PDM LEADER CALLS FOR ROYAL HOLIDAY
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
TCI 
ISLANDERS can look forward to an extra day’s vacation next year if Doug Parnell gets his way.
The PDM leader is calling for a public holiday to celebrate the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
The royal couple, both 28, got engaged while on holiday in Kenya in October and will tie the knot on Friday April 29.
Parnell said: “Firstly I would like to send congratulations to the Royal couple from both the PDM Party and everybody here in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
“Royal weddings don’t come along very often and this is sure to be a very special occasion and one that will be enjoyed by millions around the world.
“In the UK, a public holiday has been announced and I would urge the TCI interim government to do the same here. I think, as a British Overseas Territory, islanders should be given the opportunity to celebrate the occasion if they wish.
“The British Royal Family is much loved and respected here in the TCI and it’s nice to have something like this to look forward to. Prince William’s mother, Princess Diana, has a special place in the hearts of so many and therefore so does has her son.”
With the last Royal visit having taken place in 1966 when the Queen and Prince Phillip toured Grand Turk and South Caicos aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia, Parnell wants an official invitation to be extended to Prince William and his bride.
“We have waited a long time for a Royal visit”, added Parnell, “and maybe this is the perfect opportunity. What better way for any newlyweds to spend their time than relaxing in the beautiful TCI.
“I’m sure their honeymoon arrangements are already taken care of but I would like to see us extend an official invitation to the couple to visit in the near future.
“Certainly I will be extending that invitation on behalf of the PDM Party and hopefully it’s something that can be done at government level, and with a degree of real conviction.
“Not only would we be proud to host such a visit, it would also act as a perfect opportunity to show off our wonderful islands, which would be a massive boost for tourism and our economy in general.”
The Royal Family and the Middletons will pay for the wedding itself, but the British taxpayer will meet the cost of extra security and transport.
It will take place at Westminster Abbey, a venue that has hosted the weddings of the Queen and Queen Mother and was the venue for Princess Diana's funeral in 1997.
It’s expected the ceremony will be beamed live around the world, including here in the TCI, which are five hours behind London.
NIB takes Rounder’s Ltd, Tucker’s Hill Nursery & Island Publishing Ltd to court
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
The National Insurance Board continues on their quest to collect outstanding arrears owed to them.The following persons appeared in the Magistrate’s Courts in Providenciales on December 13th, 2010.
Providenciales
-
Mr. Rhynie Campbell Director Rounder’s Ltd appeared in the Magistrate Court before Chief Magistrate Mr. Clifton Warner, for failing to pay contributions and additional charges for the period June 2009 to July2009 in the amount of $2,731.60 He was represented by Attorney Ashwood Forbes. He requested a further adjournment. The matter was adjourned to February 10th 2011 pending settlement.
The matter was adjourned to the 10th February, 2011 Settlement pending.
The following persons appeared in the Magistrate‘s Court #1 on December, 16th 2010 before Honorable Magistrate Mrs. Joann Joyner.
Providenciales
-
Tracey Ann Ewing -Hurdle Contractor of Tucker’s Hill Nursery appear in the magistrate Court Sitting at Providenciales before Chief Magistrate His Hon Mrs. Joann Joyner, for (14) counts failing to pay contributions and (14) counts additional charges as an employer and (2) counts of failing to pay contributions and additional charges as a self employed person. During the period November 2008 to June 2010. Mrs. Ewing pleaded guilty on all charges and was ordered to pay the amount of $1500.00 by the 30th December, 2010 on each complaint or 30 days imprisonment. Magistrate Miss Joann Joyner also ordered that Mrs. Ewing pay the amount of $2500.00 per month commencing on the 30th January 2011 and every month after until the full amount of $85,207.35 is extinguished.
Committal proceedings
-
Director of Island Publishing Ltd appeared in the Magistrate Court #1 before Chief Magistrate Joann Joyner on the charges of failing to pay contributions and additional charges as an employer and self employed person, during the period November 2005 to April 2009. Mr. Boyce was represented by Attorney Mr. Clayton Green in the matter. The NIB was represented by Attorney Mesick. A Warrant for committal to prison was issued by the court. Mr. Boyce was ordered to pay the full amount of $24,000.00 by the 17th January 2011 or 30 days imprisonment. Mr. Green requested a further adjournment which was granted by the court.
The warrant was put on hold until the 17th January 2011, in default of the payments, Magistrate order the warrant of commitment to be executed on the 18th January 2011 without delay.
The matter is adjourned to 17th January 2011 for payment.
TCI Governor signs International Tax Information Exchange Agreement with Portugal
On Friday H.E The Governor Gorgon Wetherill departed the Turks and Caicos Islands for consultations with Ministers and senior officials in London.
He will also be signing an international Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) on behalf of the Turks and Caicos Islands with the Republic of
Portugal. This will bring the total number of TIEAs signed to sixteen.
The Governor will return to Grand Turk on 12th January 2011. In his absence Mr Mark Capes will be Acting Governor throughout the intervening period.
Building Civil Society Capacity for Conservation in the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
Turks & Caicos National Trust executive director, Ms. Ethlyn Gibbs-Williams and president of the Providenciales Rotaract Club, Ms. Nicquell Garland recently returned to the islands after spending five days, December 6-10, in Bonaire on a Study Tour organized by CANARI (Caribbean Natural Resources Institute).
The National Trust and the Rotarac Club have teamed up to further advance biodiversity conservation in the Turks and Caicos Islands through a project implemented by CANARI and funded by the Darwin Initiative. The purpose of the project is to enhance the organizational capacity of at least 10 civil society organizations, including the 5 National Trust organizations in the UK Overseas Caribbean Territories to function as strong, effective and sustainable organizations that can play a significant role directly in biodiversity conservation in their territories and the Caribbean region, as well as indirectly by catalyzing and coordinating wider civil society participation.
To launch the project, workshops were held in each of the 5 UK Caribbean Overseas Territories and facilitated by CANARI personnel, during the latter part of 2009. This was followed up by an Action Learning Group workshop in Nevis in February of 2010.
The Study Tour is just one of the activities earmarked for the 3-year project ‘Building Civil Society Capacity for Conservation in the Caribbean UK Overseas Territories’.
The case studies chosen for the study tour were two organizations which play significant roles in the conservation institution of Bonaire. DCNA (Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance) which is the umbrella organization established to assist parks and protected areas to safeguard biodiversity and promote sustainable management in the six Dutch Caribbean islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten) and STINAPA- (Stitching Nationale Parken) National Parks Foundation Bonaire.
Both organizations play vital but separate roles in biodiversity conservation in Bonaire. Interestingly, the government does not manage parks and protected areas in Bonaire but has delegated this responsibility to STINAPA.
Participants on the study tour were able to get a close-up look at both organizations approach to biodiversity conservation, learn about their relationship with stakeholders and analyse the institutional and organizational structure, funding and strategic focus.
The group visited areas managed by STINAPA including the visitor centre, the Washington Slaagbai National Park and the Bonaire Marine Protected Area.
Objectives of the study tour were:
(a) to identify key lessons on what has helped or hindered civil society participation focusing on institutional arrangements, policy environment, organizational capacity, strategic direction and approach, funding environment and financial stability, stakeholders and leaders.
and
(b) to identify what lessons can be applied in the UKOTs and UKOT organizations.
The experience was highly beneficial and best practices observed will be adopted to improve management structure of both partner organizations in TCI.
Residents of South Korean island fleeing ahead of military drills
Amid South Korean plans to hold live-fire military drills this week and North Korean threats of retaliation, many residents of Yeonpyeong Island are evacuating, afraid of being caught in the middle.
Villagers streamed onto what they believed was the last ferry to Incheon, South Korea, on Sunday, carrying what belongings they could. Some were holding their children as others helped the elderly.
"I'm leaving because they said the drills are tomorrow," said Kim Ok Jin, 66. Kim said the island was once a good place to live and she does not want to leave.
"Of course I'm angry," she said. "But that's not going to change anything."
Many Yeonpyeong residents are evacuating for a second time. This time, however, they have warning. On November 23, they had none before North Korea began shelling the island. Two civilians and two South Korean Marines died in the attack.
The South Korean military said Thursday that its drills will take place in the seas southwest of Yeonpyeong Island between December 18 and 21, but bad weather forced a delay Saturday. South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported the drills will take place Monday or Tuesday in the Yellow Sea off the island.
As villagers departed, few signs of life remained on the island -- only military trucks patrolling and waiting for possible North Korean retaliation for the drills.
Not everyone on Yeonpyeong, however, was leaving. Song Young Ok said she has not been told to stop selling tickets for the ferry off the island, and doesn't know when the military drills will take place.
Song said she is planning to stay put, holed up along with others in a military bunker.
She said she doesn't know why it has to be this way -- if South Korea carries out the drills, North Korea has threatened to retaliate even more strongly. South Korea's insistence on conducting the drills is picking a fight, she said.
Others were more optimistic. "It's OK," said ferry passenger Lee Chun Nyeo, 83. "The soldiers need to do (the exercises), right?"
Yeonpyeong is located just south of the Northern Limit Line, the line drawn in 1953 by the United Nations just after the Korean War. The U.N. drew the line three nautical miles from the North Korean coast and put five islands close to the coast under South Korean control.
That was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. But in the absence of a full peace agreement, the Northern Limit Line remains in place.
North Korea has suggested an alternative line, but South Korea has resisted, as it would bring the North's maritime boundary close to Incheon, a main port.
Waters in the Yellow Sea are important for fishing and crab. For North Korean fishermen especially, the blue crab season between June and September is an important source of income. Crabs have a habit of migrating south during that time, so the water is sometimes crowded with boats from both countries, as well as vessels from China. However, the Yellow Sea has seen armed clashes in the past few years, the most serious of them in 1999 and 2002.
China and Russia have asked South Korea to reconsider holding the drills. Russia called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Sunday.
Source:CNN
Australia to provide AU$63 million in assistance to CARICOM over next four years
Representatives of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat and Australia met at the Secretariat Headquarters, Turkeyen, Guyana, on Friday for the inaugural CARICOM-Australia high level meeting on the development assistance partnership.
This meeting was conducted within the framework of the memorandum of understanding between the parties, which was signed on 29 November, 2009 in the margins of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting hosted in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad.
CARICOM secretary-general, Sir Edwin Carrington, in opening remarks at the high level meeting said that both sides were pleased at the pace and intensity with which the CARICOM-Australia relationship had deepened over the past year.
Director-general of the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), Peter Baxter pledged that Australia’s cooperation with the Caribbean Community will “see real outcomes and practical assistance.” Australia will provide AU$63.8 million in assistance to Caribbean countries over the next four years.
The meeting focused on the present technical cooperation relationship particularly against the background of the current global economic climate. The two sides discussed the various areas and modalities through which they could partner to improve the economic resilience of the Community, including the areas related to climate change and disaster risk reduction.
Australia has committed to providing AU$17.5 million to support the region’s efforts to adapt to climate change and to manage the impacts of natural disasters.
The director-general announced that “the majority of this assistance for climate change is part of Australia’s global A$599 million fast-start climate change finance package announced in June 2010, and will support the work of key regional organisations and fund community-level activities across the Caribbean.”
He also shared that about 25 percent of Australia’s fast start funding package will be targeted to the needs of small island states which are highly vulnerable to the likely impacts of climate change, like those in the Caribbean and in the Pacific.
The meeting also discussed Australia’s support to Haiti, including current and potential projects to assist in the reconstruction and development of the CARICOM member state. The government of Australia has been one of the first to provide to Haiti, immediately following the January 12 earthquake and again at the outbreak of cholera in October.
One of the modalities to be used in the CARICOM-Australia partnership will be people to people and institutional links. In this regard, Baxter also announced that an additional 30 scholarships for the Caribbean region, worth AU$3.8 million, would be granted over the next four years, increasing the overall number from 80 to 110 over the period.
The CARICOM delegation to the talks was led by Lolita Applewhaite, deputy secretary-general and included senior officials of the directorates of trade and economic integration, human and social development and foreign and community relations.
Trinidad billionaires win another stay of extradition
Two Trinidadian billionaires, who have been fighting extradition for the past three years, won their appeal in the Trinidad and Tobago Court of Appeal when the court ordered a stay of the extradition order and ruled that the attorney general's extradition decision be reviewed by a High Court judge,
The Trinidad Guardian newspaper reported that attorneys for the attorney general served notice of appeal, to challenge the decision at the Judicial Committee of the London Privy Council. This means that this aspect of the matter will have yet another prolonged delay since extradition proceedings started more than three years ago.
Appellate Court Judge Wendell Kangaloo was critical of Justice Joan Charles' handling of the application for judicial review. He suggested that it was hurried and decided without careful consideration, especially as it was arguable whether the attorney general had acted irrationally.
Attorney General Anand Ramlogan signed an order about two months ago extraditing the two wealthy businessmen, who sources say financed the United National Congress (UNC) party led by Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar.
The two men are wanted in the United States to face several charges of fraud and money laundering totalling millions of dollars, arising out of the billion dollar Piarco Airport scandal.
They were charged with six other Americans, who have already been jailed, for a series of offences two years ago.
Immediately after the appellate court ruled in favour of the two men, their attorneys filed an application for bail, but the Court of Appeal dismissed the request, stating that they had no jurisdiction to hear such an application. The lawyers will no doubt file their application and seek a hearing before a High Court judge.
Guyana loses all confidence in CARICOM trade negotiator
The government of Guyana has written to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) secretary general Sir Edwin Carrington affirming that it has lost all confidence in senior trade negotiator in the Office of Trade Negotiations Carl Greenidge and will not allow him to represent Guyana’s cause because he acted unprofessionally by making statements that Guyana lacks visionary leadership and is in a nightmare.
Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir, who was acting foreign minister during the time of Greenidge’s statements, said that not only did he act unprofessionally but he also has no moral grounds for making such statements.
Greenidge, who is also a former finance minister under the People’s National Congress (PNC), in his capacity as a trade negotiator for CARICOM represents all the governments of the region including Guyana and it was unprofessional of him to make those pronouncements on Guyana, Nadir said.
According to Nadir, there are certain professional ethics that Greenidge should have adhered to since he works for the government and this prevents him from being critical of it.
“If you are working with an organization it is unprofessional for you to criticize it from within. If you don’t believe in what it is doing and if you feel strongly you should quit before criticising it,” Nadir said.
He added that, as a citizen of Guyana, Greenidge is allowed to make those comments but as an employee of the government of Guyana Greenidge acted very unprofessionally.
This, he said, is also Cabinet’s position.
“Greenidge does not qualify if we compare the performances of the two administrations the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) and the PNC when Carl Greenidge was finance minister. They are poles apart,” the labour minister stated.
Nadir recalled the period under Greenidge’s tenure as finance minister when the per capita debt was in excess of US$8,000 per person.
“That is why we say that he has no moral authority whatsoever to say that this country lacks visionary leadership and it is in this nightmare. We have done an exceedingly good job in the PPP/C administration of rebuilding the economy and putting it on a path of four years of sustained positive economic growth,” Nadir declared.
The labour minister further stated that if the performances of Greenidge as finance minister versus Dr Ashni Singh or former finance minister and now President Bharrat Jagdeo were to be compared they would be poles apart; a hopeless one and the other one of consistent growth, more opportunities and expansion of the economy.
Greenidge as Finance Minister under the PNC was an utter failure given that there was a freeze in wages in all state corporations for a number of years. However, under the PPP/C administration every year the public sector wages increased, the minister stated.
Nadir also dispelled views that Greenidge’s statements represent the majority of Guyanese.
He added that with the per capita debt that Guyana and with the wages at the time of Greenidge’s stewardship as finance minister it would have taken every man woman and child working for seven years at an average income to pay off his or her portion of the debt.
French manufacturer says its planes are safe after safety issues raised by Trinidad government
French aircraft manufacturer ATR says its planes are safe and that suggestions made by the People's Partnership government in Trinidad and Tobago that there may be safety issues with its aircraft have no basis in fact.
The Trinidad Express newspaper reported that the southern France-based turboprop aircraft maker said on Wednesday that it has noted discussions in Trinidad and Tobago during the past couple of weeks about the acquisition by state-owned carrier Caribbean Airlines (CAL) of nine ATR airplanes to renew its fleet.
Approved by Cabinet and agreed to by ATR and Caribbean Airlines in September, the contract for the 68-seat ATR 72-600 aircraft is valued at US$200 million. However, the deal and the firing of former CAL CEO Capt. Ian Brunton are now at the heart of an impasse between the George Nicholas-led board and Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner.
The ongoing discussions on the deal have elicited concerns about the safety of ATR aircraft and the need to review this in the context of CAL's choice of aircraft. ATR, however, has not taken too kindly to the insinuation of such safety issues.
Cuban programme helps 60,000 Guatemalans learn to read and write
A year considered as a year of consolidation for the Cuban “Yes I Can” literacy teaching programme, by way of which some 60,000 illiterates learned how to read and write, is coming to an end in Guatemala.
A total of 11 municipalities in that Central American country were declared free of illiteracy, according to the parameters of the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization, the Prensa Latina news agency reported.
Osmany Justis, national coordinator, offered a comprehensive explanation of the development of this programme as 2010 is about to end, a year in which the number of people who were taught how to read and write was tripled, following the decision to bring the program to the country’s 22 departments.
The National Commission for Literacy Teaching, under the presidency of Alvaro Colom, adopted the Cuban audiovisual method, conceived to teach people how to read and write in three months, with few human resources.
Due to the short duration of “Yes I Can”, the rate of attendance and permanence in classrooms is higher. The programme stands out for its flexibility, since it adapts to the characteristics and cultural conditions of the places where it’s implemented, and allows for the learning of illiterates in their own homes or near them.
Justis announced that educators are getting ready to apply the method in mam and quiche, two of the most spoken languages among natives in Guatemala, a nation of Mayan roots.