happy to do it. If it will make me healthy I have no problem with it,” she told Kaieteur News. “I have faith that God will come through for me as he has before and I will get better.”

When asked, Kalamadeen said that the Ministry of Health has agreed to pay half of the $400,000 medical bill while she, despite being unemployed, is feverishly trying to accumulate the rest through friends and family.

“I was told in a sense that it (my life) was over,” she reiterated, “But I have courage and I won’t give up because I also have support.”

Kalamadeen said her advice to persons like herself is to stay strong and never give up hope because after that there is nothing left. And look for support,” she advised.

“I am always happy to share my advice and my ideas, so support groups are very good. They might just be the post you need to brace on.”

Anyone wishing to assist Kalamadeen can contact the woman at 675-5841.

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Big election lead for Malaysia ruling coalition KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s long-governing coalition commanded a formidable lead in national elections yesterday after a record number of voters cast ballots, capturing 80 of the 112 seats it needs to extend its 56-year rule.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim’s three-party alliance seized 37 of the 222 parliamentary seats in results released so far by Malaysia’s Election Commission.

The alliance is the most unified challenge yet to Prime Minister Najib Razak’s National Front coalition, which has triumphed in 12 consecutive general elections since independence from Britain in 1957.

The opposition hoped to capitalize on widespread allegations of arrogance, abuse of public funds and racial discrimination against the ruling coalition.

Many of the seats won so far were in the National Front’s traditional rural strongholds, especially in Borneo, where Anwar ’s alliance had been hoping to make major inroads to bolster its chances of victory.

More than 10 million Malaysians cast ballots for a record turnout of 80 percent of about 13 million registered voters, the Election

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak (left) and his deputy Muhyiddin Yassin share a light moment after winning the elections at his party headquarters in Kuala Lumpur early today.

REUTERS/Bazuki Muhammad Commission said in preliminary estimates. They were also voting to fill vacancies in 12 of Malaysia’s 13 state legislatures.

Even if it retains power, the National Front showed clear signs of vulnerability compared to its peak in 2004, when it won 90 percent of Parliament’s seats.

The opposition stayed in control of northern Penang state, one of Malaysia’s wealthiest territories, and remained strong in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s biggest city, where middle-class

voters have clamored for national change.

Three well-known Cabinet ministers and at least one state chief minister were likely to lose their seats. The Malaysian Chinese Association, the secondbiggest party in the ruling coalition, saw many of its candidates defeated as Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese minority community continued to abandon the National Front.

Some people lined up for more than an hour at schools and other voting centers,

NRA’s next president to lead its court fights against gun control (Reuters) - Alabama lawyer Jim Porter, in line to become the next president of the National Rifle Association, is expected to spearhead the group’s court challenges of gun-control laws enacted in several states since the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting massacre.

Porter, 64, the son of another Alabama lawyer who served as NRA president from 1959 to 1961, is likely to succeed David Keene today in the two-year post at the nation’s leading gun-rights organization.

The longtime member is chairman of the legal affairs committee for the NRA, which has headed off federal attempts to approve new gun ownership restrictions, including a U.S. Senate proposal last month for expanded background checks.

Porter told NRA members at their annual convention in Houston on Saturday that President Barack Obama was “AWOL” on border security, the deficit and national security, but “scheming and plotting” to take away

Jim Porter Americans’ gun rights.

In a speech to the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association in June 2012, Porter called Obama a “fake” president and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly un-American.”

The NRA’s focus is far different now from what it was when Porter’s father, Irvine Porter, led the organization. The NRA then focused mainly on shooting and hunting. Its emphasis shifted in later decades to lobbying against restrictions on guns.

Porter, the NRA’s firstvice president, who by tradition is expected to be elected president on Monday by the board, introduced the outgoing president, Keene.

Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president and chief executive, remains the most visible leader of the group.

Keene told the Washington Times earlier this week that Porter would be a “perfect match” as NRA president as it focuses on court challenges to state laws restricting gun ownership.

Connecticut and New York expanded assault weapons bans and restricted the capacity of ammunition magazines after a gunman killed 20 students and six adults at a Connecticut school in December.

Colorado, where a gunman killed 12 people and wounded 58 others in July 2012 at a midnight showing of the Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises,” approved restrictions on the size of ammunition clips and universal background checks.

showing off fingers marked with ink to prevent multiple voting after they had finished.

The National Front held 135 seats in Parliament before this month. It is anxious to secure a stronger five-year mandate and regain the twothirds legislative majority that it held for years but lost in 2008.

“The government has made some mistakes but the prime minister has made changes and I believe they (the National Front) will do their best to take care of the people’s welfare,” said Mohamed Rafiq Idris, a car business owner who waited in a long line at a central Selangor state voting center with his wife and son.

Andrew Charles, a Malaysian businessman working in Australia, flew home to vote for the opposition because he believes it can end corruption and mistrust between the Malay Muslim majority and ethnic Chinese, Indian and smaller minorities.

“I am really fed up. There are more abuses in the system and there is no equality among the races. After 56 years, it is time to give others

a chance to change this country,” he said after voting in a suburb outside Kuala Lumpur.

Najib says only the National Front can maintain stability in Malaysia, which has long been among Southeast Asia’s most peaceful countries.

“Your support is paramount if we are to keep to our path of development, if we are to continue our journey toward complete transformation,” Najib said in a statement to voters. “This election is about fulfilling promises, bringing hope and upholding trustworthiness.”

An opposition win would mark a remarkable comeback for Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was fired in 1998 and subsequently jailed on corruption and sodomy charges that he says were fabricated by his political enemies. He was released from jail in 2004.

Anwar and other opposition leaders voiced deep fears Sunday about electoral fraud. Claims of bogus ballots and an apparent ease in which some voters cleaned the ink stains off their fingers dominated

social media.

Opposition leaders said the National Front was using foreign migrants from Bangladesh, the Philippines and Indonesia to vote unlawfully. Government and electoral authorities deny the allegations.

“We have in fact jointly condemned this, which is not only fraudulent but virtually attempting to steal the elections, which is unconstitutional, disregard for the law,” Anwar told reporters.

The National Front’s aura of invincibility has been under threat since three of Malaysia’s main opposition parties combined forces five years ago. In recent years the National Front has been increasingly accused of complacency and heavyhanded rule.

Najib, who took office in 2009, embarked on a major campaign to restore his coalition’s luster. In recent months, authorities have provided cash handouts to low-income families and used government-linked newspapers and TV stations to criticize the opposition’s ability to rule.

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Kaieteur News

German conservative plunge in poll amid tax, nepotism scandals BERLIN (Reuters) German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives plunged to their lowest rating in seven months in a leading opinion poll yesterday as a tax evasion scandal embroiled an ally and their Bavarian sister party faced questions about nepotism.

Support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats and Bavarian partner the Christian Social Union fell three percentage points from a week earlier to 37 percent, their lowest ranking since October, the Emnid poll for Bild am Sonntag newspaper showed.

Last month, one of Germany’s most admired sports managers, Bayern Munich president Uli Hoeness, said he had voluntarily reported himself to authorities in a tax evasion investigation that exposed Merkel’s government to criticism it is lenient on tax cheats.

Hoeness is seen as a supporter of the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and has had close ties to Merkel.

With five months to go to federal elections and a regional vote in Bavaria, Merkel and CSU leaders have distanced themselves from Hoeness, though the party has also faced questions about the conduct of its own

Angela Merkel members.

The CSU regional parliamentary floor leader stepped down late last month, saying he had used state funds to pay his wife a hefty salary for working for him, a legal loophole Bavarian lawmakers had used for years.

Some ministers in the regional cabinet have now said they will donate the money they paid their family members to charity.

“There have been a range of events recently that have shattered peoples’ trust in the economic elites,” said Emnid chief Klaus-Peter Schoeppner. Those events included the Hoeness case and the Bavarian scandal, he added.

The CDU/CSU’s junior coalition partner in the federal

parliament, the Free Democrats, rose one point in the poll to 5 percent, which would allow them to enter parliament.

Their combined 42 percent put them on par with the joint force of the opposition Social Democrats (SPD), which was unchanged at 27 percent, and the Greens, who gained a point after announcing a divisive “soakthe-rich” campaign for new taxes last week.

Taxes are set to become a hot topic in the run-up to the September 22 election, when Merkel will seek her third term in office.

Yesterday, Bild am Sonntag newspaper reported a CSU lawmaker in the federal lower house had said he had employed his former fiancée and had asked the president of the house, the Bundestag, to check if that broke any rules.

Spiegel magazine reported Bayern Munich’s big sponsors, Adidas, Audi, Volkswagen and Deutsche Telekom, wanted Hoeness to suspend his club presidency after the team’s Champions League final at the end of May. The magazine said the sponsors agreed Hoeness could take up office again if he did not have to go to jail.

Adidas and Audi have an 18.2 percent stake in Bayern Munich.

Bangladesh building owner faces murder complaint over collapse (Reuters) - The wife of a Bangladeshi garment worker who was killed when a building collapsed filed a murder complaint against the building’s owner yesterday as the death toll from the country’s worst industrial disaster climbed to 622.

Murder complaints were also filed against the owner of one of the garment factories inside the building and a municipal engineer in the suburb of the capital, Dhaka, where the factory was located.

The owner of the Rana Plaza building, Mohammed Sohel Rana, was arrested after a four-day hunt as he appeared to be trying to flee across the border to India.

He is one of nine people being held in connection with the April 24 disaster, which the government has blamed on the building’s faulty, illegal construction. Rana and the others in police custody could face the death penalty if found guilty of murder or mass manslaughter.

Mohammed Sohel Rana None of the accused has commented publicly on the accusation that they were to blame.

Hundreds of relatives gathered at the site of the disaster yesterday, some holding up photographs of family members. A teenage girl broke down in tears when she recognised the body of her mother by her dress, after she was brought from the ruins.

In all, 53 bodies were

recovered on Sunday and rescue workers said they could see more trapped in the rubble. The smell of decomposing bodies hung in the air. Authorities have found it increasingly difficult to identify bodies and are using ID cards found on them or even their mobile phones to do so.

Rana appeared in court on Monday last week dressed in a helmet and bullet-proof jacket, in front of a crowd of protesters demanding he be hanged. He is a local leader of the ruling Awami League’s youth front.

The woman who lodged the murder case against Rana said her husband had been forced to go to work in his factory in the building despite huge cracks appearing in the walls a day before it collapsed, a lawyer said.

“If they are found guilty of these killings they will get the highest punishment capital punishment,” said Abdul Huq, a lawyer working at the court where the cases were lodged.

Monday May 06, 2013

Libyan parliament bans exGaddafi officials from office TRIPOLI (Reuters) Libya’s parliament voted yesterday to ban anyone who held a senior position during Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule from government, a move which could unseat the prime minister and other top officials regardless of their part in toppling the dictator.

Politicians debated the draft law for months, but the issue came to a head this week when heavily armed groups took control of two ministries and stormed other institutions including the state broadcaster.

The decision to hold the vote under duress could embolden the armed groups to use force again to assert their will over parliament.

Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, a diplomat under Gaddafi who defected to the exiled opposition in 1980, could be among those barred from office, although this remained unclear and a parliament spokesman said it would be decided by a committee charged with implementing the law.

“Being unjust to a few is better than defeating the whole objective of the l a w, ” s a i d o n e o f t h e hundreds who filled Tripoli’s main square to celebrating the passage of t h e l a w, m a n y o f t h e m shooting guns into the air.

Nearly two years after Gaddafi was overthrown, the gunmen who fought to end his 42-year dictatorship are refusing to lay down their arms and go back to civilian life militiamen are more visible than Libyan state forces in the capital.

The cabinet and L i b y a ’s o ff i c i a l a r m e d forces are so weak that swathes of the oilproducing desert country remain outside central government control.

A spokesman for parliament admitted it was unclear whether the vote would be enough to dislodge the gunmen from their positions outside the government buildings.

“We hope the siege of the ministries will stop now, but it is not in our hands,” General National Congress (GNC) spokesman Omar Hmaiden told a news conference after the vote.

More than a dozen vehicles mounted with anti-aircraft weapons and machine guns remained parked outside the Justice Ministry and the Foreign Ministry has been similarly

Muammar Gaddafi encircled for a week.

One of the men stationed by a machine gun in front of the Justice Ministry, said the group came from different areas close to the capital Tripoli and ahead of the vote vowed they would stay until the prime minister had been forced from office.

“We have been asking them to deal with Gaddafi’s friends for a year,” he said.

Although the law passed with an overwhelming majority of 164 votes in favor and just four against, many congress members were upset.

“It’s a very unfair and extreme law, but we need to put national interests first in order to solve the crisis,” said Tawfiq Breik, spokesman for the liberal National Forces Alliance (NFA) bloc, Libya’s largest parliamentary coalition.

Diplomats in Tripoli complained that holding the vote under duress had undermined its legitimacy, while a human rights group called on parliament to reject the draft.

“The GNC should not allow itself to be railroaded into making very bad laws because groups of armed men

are demanding it,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, a Human Rights Watch director in the region, in a statement.

“Libya’s long-term prospects for peace and security will be seriously diminished if the congress agrees to nod through this law.”

Much will depend on how high up in Gaddafi’s administration an official has to have been in order to be excluded from politics, one analyst said.

“If the bar is too low, the law could result in most government administrations being gutted, without having sufficient staff or institutional memory to ensure their proper functioning,” said Geoff Porter of North Africa Risk Consulting.

“However, if the bar is too high then we are likely to see repeats of the blockades in front of government ministries that we saw this week.”

Congress members say the law could be applied to around 40 others in the 200member parliament, including the president of the assembly Mohammed Magarief who became an exiled leader of Libya’s oldest opposition movement in the 1980s after serving as an ambassador under Gaddafi.

The law does not make provisions for those, like him, who spent decades in exile and were instrumental in toppling Gaddafi.

The law prohibits former officials from holding any position in government or even belonging to a political party.

It will also ban them from leadership roles in the country’s state firms, like the National Oil Corporation, its universities and judicial bodies.

Central African Republic to probe ousted leader BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — Central African Republic’s interim government says it is investigating what it claims are human rights abuses committed under the rule of deposed president Francois Bozize.

Justice Minister Arsene Senda, speaking on state radio Saturday, said he instructed prosecutors to probe crimes allegedly carried out by Bozize and other members of his government.

Senda charged that the Bozize government was responsible for assassinations, torture, kidnappings and economic crimes. He charged that 119 people were killed

by Bozize’s bodyguards. He accused Bozize and his family of embezzling state funds.

Bozize, 66, was toppled in March after 10 years in power and sought refuge in Cameroon. The Seleka rebels, led by Michel Djotodia, formed an interim government and have vowed to hold free and fair polls within 18 months.

Monday May 06, 2013

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Israel strikes Syria, says targeting Hezbollah arms (Reuters) - Israeli jets devastated Syrian targets near Damascus yesterday in a heavy overnight air raid that Western and Israeli officials called a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

As Syria’s two-year-old civil war veered into the potentially atomic arena of Iran’s confrontation with Israel and the West over its nuclear programme, people were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flame high into the night sky.

“Night turned into day,” one man told Reuters from his home at Hameh, near one of the targets, the Jamraya military base.

But for all the angry rhetoric in response from Tehran and from the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, it was unclear whether the second such raid in 48 hours would elicit any greater reaction than an Israeli attack in the same area in January, which was followed by little evident change.

The Syrian government accused Israel of effectively helping al Qaeda Islamist “terrorists” and said the strikes “open the door to all possibilities”; but Israeli officials said that, as in January, they were calculating Assad would not pick a fight with a well-armed neighbour while facing defeat at home.

Denying it was weighing in on the rebel side on behalf of Washington - which opposes Assad but is hesitating to intervene officials said Israel was pursuing its own conflict, not with Syria but with Iran, and was acting to prevent Iran’s Hezbollah allies receiving missiles that might strike Tel Aviv if Israel made good on threats to attack Tehran’s nuclear programme.

What Israel was not doing, they stressed, was getting drawn into a debate that has raged in the United States lately of whether the alleged use of poison gas by Assad’s forces should prompt the West finally to give military backing to oust him.

Israel was not taking sides in a civil war that has pitted Assad’s government, a dour but mostly toothless adversary for nearly 40 years, against Sunni rebels, some of them Islamist radicals, who might one day turn Syria’s armoury against the Jewish state.

It is a mark of how two years of killing in which at least 70,000 Syrians have died has not only inflamed a wider, regional confrontation between Shi’ite Muslim Iran and Sunni Arabs, some of them close Western allies, but have also left Israel and Western powers scrambling to reassess where their interests lie.

Egypt, the most populous Arab state and flagship of the 2011 Arab Spring revolts where elected Islamists have replaced a Western-backed autocrat, has no love for Assad. But on Sunday it condemned Israel’s air strikes as a breach of international law that “made the situation more complicated”.

Israel does not confirm such missions explicitly - a policy it says is intended to avoid provoking reprisals.

But an Israeli official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the strikes were carried out by its forces, as was a raid early on Friday that U.S. President Barack Obama said had been justified.

A Western intelligence source told Reuters: “In last night’s attack, as in the previous one, what was attacked were stores of Fateh-110 missiles that were in transit from Iran to

Hezbollah.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his aim for Israel was to “guarantee its future” - language he has used to warn of a willingness to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, even in defiance of U.S. advice, as well as to deny Hezbollah heavier weapons.

He later flew to China on a scheduled trip, projecting confidence there would be no major escalation though Israel has reinforced its anti-missile batteries in the north.

Syrian state television said bombing at a military research facility at Jamraya and two other sites caused “many civilian casualties and widespread damage”, but it gave no details. The Jamraya compound was also a target for Israel on January 30.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television showed a flattened building spread over the size of a football pitch, with smoke rising from rubble containing shell fragments. It did not identify it.

Syrian state television quoted a letter from the foreign minister to the United Nations saying: “The blatant Israeli aggression has the aim to provide direct military support to the terrorist groups after they failed to control territory.”

Obama defended Israel’s

BEIJING (Reuters) China has sentenced a former provincial deputy governor to life in prison for accepting almost $2 million in bribes, the most senior official to be punished since the country’s new leadership made tackling corruption its top priority.

Huang Sheng, former deputy governor of the eastern province of Shandong, accepted more than 12 million yuan ($1.95 million) from organizations and individuals between 1998 and 2011, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

In addition to the jail sentence, Huang’s assets were confiscated. Xinhua said.

President Xi Jinping, who took over in March in a oncea-decade leadership transition, has called for a crackdown on corruption, warning that the problem is so severe it could threaten the party’s survival.

So far, a few high-ranking officials have been caught in the crackdown, including Sichuan province deputy Communist Party boss Li Chuncheng and, reportedly,

Politburo member Li Jianguo, both for “serious” disciplinary issues.

A former railways minister, Liu Zhijun, was charged in April with corruption and abuse of power.

State media said on Friday a district Communist Party official in the southwestern city of Chongqing would be charged with corruption after images of him having sex with his mistress were splashed across microblog websites last year.

Party officials are banned from having mistresses.

Bashar al-Assad

China jails former senior official for life for corruption

right to block “terrorist organisations like Hezbollah” from acquiring weapons after Friday’s raid, and a White House spokesman said on Sunday: “The president many times has talked about his view that Israel, as a sovereign government, has the right to take the actions they feel are necessary to protect their people.”

It was unclear that Israel had sought U.S. approval for the strikes, although the White House spokesman said: “The close coordination between the Obama administration, the United States of America, is ongoing with the Israeli government.”

Obama has in recent years worked to hold back Netanyahu from making good on threats to hit facilities where he says Iran, despite its denials, is working to develop a nuclear weapon.

On Sunday, some Israeli officials highlighted Obama’s reluctance to be drawn into new conflict in the Middle East to explain Israel’s need for independent action.

Syria restricts access to independent journalists. Its state media said Israeli aircraft struck three places between Damascus and the nearby Lebanese border. The city also lies barely 50 km (30 miles) from Israeli positions on the occupied Golan

Heights.

Tehran, which has long backed Assad, whose Alawite minority has religious ties to Shi’ite Islam, denied the attack was on armaments for Lebanon and called for nations to stand firm against Israel. A senior Iranian commander was quoted, however, as saying Syria’s armed forces were able to defend themselves without their allies, though Iran could help them with training.

Hezbollah, a Shi’ite movement that says it is defending Lebanon from Israeli aggression, declined immediate comment.

Analysts say the Fateh110 could put the Tel Aviv metropolis in range of Hezbollah gunners, 100 km (60 miles) to the north, bolstering the arsenal of a group that fired some 4,000 shorter-range rockets into Israel during a month-long war in 2006.

“What we want is to ensure that inside the Syrian chaos we will not see Hezbollah growing stronger,” Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Netanyahu, told Army Radio.

“The world is helplessly looking on at events in Syria, the Americans in particular, and this president in particular,” he added of Obama. “He has left Iraq,

Afghanistan and has no interest in sending ground troops to Syria ... That is why, as in the past, we are left with our own interests, protecting them with determination and without getting too involved.”

Video footage uploaded onto the Internet by Syrian activists showed a series of blasts. One lit up the skyline of Damascus, while another sent up a tower of flames and secondary blasts.

Syrian state news agency SANA said Israeli aircraft struck in three places: northeast of Jamraya; the town of Maysaloun on the Lebanese border; and the nearby Dimas air base.

“The sky was red all night,” one man said from Hameh, near Jamraya. “We didn’t sleep a single second.

The explosions started after midnight and continued through the night.”

Central Damascus was quiet on the first day of the working week, and government checkpoints seemed reinforced. Some opposition activists said they were glad strikes might weaken Assad, even if few Syrians have any liking for Israel: “We don’t care who did it,” Rania al-Midania said in the capital. “We care that those weapons are no longer there to kill us.”

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Jamaica Govt. confident of Venezuela rebuffs Obama, repeats case against U.S. ‘spy’ opposition’s support on CCJ CARACAS (Reuters) Venezuela brushed off criticism from U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday and maintained its accusation that an American detainee in Caracas is a spy pretending to be a filmmaker.

During his visit to Latin America, Obama said on Saturday the allegations against Tim Tracy, 35, were “ridiculous.”

But Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres insisted that intelligence agents tracking Tracy since late 2012 had uncovered ample evidence he was plotting with militant antigovernment factions to destabilize Venezuela with violence.

“When you want to do intelligence work in another country, all those big powers who do this type of spying, they often use the facade of a filmmaker, documentarymaker, photographer or journalist,” he told state TV. “Because with that facade, they can go anywhere, penetrate any place.”

Obama’s comments about Tracy, and others questioning socialist leader Nicolas Maduro’s democratic credentials after last month’s disputed presidential vote, have infuriated the government and revived accusations of “imperialist meddling.”

Miguel Rodriguez Late on Saturday, Maduro’s government issued a formal protest note. In a remark reminiscent of his mentor and late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s tirades against U.S. leaders, Maduro even labeled Obama “the grand chief of devils”.

Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver who rose to be Chavez’s foreign minister and vice-president, has alternately railed against Washington in the same terms as Chavez and fanned prospects of a rapprochement by offering dialogue. “I think he actually wants to improve relations with the north, but because he’s vulnerable domestically right now, he needs to revive the old blood-and-thunder rhetoric to shore up support,” said a Western diplomat in

Caracas.

The Tracy case is a crucial test of Maduro’s intentions towards a country that remains the main export market for the OPEC member’s oil despite years of political hostility.

Friends and family of Tracy, who was a director and producer at Los Angelesbased Freehold Productions according to his LinkedIn profile, say he became passionately interested in Venezuelan politics and had excellent relations on both sides.

Interior Minister Rodriguez, however, countered that Tracy had “disguised himself” as proChavez for credibility in some circles. Some 500 videos of him, and email exchanges with opposition activists, proved he was in the midst of violent plotting with students, Rodriguez added.

“In those videos, those radical, fascist kids ask the ‘gringo’ for dollars,” he said.

U.S. diplomats have still not been able to visit Tracy in prison, where he awaits formal charges after being arrested in late April.

According to LinkedIn, he attended Georgetown University, and his work has included the “Madhouse” TV series about stock car racing for the History Channel, plus a just-finished comedy called “Angry White Man”.

Watchdog group claims Cuba committed fraud to influence review GENEVA, Switzerland CMC – A Geneva-based nongovernmental organization (NGO) that monitors the United Nation’s work on human rights claims that Cuba committed “fraud on a massive scale” to influence a UN review of its human rights.

In its 13-page report, “Massive fraud: The corruption of the 2013 UPR (Universal Periodic Review) of Cuba,” the UN Watch says Cuba used hundreds of “front groups” to submit comments favorable to the Spanish-speaking Caribbean island.

The report says while 454 non-governmental organizations submitted comments for Cuba’s review, 48 NGOs commented on Canada’s — the second highest number of comment.

It says that although “critiques by genuine NGOs do appear, they are overwhelmed by an

unprecedented amount of submissions by fraudulent ‘NGOs’ that, if they do exist, are mere puppets of Cuba and its allies abroad.

“This is fraud committed on a massive scale,” claims he report, timed to coincide with Cuba’s review by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) here. The UNHRC audits each nation every four years for its UPR. “Cuba used hundreds of front groups to hijack the United Nations compilation of NGO submissions and turn it into a propaganda sheet for the Castro Communist regime,” the report adds.

The UPR is not binding on anyone “but does have an impact because it’s a megaphone, a podium, which does shape the way people think and it’s a source of legitimacy,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch and a Canadian lawyer. During a UNHRC meeting Wednesday on Cuba,

Syria and North Korea praised Havana, while Western nations criticized Cuba for its alleged abuses and lack of democracy.

UN Watch says the UPR does not directly challenge the praise heaped by the NGOs on the communist-run island but simply listed some of their favorable comments and some of their names.

Among the NGOs were several organizations controlled by the Cuban Communist Party and government, such as the Federation of Cuban Women, the Federation of University Students and the Pioneers, the island’s politicized version of the Boy Scouts.

UN Watch said many of the NGOs listed in the UPR summary of their comments were based in countries that have friendly relations with Havana and mainly in countries where Cuba has medical, teaching or sports missions.

KINGSTON, Jamaica CMC – The Portia Simpson Miller led administration is confident that the opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) will pass the necessary legislation that will make the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) Jamaica’s final appellate court.

On the weekend , leader of Government Business in the House of Representatives, Phillip Paulwell made the statement despite a recent proclamation by the leader of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), Andrew Holness that the JLP remains steadfast in not supporting the legislation as it there are more important issues.

The Opposition has called for a referendumon the matter, however the government has refused.

“Believe it or not discussions are being held as we proceed, we believe that good sense will prevail and we are hoping that when the Bills get to the Upper House they will be successful. I can say to you that I believe that there are members of the Jamaica Labour Party who may have a different position,” Paulwell said.

By law the government needs two thirds majority to pass the CCJ Bills, however the Minister could not say when the CCJ Bills will get to Parliament.

Last week the President of the Jamaican Bar Association, Ian Wilkinson QC, called on the country’s two major political parties to intensify their discussions about making the CCJ Jamaica’s final appellate court, and forego holding a referendum on the matter.

“Why should we have a referendum, when the JLP, the second major player in the Parliament says it supports and accepts the CCJ? Of course, I want my people to choose its court, but the two major parties right now who represent the people have agreed that the court should be the final court. Why then should we need a referendum?” argued Wilkinson. He added that a referendum could become a political tool and thereby fail to fulfil its purpose.

“I hope they continue dialogue because a referendum would cost us based on the estimate approximately J$1 billion which Jamaica cannot afford

Portia Simpson Miller and it would be politicising, whether it is the intention or not of the parties, it would become a political football,” he said.

The CCJ was established in 2001 to replace the Londonbased Privy Council, and also serves as an international tribunal interpreting the revised Treaty of Chaguaramas that governs the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) grouping.

While all member states have signed on to the original Jurisdiction of the CCJ, only Barbados, Guyana and Belize are signatories to the appellate jurisdiction.

Energy forum focuses on economic benefits of clean energy MIAMI - CMC – Latin American and Caribbean delegates attending a renewable energy finance forum here have underscored the importance of clean energy, as investment in the region continues to grow.

According to one of the organizing groups, the Washington-based American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE), a non-profit membership organization, the Third Annual Renewable Energy Finance Forum – Latin America and Caribbean (REFF-LAC) is “dedicated to building a secure and prosperous” region, with clean, renewable energy.

“The region represents a real opportunity for investment and more success

stories like the ones we heard this week from Barbados, Costa Rica, Mexico and Aruba,” said Carlos St. James, president of the Latin American & Caribbean Council on Renewable Energy (LAC-CORE).

St. James said more than 200 senior level executives, government officials and financiers from the region attend the two-day conference “to discuss success stories and the future of clean fuels in the region.”

LAC-CORE also awarded the first annual Clean Energy Award to Jose Maria Figueres, President of the Carbon War Room and former President of Costa Rica.

The award is given jointly

by LAC-CORE and Spanish-

language Clean Energy magazine to “a public figure who has done significant work towards the advancement of renewable energies in the region,” St. James said.

“President Figueres is an important leader in the work being done in the region to build a sustainable energy future for the world,” he said.

“This year’s Forum was a remarkable success – clean energy in the region is growing rapidly which is why it is important to coordinate policies and share best practices,” said Henry Hely Hutchison, managing director of Euromoney Energy Events, which produces high-profile events for energy professionals worldwide.

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Peru deputy minister resigns as Humala rolls back indigenous law LIMA (Reuters) - A key Peruvian official tasked with implementing a law to give indigenous groups more r i g h t s h a s r e s i g n ed to protest efforts by President Ollanta Humala’s cabinet to roll back the law to protect mining investments.

Deputy Culture Minister Ivan Lanegra, who confirmed his resignation on Saturday on Twitter, was upset the government decided to exclude Quechua-speaking communities in the mineralrich Andes from being covered by Peru’s “prior consultation law,” a number of sources told Reuters.

That law gives indigenous communities the right to shape natural resource developments that affect them, but does not allow them to veto projects.

Still, mining companies in one of the world’s top minerals exporters were worried the law would slow new projects by making community approvals more difficult.

Reuters reported in an exclusive on May 1 that Mines and Energy Minister Jorge Merino had persuaded Humala to keep Quechua communities from being covered by the law, because

No word! CXC waiting as islands scrap 11-Plus Barbados Nation Barbados is yet to make a decision about whether to replace the Common Entrance Examination with a Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) test already in use in some Eastern Caribbean nations.

Deputy Chief Education Officer David Clement told the Sunday Sun that “discussions are going on” about the CXC’s Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment (CPEA) but no decision had been taken.

In an interview, CXC registrar Dr Didacus Jules said that as a member country of the CXC Council, Barbados was represented at meetings where the CPEA had been discussed, and local authorities were in

possession of all the information about the test.

The CPEA focuses on the performance of students over a three-year period, with classroom work done over two years preceding the exam accounting for 40 per cent of the final mark.

CXC officials have claimed that the test was much broader than the Common Entrance as it would help improve numeracy and literacy and encourage greater pupil and parental participation.

Jules said CXC had devised the CPEA at the request of governments of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to find a replacement for the Common Entrance, or 11-Plus.

Venezuela to use military in crime fighting CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela’s top security official announced yesterday the government of President Nicolas Maduro will use the military to fight rampant violent crime, raising concerns among activists who warned the initiative could lead to human rights violations.

Justice Minister Miguel Rodriguez said personnel from the army, navy and air force will join National Guard troops as part of a forthcoming anti-crime initiative.

Rodriguez did not provide details of the plan during an interview broadcast on state television, but he said tapping the military would give the government “potential that we can use to quickly reduce the crime rate.”

“It will be a good tool that is going to bring peace to citizens,” he said.

According to a recently released study by the UN Development Programme, Venezuela had the world’s fifth highest homicide rate last year, trailing Honduras, El Salvador, the Ivory Coast and Jamaica.

Rafael Uzcategui, an activist with the local human rights group Provea, warned against using the armed forces to fight crime because military personnel are not trained for such duties.

Venezuela’s military personnel, he said, undergo specific training for armed conflicts rather than for “a democratic policy of public order control and crime containment.” “Provea has always questioned the use of groups from the armed forces in citizen security operations,” Uzcategui said.

He added, “This can bring about potential violations of human rights.”

Merino feared its broad application in the Andes would hold up a $50 billion pipeline of mining investments.

Foreign investment in mining has traditionally powered Peru’s fast-growing economy.

Merino has argued that Quechua communities in the Andes are not “indigenous” but instead “peasant” because they mixed with

Spanish colonizers centuries ago, often have formal town assemblies, and are less isolated than Amazon tribes.

Humala has made comments echoing Merino’s position.

It is unclear whether Lanegra’s resignation will further delay the application of the law in the Amazon, where it is still expected to cover tribes near Peru’s oil and gas reserves.

“I am grateful for the honor to have served my country and led such a challenging process that has only seen its first chapter,” Lanegra said on Twitter.

Humala had touted the prior consultation law as a salve to widespread and sometimes violent conflicts over mining and energy projects in Peru. Many communities have organized

to hold up projects that they say could reduce scarce water supplies, cause pollution or fail to generate sufficient jobs and tax revenues.

When he signed the law in 2011, Humala listed the Quechua as one of the indigenous groups that would be covered by the law to “build a great republic that respects all its nationalities.”

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$25B and counting

Cost to taxpayers of CLICO bailout and enquiry Trinidad Express - Sir Anthony Colman’s multicompany Commission of Enquiry (CoE), which principally focused on the illiquid insurance company CLICO and the Hindu Credit Union (HCU), has cost taxpayers $36.2 million.

However, Government’s intervention into the CLICO fiasco has cost taxpayers more than $25 billion.

The 24-month long CoE exercise, which came to an end last Thursday at Winsure Building in Port of Spain, had 85 sitting days, 23 parties, 77 lawyers, 57 witnesses, 50 subpoenas and five million pages of documents.

The Sunday Express obtained a break-down of the $36.2 million cost which comes from the budget of the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM):

Sir Anthony Colman’s fees—$6,852,937.44 Legal Fees— $22,240,363.77 Salaries—$1,804,149.11 Administrative Cost and I n c i d e n t a l s — $5,370,854.67 The legal fees were divided among lead counsels—Peter Carter QC and Edwin Glasgow QC; Junior counsels—Marion Mac Gregor Mason, Gerald Ian Ramdeen, Shankar Bidaisee; Instructing attorneys—Celeste Jules and Varun Debideen; and special adviser Ian Marshall.

All parties to the CoE, who were mostly represented by senior counsel, would have been paid separate legal bills.

“While the CoE has been costly, it is significantly less than expected because I am a

tough negotiator on consultancy fees,” said Attorney General Anand Ramlogan, in response to questions from the Sunday Express yesterday.

Ramlogan pointed out to the Sunday Express that the sum was inclusive of two major companies and was significantly less than the Uff Commission of Enquiry of 2009, which cost the State about $60 million.

The cost of the commission is exclusive of the Government’s bailout of Lawrence Duprey’s cashstrapped empire.

The Sunday Express obtained figures for the bailout which state: Funds Disbursed: 1. CLICO bailout—$5.6 billion 2. Short Term Investment Products (STIPS)—EFPA,

Jack meets with English lawyers to review Concacaf report Trinidad Guardian - A 90minute meeting between Jack Warner and his English attorneys over the damning Concacaf report Saturday has left the former national security minister in an upbeat mood.

The meeting between Warner and his battery of attorneys was held Saturday at the Centre of Excellence, Macoya, 15 days after David Simmons presented Concacaf ’s congress in Panama with a detailed report into allegations of financial mismanagement by Warner.

In a telephone interview Saturday, Warner confirmed

Jack Warner the meeting. The attorneys, Warner said, have analysed the report. “I remain very

upbeat and believe me, I mean this literally, I am very upbeat.”

Warner said “one can not understand how others could have come to any conclusion as they have come to.”

More will be revealed to the public in due course, Warner said.

Warner resigned as National Security minister and UNC party chairman, as well as Chaguanas West MP, following the disclosure of the report which found he was fraudulent in his management of Concacaf as the o rg a n i s a t i o n ’s president.

BAT and Mutual Funds— $11.365 billion 3. British American—$0.1 billion 4. CLICO Investment Bank—$1.87 billion 5. CMMB—$0.666 billion Total—$19.6 billion Contingencies: 1. CIB’s INCs—$2.16 billion 2. EFPA judgment dated March 2013—$1.3 billion 3. CMMB—$0.835 billion Total—$4.296 billion The Sunday Express understands that $2 billion has been re-allocated for the capitalisation of Atrius, the company which CLICO will be re-branded into in the coming months.

In addition, the Government has made provisions of US$55 million for a judicial matter in the Bahamas and has spent US$24 million from the Caricom Petroleum Fund to assist the islands following the collapse of CLICO. Those sums are also exclusive of legal fees in the CLICO matter.

Last October, Ramlogan revealed in Parliament that the Central Bank had paid some $82.8 million to US forensic investigator Bob Lindquist for investigations.

Ramlogan said Lindquist, between April 2009 to November 2010, received $46 million; February 2011 to August 20, 2011—$10 million; February to September 2011—$17 million; November 2010 to September 2011—$9.8 million; for the grand total of $82.8 million.

Now that the CoE has been concluded, Colman has three months in which to submit his final report to the Government.

Colman’s terms of reference include: “whether there are any grounds for criminal and civil proceedings against any person or entity; whether criminal proceedings should therefore be recommended to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for his consideration; and whether civil proceedings should be recommended to the Attorney General for his consideration.”

Last November, Colman’s Enquiry was almost derailed after DPP Roger Gaspard announced that a criminal investigation against former CLICO executives and several corporate entities aligned to the collapsed insurance giant had begun, almost three years after the Government had stepped in

to bail out the company to protect the country’s financial system from systemic risk.

Gaspard had written to Colman expressing concern about how the public enquiry, which had been 19 months old at the time, could impact on the criminal investigation by the police.

“I am particularly concerned that an otherwise credible prosecution might be stopped by the court on the grounds that a defendant’s right to a fair trial had been fatally compromised by the publicity attendant upon your enquiry. As such, I shall be issuing a press release warning the media against the publication of any material which may jeopardise the police investigation and any potential criminal proceedings,” Gaspard had said.

Gaspard had also made a request to Ramlogan to have the CoE discontinued.

Despite Gaspard’s request, the enquiry continued, but witnesses attached to CLICO failed to turn up concerned that they would incriminate themselves.

Last week, former CL Financial chairman Lawrence Duprey and its former financial director Andre Monteil were among the list of no-shows at the CoE. Questioned yesterday on whether Gaspard’s action had impacted on the integrity of the CoE, Ramlogan said: “The announcement by the DPP of a criminal investigation when the CoE was 90 per cent complete was significant. The Government thought it best to leave these concerns to the discretion of the commissioner. While the criminal investigation could have hijacked the work of the commission, it was too far advanced to be any detriment.”

As the Anti-Corruption Investigation Bureau and the Fraud Squad of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service pursue its criminal investigation, the Central Bank has already mounted and instituted civil proceedings against three former CL Financial executives—Duprey, Monteil and former corporate secretary Gita Sakal.

Asked whether the CoE still had value given the public’s dissatisfaction that key players have not yet been brought to justice, Ramlogan responded: “As AG, depending on the findings

REPORT PENDING: Lone commissioner at the CLICO/HCU enquiry Sir Anthony Colman. and the recommendations, it is my intention to pursue all options.”

He explained that when the Government purchased the rights of the depositors, the State stepped into their shoes and the State will pursue all avenues at its disposal to seek justice.

“While I have no control over the criminal process, I do have constitutional jurisdiction in civil law which I can invoke for social justice,” he said.

“Once I have the report, in the coming months I expect an avalanche of activity in the pursuit of justice.

“The collapse of CLICO has burned a hole in the Treasury the size of a national budget.

When the Government assumed office there was a stony wall of silence and inaction with regard to the CLICO fiasco,” explained Ramlogan.

He observed that the DPP was never presented with any police investigation report and, in the circumstances, the Government appointed a CoE. Apart from lack of witnesses, the CoE has had its fair share of challenges— attorneys objected to the releasing of certain documents forcing the commission to adhere to a confidentiality protocol, and the Ministry of Finance’s lawyers were changed midcommission.

But the commission has produced startling revelations about a company which was funded principally by policyholders’ money— million-dollar salaries paid to executives; companies created by executives and hiving off millions in contracts; and blatant breaches in governance.

Monday May 06, 2013

Kaieteur News

DTV CHANNEL 8 08:25hrs. Sign On 08:30hrs. This Morning 09:00hrs. Live! With Kelly and Michael 10:00hrs. Roseanne 11:00hrs. The View 12:00hrs. World News 12:30hrs. The Young and the Restless 13:30hrs. The Bold and the Beautiful 14:00hrs. The Talk 15:00hrs. Without a Trace 16:00hrs. Criminal Minds 17:00hrs. Charmed 18:00hrs. World News 18:30hrs. Nightly News 19:00hrs. Greetings and

Announcements 20:00hrs. Channel 8 News 20:30hrs.

Rules of Engagement 21:00hrs. 2 Broke Girls 21:30hrs. Mike & Molly 22:00hrs. Hawaii Five-0 (New Episode) 23:00hrs. Sign Off NCN CHANNEL 11 05:00h – Inspiration 05:30h – Newtown Gospel 06:00h – NCN News (rb) 06:30h – BBC 07:00h – Guyana Today 08:00h _ Weekly Digest r/b 08:30h _ Pulse Beat 09:00h – Stop the Suffering

10:15h _ Kings vs Royal Challengers 13:30h _ Indian Arrival 14:30h _Arrival Greetings 15:05h _ Feature 16:05h _Cartoons 17:00h _ Anderson 18:00h – NCN News Magazine – Live 18:30h – Guysuco Roundup 19:00h _ Al Jazeera 19:30h _ Catholic Magazine 20:00h – 3d/daily millions/play de dream/lotto draw 20:10h _ Round Table 21:05h – Feature 22:35h – Caribbean Newsline 23:00h _ Movie

Monday May 06, 2013 ARIES (March 21 - April 19): There's so much going on right now that you might feel like you're being pulled in too many directions -- but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And where there is hope, there is happiness! ******************* TAURUS (April 20 - May 20): Your unique style inspires quite a few followers from time to time, which is flattering. But does the way you dress give people the wrong impression about who you really are? ****************** GEMINI (May 21 - June 20): Despite your most fervent hopes and wishes, people do not do exactly what you want them to do. This is especially true in matters of the heart. If you are crushing on someone big time but they just don't seem interested, you've got to let go and move on. ******************** CANCER (June 21 - July 22): If you experience some friction with an authority figure today, stand tall. Don't let them intimidate you. They aren't any smarter than you are, they just know things that you don't know -- and there is a difference between the two situations. ********************* LEO (July 23 - Aug. 22): You're a wise person who doesn't bend to the pressures of others. And you need to keep up this independent philosophy today, when some coworkers may try some notso-subtle tactics to sway your opinion. ******************* VIRGO (Aug. 23 - Sept.

22): You have the power to ease someone else's tension today. Simply by letting them have a lit tle more control over things, you can cool their increasingly hot temper and kill any

combative energy that's swirling around. ********************* LIBRA (Sept. 23 - Oct. 22): Today, if you ache for a slower pace to your life, you need to seek out more face to face communications.

Skip the emails and the text messages -- the technology makes things easier, but it doesn't help you accurately convey what you're really trying to say. ********************* SCORPIO (Oct. 23 Nov. 21): Whenever things are not going exactly the way you want them to, you need to start getting creative about your expectations. But you also have to know when to stand your ground and not give in -not even an inch. ******************** SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22 Dec. 21): If you're working on starting or strengthening a romance today, bear in mind that a whisper will help you get your message across a lot more effectively than a loud scream. .********************* CAPRICORN (Dec. 22 Jan. 19): Little details like names and dates are overwhelming for you today, and you're getting a bit behind on the task of keeping track of them. ******************** AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 Feb. 18): YBe careful not to relax too much today -- if you let down your guard too much, you could start falling back into a bad pattern of behavior. ********************* PISCE S ( F e b . 1 9 March 20): The weather will affect your mood greatly today, so keep an eye on the sky! When the sun is shining brightly up in the sky, all will be well -- and your confidence will be strong.

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Kaieteur News

Monday May 06, 2013

Ministry cancels Region Nine mining lottery (From page 29)

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Minister Robert Persaud addressing miners and residents of Rupununi, Region Nine.

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Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment Robert Persaud on Saturday bowed to pressure and announced that the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) will cancel the mining lottery for South Rupununi, which took place last week in Lethem.

This followed several calls by residents of Aishalton, Maruranau, Achiwib, Shea and other communities of the South Rupununi, who rejected the lottery, claiming that the method being employed undermined their chances of acquiring the prime lands released by the Romanex Mining Company.

Some residents had also contended that the lands

allocated through the lottery system had transgressed traditional Amerindian lands.

Saturday’s decision was welcomed by hundreds of residents from the South Rupununi during a meeting which was held at the Aishalton Secondary School to discuss the recent Special Mining Lottery.

Also present at the meeting were Yvonne Pearson, Advisor to the Minister, Ministry of Amerindian Affairs; Ashton Simon, Indigenous Specialist, Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment; Donald Singh, Manager, Land Management Division, GGMC and Wilson Lorentio, Regional Chairman, Region Nine.

Minister Persaud in

continuing engagement and consultation on mining within Amerindian Communities also stated that his Ministry will continue to engage all the peoples of Guyana, including Amerindians to ensure equal opportunities within the natural resources sector.

“The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment and its regulatory agencies will continue to consult and engage all stakeholders to improve the management of Guyana’s natural wealth,” Persaud pointed out.

The Minister added that government is committed to developing the natural resources of Guyana by making more mining properties available, but at

the same time respecting the rights of the Amerindian people.

This he said will be done in a transparent manner for all interested persons, but will be governed by the Mining Act and Regulations of the GGMC. He stressed that the government will not condone illegal mining as the GGMC is boosting its capacity to increase monitoring, compliance and enforcement within all mining districts.

However, the Minister assured hundreds of miners

and residents present that his Ministry will continue to engage all miners, including Amerindians to ensure equal access to mining properties through a transparent mechanism.

The mining lottery was born out of a bitter struggle by the miners to secure their access to lands at Marudi, Region Nine that they have been mining for decades.

This was after they were forcefully removed by heavily armed police ranks and some other private security concerns two months ago.

Their removal made the headlines when a video tape and photographs emerged showing a policeman whipping a woman and her children, who were lying on the Marudi trail leading to the mining district.

After the Marudi Incident, the Rupununi Miners Association met with the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and Minister Robert Persaud to discuss the issue.

At that meeting, the Minister promised to give 25 Special Mining Lotteries to Miners from the Marudi district. This special lottery would have guaranteed that lands in the gold-rich Romanex concession go to miners from the Rupununi.

Britain’s hearing impaired...

From page 27 her sister Lucria Rambalak.

The conflict erupted here in Guyana after a YouTube video of Rambalak being interviewed by the Indian media, went viral.

Apparently, the video portrayed Rambalak as somewhat impersonating the queen. However, following media reports about the video, Ramnarine issued a public statement saying that the mix up occurred with the media representatives in India, who mistook Rambalak for the Miss India Worldwide.

Alana Seebarran has since sued both Ramnarine and Rambalak for $50M. In papers obtained from the Supreme Court Registry, Georgetown, Seebarran is alleging that Chandini Ramnarine failed to discharge contractual and fiduciary duties owed to her. And, the claim against Rambalak, who was selected by her sister to be Miss India Guyana 2010, is for impersonation and “passing off”.

Monday May 06, 2013

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Kaieteur News

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Page 29

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Kaieteur News

Mumbai’s huge win stops CSK streak ESPNcricinfo - It was as if the Chennai Super Kings batsmen wanted to beat the evening crowds in the Mumbai local trains. So as opposed to chasing the below-par 140 in a hurry, they kept throwing away their wickets away, folding for the lowest total this IPL and losing by 60 runs to end their seven-match winning streak.

No matter how much credit you give to Mumbai Indians’ bowling - one of the more watchable acts of the IPL - it was a surreal case of mediocrity manufacturing excitement in the first few overs of the chase. In the first over of the chase, Mitchell Johnson kept bowling short and wide, Michael Hussey kept cutting it to Kieron

Pollard at point, and Pollard kept dropping. The third successive one of those cut Pollard’s nose, and he walked off the field even as the Wankhede Stadium rubbed its collective eyes.

You could argue Johnson came back with a superb second over, but that began with a loose shot from M Vijay, who dragged a wide length ball on. Suresh Raina played across one, and got a leading edge to Pollard at point.

This time Pollard dived in front and half-redeemed himself. As is the rule with Super Kings, they sent S Badrinath to face the crisis, and he nearly edged the hattrick ball. Soon, Johnson beat his other edge with a left-arm bowlers’ outswinger, and was

Builders Lumber Yard Darts Tournament

Rambharose and Hiralall win Singles titles Lallchand Rambharose made it two out of two in the last two weeks competing against Sudesh Persaud Fitzgerald when he rebounded from a two-game and 200 points deficit to capture the Men’s Singles 501 final of the Builders Lumber Yard-sponsored Darts Tournament which was played on Friday, at the Salt Air Sports Club, Pegasus Hotel.

Playing in the best of five final, Rambharose, who has been enjoying relatively good success against Fitzgerald, regarded as the most consistent Darts player since Norman Madhoo, showed admirable calmness and consistency under pressure to defeat his opponent 3-2.

In the semi-finals, Fitzgerald won 2/0 against Anil Lachman, while Rambharose advanced by a similar margin from Nicholas Seetaram.

Lachman then squeezed past Seetaram by a 2/1 margin to claim the third spot after posting an impressive 158 points check out.

In the Ladies final, Jaswantie Hiralall made light work of Shaundell Hyles to win 3-0.

The semi-final saw Hiralall beat Cynthia Amyan 2-0, while Hyles registered an upset 2-0 triumph over last week tournament winner Hemwattie Amyan.

The Draw Doubles was won by Andrew Balchand/Anil Lachman from Sherwyn Greene/Luis Ramirez-Merlano (Miguel).

Third place went to Christopher Fullton/Mark Persaud who won 2/1 from Colin France/Bryan James.

denied a triple-wicket maiden only by Dwayne Bravo.

And Wankhede was yet to finish rubbing its eyes. In the next over, Bravo drove a shortish Pawan Suyal delivery off the back foot straight to cover. At 18 for 4, MS Dhoni held himself and Ravindra Jadeja back, and sent in R Ashwin, who soon fell to the veteran offspinner he has usurped, Harbhajan Singh. In came Dhoni with the asking rate past eight and only five wickets in hand.

Hussey regained his orange cap, but his innings

was never fluent.

Lasith Malinga’s over to him was striking as the bouncers did Hussey in with both the slowness and then pace. Under immense pressure, Hussey looked for release the moment Pragyan Ojha came on to bowl, and lofted him straight to deep midwicket to make it 40 for 6 in 9.1 overs.

Scores: Mumbai Indians 139 for 5 (Rohit Sharma 39*, Jadeja 3-29) beat Chennai Super Kings 79 (Ojha 3-11, Johnson 3-27) by 60 runs.

Royals jump to fourth after big chase ESPNcricinfo - The Sawai Mansingh Stadium continued to remain a fortress for Rajasthan Royals, though it came close to being breached by Pune Warriors during a high-scoring clash on Sunday. Royals moved to No. 4 in the IPL points table, their openers Rahul Dravid and Ajinkya Rahane guiding a challenging chase with halfcenturies, and Stuart Binny and Sanju Samson chipping in with crucial cameos to help sneak their team home in the final over. The sixth straight win at home for Royals was a seventh consecutive loss for Warriors, who need to get their bowling in order to spoil a party or two this season.

The dew was a factor in Jaipur, but Rahul Sharma’s long-hops in a gamechanging 17th over could not be blamed on the environment alone. With 43 needed off 24 balls, he gifted a short ball outside off to Binny, who promptly slashed it past point. Two more short deliveries later, Binny pulled the next one over the deep midwicket boundary. Samson

faced his first ball with 28 needed off 16, and began imperiously, showing no signs of nerves, driving Wayne Parnell on the up and then running him past third man for successive boundaries.

Binny took charge, dispatching a length ball from Bhuvneshwar Kumar for six in the penultimate over and squeezing Parnell past mid-on for four to seal victory when one run was needed off two balls.

Dravid surprised a few by walking out to open instead of Shane Watson during Royals’ chase of 179, but took the lead in delivering a brisk start that was the foundation for his team’s successful overhaul of Warriors’ score.

He punched Bhuvneshwar for two boundaries through point in the opening over, then targeted Krishnakant Upadhyaya for three fours to three different parts of the ground.

Scores: Rajasthan Royals 182 for 5 (Rahane 67, Dravid 58, Parnell 3-27) beat Pune Warriors 178 for 4 (Uthappa 54, Finch 45) by five wickets.

Monday May 06, 2013

Local boxers intensify preparations for important Cuban sojourn He might not be proficient in the use of the English language, but Cuban boxing coach, Francisco Hernandez Roldon understands the language enough to instruct a group of amateur boxers as they applied themselves to training sessions at the Andrew Lewis Boxing Gym yesterday morning.

The team is under the tutelage of Roldon and Terrence Poole and is currently preparing for the Roberto Balado and the Cardova Cardin boxing tournaments scheduled for Cuba early next month.

Those undergoing rigid training yesterday morning are welterweights Eon Bancroft and Ron Smith, light/middleweight Bert Braithwaite, light/weight, Clairmont Gibson, middleweight Dennis Thomas, bantamweight, Imran Khan, featherweight, Delon Charles and lightweight, Stephon Gouviea. Woman boxer, Theresa London was also practicing her trade among the male boxers.

Señor Roldon was very upbeat and lauded the quality of the local boxers.

However, he said that they still have a lot to learn and every effort should be made to ensure their participation at the impending tournaments in Cuba.

He said that the time allotted for preparation in the Brazil Olympiad is hardly sufficient but the local boxers can maximize their chances by attending as many high profile games as possible; the Cuba sojourn is one such. He warned that the Cuba

tournament will test the local boxers to the hilt, but it was important that they procure the experience if they are to impact at the Olympics level.

Meanwhile, the Cuban coach pressed his charges to achieve the best and pushed them to the maximum.

The boxers were saved the ignominy of stiff punches and were directed to a softer approach of school boxing. “We need to concentrate on the technical aspects of the sport; shelve the power p l a y, ” a s s e r t e d S e ñ o r Roldon.

He further touched on the importance of the jab and even pointed to the just concluded bout with Floyd Mayweather and Robert Guerrero where the former boxer utilized the jab to full effect.

To t h a t e ff e c t t h e pugilists were taken through their paces with sessions of school boxing at the long and short ranges.

C o n s e q u e n t l y, the boxers were taken on a light run, up to the St Pius playfield, before wrapping up sessions with a lengthy period of calisthenics.

Despite the prognosis of the Cuban coach, the boxers’ participation depends on the ability of the executives of the GBA to accrue more than $3M to facilitate the trip.

President of the GBA, Steve Ninvalle is beseeching the assistance of the Government and members of the corporate community for the requisite assistance to make the trip a reality.

(Michael Benjamin)