caribbean star #22 vol.4

Why punish the West Indies players when the administration is to blame? See More on Page 41

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WHEN WILL IT STOP Man busted trying to smuggle cocaine inside containers of curry and rice at JFK Airport

COP'S SON SHOT DEADThe murder of 28-year-old Johnathan “Tallo” Moore, a 39 Rosewood Ave-nue, Coconut Drive, Morvant resident, was caught on video tape as unknown assailants ambushed him at about 8.30 Saturday morning.

See More on Page 4 See More on 0

Gunmen Beat, Rob Corentyne Family Of MillionsSix gunmen yesterday invaded a Maida, Corentyne home, beating the family and robbing them of cash and jewellery worth millions even as the police did not answer frantic phone calls and respond-ed more than half an hour after the bandits had left.

See More on Page 26

NYPD MONITORING INTERNET THREATS, LAWMAKERS CALL FOR BULLET-PROOF POLICE CARSOfficers taking precautions in wake of NYPD officers murdered

Jackie Chan’s son Jaycee prosecuted on drug chargeKungfu superstar Jackie Chan’s 32-year-old son Jaycee Chan was today prosecuted here for allegedly providing a venue for drug users.

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The goddess Kali, seen here in a new Brooklyn Museum exhibit, should be worshiped in temples — not on museum walls, prominent Hindu leader Rajan Zed said.

Hindus angered over Brooklyn Museum’s new massive exhibit of goddess KaliThe cultural institution’s 60-foot wall mural of the highly revered deity of destruction and rebirth is ‘hurtful to devotees,’ said prominent Hindu leader Rajan Zed.

Hindus are upset over a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum that in-cludes a 60-foot wall mural featur-

ing an image of the highly revered deity Kali.

The goddess of destruction and re-birth, who has six arms, three legs and three breasts, is meant to be worshiped in temples or home shrines — not “thrown around loosely in reimagined versions

for dramatic effects on museum walls,” prominent Hindu leader Rajan Zed said.

“Such absurd depiction of goddess Kali with no scriptural backing was hurtful to the devotees,” the director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Nevada added.

The large-scale mural at the Brooklyn Museum is the brainchild of Chitra Ga-nesh, a Ditmas Park resident, who is orig-

inally from India.Ganesh, 39, made the mural “of itera-

tions of feminine power” with an amalga-mation of random objects.

The museum did not return several calls and emails seeking comment, and Ganesh was not immediately available.

In a video describing the exhibit, Ga-nesh says her work “explores themes of femininity and multiplicity using inspira-

tion from the collection of objects of the Brooklyn Museum.”

There are more than 150 prayer flags displayed above the mural designed to in-voke institutions or temples, Ganesh said.

The flags each have a silkscreen image affixed on them and are made from her mother’s old saris and other materials from India.

This is not the first time Zed has been angered by the use of sacred Hindu sym-bols.

The vocal leader asked Urban Outfit-ters last December to yank socks with the image of Hindu deity Lord Ganesha.

He called the Philadelphia-based cloth-ing store’s sock “inappropriate” and “dis-turbing.”

“Hindus were for free artistic expres-sion and speech as much as anybody else if not more,” he said at the time.

“But faith was something sacred and attempts at trivializing it hurt the follow-ers,” he added.

Last July, Zed also asked the store to pull a duvet cover with the picture of Lord Ganesha, to no avail.

In 2007, he made history as the first Hindu cleric to lead the U.S. Senate’s morning prayer after an invite from Sen-ate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The invocation was vociferously op-posed by several Christian groups.

The large–scale mural at the Brooklyn Museum is the brainchild of Chitra Ganesh, a Ditmas Park resident, who is originally from India.


COP'S SON SHOT DEADThe murder of 28-year-old Johnathan “Tallo” Moore, a 39 Rosewood Avenue, Co-conut Drive, Morvant resi-dent, was caught on video tape as unknown assailants ambushed him at about 8.30 Saturday morning.

Newsday received the video from anonymous sources that showed

Moore as he was attacked by the assailants.

The video began with Moore walking toward a white vehicle, attempting to enter. As he sat in the car two men, whose faces could not be seen approached the car with pistols in hand and began firing. Moore escaped from inside the car by jump-ing out of the passenger side of the vehicle.

The video ended with Moore running for his life down a street, while the two men gave chase. The two gunmen were followed by a blue Toyota Corolla. The video also showed Moore ly-ing on the roadside with his mouth and eyes open — dead.

Police sources say in an at-tempt to escape the 28-year-old man ran along Isles Trace. The Corolla, which was occu-pied by two other armed as-sailants, slammed into Moore, and pinned him against a truck on the eastern side of Isles Trace. The gunmen then opened fire on Moore, killing him on the spot.

The gunmen then entered the Corolla, and while try-ing to flee the scene crashed along Isles Trace. The men then escaped on foot, by run-ning north along the trace.

The scene was processed by WPC Dabreau and pho-tographed by PC Endall. The body was viewed by DMO Dr Ravi Kawal.

Moore’s body was removed by employees of Guides Fu-neral Home, and the Corolla vehicle was wrecked and tak-en to the Chaguanas Police Station.

Reeling from Moore’s death, his father, a police inspector with the St James branch of the Central Intel-ligence Division described his son as a progressive, and helpful man, despite his run

ins with the law. While police say that the

man was known to them, Newsday spoke with rela-tives, who said the man did everything he could to ele-vate his family, despite his trouble with the law.

“He’s had his ups and downs when it came to the law; for a while he was held by police officers at least once every three months,” said Moore’s father, “But all in all, if he had done anything in his past, those days were behind him. He was a progressive, and helpful man. Nothing was too hard for him to do if it meant helping someone, and he built his family up in helping them.”

The father revealed that Moore spent Friday night with a female friend and was returning home, when the worst happened.

Up to press time, police have neither made any ar-rests in connection with the shooting death nor estab-lished a motive.

Moore’s father revealed funeral arrangements are al-ready being made, and his son’s funeral is set for to-morrow. The father said while the entire family is in sham-bles after learning of Moore’s death, they will have to come to terms with his murder, one way or the other.

“The family really isn’t coping well with this, but we cannot press an ‘undo’ but-ton and start over. We will just have to come together as a family and move on,” the grieving father said.

Guyana closer than ever to settling political instability

Guyana is closer than ever to solving the riddle of political instability with constitutional

reform also inevitable, former Speak-er of the National Assembly Ralph Ramkarran says.

“If no political party gains an abso-lute majority of the votes at the up-coming elections, as many speculate can again happen, a coalition govern-ment comprising at least two parties is likely to emerge. A denial at a top place on the political agenda for a political solution (for the distribution of political power) could not then be sustained,” Ramkarran wrote in his column in the Sunday Stabroek yes-terday. “Constitutional reform would follow,” he added.

The AFC has been clamouring for constitutional reform and at the party’s recent conference, its chair-man Nigel Hughes outlined some proposals. Ramkarran said that the proposals suggests that the structure of Guyana’s executive and legislature, and the relationship between them, need to be altered. He noted that the proposals add to those already in circulation, offered by other persons while there is also substantial writing and academic material on record on situations like Guyana’s. “This debate will gather steam and climb to the top of the agenda only when the political conditions mature,” he said.

Ramkarran recalled that in re-sponse to the AFC’s proposals, Gen-eral Secre-tary of the PPP Clement Rohee, said that Guyana’s constitu-tion, which was amended in a reform process between 1999-2001, is the most advanced in the Caribbean Re-gion. “This rejection of constitutional reform demonstrates the absence of the political consensus which is nec-essary to drive such a process,” he observed.

According to Ramkarran, a con-stitution needs to be changed when some or all of its rules no longer re-flect the popular will or when they

have been overtaken after the efflux-ion of time. “Suggestions for reform of the constitution, therefore, reflect a view that it is in need of restructur-ing,” he said.

The former PPP stalwart observed that Guyana has an undeniable polit-ical problem, which is rooted in the existence of two large ethnic groups that have been placed in competition by economic, social and political ar-rangements as they developed his-torically and as they exist today. “This competition, which has expressed itself in communal friction of varying degrees, finds political expression in two large political parties competing for political power. Although both the PPP and the PNC have officially de-clined to acknowledge this situation, they have given implied recognition of it and have offered solutions,” he said.

However, he pointed out that there were several setbacks to the process of establishing a political solution. “These were the rejection of the Na-tional Patriotic Front by the PNC, failure to reach a political consensus for the 1992 general elections, the majoritarian impulse of the PPP after the 1992 elections and the passing of Cheddi Jagan in 1997,” he said.

SEALED“The ascension of Mrs Janet Jagan

to the presidency in 1997, sealed the abandonment of winner does not take all, even by those who had vig-orously supported it in the past. Mrs Jagan had always adamantly rejected all such approaches, notwithstand-ing that they were longstanding par-ty policies, which have never been formally rejected. Desmond Hoyte’s bitter, implacable and sterile politi-cal hostility to the PPP Government from 1992 onwards, dampened any residual ardour within the PPP for winner does not take all,” he added.

Ramkarran asserted that the pri-mary obstacle, therefore, is not the

constitution. “It is the existence of a political problem regarding the dis-tribution of political power. The de jure distribution is solved technically by general elections. But their out-come leaves the bitter taste of ethnic winners and losers, victors and van-quished. In its present day configura-tion, the PPP is yet to acknowledge this state of affairs. With Cheddi Ja-gan at its helm, it did in 1978,” he said.

It was in this context that he re-marked that Guyana is closer than ever to solving the riddle of political instability.

“Our main political parties are blissfully unaware of how in a few important respects some of their ap-proaches are similar. The PNC when in office declared that the race prob-lem had been solved. At the last elec-tions the PPP quietly predicted that it would obtain 60 per cent of the vote, reflecting the same mindset. When in office the PNC rejected any form of coalition with the PPP. Now in office, even in a minority, the PPP rejects any form of coalition with APNU. The persistence of this attitude by the PPP after the upcoming elections, if it gains a majority, will cause that party to temporarily deny the burning de-sire of Guyanese people, including its own supporters, for a political solu-tion. But it cannot postpone the inev-itable indefinitely,” he said.

“Our political process has been painfully slow. This has resulted from the split of the PPP in 1955 and the striving for political dominance since that time. In 1978 the PPP rejected the policy of political dominance. It declared that it did not want to dom-inate or be dominated. The reality of the PPP’s grip on political power since 1992 has put on hold this and all the other admirable ideals of a po-litical solution that it developed while in opposition. Now that its power to dominate is waning, hopefully these ideals will rise to the surface once again,” Ramkarran wrote.


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No nominations yet for SFE

AS of yesterday afternoon, 24 hours before today’s 4.30 pm deadline for nominees to be candidate for

San Fernando East (SFE) in the 2015 general election, no nominations had been sent in by any party group to the constituency executive, Newsday learnt from constituency PRO, Anthony Clarke, yesterday.

Former Prime Minister, Patrick Man-ning, has been MP for 43 years but is understood to want time to undergo two medical checkups to test the viability of his health to be a candidate after a debil-itating stroke in January 2012.

After giving the constituency executive an initial extension to December 22 for nominations, the national executive re-fused a further extension to January 2 to facilitate Manning.

Newsday asked Clarke if he was con-cerned about Rowley’s remarks in yes-terday’s Newsday that the constituency would not be able to meet the PNM Con-stitution’s seven-day minium deadline for party groups to suggest nominees and that this situation would be rectified by the party’s hierarchy. “No concern at all,” replied Clarke.

He said it is up to Rowley and the screening committee — which is usually a mixture of constituency officials and National Executive officials — to choose a candidate. “I don’t see it as a problem

if the leader (Rowley) wants to have an input in the selection, as he would do so anyway,” Clarke explained. Asked if any nominees had been forwarded to the constituency executive, he replied, “Not as yet”. Saying the constituency office will stay open until 4.30 pm today (Mon-day), he added, “Maybe we’ll get some nominations”.

Last Friday, the PNM’s general secre-tary Ashton Ford issued a media state-ment yet again stating the deadline.

“Attention. I wish to make it absolute-ly clear that the deadline for nomination of candidates for the San Fernando East constituency will close on December 22 at 4.30 pm at Balisier House, Port-of-Spain,” wrote Ford. “Nominees who sub-mit their papers after the deadline will not face the screening committee.”

Yesterday Manning’s Facebook page, that has hitherto given hints as to his thinking, had no recent updates to signal his intentions for today. Ford could not be reached, as he was abroad, according to persons close to him, nor could PNM chairman Frankie Khan or PRO Faris Al-Rawi.

Contacted at home Manning’s wife, Hazel Manning, yesterday told Newsday, “Mr Manning is not available”. Asked if he had given her any indications of whether he’d file a nomination, she brushed off the question, saying, “No, no, no”.

Father of daughters, who died in blaze, succumbs to burns

Thirty-four days after jumping from a blazing building in com-mercial Georgetown where his

two daughters were burnt to death, an elderly man died early Sunday morning of severe burns about his body.

Mr. Hilrod Randolph Thomas,68, succumbed to injuries he sustained while fleeing a burning building on King and Robb Streets during the pre-dawn hours of Monday, November 17, 2014.

Former government minister in the People’s National Congress (PNC) administration, Jeffrey Thomas con-firmed that his brother passed away at the Georgetown Public Hospital Cor-

poration (GPHC).Jeffrey said his brother remained

largely unconscious and barely com-municated with visitors throughout his period of hospitalization. According to him, his brother was told by one of his two older daughters that their younger siblings perished in the fire.

Theresa and Clarissa Rosario lost their lives, having failed to flee the locked building.

Police and fire service investigators believe that the fire at the disputed building was the work of arsonists. One man was questioned and later released from custody without being charged for any offence.


By Subhamoy DasHinduism Expert

Kali: The Dark MotherFearful goddess with a heart of a mother

The love between the Divine Mother and her human chil-dren is a unique relationship.

Kali,the Dark Mother is one such deity with whom devotees have a very loving and intimate bond, in spite of her fearful appearance. In this relationship, the worshipper becomes a child and Kali assumes the form of the ever-caring mother.

"O Mother, even a dullard be-comes a poet who meditates upon thee raimented with space, three-eyed, creatrix of the three worlds, whose waist is beautiful with a gir-dle made of numbers of dead men's arms..." (From a Karpuradistotra hymn, translated from Sanskrit by Sir John Woodroffe)

Goddess Durga during one of her battles with the evil forces. As the legend goes, in the battle, Kali was so much involved in the kill-ing spree that she got carried away and began destroying everything in sight. To stop her, Lord Shiva threw himself under her feet. Shocked at this sight, Kali stuck out her tongue in astonishment, and put an end to her homicidal rampage. Hence the common image of Kali shows her in her mêlée mood, standing with one foot on Shiva's chest, with her enormous tongue stuck out.Who is Kali?

Kali is the fearful and ferocious form of the mother goddess. She assumed the form of a powerful goddess and became popular with the composition of the Devi Mahat-mya, a text of the 5th - 6th century AD. Here she is depicted as having born from the brow of

The Fearful Symmetry

Kali is represented with perhaps the fiercest features amongst all the world's deities. She has four arms, with a sword in one hand and the head of a demon in another. The other two hands bless her worship-pers, and say, "fear not"! She has two dead heads for her earrings, a string of skulls as necklace, and a girdle made of human hands as her clothing. Her tongue protrudes

from her mouth, her eyes are red, and her face and breasts are sullied with blood. She stands with one foot on the thigh, and another on the chest of her husband, Shiva.

Awesome Symbols!

Kali's fierce form is strewed with awesome symbols. Her black com-plexion symbolizes her all-embrac-ing and transcendental nature. Says theMahanirvana Tantra : "Just as all colors disappear in black, so all names and forms disappear in her". Her nudity is primeval, fundamen-tal, and transparent like Nature — the earth, sea, and sky. Kali is free from the illusory covering, for she is beyond the all maya or "false consciousness." Kali's garland of fifty human heads that stands for the fifty letters in the Sanskrit al-phabet, symbolizes infinite knowl-edge.

Her girdle of severed human hands signifies work and libera-tion from the cycle of karma. Her white teeth show her inner purity, and her red lolling tongue indicates her omnivorous nature — "her in-discriminate enjoyment of all the world's 'flavors'." Her sword is the destroyer of false consciousness and the eight bonds that bind us.

Her three eyes represent past, present, and future, — the three modes of time — an attribute that lies in the very name Kali ('Kala' in Sanskrit means time). The eminent translator of Tantrik texts, Sir John Woodroffe in Garland of Letters, writes, "Kali is so called because She devours Kala (Time) and then resumes Her own dark formless-ness."

Kali's proximity to cremation grounds where the five elements or "Pancha Mahabhuta" come togeth-er, and all worldly attachments are absolved, again point to the cycle of birth and death. The reclined Shi-va lying prostrate under the feet of Kali suggests that without the pow-er of Kali (Shakti), Shiva is inert.

Forms, Temples and Devotees

Kali's guises and names are di-

verse. Shyama, Adya Ma, Tara Ma and Dakshina Kalika, Chamundi are popular forms. Then there is Bhadra Kali, who is gentle, Shy-amashana Kali, who lives only in the cremation ground, and so on. The most notable Kali temples are in Eastern India — Dakshineshwar and Kalighat in Kolkata (Calcut-ta) and Kamakhya in Assam, a seat of tantrik practices. Ramakrishna Paramhamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Vamakhyapa, and Ramprasad are some of the legendary devotees of Kali. One thing was common to these saints — all of them loved the

goddess as intimately as they loved their own mother.

"My child, you need not know much in order to please Me.

Only Love Me dearly.

Speak to me, as you would talk to your mother,

if she had taken you in her arms."


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It’s not just what you do, it’s who you do it for.

SMRU1614160(Exp.08/07/2016)

Man busted trying to smuggle cocaine inside containers of curry and rice at Kennedy Airport

Oral Anthony Caines, 55, was stopped by customs officers af-ter arriving on a Caribbean Airlines flight from Georgetown, accord-ing to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court. The officer found a plastic bag containing cocaine un-der a layer of food in each food container stashed in his luggage.

He's cooked.A Guyanese national was arrest-

ed at Kennedy Airport trying to smuggle cocaine inside plastic containers of curry and rice.

Oral Anthony Caines, 55, was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers on Wednesday after arriving on

a Caribbean Airlines flight from George-town, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.

The officer found a plastic bag contain-ing cocaine under a layer of food in each food container stashed in his luggage.

Caines said he was paid $5,000 to bring the take-out order of food and drugs to

New York City, Homeland Security spe-cial agent David Schrader said in the complaint.

He was ordered held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brook-lyn.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

officer goes through a traveler’s suitcase

looking for illegal narcotics at John F.

Kennedy Airport.


Gunmen beat, rob Corentyne family of millionsSix gunmen yesterday invaded a Maida, Corentyne home, beating the family and robbing them of cash and jewellery worth millions even as the police did not answer frantic phone calls and responded more than half an hour after the bandits had left.

This caused residents to protest at the Whim police station.

“I call police and holler for help but nobody! Nobody didn’t come,” Noon-wattie Pooran, 45, of Maida Farm told re-porters. Stabroek News was told that at about 2:30 am yesterday, six men armed with guns invaded the Pooran’s home at Lot 47-48 Maida Farm and stole approx-imately $3 million and jewellery worth $1 million.

During the ordeal which lasted for about one and a half hours, the gunmen fired several shots and threatened to kill Latch-man ‘Anil’ Pooran, 42, a large-scale rice vendor. Fearful for his life, Pooran jumped

approximately 10 feet off his front veran-da and scaled a fence that is estimated to be seven feet high and topped by barb and razor wires, to escape from the men. Pooran however, sustained several inju-ries and was admitted to the Anamayah Memorial Hospital.

It is not the first time the family was robbed and the invasion of their heavi-ly-secured home left the family shocked. Noonwattie recalled that they were awak-ened by unusual noises on their premises. “I heard the dogs bark, something break and a sound like a gunshot and I turned and wake up Anil. I tell he put on the cam-era [monitor for the surveillance camer-

as] and we saw four men coming up the stairs,” she recounted. The woman said that after they saw the men coming up-stairs, she sounded an alarm.

The bandits also had with them two 4x4 posts and used these to smash open a glass door at the rear veranda. Hearing the noise, Noonwattie said, they quietly walked out to the front veranda in a bid to get to safety.

The men were experiencing difficulty in entering the home. Noonwattie recalled hearing the men saying that they could not find an entry point into the house. Stabroek News observed that the family’s

home was indeed tightly secured as there was an iron grille over two wooden doors which was locked with top-of-the-line se-curity padlocks.

The men subsequently broke a window that was located next to the door but were hampered by the wooden bars and an iron grille that secured it. However, eventually they broke the wooden bars and bent the iron grille and entered. Noonwattie relat-ed that the family had recently spent over $1.5 million to install the glass windows and door on the rear veranda.

Gunmen beat… see page 13

The bandits smashed their way through this door


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The mother of three lamented that as they hid on the veranda, they made nu-merous calls to the Whim police station but got no response. “I call police and holler for help but nobody! Nobody didn’t come,” she said. Neighbours present at the scene related that after they heard the family’s cries for help, they too made sev-eral calls but could not get on to the police. Many residents said that they refrained from helping the family as the men were heavily armed and had been firing shots wildly.

Noonwattie further recounted to the media that the determined bandits took al-most an hour to gain entry into the house. Upon their entry, she said, they searched

the rooms but could not find anyone. They then called out to her husband. “Anil if yuh na come out, we gone kill yuh,” she re-counted one saying, adding too that while they called out for her husband, they fired their guns. It was at this point, she said, that Pooran fled for his life.

Stabroek News learnt that as three men

entered the home, the other three stood guard at different points on the premis-es. After the bandits found Noonwattie and two of her sons on the veranda, they brought them into the living room and de-manded cash. “They slapped me and asked us for the money…a bag had $2 million was next to the chair and we gave them…”

she stated.The woman recalled that the bandits

were not satisfied and demanded more. “They hit my small son in his back and asked for more. Another bag had $1 mil-lion…and we gave them,” the mother said.

During the ordeal, the bandits ransacked two bedrooms and collected the jewellery. As they searched through the rooms they ripped apart a wardrobe and also slashed the wires connected to the surveillance camera’s DVR and took away the DVR.

Noonwattie said that although the ban-dits had millions of dollars, they still want-ed more and threatened to shoot her in the eye. “I said ‘buddy you broke the ward-robe and took everything, we give you all the money, we don’t have anything else’… I turned and tell he ‘look how much you have and you still want more?’ I fall at his feet and beg for our life,” the woman re-counted.

Realising that they could not get any-thing else, the bandits escaped, heading west of the house and through a dam that leads to the backlands. Stabroek News un-derstands the police arrived on the scene approximately half an hour after the men had fled.

A stunned Noonwattie said that she never expected that they would have ever experienced a robbery of this nature since their house is well secured. “We have cam-eras, [dogs and the house is grilled] and they still rob us…to see thief-man do this to you is best you make a hut and live in-side and eat,” she said.

Stabroek News was told that prior to the robbery, about two weeks ago, four men were seen standing in the vicinity of the premises. Pooran had reported the matter to the police.

Following the failure of the police to re-spond promptly to the robbery, residents protested in front of the Whim police station at about 2pm yesterday. The res-idents called for Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee as well as officers from the Whim police station to go. The protest was supported by the Alliance For Change. An-other protest is planned for today in front of the Whim police station.

Stabroek News learnt that this is the third time the family has suffered from a robbery. In 2009, Pooran was robbed of $2.6 million in cash and jewellery at around 3:30am after he got up to check his truck at Bush Lot, Corentyne. The sec-ond robbery occurred three years ago, also in the night. Pooran was robbed of a quantity of cash and brutally beaten by the bandits. As a result, he installed twelve surveillance cameras.

Gunmen beat… from page 10

Protesters outside the Whim Police Station yesterday (Photo courtesy of Mark Ross)

The grille which was pushed back by wood transformed into a battering ram


ISLAM Peace / submission to the will

of our creator.

The Holiday Season. A Time to dedicate more effort

to understanding the Quran

When society indulges in dis-obedience and dark deeds, a Muslim turns to his creator

and gains closeness by performing acts of obedience. He seeks out guid-ance and direction to the straight path. Allah (S.W.T) has informed us that the highest form of guidance is found in the Quraan, for those who will be fearful of their lord.

Here are some of the many vir-tues of acquiring knowledge of the Quraan:

Uthman (Radhiyallaho anha] nar-rates that Rasulullah (Sallallaho alai-he wasallam) said: “The best amongst you is he who learns the Qur’an and teaches it.” In most of the books, this hadith is quoted with the word ‘and’ between ‘learns’ and ‘teaches’ as above. Thus the greatest reward would be for him who learns the Holy Qur’an and thereafter teaches it to others. But in some of the books this ‘hadith’s is narrated with the word ‘or’, in which case the meaning would be: “The best amongst you is he who learns the Qur’an or-teaches it.”

According to this version, the reward is general, i.e., equally great whether one learns himself or teaches to others. Thus there would be equal virtue for both.

The Qur’an is the basis of the re-ligion of Islam, and on the preserva-tion and propagation of the Qur’an depends the very existence of this faith. Hence the virtue of learning and teaching the Qur’an is self-evi-dent and does not need further elu-cidation.

There are, however, various de-grees of excellence. The highest is to learn the Qur’an along with its mean-ings and purport, and the least is to learn its words only.

The hadith mentioned above is supported also by another saying of Rasulullah (Sallallaho alaihe wasal-

lam) as reported by Sa’eed ibn Sal-eem (Radhiyallaho anho): “If a person who has acquired knowledge of the Holy Qur’an considers another per-son who has been gifted with some-thing else to be more fortunate than himself, he has shown disrespect to the blessings of Allah bestowed on him on account of his learning the Qur’an.” It is evident that since the Qur’an, being the Word of Allah, is superior to all other discourses as mentioned in some of the Ahadith quoted later, its reading and teaching must be superior to everything else.

Mulla Alt Qari quotes from anoth-er hadith that whoever acquires the knowledge of Holy Qur’an stores the knowledge of Prophet Hood in his forehead.

Sahl Tastari (Rahmatullah alaih) says that the proof of love for Allah is the existence of love for the Word of Allah in one’s heart. In ‘Sharhul Ihya, the list of people who will be given shelter in the shade of the Arsh (Throne of Allah) on the fearful Day of Judgment includes those persons who teach the Qur’an to the chil-dren of Muslims and also those who learn the Holy Qur’an in their child-hood and are devoted to its recitation when grown up.

Abu Sa’eed (Radhiyallaho anho) narrates that Rasulullah (Sallallaho alaihe wasallam) said: “Almighty Al-lah says; “If anybody finds no time for My remembrance and for begging favors of Me, because of his remain-ing busy with the Holy Qur’an, I shall give him more than what I give to all those who beg favors of Me. The su-periority of the Word of Allah over all other words is like the superiority of Allah over the entire creation.” In other words, compared to those who are begging favors of Allah, He will surely confer some better reward on a person who remains so occupied

with committing the Qur’an to mem-ory or learning and understanding it that he hardly gets time for du’a.

‘Aa’ishah (Radhiyallaho anha) nar-rates that Rasulullah (Sallallaho alai-he wasallam) once said, “One who is well versed in the Qur’an will be in the company of those angels who are scribes, noble and righteous; and one who falters in reading the Qur’an, and has to exert hard for learning, gets double the reward.”

“One who is well versed in the Qur’an” means one who is proficient in memorizing as well as in reciting it. It is highly praiseworthy if one mas-ters its meaning and significance as well. “To be with the angels” means that, like the angels who transferred the Qur’an from the, Lowhul Mahfooz’ (Protected Tablet in the Heavens), he also conveys it to others through its recitation and, therefore, both have the same occupation; or that he will join the company of such angels on the Day of Judgment. One who falters will get double reward—one for his reading and the other for his effort in reading the Qur’an, in spite of falter-ing again and again.

It does not mean that his reward will exceed that of a well-versed per-son. The reward that is mentioned for a well-versed person is far greater, so much so that he will be in the compa-ny of special angels. The explanation is that the labor involved in faltering

and the difficulties in the reading of the Qur’an carry an independent re-ward. As such, reading of the Qur’an should not be given up, even though faltering may be an excuse.

Mulla ‘Ali Qari has reproduced from the riwayat of Ta-brani and Bai-haqi that one who cannot memorize the Qur’an well and yet persists in learning it by heart gets double re-ward. Similarly, one who cherishes a longing for memorizing it and does not possess the ability to do so, but does not give up his efforts, will be reckoned by Almighty Allah among the huffaaz (Plural of hafiz—one who has learnt the whole Qur’an by heart) on the Day of Resurrection.

With such great virtues there for the taking, what is keeping us from taking part in these rewards and blessing except our own weakness of faith compounded by laziness and love of material gain.

It is time we wake up and realize the true reason for our existence; to worship our creator and prepare for the life hereafter. It is time we start making the time for the word of Allah and stop waiting to find the suitable time. Let us put aside our comforts and desires and dedicate a portion of our day to reading and learning something of this great book.

Shayk Abdullah KhanAl-Ihsan Academy

[email protected]


Low gold price continues to dent Guyana's economyGuyana’s declared gold production and

exports have each slumped by more than 20 percent, due to the fall in the

international price for the yellow metal during the year, according to the Guyana Gold Board.

Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh during his half-year report has already revised down-ward the country’s economic growth for this year from 5.6 percent to 4.6 percent largely due to a decline in the gold price.

Except for March 14, 2014 when the price of gold on the London Fix was at its highest for this year at US$1,385 per ounce; the price was generally low. It ended at US$1,195.50 at the close of trading on Friday, December 19, 2014.

That’s unlike January to May, 201 when the price averaged between US$1,680 and US$1,410 until it started to dip steadily

throughout the remainder of that year to date.The Gold Board said that the combined sta-

tistics of all mining operations and gold deal-ers’ data for 2014 have indicated that the ex-pected levels of gold output for 2014 will not be met as was originally set at the beginning of the year. The major factor for these lower levels of declarations are as a result of the fall in the global price for the yellow metal on the world economy during this year.

Following is the remainder of the Gold Board’s statement:

Total declaration as at December 20, 2014 has decreased by 22.61% when compared to 2013, whilst gold purchased by the Guyana Gold Board (GGB) has fallen by 41.24% for the comparative periods. Dealers’ quantity of gold exported has increased by 10.16%, whilst the GGB quantity of gold exported has fallen

by 40.26%. Thus, the overall quantity of gold exported for the two periods being compared are down by 22.73%. Moreover, the value of gold exported by dealers have increased by 10.86%, whilst the revenue garnered by the GGB has decreased by 43.48% during the comparative periods. The total revenue for the two comparative time periods have fallen by 23.45%.

In 2013 it was forecasted that gold might fall to $1,050 an ounce before this downturn is over. The yellow metal duly fell by a quar-ter in 2013, when compared to its highest level in 2011 and has made little headway in 2014, despite lots of geopolitical uncertainty. It stood at $1,198 an ounce on Friday evening. The sentiment is bearish and miners are being forced to curtail production or shelve invest-ment plans.

Gold stocks have suffered a miserable few years, becoming a laughingstock even among contrarians. However, this despised sector’s seemingly-endless downward spiral has left gold stocks vastly undervalued relative to gold, which drives their profits. The fundamentally-absurd disconnect between gold-stock price levels and gold can’t last. And it sure looks ready to end, making 2015 the year gold stocks shine again.

In the gold-mining industry, the price of gold is the dominant driver of corporate prof-its by far. Mining costs are largely determined by the particular deposit being mined, and are largely fixed when any mine is designed and constructed. So gold miners’ profits are al-most totally dependent on the price of gold. The higher it happens to be, the larger their margins grow since their costs generally don’t change much.

This dynamic is what has long made gold stocks attractive to investors. When the gold price rallies, the profits of gold miners rocket higher much faster. If a miner can produce gold for $900 an ounce, and sell it for $1200, its profits are $300. But, if gold merely climbs 25% higher to $1500, that same miner’s profits double to $600. This inherent profits leverage to gold makes the gold stocks really amplify gold’s moves.

Nonetheless, as in all stock-market sectors, this key fundamental relationship between earnings and stock prices can be temporarily derailed by sentiment extremes. Sometimes investors get greedy, and bid gold-stock pric-es up far higher than their gold-driven profits could ever support. And other times they get scared, selling so aggressively that prices fall far below their earnings-supported levels. Great fear has plagued gold stocks.

Hence, it must be emphasized that the Ministry of Natural Resources and the En-vironment along with its supervisory and regulatory authorities; Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and Guyana Gold Board is continuously working with all stakeholders of the gold mining industry, in particular the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Associa-tion, to ensure the sustainability of the sector. Specifically, some of the interventions of the Government and its agencies are as follows:

• Duty Free Concessions for All Terrain Vehicles (ATV), Excavators, Bulldoz-ers and other machinery, Double-Cab Pickups, Spares and Equipment

• Fuel Licence• Mercury Free Mining Development

Fund• Access to Foreign Currency (USD)• Hinterland Infrastructure• Availability of New Areas for Mining• Reduction in Royalty and Property

Rental Rates• Work Permits• Hinterland Security• Firearm Licences• Human Resources development

through the Guyana Mining School and Training Centre Inc.

Moreover, the year-on-year decline may suggest a weak market, but such compari-sons are still heavily influenced by the events of last year. Longer term analysis shows a market in good health. Year-to-date volumes continue to extend the broad uptrend from the low seen in 2009. The quarterly volatili-ty in the US dollar gold price was among the lowest levels seen over the past two decades, both a cause and effect of the benign demand environment. The lack of a clear price signal, as well as continuing to digest last year’s de-mand surge, caused investors to hold back from buying gold. The ongoing economic and geopolitical instability encouraged cen-tral banks to continue to seek the protection and diversification of gold. Thus, the broad themes surrounding gold supply during the first half of the year continued to play out in second half.


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Paradise pump up and running —to be commissioned in early 2015

THE Paradise pump is one of the new pumps that the Ministry of Ag-riculture added to boost drainage

capacity in 2014. It has a pump capacity of 200 cuft/sec, and is of benefit to 4500 acres of land, both residential and agri-cultural.

Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ram-sammy, who visited the pump station, on the East Coast of Demerara on Friday, in the company of Chief Executive Officer of the National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA) Lionel Wordsworth, explained that though completed, the pump has not yet been commissioned. He said that thus far, the ministry has only had one occasion to use the pump, and that was a few weeks ago, when the country experienced about two to three days of heavy rains.

Minister Ramsammy noted that the amount of rain that was recorded in ar-eas, (over 200mm in one 24-hour peri-od, and in a three-day period more than 300mm of rain) in the past would have caused flooding that would have lasted for weeks. He pointed out that in this case, in about three to four days most of the villages were relieved from the flood and mainly for that reason that the pump was in operation.

The Paradise pump is among one of 14 that the ministry had started to put

in place under the EXIM Bank of India, which has famously become known as the Surrendra pumps. “I still see in parts of the media confusion as to where are these pumps. Have they arrived in the country? And in the meanwhile, as far as I know, at least 10 of the 14 pumps have been installed and are in operation,” Min-ister Ramsammy said.

He explained that the ministry has not yet commissioned the Paradise pump too, because there is still some landscaping work that is being tied up but the pump is operational. Several other pumps are operational, but will be commissioned in 2015.

The contract for the Paradise pump station is valued $139M, while the pump itself was acquired at a cost of US$4M. (GINA)

The Paradise pump station

Businessman injured in Robb St blaze succumbs

Businessman, Hil-rod Thomas, 63, died on Satur-day, a little over one month after his home located on Robb and King streets caught afire killing two of his daughters.

Thomas, who is the brother of for-mer minister in the PNC admin-istration Jeffrey Thomas, jumped

from the burning building, after he was unable to save his trapped children. He sustained burns and injuries to his

limbs and was a patient of the Burn Care Unit at the Georgetown Public Hospital Incorporated (GPHC) for over one month. The fire occurred sometime around 2 am on November 17 and also claimed the lives of Thomas’s two daugh-ters Theresa Rozario, 12, and Clarissa

Rozario, 14.Thomas and his two daughters lived in

the top flat of the three-storey building, while other parts of the building were oc-cupied by small businesses.


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PEACE ON EARTH AND GOODWILL TOWARD ALL MENMatthew presented Jesus as King.The Gospel writer Matthew concentrat-

ed on presenting Jesus to a Jewish audi-ence as their King/Messiah in fulfillment of the prophecies. Matthew’s book has survived much longer than the average 7-year shelf life of books. If this record was inaccurate, it would have been dis-carded a long time ago. Matthew provided the following details regarding the Virgin Birth of the Savior:

Matt.1:18 – 2:11: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Jo-seph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is con-ceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins. Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanu-el, which being interpreted is, God with us. Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus. Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born. And they said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judaea: for thus it is written by the prophet, And thou Beth-lehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel. …When they had heard the king, they departed; and, lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they re-joiced with exceeding great joy. And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense and myrrh.”

Luke also gave details of the Birth of our Savior.

The other Gospel writer who recorded details of Christ’s Birth was Luke, a med-ical doctor with a reputation to preserve. He was thorough in researching his in-formation. He focused on reaching a Gre-co-Roman audience showing the Savior was the Son of God and perfectly human. He begins with an assurance that he left no stone unturned in investigating the facts surrounding the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

Luke 1:1-5; and 2:1-16 “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect un-derstanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou might-est know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed. There was in the days of Herod, the king of Ju-daea, a certain priest named Zacharias, …. And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Cae-sar Augustus that all the world should be taxed….And all went to be taxed, ev-ery one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (be-cause he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his es-poused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should

be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swad-dling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host prais-ing God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men….. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.”

Peace comes through Jesus Christ.Who does not know our world needs

peace? First, we must have peace with God. We need an inner witness of the Holy Spirit that our sins are forgiven and we have been reconciled with God. Jesus was born for this purpose – to pay the price for sins on the Cross. His Blood sealed for us a new covenant with Holy God. Anyone can ask His forgiveness and know peace with God. When God’s peace rules our hearts, we will be at peace with people. Is someone reading this who needs to know real peace? You can call on the name of our Savior and feel peace flood your heart.

God sends His goodwill to us. When the angel announced to the

Shepherds “goodwill toward men,” the message was not one of friendship and healing between people. It was God of-fering His friendship and reconciling our relationship with Him. This is wonderful! God’s every intention is for our good. He does not cause us suffering. He wants to heal, forgive and secure our salvation for all eternity. If anyone hears the gospel and ends up in Hell, it will be his own fault. God has done everything for our eternal enjoyment of Himself and Heaven through Jesus Christ.

You can know peace and God’s goodwill through a prayer of repentance, and then making a firm decision to attach yourself to a Bible believing church for your walk with Him. Take your family to church this weekend. Merry Christmas to all!

Pastor Haniff BacchusCalvary Assembly

of God102-07 Rockaway Blvd, Ozone Park, NY 11417

Tel. 718-659-4500www.calvaryozone.org


Call347-759-3934FOR A FREE ESTIMATE!!

How did Warren Blue remain under the radar for two years?Questions have been raised as to how fugi-

tive policeman Warren Blue managed to elude capture for more than two years be-

fore being brought down by a bullet to the head.Blue was shot dead a week ago after he and at

least one other man committed an armed rob-bery on a supermarket at Montrose, East Coast Demerara. A wanted bulletin and an arrest war-rant were out for Blue and another policeman, Special Constable Jamal Lewis, for the 2012 murder of Agri-cola youth Shaquille Grant. Lewis is still at large.

Though the police were seemingly unable to locate Blue, the man was in constant contact with at least one of his relatives. From all indi-cations, this information was never shared with investigators.

His sister Sabrina Blue told this newspaper that the last time she had contact with Blue was a month ago, via telephone. She explained that

he would randomly call to check on his children and with each call he used a “strange number.”

According to Sabrina her brother had nev-er left the country. “All he said, he in the bush” she told Stabroek News, adding that he never specified his exact location. After he vanished, there were suspicions that he might have left the country and the police had even contacted their counterparts at Interpol. Back in 2012 then Crime Chief Seelall Persaud had insisted that all efforts were being made to find the duo.

Asked recently how it was that Blue managed to remain in Guyana undetected, current Crime Chief Leslie James told Stabroek News that there are Standard Operation Proce-dures (SOPs) re-lating to the arrest of a person for whom a want-ed bulletin has been issued.

James said that one must appreciate that in Blue’s case not all ranks may know him adding that there are a large number of ranks in the force.

With regard to the SOPs in place, he said that when a bulletin is issued, documentation with the person’s photograph and particulars are posted up at stations. He said that the person’s photo and particulars are also publicized in the press.

Told of the admission by Blue’s sister, he said relatives have a duty and personal responsibility to disclose such information to the police. “The onus is on the relative to provide that informa-tion to the police,” he said. Speaking generally he went on to say that not only relatives but friends and acquaintances if they possess information about a fugitive, by “virtue of being a citizen,” should share it with police.

Asked about the whereabouts of Lewis, he said that like Blue before he was killed, his whereabouts are unknown. Based on the infor-mation this newspaper has gathered, the fugitive cop has been moving between Guyana and one of the neighbouring countries. It would appear

though, like Blue he spends most of his time in Guyana.

A security source expressed concern that Blue managed to remain under the radar for so long. The source questioned whether local lawmen were actually looking for Blue. He said the fact that the man was in contact with at least one rel-ative and the police did not know about it, is also of concern and raises questions about the levels of confidence between the police and members of the public.

“Wouldn’t it have been best to capture this man at the earliest opportunity and place him before the court for the murder matter?” the man asked, adding that the fact that Blue man-aged to escape before he was brought before the court speaks volumes. At the time he and Lewis disappeared, they were said to be under close arrest. How they managed to escape that arrest is unclear.

According to the source, one now has to pon-der the possibility that Blue was “allowed” to es-cape for a reason. “The question is whether they wanted to find him,” the source commented.

He stated that while the police do not have the ability or the legal jurisdiction to tap people’s phone lines, it must always be remembered that fugitives at some point will contact their rela-tives, friends or partners as they have to be able to sustain themselves.

Blue, 33, of Liliendaal, ECD and Mahendra Sukull, 24, of Prashad Nagar, were both fatally shot at Montrose ECD, after an alarm was raised during their armed robbery of the Lahago Su-permar-ket. During the attack, proprietress of the supermarket, Latchmie Baburam, was shot by one of the two men. She is still recovering at the Georgetown Public Hospital.

Stabroek News had received conflicting in-formation about who shot Blue but according to persons in the area it was a member of a securi-ty guard service which responded to a distress call from the supermarket which is electronically monitored. It is believed that during the attack the alarm was activated resulting in the security service responding. Blue was reportedly shot af-ter an exchange of gunfire.

Sukull, a former university student was shot at least four times in the store by police who ar-rived on the scene after Blue had been killed. He was cornered in a section of the supermarket. A resident said that there is nothing to suggest that Sukull had fired at the ranks. The woman insisted that she heard six gunshots, one after the other, which came from the same weapon.

The information provided to Stabroek News is that two men were waiting in a car while the duo were committing the armed robbery.

FROM COP TO BANDITAsked about Blue’s criminal history, James

said that there is no information so far to sug-gest that the 33-year-old Liliendaal resident was involved in any other crime. He said the informa-tion in relation to the other dead bandit is similar.

According to the Crime Chief there were a number of gunpoint robberies on the East Coast committed by a “particular grouping.” He said the police are still checking to see whether the duo might have been involved in any of those.

Sabrina had told Stabroek News that the pic-ture painted in the media of her brother, was not like him. She said her brother had told her that he had not killed Grant, adding, “he likes children bad.” She said she had advised Blue to surren-der, but he was convinced that the justice system would fail him.

However the security source expressed a dif-ferent view. He stated that the fact that he not only escaped but turned to a life of crime points to possible guilt. He said that now Blue is dead it will never be known whether he was innocent or guilty.

The source said that there is nothing stopping the rank who has been committed for the teen’s murder from pointing the guilty finger at Blue.

According to the source, as in all cases when policemen are killed under such circumstances he was surprised, but one may say it is under-standable as he had to find a way to get money to sustain himself. The source said the possibility is that he may have had criminal tendencies all along.


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Life Insurance:Can You Afford To Wait?

Critical decisions, such as buying a home, getting married, or having children, require de-liberate, thoughtful consider-ation. Indeed, the outcome of any one of these decisions can irrevocably change your life for better or worse. But, delaying the purchase of life insurance can be a costly mistake for you and your loved ones. Waiting just a few years can have a nega-tive impact on several key areas of a life insurance policy.

Whole Life Insurance: Finan-cial Protection Plus Cash Value Accumulation

In its simplest form, whole life insurance protects the people who depend on you for finan-cial support — no matter what happens to you tomorrow. Aside from providing money to your beneficiaries to replace your in-

come, whole life insurance also offers guaranteed* cash value accumulation on a tax-deferred basis, as long as the policy re-mains in force. If available, cash value can be borrowed against to fund a child’s education, supple-ment your retirement income, or meet an emergency cash need. Remember, policy loans accrue interest at the current variable loan interest rate and reduce the total cash value and total death benefit by the amount of the outstanding loan and accrued loan interest.

The Effects of WaitingSince a portion of the premi-

ums paid accumulates cash val-ue each year, over the long term, cash value accumulation can be considerable, especially since taxes on the growth are de-ferred. Generally speaking, the

sooner you start paying policy premiums, the faster your cash value may accumulate.

A whole life policy is also eli-gible to receive dividends, if and when declared by the insurance issuer. Unlike cash values, div-idends are not guaranteed. In addition, past dividends are not indicative of future dividends. As a policyholder, you have sev-eral options for dividends usage. For example, you can take divi-dend distributions in cash or ap-ply dividends to add insurance coverage through the purchase of paid-up additional life insur-ance. Paid-up insurance is also eligible for dividends, has cash value, and requires no additional premiums. Other dividend pay-ment options may be available. So, waiting in this case can cost you the opportunity to increase

the benefit paid to your benefi-ciaries.

Let’s say you’re healthy now, but you decide to delay pur-chasing whole life insurance for five years. In five years, you may suffer an unexpected health condition, which may place your insurability in jeopardy. In the worst-case scenario, if you were to die in the next five years, the cost of waiting would be the death benefit your beneficiaries would not receive.

Remember, purchasing life in-surance is a major decision. So, it’s important to take the time to gather all the necessary infor-mation and choose the coverage that best suits your needs. While the decision is up to you, keep in mind that postponing your deci-sion ca

*Guarantees backed by the

claims paying ability of the is-suer.

This educational third-par-ty article is being provided as a courtesy by INDRA PURAN. For additional information on the in-formation or topic(s) discussed, please contact INDRA PURAN at 646 266 5416.

Indra Puran, LUTCF, CLTC Agent

New York Life Insurance Company


NYPD MONITORING INTERNET THREATS, LAWMAKERS CALL FOR BULLET-PROOF POLICE CARS

ALBANY, N.Y. – Some anti-police sentiment in the wake of the fatal shootings of two NYPD officers

has prompted the department to make changes to better protect officers.

The NYPD is investigating more than a dozen threatened copycat attacks, mostly made over the Internet.

In one case, an 18-year-old Brooklyn man was charged with making terroristic threats.

Authorities say Devon Coley surren-dered to detectives in the 73rd Precinct after his Facebook postings were spotted by police.

Coley reportedly admitted he was re-sponsible for making the statements after police say he wrote the phrase “73Nextt,” a reference to the 73rd Pre-cinct in Brooklyn.

He came into his precinct with his mother Sunday night and said he was re-morseful for his actions.

Meanwhile, four state lawmakers are proposing that all police cars in New York state be retrofitted with bullet-proof glass.

The bill is being drafted by Assembly members Jim Tedisco and Nicole Mallio-takis and senators Phil Boyle and Marty Golden, all Republicans.

According to a news release Sunday, the legislation to be introduced in the next session would have the bullet-proof glass installed over a phased-in period, starting with the New York Police De-

partment.The lawmakers are calling for part of

the $5.1 billion state surplus to be used to pay for the retrofit.

The legislators don’t include a cost estimate. Texas Armoring Corp. of San Antonio says it charges $55,000 and up, depending on level of bullet-proof pro-tection.

No pilots on board delayed Dynamic flight, passengers made to disembark - frustration grows

Already delayed by a day, Dynam-ic Airways passengers who were flying from New York to George-

town boarded their plane at JFK discov-er that there were no pilots on board.

New York Transit Police were later called in to investigate and passengers were told to disembark and that their bags would be returned to them. Up to press time there was no statement from the airline on what had happened.

Just a month after it was given the green light to restart its services Dy-namic Airways continues to be plagued with problems and some passengers are complaining that it appears as if they would not make it to Guyana for the holidays with little or no explana-tion from the airline.

The airline’s local partner Captain Gerry Gouveia in a message on his Facebook page over the weekend indi-cated that the flight was delayed for 24 hours and that it was scheduled to ar-rive in Guyana early yesterday morning.

However, that was not the case and as angry passengers continue to com-plain, this newspaper was unable to make contact with Gouveia. Since the airline’s return to the market on No-vember 22 it has encountered a series of problems.

According to Gouveia, the initial problem over the weekend was due to an unanticipated maintenance de-lay and as such the additional flight that was added by Dynamic to handle holiday passengers was delayed by 24 hours.

“To alleviate the inconvenience, pas-sengers are being accommodated with

hotels, meals, and transportation,” the local partner said.

He added that it was a 24-hour de-lay while apologizing “for any inconve-nience caused but safety is always our first priority.”

However, one woman commenting yesterday on the post made by Gouveia and to which he did not respond stated that her flight was delayed from Sunday night and she was told to return Mon-day but after she had boarded the plane the passengers were told the flight was delayed again.

“They’re not courteous. In all that time, I got some water and some juice. Now they’re telling me that the flight will be on for tomorrow (today) 1 am, know-ing it’s not approved. Will this be anoth-er cancelled flight? You have enough time to charter a new plane for tonight,” the woman said.

Meantime, Sukree Boodram, founder of Caribbean American Domestic Vio-lence Awareness, told Stabroek News that she has several family members who were supposed to visit Guyana for the holidays and a wedding but were un-able to make it on the airline.

As of 8 am yesterday, Boodram said

passengers who were told to check in at 9 pm on Sunday for a flight departing at 1am, had not left New York. She revealed that they did not board until the wee hours in the morning and some wheel-chair-bound passengers were loaded but were later taken off the plane.

The passengers were later told that they would board at 6 am yesterday and they did but when they got on there were no pilots and no answers as they sat on the plane for hours.

“New York transit police were called [and] investigated the event. [The] po-lice disembarked the plane and at of 8:30 am [yesterday] the passengers were told that they will get their bags back…” Boo-dram said adding they were not told how this would be done.

She said that the passengers were be-coming frustrated as they had no food or anything to eat or drink all night and no airline official kept them updated on the status of the flight

The airline had a troubled entry into the local market in June, after numerous problems beset its inaugural flight from the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri and its subsequent grounding at JFK International Airport in New York for a series of violations.

As a result, it was forced to use al-ternative airports in Connecticut and New Jersey to transport passengers to Guyana. The United States Department of Transportation (DOT subsequently pulled Dynamic’s operations approval, giving it up to August 8 to get its busi-ness in order. It was cleared to return to the market but problems have since continued.

Former magistrate slams her car into parked pick-up

FORMER magistrate, Hazel Octave Hamilton last evening slammed the Toyota Aventis she was driving into

a parked Hilux open-back pick-up on the Good Hope Public Road.

According to information reaching this newspaper, Hamilton hit the vehicle that was parked on the shoulder of the road opposite a bar as she was heading east along the carriageway.

Asked if she was under the influence as was reported by another section of the media, one police officer said that he could not confirm that report.

Meanwhile, when the Guyana Chroni-cle arrived on the scene, the magistrate’s badly damaged car was being placed on a tow truck even as the pick-up truck which belonged to a popular city businessman remained on the scene, as the business-man was entertaining acquaintances at the bar across the road.

No evidence to proceed with charges against

Attorney General - DPP

THE Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Shalimar Ali-Hack yesterday recommended that no charges be filed

against the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, in the controver-sial private conversation between him and a senior Kaieteur News reporter.

The 19-minuute recording of the con-versation on October 25 last, between the Attorney General the senior Kaieteur News reporter, Leonard Gildharie, a for-mer schoolmate of the Attorney General, was released days after.

The release was done by publisher of the Kaieteur News, Mohan Lall, also known as Glenn Lall.

He subsequently made a report to the Deputy Police Commissioner, Mr. Balram Persaud, premised on the contention that the contents of the recording indicate that his life, the lives of his family and staff members, were under threat.

GROUNDS FOR RECOMMENDATIONAli-Hack, in a statement issued to the me-

dia, said that the subject of the investigation was an alleged recording of a private con-versation between Nandlall and Gildharie.

As such, based on the evidence con-tained in the police file, the DPP conclud-ed that the recorded conversation was not between the Attorney General and the publisher of Kaieteur News, Glen Lall, who filed the police complaint against Nandlall.


My name is Shaw Ryan Khan. I am the son of Shaw M. Khan and Camille Zeena Khan and I am the grandson of Haji Ali Akbar Khan and Azeezan Khan from Cane-grove, Guyana, as well as Harry Singh and Lillian Ganpati Singh from Industry, Guyana. My re-spect to my parents and my grandparents always.

I remember there were times when I was younger that I felt scared and didn’t know what to do. No, I don’t

mean that someone spooked me or a scary movie actually scared me. Rather, there were times when I felt that my life is changing and will be changing and I didn’t know what to do to react to that change. An exam-ple of this would be when I moved to Queens from Brooklyn. Although this was years ago, I still remember my first best friend Patrick. Patrick and I used to live right across from each other and we were the greatest of friends. My father thought it would be for the better interest of mom and I that we all move to Queens. I was scared because I didn’t want to leave my friend and I didn’t want to leave the neighborhood; it was a fun and quiet block, I enjoyed it. But then, like always, my mom said the absolute right thing that made me less afraid. Even to this day, I remember what she said; she said “Ry, don’t be afraid. No matter what challenges and obstacles God puts in front of us, he will always look out for us. Just keep believing in him and show him that you trust his decisions.” I trusted mom and be-lieved in what God wanted for me; I never regretted it. Sure I miss my old neighborhood sometimes but I love it in Queens. What I’m trying to say is that we shouldn’t be afraid when God puts something that has possible life changing results in our path of life. Just believe in God and chances are, you will most likely never regret it.

There were also times when I felt scared because I had to make a deci-sion and I was scared of that decision. I used to never believe in myself but I’ve learned to change that mentality. When I was in middle school, I was given the choice of picking which high school I should apply to. I thought about it but no matter what I did, I al-ways assumed I wasn’t good enough for that school and I would aim so that

I would not be rejected. My mom real-ized what I was doing and once again, said the absolute right thing. She told me “Son, why are you scared of fail-ing? How do you already know that you will fail? You can never know if you’re going to fail something or not. You only live this life once so try to make the best of it. Always reach for the sky and if sometimes you trip and fall, just get back up, brush yourself off, and keep on reaching for the sky and beyond.” Like always, mom was right. Since then, I always challenged myself to be better and I always made sure my decisions were never under-mining my true capability. Because of this mentality, I got into an excel-lent high school, an excellent College, and currently maintain a 4.0 average with 1 more year to go before Law school. Sometimes we live this life having fear overpower our mind. But fear is not something that should lim-it you. Fear is something that should encourage you to conquer it. For ex-ample, I’ve heard stories of my aunt being afraid of a particular dog. Ev-ery time she sees this dog, she would make sure to stay very far away. But just last weekend, I saw her take a pic-ture while hugging the dog. She was able to conquer her fear and I am very proud of her. What we all need to do is take life one step at a time and work towards conquering your fears one by one. Are you scared to tell the girl of your dreams that you love her or have a crush on her? Don’t be! The worst that can happen is that she says no. It sounds harsh but it’s not like it will be the end of the world! But the main issue is, you never know until you try. So go ahead, and work towards con-quering your fear.

About a year ago, I conquered one of my fears. As many of you know, I was picked on when I was little but I got over it. However, what was left in me was a type of social anxiety. Don’t get me wrong, when it came to pub-

lic speaking, I would go up easily and speak with ease to the crowd. But you would rarely see me going up to a sin-gle person to talk to them. But, like I said, a year ago I conquered my fear. I remember it was after a function when I saw this person sitting there who seemed around my age. I decid-ed to go ahead and try to talk to that person. What was the worst that could happen? I would never know until I try. So, I went up and talked and we started talking. It turned out that we had a lot to talk about. We had a lot in common. As weeks went by, we became friends, and as the months went by, even to now, we became the greatest of friends and I can even call that person my best friend now. And what did it take for all this to happen? One simple phrase “Hi, my name is Ryan. Nice to meet you!” I was able to conquer my fear and now I don’t have that fear anymore. Sure, there were times when making a new friend didn’t work but there were more times when it did. Now, rather than me being the old and scared Ryan who would be the last person to start mak-ing friends in class, I am now a person who is the first in the class to strike up a conversation on the first day!

What I am trying to make all of you understand is this; never stop chas-ing your goals and dreams; always aim for the stars and beyond, and never ever give up on anything you feel passionate about. Fear is just a weakness that provides us strength when we conquer it.

This article will be a little shorter because I want to talk to you all about a fear that I conquered just recent-ly. Recently, I was given the option to be able to create something that can potentially impact our neighborhood in a positive way; the choice of form-ing a non-profit organization. At first, I was scared of this new challenge; from what I’ve researched, it is a very difficult process, it involves a lot of work and planning, and it requires a lot of responsibility. But, I decided to do so because I believe I am here for a great cause; to help those around me. And what better way to help those around me than to form up a group of like-minded individuals who share the same passion for helping others. Two heads are better than one! In this case, 7 heads are better than one be-cause this organization was created with 7 total members, including my-self. So now, not only am I the voice of the youth, but I am also the President of Beacon of Peace. Beacon of Peace (BOP) is a united group of individuals hoping to create a better tomorrow for the next generation. This organization intends to nullify the waves of negativ-ity and hardship that passes through those who are unfortunate. BOP will work to wash away negativity with love

and become pedestals of faith when there is doubt. We will work to: be-come beacons of hope when there is despair; become auras of light where darkness seems to overpower; and be-come ambassadors of joy where there is sadness. We will become the most powerful instrument anyone could be gifted with; an instrument of peace. I know, for a fact, with the help of the board of directors in BOP, we will be able to spread peace and serenity to many lives. And we are counting on all of you to spread the word of our or-ganization. On behalf of my family and on behalf of Beacon of Peace, I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

Before I end my article, I just want to say this; may God continue to bless each and every one of you and I wish for you to achieve peace and serenity in your lives!

Lastly my readers, in your journey through life, I hope you heed my ad-vice. I want nothing except peace and serenity. And remember this; ““There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vi-sion of people who embrace life.”

God bless you all and see you in two weeks!

(Like my articles? Want to give me feedback? Do you have a topic suggestion for my next article? Let me know! Add me via Facebook @ Facebook.com/ryankhan0721 or give me a call @ 646-269-8227 or 718-849-1006)

Voice Of The Youth


World News Highlights

AMMAN — Islamic State fighters took a Jordanian pilot prisoner after his warplane was shot down in northeast Syria on Wednesday, the first captive taken from the U.S.-led coalition battling the jihadi group.

UNITED NATIONS — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday urged the Islamic State captors of a Jordanian pilot whose warplane was shot down in northeast Syria to treat him humanely, his spokesman said.

MOSCOW — Russia said on Wednesday NATO was turn-ing Ukraine into a “frontline of confrontation” and threatened to sever remaining ties with the Atlantic military alliance if Ukraine’s hopes of joining it were realized.

WASHINGTON — The U.S.-led campaign against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq includ-ed 10 air strikes in Syria on Wednesday and seven in Iraq, the U.S. military said.

TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled a new cabinet on Wednesday, ap-pointing a defense chief whose desire for a stronger pre-emp-tive strike capability could rile neighbor China.

JERUSALEM — Israeli police said on Wednesday they had detained more than 30 serving and former public officials in an investigation into alleged cor-ruption linked to a party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.

GAZA — Israeli forces shot dead a member of Hamas’s

armed wing after a firefight erupted along the border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and an Israeli soldier was wound-ed, Gaza hospital officials and the Israeli army said.

BERLIN — President Joachim Gauck urged Germans to wel-come with open arms the hun-dreds of thousands of people fleeing war zones and to reject anti-immigrant populism.

GUWAHATI, India — Police in northeast India fired on Wednes-day on demonstrators protesting against the killings of dozens of people by tribal guerrillas, killing five of them.

MOGADISHU — Somalia’s lawmakers on Wednesday ap-proved the appointment of new Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke, who vowed to end the infighting slowing So-

malia’s efforts to rebuild after decades of war.

CAIRO — Egyptian and Qatari intelligence officials have met in Cairo to discuss reconciliation as part of Saudi-brokered efforts to end an 18-month standoff over Doha’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, security and diplo-matic sources said.

TOKYO — Japan, fearing it could be a soft target for possi-ble North Korean cyberattacks in the escalating row over the Sony Pictures hack, has begun work-ing to ensure basic infrastructure is safe and to formulate its diplo-matic response, officials said.

KIEV — Ukraine will be forced to implement more power cuts if the weather gets sharply colder, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said on Wednesday.

MOSCOW — A leak on a major Russian oil pipeline caused a spill in the Black Sea near the port of Tuapse on Wednesday where of-ficials said stormy weather was hampering efforts to assess and respond to the mishap.

AMMAN — The Jordanian army said on Wednesday one of its pilots was captured by Islam-ic State militants after his plane was downed during coalition air raids in Syria.

MOSCOW — Russia said on Wednesday it would respond adequately by severing ties with NATO if Ukraine becomes a member of the Atlantic bloc.

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomb-er killed 33 people and wounded 55 others in Madaen, about 25 km (15 miles) south of Baghdad, on Wednesday, Iraqi police and medical officials said.

California questions over safety of driverless carsLOS ANGELES, United States (AP) - California's Department of Mo-tor Vehicles will miss a year-end deadline to adopt new rules for cars of the future because regu-lators first have to figure out how they'll know whether "driverless" vehicles are safe.

It's a rare case of the law getting ahead of an emerging technology and reflects regulators' struggle to

balance consumer protection with in-novation.

Safety is a chief selling point, since self-driving cars — thanks to an array of sensors — promise to have much greater road awareness and quicker reaction time than people. Plus, they won't text, drink or doze off.

Though the cars are at least a few years away from showrooms, seven companies are testing prototypes on California's roads, and regulators have questions: Do they obey all traffic laws? What if their computers freeze? Can they smoothly hand control back to human drivers?

DMV officials say they won't let the public get self-driving cars until

someone can certify that they don't pose an undue risk. The problem is that the technology remains so new there are no accepted standards to verify its safety. Absent standards, certifying safety would be like grading a test without an answer key.

Broadly, the department has three options: It could follow the current US system, in which manufacturers self-certify their vehicles; it could opt for a European system, in which inde-pendent companies verify safety; or the state could (implausibly) get into the testing business.

"It's a huge undertaking," said Ber-nard Soriano, who oversees the DMV's regulatory process. "There are all of these issues that need to be adequate-ly answered."

Manufacturers generally would

prefer self-certification. That may be where California ends up, but for now the DMV is exploring indepen-dent certification — something that doesn't exist for driverless cars.

In July, the DMV asked third-party testers whether they'd be interested in getting into the game. The depart-ment doesn't have the expertise to create a safety standard and testing framework, so "the department want-ed to get a very good sense of what is out there in the market," according to Russia Chavis, a deputy secretary at the California State Transporta-tion Agency, which oversees the DMV and requested a deeper exploration of third-party alternatives to self-certifi-cation.

Two large European testers and two businesses in Ohio responded to the DMV's request. None was ready to im-plement a programme immediately.

So the department is asking indus-try, consumer groups and other inter-ested parties to gather in January for a public workshop on safety standards.

Whatever course California officials take could influence how other states — and perhaps even the federal gov-ernment — approach the issue. Cali-fornia is such a large consumer market that in many cases its rules become de facto national standards.

Federal transportation officials have said they don't plan to write driverless car safety standards any time soon, and they don't want states writing

their own. SAE International, an asso-ciation of engineers, has been devel-oping a set of safety guidelines — but those are for vehicle testing and don't get into specific performance levels that would be needed for commercial-ly available cars.

California's January 1 deadline was set by a 2012 state law that regulated testing on public roads and required the DMV to publish rules guiding what carmakers need to do before they can bring the vehicles to market. The law also says the DMV should encourage the development of driverless cars.

Regulations often lag cutting-edge technology, but California's driver-less car policy has developed sooner because of lobbying from one of the state's signature companies: Google.

Self-driving vehicles are a departure from the Silicon Valley giant's Internet search and advertising core, but a pri-ority for co-founder Sergey Brin.

Even before Google pushed the 2012 law that officially legalised driv-erless technology, the Silicon Valley giant had dispatched its cars hundreds of thousands of miles. Google says its Toyota Priuses and Lexus SUVs, souped up with radar, cameras and laser sensors, have an excellent safe-ty record. They have been involved in just a "few" accidents, though not at fault in any of them, spokeswoman Courtney Hohne said.

Google has its own idea for how to determine whether vehicles are safe.


7 1 33 2 9

5 6 71 5 4 2

4 2 9 7 68 1 6 3

8 2 7 5 45 3 9 21 3 6

Fill in the blanks so that each row, each column, and each of the nine 3x3 grids contain one instance of each of the num-bers 1 through 9

PUZZLE!4 6 3 8 1 9 5 7 21 8 5 4 2 7 6 3 99 2 7 3 5 6 8 1 42 5 1 9 7 8 4 6 37 9 4 6 3 2 1 8 56 3 8 1 4 5 2 9 75 1 6 2 9 3 7 4 88 7 9 5 6 4 3 2 13 4 2 7 8 1 9 5 6

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE KIND AND HOW TO BE KIND

Sitaram everyone, my name is Ajay Ram-phal, and I am a proud member of the Naujawaan Mandalee Youth Group, and

I am here to talk to you about why it is import-ant to be kind to others. Being kind to others is very important because it will help create a better place to live in, a place that is free from stress, anger, hatred and fights. Being kind starts a chain reaction, if you are kind to someone, you are not only brightening up their day but you are also encouraging them to be kind to someone else. This helps the world be a happier and peaceful place. Being kind also shows that we are sowing good kar-ma. If we are all kind to someone today, it will come back to us and our families.

Being kind is also good for our own self. Doing something nice for someone else will make us feel good about ourselves and help us to become better humans. People will ap-preciate you more when you are kind and will want to be around you more.

Being kind is very easy to do. You can start by doing at least one kind act for the day. And then you can increase this as you go along. Learn to be a good listener, that helps the other person feel important and special. Stay-ing positive will help you be kind, and it will bring joy to those around you. Being polite is also very important if you want to be a kind person , it shows that you are respectful and people will enjoy being around you. It is also important to appreciate other people’s kind-ness, learn how to say thank you in the end, being kind should be as important as prayers. It is simple to do and can become a habit if you practice often.

Jai ho!!!

‘One slap can lead to ten slaps and ten slaps could lead to death’Natasha tells the story of how an abusive husband killed her two children and left her maimed

The Christmas season for 22-year-old Nazalena Natasha Houston is going to be a haunting experience as she re-

members her two young children who were brutally hacked to death by the man they called ‘Daddy’ and who should have loved and protected them.

On July 31 last year Richard Lord used the tool of his trade – his cane-cutter’s cut-lass – to slash his children to death, taking his own life days later, even before five-year-old Kimberly and two-year-old Saif had been laid to rest.

While many citizens will be in a festive mood, adding the finishing touches to house decorations and the pepperpot, Na-tasha, as she is known, is wishing that there was no Christmas.

“It would not be a big celebration; it would be hard for me… I accustomed to eat with them so that day was hard for me,” Natasha told the Sunday Stabroek sadly.

As the day draws nearer Natasha says she becomes “nervous” even though she no longer lives in the yard where the tragic incident occurred. There is no doubt in her mind that she would be weeping on the day

when others would be celebrating.Not a day goes by when Natasha does

not remember her two children, or does not struggle to understand why God allowed her children to be slaughtered and left her to live minus her right arm and three fin-gers from her left hand. She does not need her severed hand and fingers to remind her of that day when her reputed husband of seven years thought he had murdered her as well; the absence of her children is a constant reminder.

Last year she ate no food at Christmas and cried throughout the day; her only solace was sitting quietly on the seawall while her relatives celebrated. This year she may have to cook – yes, she cooks with one hand – because eight months ago she moved on.

It has not been two years since her children were killed and Natasha said she knows some may not understand and even condemn her for starting a new relation-ship. But maybe if they knew the many times she struggled with suicidal thoughts and how she questioned why she had been left alive, they might understand. It may

help them if they knew about the sad and lonely days having no shoulder to cry on, and no one to talk to with whom she could share her darkest moments.

It was her current partner who dragged her out of the tunnel of blackness at the end of which she saw no light. It is he who now listens to her when she wakes up from another nightmare as she talks about her children.

Maybe the relationship would last, may-be it would not, is how she looks at things, but for her it is a moment by moment ex-perience and for the last eight months she has had someone there to help her take care of herself and wipe her tears. It could be weakness but she sees it as strength, since she is now willing to face the future and explore what life has for her.

“You know it was just me mother and she sickly like when I tell she wah I thinking, she use to get upset and just cry, so is like I ain’t get nobody to talk to. He use to listen to me you know…” she said of her current partner.

She admits that her mother was not pleased when she moved out and start-ed the common-law relationship, but she explained that her mother also struggles, and she felt uncomfortable depending on her for her every need. She longs for a day when she can become independent and provide for herself, but as it is now she has to depend on someone to survive and that

person is her partner.So this Christmas, unlike last year, she

would be cooking but maybe not eating.“I don’t live alone so I have to cook,” Na-

tasha said, a task she described as becom-ing relatively easy with time.

It is still a struggle but her partner does “all the cutting up and then I cook” and she demonstrates how she manages to light her stove and use the hand minus some fingers to cook a meal.

“And I does sweep and scrub the house too. The only thing I can’t really do is wash clothes; my fiance does have to do that,” she said, but expressed the belief that with a prosthetic arm she would also be able to undertake the latter task.

She can apply her make-up but cannot comb her hair, and this too is done by her partner who has no qualms about putting her hair into a neat bun.

If she were to have a Christmas wish Na-tasha said it would be to get a prosthetic arm which she believes would lead her to independence.

The happy eight months she has had with her current partner are like years she can cherish, as the seven years spent with Richard were times of constant abuse and it was after she finally decided that enough was enough that he ended it all. It was ‘all’ for her because he took the greatest treasures God had given to her – her children.


(March 21-April 19)You have a lot of drive as the week begins, but you need to take time and consider your tactics — not

to mention the perspective of others. Make sure you’re giving as well as taking, too, for your karma’s sake. Around Wednesday and Thursday, you’ve got creative power, intellectual prowess and a knack for finding people you click with. Whatever you’ve got in mind for the future, it can start right now. From Friday through the weekend, however, you’ll want to say ‘whoa’ instead of ‘let’s go.’ Charging forth could put you in the middle of a real issue, so proceed with caution.

ARIES(April 20-May 20)You can make excellent progress in all of your endeavors as the week begins, but don’t forget to think big,

too. Your larger ideals come into play now in very important ways. Around Wednesday and Thursday, life (and possibly love) may not go quite as smoothly. How will you handle something or someone who stands in your way? Have a strategy rather than just a reaction (or overreaction!). Ideas flow from Friday through the weekend, and the more minds that are involved, the better — not to mention the merrier. Friends, family and community are especially fulfill-ing and fun now.

TAURUS(May 21-June 20)If you’ve got a partner, whether in business or romantically speaking,

expect some negotiations as the week begins. Your aims and theirs may need some discussion and adjusting to work together. Around Wednesday and Thursday, investigate some radically different ideas, meet some highly unusual people and taste some foods you’ve never tried — it’s all mind-expanding and even life-changing now. There’s a lot going on from Friday through the weekend, both around you and in your own mind and heart. Find a creative outlet while you process it.

GEMINI

(June 21-July 22)Beware of a tendency to withdraw as the week begins. It’s important

to stand your ground and defend your position now, whether it’s at work or in your personal life (or, right now, even both). Be fair but firm, and it’ll go well. Around Wednesday and Thursday, fiscal matters are in the stars — so double-check your numbers. If anyone else is involved in the finances, a frank discussion may be in order. You may be all over the place from Friday through the weekend, but it’s in a very good way. Spread the love.

CANCER(July 23-Aug. 22)Who’s in charge at the beginning of the week? In any circumstances

where you’re sharing the power, you’ll need to make an extra effort to cooperate — or a renegotiation may be in order. Around Wednesday and Thursday, progress can be made in all areas of your life, but not via the traditional means. Take a holistic approach and investigate some unusual options — the obvious approach isn’t the best one. Some drama’s in the stars from Friday through the weekend. Will you join in or stay in the audience, waiting for the theatrics to sort themselves out?

LEO(Aug. 23-Sept. 22)Friendships and fun can blossom at work as the week begins, blurring

the lines between labor and play in the nicest way. (Keep any workplace flirtation appropriate!) Around Wednes-day and Thursday, you’ve got innovative power that can have you reexamining the way you do things and even the way you approach your world as a whole. Give yourself time to brainstorm, and don’t rule anything out right away. You might as well put aside your to-do list from Friday through the weekend, because getting stuff done will be tough. How will you react? And what will you do instead?

VIRGO

LIBRA(Sept. 23-Oct. 22)What do you do to beat the blues? Have some action steps ready as

the week begins — exercise, time with friends, meditation, whatever works for you. Then the stars give you a big boost around Wednesday and Thursday, both mentally and in terms of your personal pulchritude. These are fabulous days for any romantic en-deavors — you’re brainy, beautiful and beloved by those you encounter. From Friday through the weekend, rather than kicking off any new projects, finish off a current one. The sense of accomplishment motivates you afresh.

(Oct. 23-Nov. 21)You’re both a power player and a team player as the week begins, and when it comes to your personal life, your

skills aren’t too shabby, either. Getting some great stuff started now is no problem. Around Wednesday and Thursday, however, issues with family may emerge. Be ready to cultivate mutual respect yet set good boundar-ies. If you’ve got romance on your mind, Friday through the weekend is your time — plan a fantastic date or, if you’re single, get out and shop around. Your passion and uniqueness make you irresistible now.

SCORPIO SAGITTARIUS(Nov. 22-Dec. 21)Money might be on your mind as the week begins, but don’t neglect your creative side. After you figure out the

finances, head out to a gallery for some imaginative inspiration. Then, around Wednesday and Thursday, you can generate some fantastic ideas — and if you get some fantastic people in on it, the stars say the sky’s the limit. Friendships expand now, too, maybe due to your generosity of spirit. From Friday through the weekend, you’re in a slower mode. Keep plans low-key and give yourself time to space out.

PISCES(Dec. 22-Jan. 19)You’re hot stuff as the week begins, and not in that by-chance, flash-

in-the-pan way. It’s the effort you’ve put in so far — at work, in relationships, into your own health — that’s showing so beautifully. You may find yourself thinking of the future around Wednesday and Thursday, and that’s a good thing. Make sure a financial plan is part of it. Then, from Friday through the weekend, give your practical side a little time off. Open your heart and your mind — see new things, meet new people. You’ll love it, and they’ll love you.

(Jan. 20-Feb. 18)A free-form approach isn’t going to cut it as the week begins, whether it’s

at work or in personal matters. Analyze the situation and assess what the best response is (it’s not the knee-jerk one). Around Wednesday and Thursday, however, your intuition’s right on and your unusual ideas find many listening (and impressed!) ears. Capture your extra brilliant concepts for later use. Cultivate your compassionate side from Friday through the week-end — do a friend a favor, volunteer your time. It’s heart-expanding and good for your karma, too.

AQUARIUS(Feb. 19-March 20) Those who consider you a dreamer might be surprised as the week begins — you’re a real problem-solver now,

and you make it look easy, too. It’s also a good time to tidy up your physical surroundings. Around Wednesday and Thursday, it’s your headspace that’s in some disarray, but possibly in a good way. All these thoughts will con-geal eventually, so give yourself time for the free-form part of the process. From Friday through the weekend, all of your best qualities are spotlighted by the stars — including your innate knack for all things romantic. Hot stuff can happen now!

CAPRICORN

The weekly horoscopes are updated on every week to gives you an in-depth insight into your family, your love life, any career opportunities, friends and money issues.WEEKLY HOROSCOPE

I am determIned to be cheerful and happy In whatever sItuatIon I may fInd myself. for I have learned that the greater part of our

mIsery or unhappIness Is determIned not by our cIrcumstance but by our dIsposItIon. — martha washIngton.


Entertainment News

Jackie Chan's son Jaycee prosecuted on drug charge

Kungfu superstar Jackie Chan's 32-year-old son Jaycee Chan was today prosecuted here for allegedly

providing a venue for drug users.The prosecution of Jaycee, an actor and

singer, has come three months after he was formally arrested on suspicion of ac-commodating drug users. He was arrest-ed along with Ko Chen-tung, 23, a Tai-wanese movie star also known as Kai Ko.

Beijing police detained many people for drug offences, including Jaycee and Chen-tung on August 14. The duo were tested positive for marijuana and admit-ted to taking the drug.

The arrests were made following com-plaints from local residents.

Police had also seized more than 100 grams of marijuana from Jaycee's resi-dence, state-run Xinhua news agency re-ported today.

Chen-tung was released on August 29 after 14 days of administrative detention.

According to Chinese law, those in-volved in providing locations for others to take drugs face sentences of up to three years. The transporting, manufac-turing or trafficking drugs can attract the death penalty.

Born to Jackie Chan and his wife, a Tai-wanese actress Lin Feng-Jiao, Jaycee was

raised in Los Angeles. He did not pursue studies after two semesters and has a penchant for luxury cars.

Drug abuse among Chinese celebrities has become a hot topic as a number of TV and film stars have been arrested in this connection.

Jackie, an influential member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a legislative body, was ap-pointed as goodwill Ambassador for the China National Anti-Drug Committee in 2009 to promote anti-drug education in the country.

Bill Cosby faces another 'drug abuse' claim by new woman

The problems does not seem to end for Bill Cosby as another woman has accused the actor for drugging

her more than two decades ago.According to the Hollywood Reporter,

the woman identified as Lisa, told her sto-ry on 'Dr. Phil' saying that she had built a friendship with Cosby after she was called in to audition for him when she was a model in the 1980s. The woman contin-ued that she noticed herself getting a lit-tle dizzy when the 77-year-old comedian called her at his hotel suite.

She said that Cosby had his legs open, and when she sat down, she was sitting down in between actor's legs with her back to his crotch and the actor then started to stroke her hair back in a pet-ting motion.

Bruce Jenner wants nothing to do with ex- wife Kris

Bruce Jenner has recently admitted that he "wants nothing to do with Kris Jenner" after the divorce, even

though she insisted that the duo would be "friends forever."

The 60-year-old said that he was "glad and relieved" that his divorce from the American television personality has been officially finalized now, Radaronline.com reported. The 'America's Next Top Model' artist has already moved on with much younger man Corey Gamble but her for-mer husband was hardly jealous.

Sources revealed that Bruce was also pleased that the divorce worked out so that he gets to keep what's his and Kris would have to pay him 2.5 million dollars to equalize their financial statuses as part of the divorce agreement.

Dianna Agron behind Caroline Flack, Jack Street's breakup?

Hollywood actress Dianna Agron is reportedly the reason behind the split of the "Strictly Come Danc-

ing" star Caroline Flack from Jack Street, her boyfriend of 18 months.

It is said that they both had an amica-ble split, but a cryptic Twitter message has suggested otherwise, reports mirror.co.uk. Last week, Flack, 35, wrote to her ex: "@jackb_street easing your guilt??? Fill yourself with glee jack."

Now it's emerged that the tweet, which was quickly deleted, could have been re-ferring to the music manager's friendship with "Glee" actress Agron, 28, who played Quinn Fabray in the show.

Meryl Streep says got Billy Magnussen 'f-king part' in 'Into the Woods'

Meryl Streep a great actress: Ju-lianne MooreStreep helped co-star land role in ''Into the

Woods''Meryl Streep to Richard Gere: The silver club of HollywoodJohnny Depp was like 'father figure to me, says 'Into the Woods' co-s...How neighbor Gwyneth Paltrow saved Meryl Streep's 'Thanksgiv-ing'

Meryl Streep had jokingly told Billy Magnussen that it was her who got him the "f-king part" in their upcoming film 'Into the Woods.'

The film adaptation of the Broadway musical, which sees the 65-year-old Os-

car winner playing an evil witch, portrays Magnussen as Rapunzel's prince, and the 29-year-old actor told the New York Post, that Streep told him that it was all her doing.

It was the first day of rehearsal, the ac-tor said humorously.

Streep had actually seen the Broadway actor in the Tony-winning play 'Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike' back in 2013 and had lobbied for him to land a role in the movie, which would be his first major on-screen role.

The film would hit theaters on Decem-ber 25, 2014.


Adnan Sami: People need to get over my weight lossIn the capital recently, Adnan Sami talks

about the current phase of obscene lyr-ics in Bollywood and how he is tired of

people talking about his weight.The festive cheer is contagious, and Ad-

nan Sami, for one, has definitely caught the festive bug. But while the Delhi winter is one reason behind the big Sami smile, it is his wife Roya who brings out the best in him, according to the singer. We met Sami on his recent trip to the capital, where he shared his take on the shelf life of the 'ob-scene lyrics' formula, his belief in the re-turn of melody and people's annoying ob-session with his weight and the weight loss that followed.

I want People to get over my weight lossMy weight is this permanent topic that

just doesn't fade away. Most days, I am fine with people talking about it. That doesn't bother me as much as how people use the fact to promote their own ventures. Ev-erybody goes around saying, 'Woh Adnan Sami hai na, usko maine patla karwaya tha'. Or there are surgery jokes which just don't stop coming. There are doctors from weight loss clinics who're taking the credit, saying, 'Humare paas aaye the, humne pat-la karwaya, surgery karwayi'. And all of this is going on online with people I don't even know. People expect this (the weight loss) to happen after a liposuction, but that's not even possible. Everyone has their own opinion on how I did it. I get the 'being a public personality' thing, but weight is something so personal, it's sad to see peo-ple talking about it over lunch and coffee.

I am also a human being. I want people to get over my weight and the loss of it. It's been years and I am sure people can find better things to talk about.

I fought the same battles every fat per-son fights

I lost weight by consulting a nutrition-ist. It was as challenging for me as it would have been for anyone trying to lose weight, and I dealt with these battles on a daily ba-sis. At that time, I hadn't even dreamt of doing something like this. I was shopping once in Texas with my mother and I really liked a T-shirt in a store. They obviously did not have it in my size. I couldn't even shop at the plus sizes store. But I bought that T-shirt, saying I will fit into it one day. I would try it every other night, not fit in and then struggle again. Till one night, at 3am, it fit. I called my mom that very moment, screaming with happiness. Another time, I called my father to tell him that I could see my knuckles. I couldn't even bend down to pick stuff up earlier and have come a long way from there. Itni mehnat lagi thi sab kam karne mein, tabhi koi surgery bolke nikal jaata hai toh bura lagta hai.

Compared to songs nowadays, Choli Ke Peeche is a lullaby

Society's tolerance for obscenity has grown

I have been working and composing music since 1986. Over the years, I have seen our music industry go through all kinds of transformation. I remember the time when Choli Ke Peeche came out. It caused an outrage - 'Yeh kya kar diya? Wahiyat, qayamat aa gayi hai! How dare Anand Bakshi write something like this?' And now, in comparison, if you listen to that song, it seems like an innocent, little nursery rhyme, like a sweet little lullaby. When you start looking around at what's going on today, then you feel tab bina wa-jeh hi uski choli ke peeche pad gaye the. I have come to realise that everything is relative. People sit down and analyse lyrics or what songs sound like, but the fact is that society, in general, has really changed and these lyrics seem okay now. Kids and adults, all talk in ways that we wouldn't have dared to use while growing up. I got reprimanded by my father for us-ing the word 'stupid'. But now, a sentence is incomplete without a 'stupid' or 'shit'. A song's lyrics can't be held culprit for the overall change in society. It is all related. As a society, our tolerance for obscenity has expanded.

Some music creators need controversy to survive

Personally, there are many criteria on which I decide a song. One is, of course, the melody. I have to connect with the song. But I will not agree to a song with disturbing lyrics when it's not needed at all. Sometimes, you can pass off the lyrics as an attempt at being funny. You grow with the times and try to relate to the words and you get the usage. But there are still some songs which are just ridiculous and don't make sense at all. By listening to a song, you can make out if the creator was using a word or explicit language just to sound cool. That is when you stop and draw the line. Right now, we have people who use a bad word just so people talk about it and they survive on controversy. People will say, 'Kya wahiyat hai yeh', controversy bane and woh ussi pe paise bana le. So, I stay away from something that is ridicu-lously offensive because you can figure out what the music maker is trying to do.

People will eventually reach a satura-tion point

In our industry, we always have phases. Right now, it's the phase of obscene lyrics. You write just about anything and cre-ate the song. But then, our audience has a limited attention span too. There is a point when the audience will get saturat-ed. People jump on a bandwagon, saying, 'Achcha, yeh chal raha hai, toh hum bhi yehi karenge. Yeh ganda gaana hit ho gaya, toh hum bhi banayenge.' People get con-vinced that yehi chalega, so they say no to any other kind of music, ki market ko wahi chahiye. It's a formula that's working right now, but it doesn't last forever. Someone comes up with something different - an

Aashiqui 2, a Sweeta - and it works and you can prove the bandwagon wrong. So, like people say that there will be no good music to remember from this time many years from now, I am not worried. Because in Indian music, melody has always been the king and one beautiful song will be able to end this phase that we're experiment-ing with. People expect me to be critical of the current music scene, but I disagree. I think we're in this experimental zone which shouldn't be discouraged.

Making an acting debut at 40Everybody made a big deal about this

gap in work. But, in reality, this break had nothing to do with the music being made here or my weight. I had been working con-stantly since 1986 and I wanted some time off, just for myself. Now, I am back and it feels good to be back. I am composing and singing again. But what I had never seen coming my way was acting. I am reading two scripts right now and, if all goes well, the first film will be in theatres next spring. I have always been the kind of person who takes up challenges and puts myself in un-comfortable positions. So, yes, an acting debut at 40 is uncomfortable enough for me for now.

Adnan on wife RoyaRoya came into my life when I was at my

worst. I had just lost my father and I was shattered. My father was everything to me and I had feared losing him all my life and when that finally happened, I had no way to console myself. That's when Roya came into my life like an angel and she literally put me back together. She brought my smile back. My previous relationships have been talked about so much and in a very bad way, but Roya changed everything. Not once has she complained about any-thing and I feel she's a godsend.

Roya talks about AdnanAt first, I didn't know much about Hindi

music, but my sister had Indian and Pa-kistani friends who introduced me to his music. I had a cassette of his songs which I would listen to during my college years in Turkey. The first time I saw him perform was in 2005 in London. At that time, some-one in the audience said that if he didn't lose weight, it could be his last concert ever. At that moment, I just said a prayer that 'God give him to me, I'll look after him'. And that was that. I went home and forgot all about this wish. I was still a big fan of his music. After that, we met in November 2009 and suddenly, everything just happened - with-in one month, we were engaged and in two months, we were married. It was difficult also because my father, who was an army man from Afghanistan, is very tradition-al. He didn't want me to marry someone outside our cast. So we tried to persuade him. Thankfully Adnan's forefathers were also from Afghanistan. And then we were convincing my father by using the Afghan connection. I really believe in destiny and when something is supposed to happen, it happens smoothly like water. And for us, it did, because now, we've been happily mar-ried for five years.


Sony to make 'The Interview' available in future?After Sony Pictures pulled the plug on the theat-

rical release of "The Interview" recently following threats of major disruption by hackers, one of the

studio's lawyers is assuring consumers that the movie will be available in the future.

"Sony has been fighting to get this picture distribut-ed. It will be distributed. How it's going to be distributed, I don't think anybody knows quite yet. But it's going to be distributed," Sony lawyer David Boises said Sunday morning on "Meet the Press", reports eonline.com.

Reports have indicated that the movie will be shown online for free on Crackle, an online streaming service backed by Sony. The studio, however, has yet to confirm the news.

Earlier this weekend, the Facebook page for the Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy was deleted. The film's Twitter account is still active, even though all past tweets

have been removed.As some in Hollywood continue to express their disap-

pointment at Sony for stopping the release of the film, US President Barack Obama recently said it was a "mistake" on the studio's part to pull the movie out of theatres.

While the debate continues, Boises wishes Sony Pic-tures Entertainment had a little more help to fight back against the "state-sponsored criminal attack" they en-dured.

"If the NSA (National Security Agency) had invaded people's privacy like this, people would have been out-raged. North Korea does it, and couples it with physical threats, and people sort of sit back for three weeks while Sony fights this issue on its own," Boises added.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, who has blamed the North Korean government for the attack, continues active investigation in the case.

Tejaswini Kolhapure is pregnant

Actress Tejaswini Kolhapure is ex-pecting her first child with hus-band and director Pankaj Saras-

wat. The baby is due in February and the entire clan is excited about it.

Says the actress, "Everybody is elated and looking forward to welcome the new member. Shraddha (Kapoor) even caress-es my tummy and speaks to the child." It's double excitement for the actress as her movie, 'Ugly' is releasing soon. "It's like the baby has been through the process of filmmaking and experienced it," she says.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan happy to

work with Karan Johar

Prior to locking Aishwarya Rai Bach-chan in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, Karan Johar had discussed two more

ideas with the actress who was recently honoured with the most successful Miss World model at the Miss World event held in London recently.

Aishwarya said, "When I heard the script of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, it made me smile. For me as an actor, it is exciting to be a part of this story and with Karan, it will be the way it should be told. Thus am happy to be on board," said Aishwarya.


Caribbean Connections

www.eliteradionyc.com • Playin The Best In Caribbean Music 24/7 • Download the app from any App Store search: eliteradionyc

Kingston, St Catherine police list 10 wanted men

KINGSTON, Jamaica – The police in Kings-ton and St Catherine

have listed several men as wanted in connection with several crimes.

The Kingston police are in search of:

• Paul Casanova other-wise called ‘Pablo’, ‘Bob-by’, he is of dark complex-ion slim build and about 6 feet 2 inches tall and has a surgical scar at the centre of his stomach. He is said to frequent Veron Lane Mountain View Avenue, Bob Marley beach, Bull Bay and Bayshore Park in St Andrew.

• Ricardo Jones other-wise called ‘Puppy Paw’, he is of dark complexion, medium build, and about 6 feet 2 inches tall. He is said to frequent Guava Ridge, Violent Bank and Content Gap district, St Andrew.

• Sadique Robertson he is of dark complexion, slim build, and about 5 feet 7 inches tall. He is said to fre-quent Glasspole Avenue, Kingston 2.

• Marlaon Omar Mc-Millan otherwise called ‘Chris’, ‘Shootie’, ‘Truety’ , he is of dark complexion, slim build, and about 5 feet 7 inches tall. He is said to frequent Johns Street, All-man Town; Great Georges

Street and Anderson Road in Kingston 4; Fourth Av-enue and McGregor Gully, also in Kingston 4.

Listed by the St Cather-ine MIT are:

• Twenty-four-year-old Kemoy Tummings, other-wise called ‘Night and Day’.

• Twenty-six-year-old Dwayne Ellis, otherwise called ‘Copper’, whose last known address is West Av-enue, Central Village in St Catherine. He is of brown complexion, stout build, has a tattoo on his left hand and is about 5 feet 2 inches tall.

• Twenty-six-year-old Dennis Colman, otherwise called ‘Duwan’. He is said to frequent the March Pen Road community in the parish.

• Calvin Cameron, oth-erwise called ‘Hugh Camp-bell’ and ‘Bobby Lexus’.

• Michael Morgan, oth-erwise called ‘Tullus’.

• Winston Jones, oth-erwise called ‘Swash’ and ‘Redman’.

The police are also ap-pealing to anyone with information about the whereabouts of these men to contact Crime Stop at 311, 811, police 119 emer-gency number or the near-est police station.

Sadique Robertson (left) and Marlon McMillian

Paul Casanova (left) and Ricardo Jones

Senior Trinidad police officer removed from Caribbean Airlines flight

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad, Monday December 22, 2014, CMC – Acting Trinidad & To-

bago Police Commissioner Stephen Williams said he has ordered a probe into reports that a senior po-lice officer was removed on a flight to Tobago after he failed to follow orders to switch off his mobile tele-phone.

The Police Service Social and Welfare Association (PSWA) said it also welcomed the investiga-tion into allegations that Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Pe-ter Reyes may have acted unpro-fessionally, possibly to the point of official misconduct of duties after he was removed from a Caribbean Airlines (CAL) flight to Tobago last week.

Media reports said that Reyes, who was on his way to Tobago to take over command of the police service, had refused to adhere to the regulations given by the air flight attendants.

Reyes told the Trinidad Express newspaper Monday that he did not

know how to switch off his cellular phone causing the one hour delay in the departure of the airline.

“The truth is I did not know how to switch off the phone…,” he said.

CAL said it was forced to transfer the passengers to another aircraft to transport them to Tobago and a report lodged with the police.

In their report, the flight atten-dants Karen Wilson and Lieko Sue Hong described Reyes as an “un-ruly” passenger who had made ra-cial remarks.

“He continued his conversation briefly with the caller and as I stood by his row asking him to please switch off his cellular phone as the doors were closed, the engines were running and the aircraft was taxiing, he advised me that it was an urgent call.

“I advised this passenger that all cellular phones must be switched off at this time despite the urgen-cy of the call. He then loudly stated to me that I was attacking him be-cause he was not white. At this time he increasingly showed that he was

angry by talking loudly to the pas-sengers around him referring to the point that I wouldn’t pick on him if he wasn’t black,” Wilson said in her report to CAL’s management on the incident.

PSWA general secretary Michael Seales said while the association found the whole incident “unfortu-nate”, it welcomed the the decision by Williams to appoint a team to in-vestigate the matter.

“From the observations the as-sociation has made from the article on the Sunday Express which pur-portedly depicts the reports from flight attendants on the plane, then a very serious event has unfolded. It goes right to the heart of security implementations and adherence of law and regulations. And this is es-pecially serious as we live in a world where terrorism is a major issue.

“Therefore, the association has taken an interest in this matter, and if these allegations turn out to be true then we are ready to rumble so to speak, and take this matter as far as it needs to go,” Seales said.

CARIBBEAN AIRLINES (FILE PHOTO)


Forex: J$114.54 to one US dollarKINGSTON, Jamaica — The US dol-

lar on Monday, December 22 end-ed trading at J$114.54, down five

cents, according to the Bank of Jamaica’s daily foreign exchange trading summary.

Meanwhile, the Canadian dollar closed at J$98.07, down from J$99.77 while the British pound sterling ended trading at J$178.38 down from J$179.06.

Witness in Kartel murder trial killed

in Portmore

KINGSTON, Jamaica – A man who was a key witness in the Vybz Kartel murder trial was shot dead in the

Waterford area of Portmore, St Catherine this morning.

Reports reaching OBSERVER ONLINE are that Damion Orrett also known as Ratty was in the community when a gun-man alighted from a motorcar and shot him just before 9:00am.

Another man was injured during the shooting and was taken to hospital.

Five CARICOM countries eligible to participate in US work programmes

WASHINGTON (CMC) – The United States Cit-izenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the US Department of Homeland Securi-

ty, in consultation with the Department of State, have announced that five Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries are eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B visa programmes for the coming year.

The US agencies said Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Haiti and Jamaica will participate in the H-2A and H-2B Visa programmes that allow US employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary agricul-tural and non-agricultural jobs.

The Dominican Republic is the other Caribbean coun-try on the list.

The Czech Republic, Denmark, Madagascar, Portugal

and Sweden have also been added to the list of countries whose nationals are eligible to par-ticipate in the programmes in the New Year.

USCIS said it only approves H-2A and H-2B petitions for nationals of countries the Secretary of Homeland Security has desig-nated as eligible to participate in the pro-grams.

USCIS said it may approve H-2A and H-2B petitions for nationals of countries not on the list “if it is determined to be in the interest of the United States.”

Effective January 18, 2015, nationals of the 68 countries are eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B Visa programmes.


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Four die in West Berbice accidents

Three persons died after a car crashed into a utility pole at No 6 Village, West Coast Berbice around

9:30 pm yesterday.Dead are driver of the Honda Civic

car, Pash Jienarine, 35, of Bath Housing Scheme and a passenger, Rakesh Sukdeo, 33, known as ‘Cerex’ of Bush Lot along with Chaitnarine Mangru, 27, ‘Suren’, who came into contact with a live wire.

Reports are that Jienarine and Sukdeo were returning from Rosignol when Jie-narine apparently missed the turn and ran off the road.

Surren, also of Bush Lot who was trav-

elling behind stopped to render assis-tance when he met his demise.

And in a separate accident, Yonette Branch, 16, of Rosignol lost her life when a car driven by her father, Alfred Branch crashed into a parked canter at No 29 Village, WCB.

The accident occurred around 7:30 pm and Yonette who was sitting in the back seat on the left, sustained severe injuries.

The victims of both accidents were rushed to the Fort Wellington Hospital where they were pronounced dead on arrival.

German writer finds Trinis among Isis

After an account by a German au-thor, now back from examining the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

(Isis) in Iraq and who encountered re-cruits from T&T in Mosul, National Secu-rity Minister Gary Griffith has confirmed there are 12 T&T nationals who are with Isis, mainly persons who were involved in crime and gang-related activities in T&T.

Griffith was contacted yesterday fol-lowing breaking reports from former Ger-man politician Juergen Todenhoefer, who spent just over a week in the Isis-con-trolled city of Mosul, Iraq, and two other similar areas in Syria and Iraq. Granted unprecedented access, he spoke to Isis fighters and child soldiers. Todenhoefer, 74, who had objected to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, had negotiated for the visit with the radical Islamic group for seven months but at the end he said he returned home pessimistic.

He filed a report detailing issues he noted during his visit, including sex-slav-ery trauma, how extremist groups raised money and other matters. He said Isis was stronger, more brutal and harder to confront than he had expected and found Isis followers highly motivated and sup-portive of the group’s brutality. He said he “met child fighters bearing arms” and encountered recruits from around the world, including US, UK, Sweden and T&T.” The numbers included 14 Ameri-cans.

Todenhoefer said he was struck by their brutal zeal and the scale of their ambition to carry out “religious cleans-ing” and to expand their territory. He is quoted as saying: “They are the most brutal and most dangerous enemy I have ever seen in my life... (it’s) terrible to feel people can be enthusiastic about killing hundreds of millions of people. “There’s an enthusiasm I have never seen before in war zones. They are so confident, so sure of themselves.”

Todenhoefer warned Isis was bent on religious cleansing. “It’s their official philosophy. They are talking about 500

million people have to die,” he added. He said there was a constant stream of men coming to sign up to fight. He explained: “When we stayed at their recruitment house there were 50 new fighters who came every day. I just could not believe the glow in their eyes. They felt like they were coming to a promised land, like they were fighting for the right thing.

“At the beginning of this year few peo-ple knew of Isis but now they have con-quered an area the size of the UK. This is a one per cent movement with the power of a nuclear bomb or a tsunami. “I had the impression they want to show the Islamic State is working. I don’t see anyone who has a real chance to stop them. Only Ar-abs can stop Isis. I came back very pes-simistic.”

T&T women being used as decoysContacted yesterday, National Secu-

rity Minister Gary Griffith told the T&T Guardian apart from the 12 confirmed cases of people leaving T&T to fight with Isis’ 30,000-strong Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) complement from over 80 countries, Government was monitoring T&T women who were going and acting as support for male T&T nationals.

“Some are accompanying the men to make it look like it’s a family travelling normally to try to fool authorities that they are on legitimate travel purposes,” he added. Griffith said intelligence re-ports have confirmed that the T&T na-tionals who have gone to join Isis were largely those involved with radical Islamic sects and who had been involved in crime locally.

He said security agencies have also red flagged a number of people of interest in T&T who were aiding and abetting T&T nationals in going to Iraq (via Syria), by providing financing and assisting with getting visas and travel documents for them. The route is usually through Eu-rope and Turkey. Griffith said: “The situa-tion means we cannot afford to heed, for instance, PNM protests and play possum. Those days are gone.”


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Get on top of crime -President urges security forces

President Donald Ramotar yesterday met with the heads of the country’s secu-

rity forces and urged them to get on top of the crime situation.

Stabroek News was unable to ascertain what prompted the meeting. It is suspected though that it may have to do with the country’s escalating murder rate and incidents of gun-related crimes.

A press release from the Gov-ernment Information Agency (GINA) last evening said that Ra-motar met with Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Brigadier Mark Phillips and Com-missioner (ag) of the Guyana Po-lice Force Seelall Persaud at the Office of the President.

The release said that the Head of State discussed the current state of affairs with regards to crime. Secretary of the Defence Board Dr. Roger Luncheon was also at the meeting.

The president’s plea to the duo suggests that he is con-cerned about the country’s crime and security and sees it as an ur-gent enough issue to meet with the heads of the security forces.

This meeting came just a few days after Guyana was cited for its high murder rate and despite the police having unveiled an elaborate plan to fight crime during the Christmas season.

In the Global Status Report on Violence Prevention 2014 compiled by the World Health

Organization (WHO), the Unit-ed Nations Development Pro-gramme, and the United Na-tions Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Guyana was cited as having one of the highest homi-cide rates in the world with just over 20 deaths per 100,000 of the country’s population. It was listed as the 16th most homi-cidal country globally.

The report which pointed out that Latin America is the most murderous region in the world said that Guyana’s es-timated rate of homicide per 100 000 of the population was 20.2 persons for 2012.

Though the police force has reported a decrease in crime as at the end of November this year, there is still concerns in other areas relating to gun possession and gun crimes. According to the police a total of 127 murders were recorded at the end of November 2014 in comparison to 133 mur-ders for the same period in 2013, a decrease of 5%.

Since the police unveiled its Christmas policing plan there have been a number of hair-rais-ing murders and robberies.

‘A’ Division Commander Clifton Hicken in addressing the media had said that the Christmas plan will target crime, traffic conges-tion and road accidents. The GPF, he said, intended to police major hot spots and provide a safe and secure environment for citizens, visitors and shoppers. It was also announced that there will be an increase in vehicular and foot pa-trols particularly in Georgetown.

There have been cases of per-sons being robbed in board day-light while conducting business in the city inclusive of a woman who was shot and wounded moments after she withdrew a small amount of cash from an ATM machine.

On December 8 five gunmen stormed Sterling Products Lim-ited (SPL) in what has been de-scribed as a failed robbery during which security guard Wilfred Stewart, 45, was fatally shot and

Mario Gohill, 31, an Indian nation-al working as a chemist wounded. The invading bandits managed to make their way to the accounts department at the SPL Provi-dence complex, where they were met with a locked safe. The men subsequently fled in a waiting car.

Police have so far been unable to apprehend any of the suspects and based on what this newspa-per was told there has been no development in the case since the arrest and subsequent re-lease of three men.

Days later a fugitive cop and a Prashad Nagar resident were shot dead when they commit-ted an armed robbery on a su-permarket at Montrose, East Coast Demerara.

Warren Blue who fled before he could be formally charged with the 2012 murder of Agrico-la youth Shaquille Grant was the first to be killed. This newspaper was told that he had traded shots with members of a private securi-ty firm which was in charge of se-curity at the supermarket before being shot in the head.

About an hour later Mahendra Sukull who was hiding in the su-permarket was cornered and shot dead by police. Police had said that the robbers had snatched $140,000 from the supermarket. It is suspected that at least two ac-complices managed to escape in a waiting motor car. There is noth-ing to suggest that the stolen cash has been recovered.

President Donald Ramotar (second from right) meeting with Army Chief, Brigadier Mark Phillips (second from left) and Police Commissioner (ag), Seelall Persaud (left). Dr Roger Luncheon is also in this GINA photo.

Car dealer robbed of $2M after leaving bank

Armed bandits carted off just over $2 million and other valuables during a brazen daylight robbery at a Vry-

heid’s Lust, East Coast Demerara business yesterday.

According to Narine (only name offered) who identified himself as a car dealer, at approximately 1:30pm yesterday, as he and his wife were entering their Vryheid’s Lust home, two bandits, one of whom was armed with a gun, approached them and de-manded a bag which contained $2,027,000 which the couple withdrew from a city bank earlier in the day. The traumatized busi-nessman told Stabroek News that the in-truders also robbed him of a cellular phone, his licenced firearm, driver’s licence and other valuables.

Another relative who spoke on the con-dition of anonymity, said that the two men after the robbery, jumped into a silver/grey Toyota Premio and drove south into a near-by street. However, the relative said that the two bandits and the driver of the car abandoned the vehicle after they realized that the street they had entered was a dead end. That relative stated that the three men made good their escape through a narrow passageway.

From all indications, it appears that the couple was traced from the time they left the bank in the city. An eyewitness noted that the men appeared to have been waiting near their home, since a similar car was seen parked in the area sometime before the crime.

When asked if anyone outside the family knew of their trip, Narine said no one was privy and suggested that the bandits had to be trailing them from Georgetown. In frus-tration, Narine declined to provide further information about the attack as he opined that recounting the event to the media would not restore his losses.

Eight days ago, another East Coast busi-ness, the Lahago Supermarket at Montrose, ECD, suffered the same fate, when armed bandits Warren Blue and Mahendra Sukull entered the business and demanded cash. Blue and Sukull were shot dead while at-tempting to escape. The proprietress of that business, Latchmie Baburam, was shot and injured by one of the two men.

When the police arrived on the scene, they met only an abandoned car in the dead end street. Statements were then taken from Narine and his wife.

When contacted, the Detective Officer in charge of crime, Superintendent Rishi Das said that investigations into the matter continue.

The house where the robbery took place at Vryheid’s Lust, East Coast Demerara, where Narine and his wife were held at gunpoint.


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Henry five-for gives NZ series winNew Zealand 275 for 4 (Wil-

liamson 97, Taylor 88*) beat Pa-kistan 207 (Sohail 65, Shehzad 54, Henry 5-30) by 68 runs

New Zealand capped a hard-fought tour of the UAE with a commanding

win in the final match to take the ODI series against Pakistan 3-2. The Tests and T20 internation-als had been tied 1-1 each. New Zealand had trailed in both those contests, as they did twice in the one-dayers before resiliently re-bounding with victories.

Kane Williamson led with the bat again, along with Ross Tay-lor, as New Zealand posted a stiff total on a slow pitch and the fast bowler Matt Henry blew away the Pakistan top order on his way to a maiden international five-wicket haul. Pakistan had come within a couple of hits of chasing down 300 in the fourth ODI but they fell well short of the target of 276 as their poor re-cord in series-deciders over the past decade continued.

Kane Williamson was at it again with a 97

Holder appointed West Indies ODI captain

Jason Holder has replaced Dwayne Bravo as West Indies ODI captain and will lead the team in the five-

match ODI series against South Africa, which starts on January 16, 2015.

Bravo, who had replaced Darren Sam-my as the ODI captain in May 2013, has been left out of the squad for the South Africa one-dayers but is a part of the T20 side. Bravo led West Indies to vic-tory in 12 of their 27 completed ODIs since taking over full-time from Sammy.

According to a WICB release, the recommendation to replace Bravo with Holder had been made by the Clive Lloyd-led selection panel and was ap-proved by the board of directors. Lloyd said Holder’s appointment had been made with an eye on the future.

Holder, 23, made his ODI debut against Australia in February 2013 and has played 21 games, taking 29 wickets with his fast bowling at an average of 28.65.

“Jason is one of the good, young players who we believe will form part of the long-term future of West Indies Cricket,” Lloyd said. “We expect him to be around for a very long time. He is a young man with a very bright fu-ture. We have invested in him. He was part of the High Performance Centre and he also played for the West Indies Under-19 Team and the West Indies A

Team.“He has played ODIs for the West In-

dies before and has done well. We know he will continue to grow and demon-strate leadership. He has a very good cricketing brain and has the makings of a very good leader.

“The selectors decided that now is the time to make the transition and Ja-son will have people around him to help and guide him. Some might say it’s close to the time of next year’s ICC Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zea-land but we know that we have a good one-day team which can do very well.”

The decision comes two months after West Indies pulled out of their tour to India with one ODI, one T20 and three Tests pending, due to a protracted dis-agreement between the players, the board and the players’ association over the payment structure specified by the players’ revised contracts. Bravo had vocalized the players’ stance in several letters to the WICB and WIPA.

Holder said he had looked forward to leading West Indies for a long time.

“I’m very happy to be appointed in this post,” he said. “It’s something I’ve always been looking forward to from [the time I was] a youngster. Obvious-ly being able to take over the mantle of Dwayne Bravo is big boots to fill. [I’m] just trying to move the team forward.”

Morgan to captain England in World Cup

Gary Ballance is the chief benefi-ciary of Alastair Cook’s sacking as one-day captain after he was

named in England’s World Cup squad. Ben Stokes and Harry Gurney have also been omitted from the team that was recently in Sri Lanka with James Anderson and Stuart Broad returning from injury.

The news of the change of captaincy, with Eoin Morgan replacing Cook, had been confirmed earlier on Saturday morn-ing. Aside from Cook, the most significant omission is that of Stokes who, less than a year ago, emerged from the dreadful tour of Australia as one of the few players with any credit.

However, since then he has cut a forlorn figure at international level, his frustration never more apparent than when he broke his hand punching a locker on the tour of West Indies. In his three matches on the re-cent tour of Sri Lanka, he sent down eight overs for 85 alongside scores of 16 and 6.

“I’ve spoken to Ben at length and he was very disappointed as you can imag-ine,” James Whitaker, the national selector, told Sky Sports. “It’s always going to tricky

as a new player in a squad establishing yourself. There will be different positions you have to try and establish yourself in but he was obviously disappointed. We are looking for consistency and we are sure that will arrive with Ben. We have always understood his talent. He’s definitely a player for the future and will form a core part of our group in the future.”

Ballance returns to the one-day side having been omitted for the tour of Sri Lanka after a summer where he was in and out of the one-day side. He played all five matches at home against Sri Lan-ka, but only once against India following a prolific Test season during which he established himself as England’s No. 3. He has a top score of 79 in his 12 ODIs, which was made in his second match against Australia at the MCG.

England’s World Cup squadEoin Morgan (capt), Moeen Ali, James

Anderson, Gary Ballance, Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler, Steven Finn, Alex Hales, Chris Jordan, Joe Root, James Taylor, James Tredwell, Chris Woakes

http://www.espncricinfo.com/newzealand/content/player/277906.html




http://www.espncricinfo.com/westindies/content/player/391485.html




http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/232438.html





http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/current/story/812309.html


Gaining experience will boost India, says Dhoni

If it was prolonged wick-etless spells in Johannes-burg and Wellington, India

are left ruing two short periods of play where their batsmen couldn’t arrest a collapse in Adelaide and Brisbane. When most Indian teams would have batted for a draw, given the tar-get of 364 on the final day in Adelaide, India went for the win and at one point needed 122 with eight wickets in hand and plenty of time to go. They were bowled out for 315. In Brisbane, they had done well after fall-ing behind in the first innings, and were close to wiping out the deficit with just one wicket down when another collapse

kicked in. Overnight batsman Shikhar Dhawan got injured in the nets, four other wickets fell for 11, and all the spirited work after that couldn’t prevent the defeat.

Captain MS Dhoni spoke about those «20 minutes» in each match, and said that the team needed more experience to deal with such situations. «Till the time youngsters play matches and gain experience… there is no substitute to that,» Dhoni said. «Unless they play more matches they cannot have it. If you see here in first and second Tests, in both matches there have been intervals of 20 minutes where we have not

batted well and it impacted the result a lot. To a certain extent we have to manage that and it will help us. The more we play overseas, more will be the ex-perience.

“We cannot get experienced players from anywhere. The attitude from all players has been very good. Whatever two matches are left, it is important that we go into those matches with the same attitude. Whatev-er the result, we shouldn’t focus on that but focus on process in-stead. That would be better.”

The Indian team had made its displeasure with the prac-tice pitches at the Gabba public on Saturday. They believe the

pitches were not good enough, that the groundstaff ignored their requests, and that led to injuries to Dhawan and Virat Kohli, but Dhoni said the team should have handled the sit-uation better. “I felt the first session [when India collapsed] was very crucial, and I don’t think we handled it really well,” Dhoni said. “That was one of the main reasons [for the de-feat] because if we had a decent partnership going and got a few more runs, we all knew the wicket was misbehaving to an extent, and if the game would have gone to the fifth day it would have been a bit up and down. We could have exploited

the conditions a bit more.”Dhoni said there was no

magic solution to handle these collapses. “Yes we have had batting collapses in the past, in the recent Test series we have played,” Dhoni said. “This [Gab-be collapse] was something very different. This will be ad-dressed in a different way. Gen-erally how you address a situa-tion is you try to tell them to bat as normally as possible. To not really look at the scoreboard as to what really has happened. You play according to the merit of the delivery. If it is there to be hit, you hit. You look to score and be positive. That’s how it is supposed to be.”

India folds against Australia’s quicksAustralia 505 (Smith 133, Johnson 88)

and 6 for 130 (Rogers 55) beat India 408 (Vijay 144, Rahane 81) and 224 (Dha-wan 81, Johnson 4-61) by four wickets

Australian resilience was writ large across a four-wicket victory over India that will look a little fortunate

in the scorebook without reference to the dressing-room scenes on day one, when In-dia seemed set fair for a mighty first innings and Mitchell Marsh, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood were all either lost to injury or weakened by fatigue.

Hazlewood’s recovery from full-body cramps to prise out India on the second morning set-up the match, and the com-bined efforts of the new captain Steven Smith, Mitchell Johnson, Chris Rogers, Starc and Nathan Lyon ultimately allowed the hosts to overwhelm India by a greater mar-gin than the first Test in Adelaide. For Smith it was a significant triumph, emerging victo-rious after a first day he described among the toughest he had ever endured, as either player or captain.

MS Dhoni’s men were adequately placed to fight their corner when day four began, but they crumbled in the face of concerted pace and pressure from Johnson on a pitch that had begun to deteriorate. Only Shikhar Dhawan, who did not walk out to bat at 10am because he had been struck on the wrist in the practice nets, offered any sustained re-sistance, and his dismissal lbw to Lyon after lunch heralded a swift end to India’s innings. They had never recovered from Johnson’s burst in the morning session.

In the space of a single spell he prompt-ed Kohli to drag onto the stumps, bounced out Ajinkya Rahane and coaxed an edge be-hind from Rohit Sharma. When Hazlewood chimed in to pin Dhoni lbw, India had lost 4 for 11 and any semblance of control over the game. R Ashwin endured for a time but was given out caught behind off Starc, when the ball may have brushed thigh rather than bat, and Cheteshwar Pujara’s stubborn in-nings was ended by a sharp lifter from Ha-zlewood that looped off the shoulder of the bat to gully.

Left with 128 to chase down in a little more than a day and a session, Australia endured an early hiccup when David War-ner was struck a sharp blow on the thumb in Umesh Yadav’s first over. Warner strug-gled visibly to bat thereafter until he edged Ishant Sharma behind, though closer in-spection in the dressing room suggested no fracture had been sustained. Nonetheless it demonstrated how difficult batting had be-come, and another 50 runs may have been enough for India.

Shane Watson skied an attempted hook at Ishant to be out for a duck, but an un-certain 2 for 25 at tea was added to quickly on resumption by a busy and businesslike Rogers, who knew from years of opening that such fourth-innings chases are best treated with decisive strokes to quickly tip the scoreboard in favour of the pursuers. A rattling 55 left Smith in the shade during their stand of 63, and when Rogers sliced

Ishant into the cordon the target was in sight.

A late flurry of wickets, including Smith’s run-out and Brad Haddin being bounced out for the second time in the match, left a few questions hanging in the air, not least the cost of Smith being dropped badly by Kohli at slip when Australia were not yet halfway there. The taking of that catch may have addled minds that have quickly be-come accustomed to seeing Smith play a dominant hand in proceedings for his team. But it went down, maintaining an India display that had, since that first day, been rather listless.

Subdued is a word that can have been used for Johnson in this series until day three, but he had been roused to life with the bat by an uncertain match situation and some Indian goading. He followed that up with his best bowling of the series on the fourth morning, cramping and defeating

Kohli before finding sharp enough bounce to confound Rahane and Rohit.

Dhoni had jumped forward and across his stumps a long way when Hazlewood pitched straight and full, and Ashwin never quite suggested permanence. Pujara’s dis-missal to another Hazlewood steepler com-pleted a wretched morning for the visitors and a storming one for the hosts.

Dhawan played sensibly and well de-spite his sore wrist, and a stand of 60 with Umesh was taking on useful proportions when Lyon straightened one from around the wicket to draw an lbw verdict from Marais Erasmus. Varun Aaron skied a slog and Umesh connected more sweetly with a pair of straight hits before Johnson found an edge to give Brad Haddin his ninth catch of the Test.

Within a couple of hours they were cel-ebrating a 2-0 series ledger, and a most heartening start to Smith’s captaincy.

Mitchell Johnson blew away India’s top order inside the first hour on the fourth day

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/match/648665.html



http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia-v-india-2014-15/engine/match/754737.html



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Steyn and SA humiliatedWest Indies South Africa 552 for 5 dec

(Amla 208, de Villiers 152, van Zyl 101*) beat West In-dies 201 (Smith 35, Philander 4-29) and 131 (Steyn 6-34) by an innings and 220 runs

Dale Steyn had bided his time while South Africa built a position of su-

premacy against West Indies, but when he stirred the effect was lethal. West Indies were blown away within 15.3 overs, their last seven wickets falling for 55 runs. It was a feeding frenzy and Steyn was the cen-tral figure, licking his lips over a morning spell of six for 31 in seven overs.

What ails West Indies? Are the Caribbean islands so locked into an instant world that they no longer have the wherewith-al to play Test cricket? A Test between the sides ranked No 1 and 8 in the world always had the potential for a mismatch, and South Africa’s victory by an

innings and 220 runs — a win achieved by playing efficient but by no means unstoppable crick-et — illustrated just as much.

Steyn had not taken a wicket in the first innings; he groused at a niggle or two when South Africa imposed the follow-on and left the field for most of the third evening, only bowling five deliveries. But South Africa were blas’ about talk of injury. A good night’s rest sustained him. He beat Leon Johnson’s outside edge with the last ball of his first over, had him caught at the wicket with a rising deliv-ery at the start of his third over and from that point restated his reputation as one of the finest fast bowlers in the history of the game.

Steyn against Chanderpaul promised a contest. Chan-derpaul squeezed a boundary through third slip and gully, squared up in the stroke. The crab sensed the tide was rushing out. Steyn banged one in short

and Chanderpaul stooped into a ball that did not rise as much as he anticipated. AB de Villiers, deputising behind the stumps for the injured Quinton de Kock, who is out for the rest of the se-ries, completed an easy catch. Steyn was now all malevolence.

Even with only four wickets down, the suspicion was that the Test might be over with indecent haste. Steyn’s removal of Mar-lon Samuels in his next over was even nastier. Samuels’ intention was to work him to the leg side but the ball bounced more from a good length and as Samuels flinched back the ball arced gen-tly off a leading edge to cover. The Centurion pitch, which had behaved impeccably on the first three days, was by now standing in Steyn’s corner.

And so it went on. The captain, Denesh Ramdin, lasted two balls. He pushed blindly at the first and gained a boundary through point that he knew he did not deserve. Steyn responded with

a short one, as if offended, and as the ball flew off the shoulder of the bat, de Villiers sprung in front of Amla at first slip to take the catch. When Steyn is in this mood, expectation makes men giants in the close-catching cor-don.

The overs at the other end, whether propelled by Vernon Philander or Morne Morkel, had merely seemed back-up entertainment while Steyn rest-ed. It felt like an error in the programme when Steyn went an over without a wicket, even more so when Morkel inter-vened, jagging one back at Jer-maine Blackwood. His bottom hand flew off the handle — the West Indies looked spooked — and from the released glove the substitute, Temba Bavuma, took a good catch at short leg.

With Kemar Roach not bat-ting, South Africa only needed two more wickets. That they would be taken quickly was nev-er in doubt. Steyn’s fifth was a

regulation catch at first slip; his sixth another leading edge — Je-rome Taylor and Sheldon Cot-trell two tail-enders out of their depth. Somewhere amid the fi-nal throes, Sulieman Benn man-aged a faint riposte by whacking Morkel through midwicket. But the presentation platform was hauled out with lunch still 70 minutes away. West Indies had been dismissed twice in four sessions.

In Brisbane, a proper Test series was enthralling crowds, India ultimately overpowered at The Gabba. Elsewhere in Aus-tralia, the Big Bash was provid-ing more instant gratification. In South Africa, the No 1 Test side felt itself all-powerful as an emphatic victory was complet-ed. It no doubt felt gratifying. But it was best not to analyse it too deeply, even allowing for the classical sight of Dale Steyn sniffing the muggy Centurion air in anticipation of the easy pick-ings to come.

Why punish the West Indies players when the administration is to blame?As Ever, The West Indies Board Has Taken The Short-Term View And Removed Supposedly Troublesome Players Instead Of Recognizing Its Own Incompetence

A few days ago, the West Indies board released the squad for the ODIs to

be played in South Africa starting January 16. There had been ru-mors flying around as to its com-position and the possibility of a new captain.

Well, those rumors are no lon-ger rumors. A press release has confirmed that Dwayne Bravo is no longer captain of the team, and not just for this tour.

The chairman of selectors has pointed out that the new captain, Jason Holder, is younger, and that they see him as the person to take this team forward. But it doesn’t end there. Bravo has not just been relieved of the captain-cy. He, along with Darren Sammy and Kieron Pollard, isn’t even in the squad to play the five games. Now while arguments can be put forward for the reasons to seek a younger captain, however flimsy those might be, what can you say about leaving the three gentle-men mentioned above out of the squad?

Obviously questions have been asked of the selectors. One volunteered the information that the three were left out because they wanted to have a look at younger cricketers leading up to the World Cup. Now if they were sensible enough to have done some homework, they would have realized what a ridiculous

argument that was. Narsingh De-onarine, who has been selected in the squad, is older than the three who have been left out.

Another argument put for-ward is that they looked at the stats, and the cricketers left out weren’t measuring up. Again, folks, do your homework. Bravo was just selected for the ICC ODI Team of the Year for 2014; that is the team selected from among all the ODI cricketers in the world. Bravo can make that team, but his «stats» aren›t good enough to make the West Indies side? That being the case, I think the ICC should just hand the World Cup trophy to West Indies instead of playing the tournament, as they have one hell of a team.

I read an article based on an

interview with the lawyer for the three gentlemen. He speaks of victimization, and I’m afraid I have to agree with him. But am I surprised? I am afraid not. He went on to mention that the WICB cherry-picked details from the task force report to victimize the three cricketers. That is fairly obvious. Once again, the WICB has commissioned a report into the workings of the board, like the Patterson and Wilkins report, and used what it felt like using to suit its own agendas.

Yes, the report did apportion some blame to the players, in par-ticular the seniors, but that came at the very end, just before the recommendations. In its opening salvo, the task force blamed the WICB and the West Indies Play-

ers’ Association (WIPA) for cre-ating the problem.

I draw your attention to the opening paragraph: “We are of the view that the overriding ex-cuse for the players withdrawing their labor was the attempted im-position of new contractual terms of employment on the players negotiated between the board and WIPA, which the players saw for the first time after they got to India.

“There is something funda-mentally wrong in sending a team to faraway places with only a historical view of their terms of employment and then to radical-ly change those terms after they arrive in that distant place.”

If that doesn’t clearly state that WIPA and the WICB created the problem then I am missing some-thing. But once again, players are being victimized and punished, and I have yet to hear about any repercussions for those who created the problem in the first place. It is so unfortunate that the WICB, in choosing to use only that small part of the report that suits it, is again doing West Indies cricket a disservice. One of the recommendations made by the task force, which the board put together without any input from the players, was, “The WICB must now build pillars of trust and respect with the players who are the board’s employees. In

this process, WIPA and the se-nior players have a very real role to play.”

Folks, that was recommen-dation No. 1. Is this how the WICB intends to build trust and respect? I think its actions clear-ly suggest that it doesn’t even intend to try. When this fiasco started in India, I wrote that the WICB had learnt nothing over the years. I pointed out that play-ers who were happy to take up the mantle of representing the region when previous players went on strike were now ready to emulate the earlier cricketers and strike themselves.

Now the WICB is looking to replace the “troublemakers” — one of whom, Darren Sammy, was seen as a “board man” not long ago — with new players. But you can bet your bottom dollar that these new players will soon become disenchanted and start rumblings against the board in the not-too-distant future. A much more knowledgeable man than myself defined madness as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a dif-ferent result. I leave you read-ers to determine what you think then defines the people running the WICB. That has been the board’s behavior for years now. It’s time to change the culture of the board, and it’s obvious that change won’t come from within.

The recently dropped Darren Sammy was considered a board man not too long ago

http://www.espncricinfo.com/south-africa-v-west-indies-2014-15/content/story/812467.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/796611.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/796611.html

http://www.espncricinfo.com/westindies/content/story/812899.html


Odell Beckham Jr. 1st alternate to Pro Bowl

Odell Beckham Jr. wasn’t selected to the Pro Bowl on Tuesday night, but the electrifying New York Gi-

ants wide re-ceiver has a good chance to cap off his bril-liant rookie sea-son at the NFL’s all-star game nonetheless.

Beckham is a first alternate selection at wide receiver. And since play-ers inevitably drop out of the Pro Bowl due to injury or their team reaching the Super Bowl (which Beck-ham’s will not), Beckham seems to stand a good chance of being added to the team in the coming weeks.

The Pro Bowl will be held Jan. 25 in Glen-dale, Arizona, one week before Super Bowl XLIX is played there.

Beckham was the Giants’ first-round pick (12th overall) in this year’s draft, and he missed all of training camp and the first four games of the season due to a hamstring in-

jury. But in the 11 games he has played, he has caught a Giants rookie record 79 pass-es for 1,120 yards and 11 touchdowns. His

highlight-reel, o n e - h a n d e d t o u c h d o w n catch against the Cowboys in a prime-time game in Week 12 made him a national star and led to his having dinner with LeBron James and tex-ting with Mi-chael Jordan.

B e c k h a m and the Giants will finish their 2014 season Sunday with a home game

against the Philadelphia at 1 p.m. ET.The only other Giant recognized in the

Pro Bowl selections Tuesday was Jason Pierre-Paul, who has 10.5 sacks and is a fourth alternate at defensive end. This is the second year in a row that the Giants have not had anyone selected to the Pro Bowl, although safety Antrel Rolle ended up going last season as an injury replace-ment.

Odell Beckham Jr. is likely to make his first Pro Bowl appearance after being named a first alternate Tuesday night.

Rex Ryan: I’ll win Super Bowl one day

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Rex Ryan has lost a lot of games this sea-

son, but he hasn’t lost his bravado.

Entering what proba-bly will be his final week as the coach of the New York Jets, Ryan exuded the same self-confidence Tuesday that marked his introductory news con-ference in 2009, when he predicted a celebratory trip to the White House.

“One day, I’m going to win that thing,” he said, referring to the Vince Lombardi Trophy. “That’s how I feel. I guess that’s just the way I’m wired. I don’t consider myself a three-win coach. I know I’m better than that, yet this is where we’re at right now.”

Major changes are looming for the Jets (3-12), who will miss the playoffs for the fourth straight season.

Monday’s news that owner Woody John-son is poised to hire former Washington Redskins and Hous-ton general manager Charley Casserly as a con-sultant is a strong indica-tion that Ryan and embat-tled general manager John Idzik will be replaced at the end of the season.

Casserly’s hiring is contingent upon a coach-ing and/or GM search, sources said, but the fact that Johnson reached out shows he’s looking to take the franchise in a different direction.

When asked if he be-

lieves he’ll get an oppor-tunity to win that Super Bowl with the Jets, Ryan paused.

“I can’t look past Sun-day,” he said. “I think I’ll win Sunday, that’s how I think. But, eventually, when it is, I just see myself winning it as a head coach. I definitely see it. If that happens, I guess we’ll find out down the road.”

Yankees’ latest deal marginalizes Alex Rodriguez even further

NEW YORK — The Yankees have been quite candid about letting the world know what they expect from Alex

Rodriguez in 2015: next to nothing. And now, if there had been any doubt

before, A-Rod surely knows what he can expect from the Yankees: maybe even less than they expect from him.

Friday’s trade of Martin Pra-do and Phelps to the Miami Marlins for starting pitcher Nathan, 1B/OF/DH Gar-rett Jones and pitching prospect Do-mingo German does more than shore up the starting rotation and add a back-up for the oft-injured Mark Teixeira. It also advances the ongoing marginaliza-tion of Alex Rodriguez, who seems to be losing playing time and at-bats with each move.

Already this week, the signing of Chase Headley to a four-year deal effectively ended A-Rod’s days as the Yankees’ third baseman. And the acquisition of Jones, a decent lefty power hitter who has aver-aged 19 home runs per year over the past six years, has further implications for A-Rod’s Yankees future, or lack thereof.

Jones has played most of his major league games at first base. So much for the idea of having A-Rod take grounders at first this spring to prepare for some Teixeira backup duty. And with the Yan-

kees already carrying four outfielders -- Jacoby Ellsbury, Brett Gardner, Carlos Beltran and Chris -— it seems likely that when Jones isn’t at first, he will be get-ting a good amount of lefty DH at-bats as the Yankees hope to exploit the apparent mismatch of hid power stroke vs. their homer-friendly right-field fence.

So it appears that Alex Rodriguez, with 654 career home runs and $61 million in Yankee paychecks due him, has been re-duced to a part-time DH at best.

There is a school of thought that this is all part of the Yankees’ plan to humiliate Rodriguez to the point that he will quit and leave his money behind, but there’s about as much chance of that as there is of Joe Girardi becoming the frontman for a hip-hop group. Still, with no legal recourse to void A-Rod’s contract and apparently little stomach for paying off his contract and releasing him, humilia-tion may be the only weapon the Yankees have left.

Short of a permanently disabling injury that would allow both parties to go their separate ways with some measure of dig-nity and financial satisfaction -— A-Rod would get the rest of the money owed on his contract and the Yankees would recoup some insurance money -— this could continue to be a long, drawn-out, messy divorce.

Yusuf Pathan slaps misbehaving spectator

Yusuf Pathan slapped a spectator during a Ranji Trophy match on Tuesday.

All-rounder Yusuf Pathan report-edly slapped a young specta-tor during a Ranji Trophy match

betweenBaroda and Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) in Vadodara on Tuesday after he heard the fan making inappropriate com-ments while batting.

Bouquets and brickbats.“This youngster had been shouting

and passing indecent comments against Pathan and other players, such as Ambati Rayudu, when they were batting. Pathan was in no mood to tolerate such a be-haviour. Thus, after he got out, he called

that youngster inside the dressing room and allegedly slapped him twice,” the BCA secretary said.

He added that Irfan Pathan, Yusuf’s younger brother and teammate, rushed from the dressing room to temper the situation as soon as he came to know about the incident. Anshuman Gaekwad, meanwhile, said that the matter came to an end in an amicable manner after a family member of the spectator came and apologized on the youth’s behalf.

A report of the incident will be sent to the BCCI by the match referee before de-ciding the future course of action, Parikh confirmed.

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