By Akile Simon
April 30, 2011 – trinidadexpress.com
PUPILS at an all-girls prestige high school busted a biology teacher who took up duties last week, revealing that he was convicted in the United States a few years ago, on charges of sexually assaulting five of his female pupils.
Continue reading Sex offender teacher busted by his pupil
Newsday Editorial
May 1 2011 – newsday.co.tt
The recent kidnapping for ransom of a citizen of China who owned and operated a restaurant at St Helena has brought to the fore, once again, the question of illegal immigrants living and working in Trinidad and Tobago.
Speaking in Senate recently, Independent Senator Rolph Balgobin raised this issue.
Continue reading Strangers in our land
By Raffique Shah
April 30, 2011
WHEN one sees the insensitivity—one might even say insanity—of persons who authorised and executed the destruction of food and root crops on three parcels of state land, one wonders what the hell is going on in this country. Successive governments, the incumbents included, have proclaimed their intent to make food production a priority. Yet, they have all committed agrarian atrocities, most times citing “progress” as an excuse. The price of progress is indeed very high.
Continue reading Agrarian Atrocity
Kidnapped Chinese restaurant owner Xue Hua Shan
Cops step up search for kidnapped woman
Police probing the kidnapping of Chinese restaurant owner Xue Hua Shan said her relatives told them that the woman’s mother, in China, received a text message saying her daughter was released. The text message, police said, was sent in a Chinese dialect to Shan’s mother who lives in China. Investigators said they had not contacted Shan’s mother and did not know if the message was true or a hoax. But detectives said yesterday that they were still looking for Shan and had no concrete evidence she had been released by her kidnappers. The lawmen said they have stepped up their search for Shan after also receiving a message from someone who called the Piarco Police Station around 6.30 am yesterday, claiming she had been dropped off near a bridge in St Helena.
Continue reading Chinese Kidnapping – Slain Restaurant Owner
Newsday Editorial
April 28 2011 – newsday.co.tt
Authorities may have followed the letter of the law in the eviction of squatters illegally farming State lands at Mausica Road, D’Abadie, but officials might have used a defter touch.
We agree that the D’Abadie farmers were legally obliged to vacate the lands, but this problem stretched back to 2008. Discussions could have been held with squatting farmers in order to establish a date which facilitated the collection of crops and which did not delay in manner untoward the housing project in whose way the farmers stand.
Continue reading Tragic waste
By Dr. Selwyn R. Cudjoe
April 27, 2011
It is true generally that citizens of nation states are emboldened by the relative power their original homelands enjoy in the world’s council of governance. Jews all over the world are emboldened and strengthened by Israel’s power as Indians all over the world are strengthened and empowered by the growing international importance of India which is why not one East Indian demurred when India offered citizenship to Indians in its diaspora after our government allowed Indian and Russian business people to enter Trinidad and Tobago without a visa.
Continue reading Africa’s Global Importance
By Burton Sankeralli
April 26, 2011
Pineapple… sweet potato… water melon… pak choi… lettuce… topi tambo… bodi… pumpkin… corn…
On April 25th, 2011, this Day of Destruction, the so-called Peoples’ Partnership government destroyed 175 acres of food crops in two agricultural sites. There are certain actions that come to define a regime, certain events when such a regime loses its fundamental credibility. Such an event may involve bloodshed or it may, on the surface, be largely symbolic or it can involve the killing of crops.
Continue reading Day of Destruction
By Raffique Shah
April 23, 2011
FORTY-ONE years ago, almost to the week, tens of thousands of mainly idealistic young people thought we had killed and buried the “race bogey” in this cussed country. We had grown up knowing that race-tension lay beneath the veneer of peaceful co-existence that those in authority had proclaimed. Too often, we had heard the epithets “nigger” and “coolie” bandied about, suggesting that after almost 150 years of living together in this melting pot, our people of different races and cultures were clinging to prejudices of a distant past.
Continue reading A full circle
Race Talk in House: Jack, Rowley square off
The People’s Partnership has achieved better ethnic balance in the appointments of boards, Works Minister Jack Warner stated yesterday. He was speaking in the House of Representatives on the motion filed by Dr Keith Rowley, asking the House to reaffirm its collective commitment to the principles of fairness and meritocracy in public affairs in the light of the “reckless and divisive statements” made by the former Police Service Commission chairman Nizam Mohammed.
Continue reading Race Talk in the House
By Stephen Kangal
April 20, 2011
The Police Service is singularly the most unique and powerful institution of the state. The establishment of that service cannot be honestly and usefully compared with and justified by the ethnic composition of the establishment of any other public and private sector institution. At the same time the entry requirements for this service is academically minimal. Brawn was accorded overriding importance at the early stage of the then Police Force. Accordingly studying law, medicine or the professions was never an alternative to being a police man.
Continue reading Police Service Is Unique and Powerful