23. January 2010 by admin.

IMMEDIATE VACANCY

A GROWING AND DYNAMIC SUPERMARKET, RESTAURANT, INTERNET CAFE AND SPORTS BAR IS SEEKING TO HIRE THE FOLLOWING PERSONS:

1 MERCHANDISER

2 CASHIERS

1 WAITRESS

1 COOK

INTERESTED PERSONS SHOULD FORWARD APPLICATION AND RESUME TO:

THE CEO

ST. ELMO’S ENTERPRISES INC.

MOON TOWN

ST.  LUCY

BARBADOS

OR EMAIL YOUR APPLICATION TO:

seeincmoontown@gmail.com

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23. January 2010 by admin.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, (Reuters) – Rescuers pulled two  barely alive survivors from the rubble of Port-au-Prince yesterday as hungry and homeless Haitians clamoured for food, which  was slow in arriving 10 days after the massive earthquake.

A Haitian boy cries while waiting in line for food and water at a tent encampment in Port-au-Prince yesterday. REUTERS/Hans Deryk

An 84-year-old woman was pulled from under a wrecked  building yesterday, the doctor who treated her said.

“They pulled her out early this morning. She was barely  responding, she had wounds all over her body, and maggots,”  said Dr Vladimir Larouche, a Haitian-American doctor from New  York, working at Port-au-Prince General Hospital.

“I treated her and made her stable. The (U.S.) army  evacuated her to a boat,” he told Reuters.

Elsewhere in the shattered capital, an Israeli rescue team  freed a 22-year-old man from the rubble. Rescuers and local  residents hugged and celebrated after pulling out the man, who  was limp and suffering from dehydration.

Although aid from around the world has been pouring into  the wrecked city in a huge U.S.-led relief operation, quake  survivors camped out in the rubble-strewn streets still  complained bitterly that they were not receiving food.

“We are hungry, we are thirsty, we can’t stand it anymore.  We want food, we want water. Down with Preval. Long live  Obama,” shouted a group of protesters outside the police  station where President Rene Preval’s government is operating.

Haitians wait in line for food and water distribution as a U.S. Navy helicopter lands in Port-au-Prince yesterday. REUTERS/ Hans Deryk

Police pushed back the few dozen protesters.

Preval, whose own presidential palace and home collapsed in  the Jan. 12 quake that killed up to 200,000 people, said his  government and international partners were doing everything  possible to get assistance to the hundreds of thousands of  needy survivors.

“We are not sitting idle doing nothing. I know the scale of  the problem and how people are suffering,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent in a large military  task force to spearhead the international relief efforts.

Up to 1.5 million Haitians lost their homes in the  earthquake that rocked the poor Caribbean country.

Relief agencies estimated one-third of Haiti’s 9 million  people would need emergency food, water and shelter for an  extended period.

“We can do this 24 hours a day for the next six months and  we still won’t meet the need,” said First Sergeant Rob  Farnsworth, part of a U.S. Army airborne unit handing out food  packs at a squalid camp where survivors lived in the open air.

SOME SIGNS OF DAILY LIFE

There were some signs of daily life resuming. Taptaps,  Haiti’s small, colorfully decorated private buses, circulated  in Port-au-Prince, sharing streets with the earth-movers and  digging machines clearing debris.

Banks were scheduled to reopen today and money  transfer agencies did brisk business after opening yesterday.

“I want to get some cash sent by my family from Canada.  It’s $500 but it’s difficult. There are so many people,” said  businessman Aslyn Denis, 31, waiting in a line with hundreds of  people, some of them jostling each other, outside a Unitransfer  office.

The dead body of a young man lay in a street, his head  swollen and bloody. Residents said he tried to steal money and  was stoned by a crowd. He wore socks but his shoes were gone  and his pockets had been pulled out.

Edmond Mulet, acting head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission  in Haiti, said coordination in delivering aid was getting  better every day. But Henriette Chamouillet, the World Health  Organization representative in Haiti, said it remained a  problem.

She said the Haitian prime minister complained at a morning  meeting with aid workers that only 10 percent of the population  in makeshift camps had received any food aid while some camps  had received three times the amount of food they needed.

Nearly 1,000 hungry people swarmed a U.S. military truck as  an 82nd Airborne company known as “the Beast” handed out food  and water at an encampment on a soccer field. Overwhelmed, the  troops pulled out after distributing 600 packaged meals,  leaving 250 food packs still on the truck.

A large supermarket, Big Star Market, reopened in the  Petionville suburb on Friday, selling everything from slabs of  ham and goat meat to Valentine’s Day chocolates. But the store  manager said they had only a week or two of stocks left and had  received no deliveries.

U.S. Navy helicopters ferried in boxes of water to  distribute to Haitians lined up at a sprawling survivors’ camp  that covered a golf course. Actor Sean Penn stopped by to  deliver antibiotics, painkillers and water filters. “The whole  city has collapsed,” he said.

U.S. troops were giving away 50,000 solar- and  crank-powered radios to help displaced Haitians receive  announcements telling them where aid was available.

More than 13,000 U.S. military personnel are in Haiti and  on ships offshore, flying in supplies, evacuating the seriously  wounded and protecting aid distribution points. The United  Nations is adding 2,000 troops and 1,500 police to its  9,000-member peacekeeping mission.

MILLIONS PLEDGED

More than $1.2 billion has been pledged to help rebuild  roads, government buildings and homes, but the World Bank said  much more would be needed to get Haiti on its feet.

“My anticipation is that $1.2 billion is just the floor,”  the bank’s director for the Caribbean, Yvonne Tsikata, told  France 24 television.

The International Monetary Fund urged donors gathering in  Montreal tomorrow to adopt a Marshall Plan for Haiti, similar  to the U.S. effort that helped rebuild Europe after World War  Two. “It is not unrealistic to imagine that the country can be  rebuilt as a prosperous nation. But it needs help over a  prolonged period,” IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn  wrote on the Huffington Post website.

Haitians are realizing it could take months or years to  regain some sense of normalcy.

“We want it to be over, but it’s not finished yet, things  are bad,” said Jeanette, a 53-year-old architect shopping at  the Big Star Market. “We have no stability, no direction, we’ve  been left to fend for ourselves. We can’t plan for the future,  we’re just living day-to-day.” (Stabroek News)

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23. January 2010 by admin.

RICE AND PEAS; MACARONI PIE

COU COU; STEAMED PUDDING AND SOUSE

STEAMED PUDDING AND PICKLED CHICKEN FOOT

GROUND PROVISION; BAKED CHICKEN

BAKED PORK; BBQ SPARERIBS

BBQ PIG TAIL; SEA CAT

FRIED SNAPPER; GRILLED FISH

LAMB STEW; FISH GRAVY

STEAMED VEGETABLES; TOSSED SALAD

MACARONI SALAD; COLE SLAW

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23. January 2010 by admin.

Nikita Braxton South Bureau

AFTER donating one hundred mattresses to Haiti, the president of the Hardware Dealers Co-operative Society of Trinidad and Tobago is calling on other hardware stores to do the same. Joseph Callender said following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake last week, a decision was made by the board to assist by donating the mattresses and 1,000 tarpaulins. ’It is a starting point. An interim gesture for the people of Haiti. We are asking all hardwares to do the same to help,’ Callender said. Callender said he knew that, apart from food and water, the people have many needs and the donation may help to provide a comfortable resting place for some of the displaced. The items are expected to be delivered in Haiti today with the help of the South Trinidad Chamber of Industry and Commerce, Callender said. (Trinidad Express)

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23. January 2010 by admin.

Aretha Welch awelch@trinidadexpress.com

Central Bank Governor, Ewart Williams has said, though this country has poor people and has just come out of three consecutive quarters of economic decline, it should give all it can to its devastated Caribbean neighbour Haiti. His comments were made on Thursday in response to questions on whether or not this country, given its recent economic ailments could afford to give more to the ravaged country which has a population of over 10 million. Haiti was struck by a 7.0 magnitude earthquake last Tuesday. The natural disaster has left millions homeless and thousands dead. The Government has pledged US$1 million towards recovery efforts in the island which is a Caricom member state. The Governor who formerly worked within the region (inclusive of Haiti) for three decades with the International Monetary Fund, told the audience during an Employers’ Consultative Association function that every country should give to Haiti. While he admitted he usually does not comment on matters such as these, he felt the Haiti situation was so devastating that it warranted everyone’s attention. During the launch of the association’s 50th anniversary celebrations and two-day workshop, Williams said, ’I don’t think anybody should say because we have poor people we should not give to Haiti.’ Persons attending the event, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, in Port of Spain expressed their support for Williams’ sentiments. (Trinidad Express)

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23. January 2010 by admin.

Kristy Ramnarine kramnarie@trinidadexpress.com

hellish experience: Dale Enoch TRINIDADIAN journalist Dale Enoch is now stranded in the Dominican Republic after his passport went missing. The I95.5 FM Head of News and Current Affairs and his colleague, Head of Production Jerome Lewis, have been covering the aftermath of the catastrophic 7.0 earthquake which hit Haiti on January 12. Enoch and Lewis left Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday to head to Haiti. The men boarded a Caribbean Airlines flight to St Maarten where they managed to get on a flight to the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti. In the Dominican Republic’s capital, Santo Domingo, the men boarded a bus operated by Caribbean Tours in order to enter Haiti. ’Once you take the bus you have to hand in your passport at the border,’ said Enoch in a telephone interview yesterday. ’We entered Haiti on Tuesday and we got back in the Dominican Republic yesterday (Thursday). I did not get back my passport when we returned. The bus company has refused to take responsibility for the situation. They are saying that they didn’t see the passport. That is ridiculous because I handed in the passport when I bought the ticket to Haiti.’ He added, ’It appears that there is a passport racket going on. Once your passport has a US visa in it, it is attractive.’ Enoch is now advising people going to Haiti to be careful before being trapped in a position like him. ’I was supposed to leave Santo Domingo on Thursday but I was unable to because I don’t have my travel documents. I lost all my bookings. Being trapped in a country is like being trapped in hell,’ he said. Enoch has been in contact with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Paula Gopee-Scoon, who is assisting in getting him temporary travel documents. He has also been in contact with the Consulate in Santo Domingo, who is waiting on the Jamaican High Commission, which is the closest to the Dominican Republic, to issue the temporary travel documents. Enoch is hoping that before the end of the week he will receive the travel documents and be able to return home. Lewis has decided to remain with Enoch until the matter is sorted out.

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23. January 2010 by admin.

Juhel Browne jbrowne@trinidadexpress.com

Eight Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) have contributed a total of US$4 million towards the relief effort in Haiti, with Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana topping the list with pledges of US$1 million each. Caricom Secretary General Edwin Carrington made the disclosure during a news conference at the 15-member regional body’s headquarters in Turkeyen, Guyana, that was broadcast live online to different locations in several member states, where journalists posed questions on its efforts to assist earthquake-ravaged Haiti. As he gave a breakdown of the pledges made by the Caricom member states to date, Carrington took note of Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s announcement that the US$1 million (TT$6.3 million) this country has pledged to Haiti is ’in the first instance’. ’So that there maybe, even from these (member states) additional resources,’ Carrington said. He said the ’information we have at the moment’ is that in addition to the pledges from Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana, the other six Caricom states contributed as follows: Grenada-US$100,000, Suriname-US$1 million, St Lucia -EC (Eastern Caribbean) $500,000, the Virgin Islands-US$8,000, Antigua and Barbuda-EC$100,000 and St Vincent and the Grenadines-US$100,000. In addition, Carrington said the CBD has pledged US$200,000. In doing so, he and other senior Caricom officials defended the organisation from criticisms throughout the region that its response after the earthquake last week has been lacking. The Caricom officials highlighted Jamaica’s immediate deployment of a contingent of troops to Haiti after the earthquake and its 1000-member strong Caricom team there now. When asked about the offer by Haiti’s exiled president Jean Bertrand Aristide to return to his homeland, Carrington said this is ’an internal matter for Haiti’ and Caricom had taken no official position on the matter. As for Jamaica’s willingness to accept Haitian refugees, Caricom Implementation Agency for Crime and Security (IMPACS) executive director, Lynne Anne Williams, said there are some concerns about ensuring the proper identification of any such Haitians, due to the escape of 3,780 prisoners when Haiti’s main jail collapsed during the earthquake. Williams said that among the procedures that must be put in place by Caricom to deal with the refugee issue, is a system ’confirming the documentation and identification of persons who wish to move to different Caricom states’. (Trinidad Express)

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23. January 2010 by admin.

Aabida Allaham

food at last: Haitians carry bags of beans from a US aid distribution point in Port-au-Prince yesterday. More aftershocks rocked the Haitian capital yesterday, as UN teams switched focus from search and rescue to relief efforts ten days after a catastrophic earthquake demolished much of the city. -Photo: AFP SEVEN members of the Muslims of Trinidad and Tobago organisation have retuned from the quake-stricken nation of Haiti pleading for more to be done for that country. ’It was extremely sad, the situation over in Haiti, and there is so much that the people need there and I know that it is going to take years before they are comfortable again,’ president of the organisation, Imtiaz Mohammed, told the Express yesterday evening. The group left Trinidad last weekend and arrived in Santo Domingo on January 19. After spending several days and approximately US$20,000 on food and water, the group then made a nine- hour journey across the border into Port-au-Prince, Haiti. ’We were able to move around Port-au-Prince, but you know all the while there were bodies under the rubble, the smell of dead bodies. And let me tell you, it smells high,’ Mohammed said. ’There are buildings all over and guaranteed there are bodies under there. Right now there are children being rescued by a New York rescue team and I am sure they are still rescuing them all now and trying to find the ones who are alive.’ Saddened by the disaster he witnessed in the impoverished country, Mohammed said he saw people walking down the road with bodies in barrels along the way like garbage and nobody was even paying attention to them. ’Just imagine that, even pigs sniffing on bodies and those are just in certain areas and you wonder why the people are not taking the bodies up and burying them. I mean, there is like one here and one there. You know, people walking up and down, people living on the streets, children living on the streets, sleeping on the streets,’ he said. ’These children, you know, they stand up, they stare, and you know they are totally confused, they don’t know what is happening or what is going on. They have no food, they have no water, they have no toilet facilities, they have nothing. All these people have is the air that they breathe everyday and the one piece of clothes they had on when everything came tumbling down in that first earthquake.’ While there, the group experienced the 6.1 magnitude earthquake and said it completely scared them. ’It was just after Fajr (morning prayer), and I was sitting and all of a sudden one of the brothers next to me shout out something, but I didn’t understand because it was in creole language, and then two seconds three seconds, everybody jumped up with fright and run out into the open area and then we realise it was an earthquake taking place. We were not even thinking an earthquake was going to hit,’ he recalled. See Page 5 photo. He said Haitians would need help for a long time to come, adding he intends to make another trip soon. He offered this advice to persons still seeking to give assistance. ’Don’t bring them clothes, they don’t want clothes, they don’t even want a proper shelter, they want food and water, that’s what they want and we have to move quickly to give them that.’ (Trinidad Express)

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23. January 2010 by admin.

Gary Spaulding, Senior Gleaner Writer
A three-vehicle collision on Marcus Garvey Drive in Kingston yesterday involving a JUTC bus, a tanker and a truck. Several passengers were taken to hospital with minor injuries. - Norman Grindley /Chief Photographer

JAMAICA WAS miraculously spared another awful catastrophe yesterday after a tanker filled with oil ploughed into a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus filled with passengers and a large delivery truck along Marcus Garvey Drive.

There were no fatalities but several JUTC passengers were injured.

Piercing screams reverberated from the 22A JUTC bus heading to Spanish Town from downtown Kingston in the aftermath of the impact.

The sounds of terror echoed the fear the passengers said they felt when they realised that the highly flammable tanker could have exploded.

Frightened passengers, assisted by others, scrambled through air vents in the roof of the bus, as well as some of the windows, when the Gleaner team arrived on the scene.

Persons claiming to be eyewitnesses from nearby Greenwich Town, as well as employees from companies in the area, said the JUTC bus had stopped to allow the delivery truck to reverse into Industrial Sales Limited when the oil tanker collided into both vehicles.

Jessica, a JUTC passenger, was on her way to Spanish Town to take her ailing grandmother to hospital, but she did not make it.

She told The Gleaner that she was in pain, having sustained stomach and hand injuries, but that did not prevent her from escaping through one of the windows.

The extent of Jessica’s injuries was unclear.

free-flowing tears

A few metres away, tears flowed freely from two women who were seated in a marked police vehicle preparing to take them to hospital.

Quivering and barely able to speak, the women gave their names as Donna Dixon and Michelle.

Dixon told The Gleaner that she received a severe blow to the head as she was seated on the side of the bus which received the full impact of the hit from the oil tanker.

The tanker had reportedly just loaded up at the nearby Petrojam facility on Marcus Garvey Drive.

Two schoolboys, too frightened to speak, were seated beside them.

JUTC personnel took the names of the injured passengers.

The police were out in their numbers manning the area, which was choked with traffic, while fire personnel took precautionary measures as others toiled to extricate the three vehicles, the extensively damaged fronts still wrapped around each other.

Up to midday, the side of the Marcus Garvey Drive dual carriageway leading to Three Miles was blocked. (Jamaica Gleaner)

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23. January 2010 by admin.

HEADING OFF? Barbados and West Indies fast bowler Fidel Edwards, will be out of the game for  a year after undergoing spinal surgery earlier this week in Jamaica. (file photo)

by TONY COZIER

WEST INDIES fast bowler Fidel Edwards faces the prospect of another year out of the game following spinal surgery in Jamaica three weeks ago to remove a herniated disc.

West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) director Conde Riley, first vice-president of the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA), reported yesterday that Edwards, who turns 28 on February 6, had been referred to Dr Akshai Mansingh, head of the WICB medical panel, following an MRI scan on his painful back.

He was admitted to the University of the West Indies (UWI) hospital at Mona where Riley said a successful operation was performed. He returned home last week.

“The medical assessment is that he has to go back to square one, strengthen the area and, hopefully, he should be able to resume bowling gradually by the end of the year,” Riley said. “Whether he will get back to full pace, only time will tell.”

The problem flared during the World Twenty20 Championship in England in June when Edwards withdrew from the West Indies starting XI on the morning of the match against England.

He underwent rehabilitation in Barbados, supervised by the WICB’s physical therapist Jaqueline King, but this was compromised when he played in the inter-parish tournament at the 3Ws Oval, in two Twenty20 matches organised by the West Indies Players’ Association in Port-of-Spain and Georgetown in August, and for the Deccan Chargers in the inaugural Indian Champions League in India in October.

The gloomy prognosis on a bowler of genuine pace and penetration is a setback to Edwards’ already injury-prone career, and comes at a time when his partnership with fellow Barbadian and new tearaway Kemar Roach would have given the West Indies attack extra spice.

In 43 Tests spread over seven years since his debut against Sri Lanka in 2003, Edwards has taken 122 wickets, more than any current West Indian. They have included eight returns of five or more wickets in an innings. He also has 60 wickets in 50 One-Day Internationals (ODIs).

Another key fast bowler, Jerome Taylor, has also been out of action since aggravating a hip injury during the first Test against Australia in Brisbane last November. His record is 82 wickets in 29 Tests and 92 in 62 ODIs.

They are records that emphasise the effect of their combined absence on the bowling strength of a West Indies team that faces a packed schedule over the coming five months with five ODIs and two Twenty20 Internationals against Zimbabwe, the third World Twenty20 Championships in the Caribbean, and one Twenty20 International, five ODIs and three home Tests against South Africa. (Nation News)

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