News Briefs

Teacher's murder trial yet to start after 13 years

The absence of a witness in the trial of Richard Duhaney, who is charged with the 2006 death of his wife, failed to get under way in the St Catherine Circuit Court yesterday.

When the matter was mentioned before Justice Sharon George, it was postponed until Monday, with the judge telling the defence that the case was on the priority list.

The date was agreed to by the defence, led by Queen's Counsel Valerie Neita-Robertson.

Duhaney's was extended.

On March 20, 2006, the headless body of 37-year-old teacher Velma Duhaney of Portmore, St Catherine, was found in bushes Waugh Hill in Sligoville, St Catherine. After an investigation, the police arrested and charged her husband with murder.

The matter is the oldest on the St Catherine Circuit trial list.

Rasbert Turner

 

 

T&T top cop denies threatening to kill detainee

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC):

Police Commissioner Gary Griffith has dismissed a newspaper report that he had threatened to kill a person, saying “he does not threaten and warn anyone in advance".

In a statement in response to a Sunday Express story that Griffith had planned on chocking and killing Cecil Skeete, the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) said, “If he intends to act, he would do it and he would do it within the law.”

The newspaper claimed that Griffith made the threat in June at the police station, where the Skeete was in custody for questioning.

The paper, quoting an “entry lodged in the dairy at the police station”, alleges that Griffith had placed a gun to Skeete’s head saying, “I could kill you and say to my men that you try to take my gun.”

 

 

Trinidad defends decision not to enter into IMF pact

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad (CMC)

Finance Minister Colm Imbert said yesterday that the Trinidad and Tobago government was being urged to adopt a structural adjustment programme more than two decades after the oil-rich twin-island republic ended a similar programme with the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Over the years, several missions from the IMF had conducted in-depth reviews of the country's economy and the reports shared with major stakeholder groups.

The finance minister said that the country also benefited from a visit by an IMF technical team in 2015 after oil prices began "falling like a stone" and that many of the proposals from the various interest groups, organisations and experts had a common theme, including implementing a property tax system; expanding the tax base; increasing tax collection as well as increasing personal income tax and corporate tax.

But he said that Trinidad and Tobago would not implement the measures as had been recommended by the IMF, noting that “blind adherence to this severe model of structural adjustment at the expense of our human capital was not a road that we wished to travel again".

 

 

HAITI-CRASH-Three detained as authorities probe “emergency” landing of aircraft

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti (CMC):

Police have detained three people – two Mexican nationals and a Haitian – for questioning after a nine-seater twin engine plane made a crash landing in Haiti over the weekend.

According to the statements of the two Mexican pilots, they had taken off from Belize to Venezuela in their twin-engine aircraft when one of the engines broke down and they were forced to make an emergency landing.

However, eyewitnesses claim that on landing, a package was taken to an unidentified car before the arrival of the agents of the Anti-Trafficking Brigade.

There has been speculation that the aircraft could have been carrying insurgents aimed at causing further disruption in Haiti as opposition forces seek to remove President Jovenel Moise from office.