Filipino workers banned from eleven Caribbean countries including TCI
The government of the Philippines has announced a ban on the deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to 41 countries, including 11 in the Caribbean which includes the Turks and Caicos Islands .
The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) last week adopted the recommendation of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to stop the deployment of OFWs to countries that lack laws to protect their rights.
The deployment ban decision was made to comply with the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act or Republic Act (RA) 10022, which only allows the government to send Filipinos to “countries where the rights of Filipino migrant workers are protected.”
Philippine Embassies and/or Missions have certified that the following host countries in the Caribbean are not compliant with guarantees for the protection of the rights of migrant workers: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Haiti, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Turks and Caicos Islands and US Virgin Islands.
Chicken from US ‘a threat’
THE CARIBBEAN’S POULTRY industry is under threat from the importation of chicken leg quarters from the United States of America.
And the situation is becoming untenable, says Dr Desmond Ali, executive director of the Caribbean Poultry Association (CPA) which represents 15 poultry companies and three national associations in nine Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries.
Ali was speaking at the Barbados Yacht Club yesterday during a Trade Agreements and Trade Negotiations Seminar hosted by the CPA, the Barbados Egg and Poultry Producers Association (BEPPA) and the Barbados Agricultural Society.
He said the Caribbean was in “the unfortunate position of being located between Brazil to the south and the United States to the north who are the two largest exporters of poultry products in the world”.
(Nation News)
Nicaragua opposition candidate calls Ortega win 'fraud'
The opposition candidate in Sunday's presidential poll in Nicaragua has rejected the victory of the incumbent President, Daniel Ortega.
Fabio Gadea said he could not accept the results presented by the electoral council because "they did not reflect the people's wishes".
With 85.8% of the ballots counted, the electoral authorities announced that Daniel Ortega had won with 62.65% of the votes.
They said Mr Gadea got 31% of the vote.
'Suspicious count'
After announcing the latest figures, president of the Electoral Council Roberto Rivas congratulated Daniel Ortega, because "the trends shown by the results could not be reversed".
Mr Gadea of the Liberal Independent Party (PLI) said he had "well-founded suspicions that a fraud of an unprecedented nature and proportions" had taken place.
PLI representatives said their parallel counting suggested an even race "before taking into account the rural vote", where they believe Mr Gadea will perform well.
Several independent electoral observers who were not accredited by the Nicaraguan authorities pointed to reports of fraud.
Legal wrangling
Official observers have so far not detailed any significant problems.
The head of the mission from the Organisation of American States, Dante Caputo, said that his team had not seen "significant irregularities", but he called on the authorities to investigate all complaints.
Head of the European Union mission Luis Yanez said the polls had taken place "in a climate of normality and tranquillity".
Mr Ortega's candidacy was controversial as it was in breach of a ban on serving consecutive terms in the top office.
He was allowed to run after the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Court overturned the ban.
His supporters took to the streets to celebrate the election results.
"This is the victory of Christianity, socialism and solidarity," said Mr Ortega's wife and spokeswoman, Rosario Murillo.
Daniel Ortega has been a leading figure in Nicaraguan politics since he led the Sandinista movement to overthrew dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979.
He ruled Nicaragua for the next 11 years - fighting a civil war against the US-backed Contra rebels - before being voted out of power in 1990.
He failed in successive bids for re-election in 1996 and 2001, but in 2006 he was voted back into office thanks to a much softer image and a divided opposition.
Many Nicaraguans have benefited from the social programmes set up by Mr Ortega's government in the last five years with financial help from his ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Voters were also electing members of the National Assembly, with reports indicating that the Sandinistas (FSLN) were on course to win a majority.
Colombia mudslide deaths mount
The number of people known to have died in a mudslide in western Colombia has risen to at least 38.
Rescuers are continuing to search for more than 20 people believed buried beneath 300 tonnes of earth and mud.
Fourteen homes were swept away when a hillside collapsed in the city of Manizales on Saturday.
Colombia is experiencing one of the worst rainy seasons in memory, which has forced the evacuation of about a quarter of a million people.
Sixteen people were pulled alive from the mud, but some are still feared trapped.
Red Cross official Juan Manuel Osorio said he had no exact figure for those still missing.
Desperate search
He said most of the residents would have been at home when the hillside collapsed at 06:00 (11:00 GMT).
President Juan Manuel Santos travelled to Manizales on Sunday to express his condolences to the families of those who died.
He said the tragedy could have been avoided if local residents had followed an evacuation order issued after heavy rains had soaked the hillside the neighbourhood clings to.
He said those affected by the tragedy would be given state subsidies and he promised that rescuers would continue searching for survivors non-stop.
Heavy rains also caused the death of eight swimmers in the western city of Cali.
They were swept away and drowned in strong currents in the rain-swollen Menendez river.
Meteorologists say heavy rains are expected to continue throughout November and December, with double or triple the average rainfall possible.
Extradition squashed
Businessmen Ishwar Galbaransingh and Steve Ferguson yesterday scored a major victory in their battle against extradition to the United States after the order was quashed by a High Court judge. Justice Ronnie Boodoosingh, presiding in the Port-of-Spain High Court, delivered his 57-page judgment at the end of the businessmen’s judicial review application, challenging Attorney General Anand Ramlogan’s decision to sign their extradition warrants on October 9, last year. In making the order, Boodoosingh said: “It is declared that it will be unjust, oppressive and unlawful to order the extradition of Galbaransingh and Ferguson.
“The extradition is debarred by the operation of Section 16 (3) of the Extradition Act.” He said the appropriate forum to try the men in relation to contracts for construction of the terminal was T&T. He also ordered that the State pay the businessmen’s legal costs, which included fees for two Queen’s Counsel, a Senior Counsel and several senior attorneys. The men, former United National Congress (UNC) financiers, were wanted in Florida on a 95-count indictment, stemming from alleged misconduct in the construction of the $1.6 billion Piarco International Airport terminal.
They also face local charges of bid-rigging and conspiracy to defraud the Government of T&T, which stemmed from two inquiries (Piarco 1 and 11) currently before the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court. In January 2007, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) discontinued some of the charges, pursuant to the US extradition request. In quashing the extradition order, Boodoosingh suggested that the DPP might consider pursuing the charges which were previously discontinued. During the trial, Boodoosingh was asked to consider the location where the crimes were allegedly committed, location of evidence in the matters and in which country the alleged crimes had a greater impact on.
Representations made to Ramlogan, under Section 16 of the Extradition Act by the parties involved before he signed the warrants, also were considered by Boodoosingh. “There is sufficient evidence before this court to hold that important representations were not disclosed to the claimants and they were therefore denied the opportunity to put their case on these matters before Ramlogan for his consideration,” Boodoosingh said.
He said because of that there was unfairness to the businessmen, which was also a reason for quashing their extraditions. Galbaransingh, owner of the Northern Construction Group of Companies, is wanted on a 13-count indictment, including charges of money-laundering involving US$1 million (TT$6.3 million) during the period June 19 to December 10, 2001. Ferguson, former Maritime General CEO, is wanted on an 82-count indictment, including money-laundering charges, involving US$3,255,345 (TT$20,508,673) alleged to have occurred from November 24, 2000, to March 28, 2002.
As part of Boodoosingh’s judgment, the conditions of the businessmen’s bail were relaxed with the requirement of reporting to the Four Roads Police Station twice a week being removed. Despite pleas from the duo’s legal team, the surety requirement of their continuing bail and the surrendering of travel documents were upheld by Boodoosingh. After spending almost ten months at the Maximum Security Prison in Golden Grove, Arouca, Boodoosingh granted the men $2 million bail each on March 30 with a surety that was later approved by the registrar of the Supreme Court. The men were represented by a legal team, which included Queen’s Counsel Edward Fitzgerald and Andrew Mitchell, Senior Counsel Fyard Hosein and attorneys Rajiv Persad, Rishi Dass and Nyree Alfonso.
Senior Counsel Avory Sinanan and Kelvin Ramkisson represented the Attorney General, while Sunita Harrikisson represented the requesting state, the United States. After the judgment was delivered by Boodoosingh, Fitzgerald, who appeared for Ferguson, told the court both men always had expressed the view that T&T was the correct forum for their matters to be tried, not the US. The issue of forum was a major claim made by the men during their trial.
Sinanan asked the court to grant a 28-day stay of execution in the matter to allow the office of the Attorney General enough time to consider whether to appeal the decision. Sinanan’s application for a stay of execution was granted by Boodoosingh. Attempts to contact AG Ramlogan for comment yesterday were unsuccessful. Both men are expected to reappear in the Port-of-Spain Magistrates’ Court before Magistrate Ejenny Espinet on Friday when the “Piarco 11” preliminary inquiry continues.
Rubis secures fuel deal here in the TCI
Rubis will acquire Chevron’s fuel distribution here in the Turks & Caicos Bahamas as well as in the Cayman Islands.
This business package represents 250,000 cbm sales with a turnover of US $230 million for year 2010.
This acquisition fully matches all of Rubis’ external acquisition criteria, a mixed set of distribution activities – retail network of 39 service stations under the Texaco brand, commercial and aviation – profitable and soundly established for almost 90 years; leadership positions in these countries with an average market share of 45%; robust logistic base comprising 6 storage terminals in import oriented markets.
Combined with skilled management structure already in place (West Indies) and synergies to come in terms of supply & shipping, all add-up to making this a promising acquisition for Rubis.
This transaction, which will be fully financed by existing bank credit facilities, is expected to boost the Group’s existing operations in the West Indies by almost 75% with a positive effect on the Group’s profitability from the year 2012 onwards.
Final completion of this acquisition is subject to prior approval from the local Competition Authorities here and abroad.
After the French Antilles and French Guiana in 2005, Bermuda in 2006 and the West Indies in 2011, this latest Rubis acquisition in the Caribbean establishes its leadership position as the independent petroleum products distributor in the Caribbean.
Italy borrowing rates hit record
The Italian government's borrowing cost has risen as fears grow over political uncertainty in Rome. 
The yield on Italian 10-year bonds rose from 6.37% to a euro-era high of 6.67%.
It is feared that Italy, the eurozone's third biggest economy, could become the next victim of the debt crisis. PM Silvio Berlusconi faces a crunch vote on public finance on Tuesday.
Mr Berlusconi denied on Facebook reports that he was about to resign.
Stock markets across Europe bounced up on the chance of the Italian premier's departure but returned to negative territory at Monday's close.
In London, the FTSE 100 ended down 0.3%, France's Cac 40 fell 0.6%, and in Frankfurt the Dax index closed down 0.6%.
But on Wall Street, the Dow Jones bucked the trend, closing up 0.71% at 12,068.4.
Concerns over Italy are overshadowing developments in Greece, where Prime Minister George Papandreou has agreed to stand down.
Mr Papandreou sealed a deal with the opposition to form a new coalition government to approve an EU-IMF bailout package.
Once the vote has been passed, it will open the way for Greece to receive the next 8bn euro tranche of bailout loans.
The deal was welcomed by investors, with the main Athens bourse up 1.4%, lifted by the banking sector. Shares in Alpha Bank were up 6.8% while Hellenic Postbank rose 8.9%.
The markets are viewing Italy's ability to repay its debt as increasingly doubtful.
The spread between Italian and German 10-year government bond yields widened to 488 basis points in early trading, its widest level since 1995.
The yield on Italian one-year bonds also jumped to 6.3% from 5.5% on Friday, though it later fell back to 6.1%.
By comparison, the yield on German one-year bonds is 0.26%.
It comes as data on Monday showed the European Central Bank (ECB) more than doubled its purchases of government bonds in the first week of Mario Draghi's presidency.
Purchases totalled 9.52bn euros, compared with the previous week's 4bn euros and was the most the bank has spent since mid-September.
Richard Hunter, head of equities at Hargreaves Lansdown stockbrokers in London, said the worries over Italy were not so much about the economy but about the state of the political situation.
"This may be the beginning of the end for Berlusconi," he told the BBC.
"We're talking about a completely different animal when it comes to Italy [compared with Greece].
Greece is responsible for 2% of [the eurozone's] GDP whereas Italy is the third biggest economy behind Germany and France."
Pressure is growing on Mr Berlusconi ahead of Tuesday's vote on the budget.
Greek Politicians Try to Reach Agreement on Interim Government
European finance ministers are awaiting the formation of a new government in Greece before deciding whether to hand the country another segment of its bailout money.
The ministers met late Monday in Brussels to consider the $11 billion Greek funding. The ministers have decided to wait for a resolution between Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras on the make-up of the interim government and a commitment to the bailout agreement.
The two Greek politicians conferred in Athens to pick a new caretaker prime minister, but had not reached an agreement late Monday. Additional discussions are scheduled Tuesday. The former vice president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos, has emerged as a possibility to fill the position.
Mr. Papandreou is stepping down in favor of a short-term coalition government after abandoning his call a week ago for a referendum on the European Union debt-relief plan to help solve Greece's financial woes. In Washington, the White House said it welcomed the Greek consensus on creating a new government and urged that it quickly implement financial reforms.
Meanwhile, new European debt concerns are quickly emerging in Italy, Europe's third-largest economy after Germany and France. Italy's borrowing costs rose to more than 6 percent, approaching the unsustainable levels that forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to secure international bailouts in the last year and a half.
Italian Prime Minister Minister Silvio Berlusconi is under increasing pressure to resign, with his parliamentary majority in question.
But Mr. Berlusconi said on the social networking site Facebook: “Rumors of my resignation are baseless.”
European finance ministers also plan to work on details of the continent's new $1.4 trillion bailout fund to head off future debt problems in Europe.
Economist Marco Simoni at the London School of Economics has deep concerns about the Italian government debts. He told VOA that the European Union “couldn't afford to bail it out.” He said that if the Italian government defaults, “the entire world economy is going to collapse.”
In order to secure its new funding, Greece is required to raise taxes and make deep cuts in the number of government jobs and the size of pensions. A coalition government will last until new elections, preliminarily scheduled for February 19.
Mr. Papandreou will not lead the new coalition. It is not clear if he plans to run again next year.
A Greek government spokesman said that Sunday was a historic day for Greece, with the prime minister agreeing to give up power to possibly save the country from bankruptcy. But many ordinary Greeks, who say they have sacrificed enough, say all politicians are the same and that new elections are meaningless.
Greek Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos has said Greece needs the next $11 billion installment of its existing bailout by December in order to avoid bankruptcy
Buffett goes on $20 billion stock buying spree
In the worst quarter for U.S. stocks since the financial crisis, investor Warren Buffett went on a stock buying spree.
A filing late Friday from Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500) shows it bought $20 billion in stocks in the three months ended Sept. 30 -- including $6.9 billion worth of dabbling in U.S. stocks.
The purchases also included the $8.7 billion purchase of specialty chemical company Lubrizol Corp., which closed in the quarter after being announced earlier in the year, and $5 billion in preferred shares and warrants of Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500).
The $6.9 billion in common stock purchases represented a fairly aggressive market position, said Greggory Warren, the analyst who follows Berkshire for Morningstar.
"That's a better jump than we've seen from them in a while," he said.
Berkshire bought about about $3.6 billion in stock in the second quarter and less than $1 billion in the first quarter. Given Buffett's inclination to try to find bargains, the buying in the third quarter wasn't a surprise, Warren said.
"We saw a fairly significant decline in the quarter," he said. "The question is where he put the money to work. We'll have to wait to find that out."
The blue chip Standard & Poor's 500 fell 14% in the third quarter, the biggest drop since the fiscal crisis hit markets in the final three months of 2008. Other major indexes also tumbled, driven by the downgrade of the U.S. debt rating, the uncertainty over the European sovereign debt and rising worries during the period that the U.S. economy is in danger of a new recession.
Buffett continued to be bullish on stocks in comments during the period. On Aug. 15, he told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose that on the first day of trading after the U.S. credit downgrade -- as the S&P 500 plunged nearly 7% -- Berkshire made its largest single-day stock purchases of the year to date. And he said the $7 billion Berkshire had invested to that point of the year was at least $1 billion more than it had ever purchased in a year.
"It's like buying on sale," he said in that interview.
Berkshire's earnings tumbled 24% in the quarter to $2.3 billion, hurt by the decline in value of its holdings and a $1.6 billion loss on derivatives it held during the period.
But Cliff Gallant, analyst with Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, said he believes most of the reported derivative losses have already been reversed by the rebound in stocks in October. He said the operating earnings beat forecasts.
"The strength of core operating earnings shrugged off mark-to-market paper losses in the derivatives book," he wrote in a note Monday. "With nearly $35 billion of cash on hand and as one of the highest credit worthy financial institutions in the world, we expect that Berkshire will continue to be positioned for such attractive opportunities."
Berkshire shares were down just less than 1% in midday trading Monday, but that was less than the drop in the broader markets.
CNN Money
Panama wants TT’s LPG
PRIME MINISTER Kamla Persad-Bissessar disclosed that the Panamanian government is interested in purchasing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from Trinidad and Tobago.
The Prime Minister made this disclosure at a news conference at Piarco International Airport on Sunday when she returned from London, after holding meetings there following the end of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Perth, Australia.
Persad-Bissessar said apart from a delegation from Brazilian energy company Petrobras coming to TT later this month to sign a memorandum of understanding, Panama is interested in exploring investment opportunities in this country’s energy sector.
“They have some investment opportunities. They want to buy our LPG and they want to give us bunkering facilities on the Panama Canal,” the Prime Minister stated.
Persad-Bissessar also said she hoped their would be progress soon with respect to tapping into natural gas reserves in the Loran-Manatee fields which straddle the maritime border between TT and Venezuela.
Noting the efforts made by her and other members of her delegation at the CHOGM and in London to heighten this country’s economic profile and encourage investment, the Prime Minister was pleased that there were positive developments in this area. “You could not get better than that,” she said.
Energy Minister Kevin Ramnarine said British Petroleum’s (BP) payment of $1 billion in taxes which the company owed the country for the period 2001 to 2006 was the result of negotiations which he and Finance Minister Winston Dookeran held with energy companies operating in TT before the presentation of the 2012 Budget in Parliament on October 10.
Ramnarine explained that one of the objectives of these meeting was to explore ways of “ raising revenue without taxation.
“This was one possible route through which could be had,” he said.
Asked whether the country could expect other energy companies to make similar payments in the near future, Ramnarine said he could not make a pronouncement on that because that was “a matter of privacy” between the Board of Inland Revenue and those companies.
Trade and Industry Minister Stephen Cadiz, who like Ramnarine was part of TT’s delegation at the CHOGM, said there were discussions with delegates from Mauritius who indicated that “exactly what TT is what Mauritius went through and they say we are very much on the right track” with respect to economic diversification.