Rihanna Covers Mexican GQ

 

Rihanna graces the cover of the February issue of Mexican GQ. A monthly men’s magazine focusing on fashion, style and culture for men.

In the meanwhile

Two sources on the web reports that Rihanna is eyeing upscale properties in London. The  reason? The Barbadian singer is looking for a UK base close to her music label HQ.

Rihanna Eyes London Home

Rihanna is planning to buy a home in London. The Umbrella hitmaker – who is currently dating fellow singer Chris Brown – is said to be eying up properties in the UK capital’s ultra-expensive district Kensington and Chelsea.

A source says, “Rihanna’s looking for a UK base close to her record label HQ.”

Rihanna, 20, recently revealed she was keen to make the move into the movie industry – and start her own business.

She said, “I’d love to star in some movies, that’s my next goal. I love my music but I want to get into movies.”I want to start some businesses of my own. I like clothes, I love make-up, so maybe I could have a hand in some of those things.

Source: showbizspy.com

Rihanna Wants To Buy Home In Britain So She Can Use Her Umbrella

Rihanna is the latest American pop singer to buy property in the UK.

I can reveal the R&B star has already sent out underlings from her record company Sony to view pads in London’s most expensive district – Kensington and Chelsea.  My music industry mole told me: “Rihanna’s looking for a UK base close to her record label HQ.”

Source: gotaaccesssecrets.com

IMF – Global Economy To Creep To 0.5% Growth In 2009 Worse Since World War 2!!!

The embattled world economy is crawling to a halt under the financial crisis and would grow by only 0.5 per cent this year slowest pace since World War II, the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday.

“The world economy is facing a deep recession,” the IMF said in an update of November forecasts that shaved about 1.75 point off its prior global growth estimate.  The IMF said the advanced economies were now seen contracting by 2.0 per cent, a sharp downward revision from the negative 0.3 per cent estimate two months ago.

“Despite wide-ranging policy actions, financial strains remain acute, pulling down the real economy,” the 185-nation institution said, warning the outlook was highly uncertain.

The United States, the epicenter of the financial crisis, would endure a 1.6 per cent contraction, the IMF said, slashing its prior estimate of 0.9 per cent.
Nonetheless, the world’s biggest economy would weather the financial storm better than most other major advanced economies. Japan’s economy would shrink by 2.6 per cent in 2009 instead of the mild prior estimate of 0.2 per cent. The world’s second-largest economy would be in recession for the second consecutive year, following a 0.3 per cent contraction in 2008. The 27-member eurozone economy would hit a wall, suffering a 2.0 per cent contraction after growing 1.0 per cent in 2008. The previous 2009 estimate was for a 0.5 per cent contraction.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, would shrink by 2.5 per cent this year after a 1.3 per cent expansion in 2008, according to IMF figures published six days ago. Britain would suffer the most, with gross domestic product (GDP) activity contracting 2.8 per cent, after 0.7 per cent growth last year. Of the major advanced economies, Canada would be the least affected, hit with a 1.2 per cent contraction.

Developing countries were forecast to have relatively weak growth of 3.3 per cent in 2009, about half the 6.3 per cent expansion of last year. China would remain the world’s fastest-growing economy, putting in a 6.7 per cent pace, down from 9.0 per cent in 2008. India’s economic growth would slow to 5.1 per cent after 7.3 per cent.

To give the scale of the deepening recession, the IMF said the first annual global contraction during the postwar period would have a cumulative output loss — relative to potential growth — comparable to the 1974-1975 and 1980-1982 recessionary periods.

“A sustained economic recovery will not be possible until the financial sector’s functionality is restored and credit markets are unclogged,” it said.

The IMF cautioned that “the uncertainty surrounding the outlook is unusually large.”

“Downside risks continue to dominate, as the scale and scope of the current financial crisis have taken the global economy into uncharted waters,” it said.

Assuming that the necessary measures will be taken to address the crises and they are effective, the IMF forecast the global economy would recover in 2010, with growth of 3.0 per cent.

“The main risk is that unless stronger financial strains and uncertainties are forcefully addressed, the pernicious feedback loop between real activity and financial markets will intensify, leading to even more toxic effects on global growth.”

Source: indiatimes.com

UK PM Warned Of Global Financial Crisis 10 years Ago

 Gordon Brown today (27/01/09) said that he had warned of the current global financial crisis ten years ago – and that the current crisis is the birth pangs of a ‘new global order’.

The Prime Minister claimed that he had called for a stronger regulatory framework in the wake of the Asian money markets collapse in 1999.

But Mr Brown’s speech came as two new opinion polls show that Labour is losing the battle to convince voters that its anti-recession measures are working. His comments also came on the day that it emerged 75,000 jobs had been lost across the world in a single day, with more than 8,000 of them in Britain.

‘As I said in Harvard ten years ago, we need an early warning system so that international financial flows are properly monitored,’ Mr Brown said in a speech yesterday.

‘We must create a framework for the international governance that we currently lack. We must consider at a global level the regulatory deficit. For a decade I have said that the current patchwork arrangement is inadequate.’

The Prime Minister insisted the recession was just the ‘difficult birth pangs of a new global order’. Mr Brown warned that countries must see the financial crisis as the chance to forge a new financial system.

Setting the scene for April’s G20 talks in London, Mr Brown said: ‘If what happens to a bank in one country can within minutes have devastating effects for banks on a different continent, then only a truly international response of policy and governance can be effective.’
He said current ‘threats and challenges’ to the world economy should be seen as ‘the difficult birth pangs of a new global order’.

‘Our task now is nothing less than making the transition to a new internationalism with the benefits of an expanding global economy, not muddling through as pessimists, but making the necessary adjustment to a better future and setting new rules for this new global order’, he said.

FULL ARTICLE

• Baron David de Rothchiid: There Will Be A New Form Of Global Goverance
  

Restaurant Critic Michael Winner Endorse BTA Gourmet Card

The Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA) has launched the Gourmet Card, which offers savings of up to 25% on meals at participating restaurants across the Caribbean island.

Part of a promotional initiative to highlight the quality of cuisine available in Barbados, the card will be valid from 15 April to 14 December this year.

Reportedly endorsed by restaurant critic and newspaper columnist Michael Winner, the Gourmet Card can be ordered on its own dedicated website.

It will provide discounts at establishments including the Aqua Restaurant and Luigi’s on the south coast, Brown Sugar near Bridgetown and Daphne’s Barbados on the island’s western side.

Barbados covers an area of only 166 square miles but is home to more than 100 restaurants and is the only country of its size to be the subject of a dedicated Zagat guide.

Petra Roach, the BTA’s European vice-president of marketing, said: ‘We are tremendously excited about the Barbados Gourmet Card, which follows on from the success of Barbados being the only Zagat-rated Caribbean island, and we warmly thank Mr Winner for his fantastic endorsement.

‘We take food very seriously, which is why our small island has so much variety and choice.’

Source: Opodo Travel News

Hmmm, no upscale restaurants listed like Sandy Lane restaurants. Can’t risk more exposure like that now can we! But then again should a five star resort  demeanour  itself  further by offering a discount card?  BTW  folks,  the card is for locals too not just tourists.

(barbadosgourmetcard.com)

• Sandy Lane’s Chef Food Gets Low Praise
  

Debt Ridden Air Jamaica To Cut Barbados Route Next Month

The head of Air Jamaica says the ailing carrier must eliminate six unprofitable routes and slash staff next month.

Bruce Noble is the chief executive of the debt-ridden airline. He says Air Jamaica’s flights to Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, Barbados, Grenada and the island of Grand Cayman will be cut in late February.

Noble said Tuesday that Jamaica’s national carrier had to “cut routes where we are losing money.”

He says an undetermined number of workers will be dismissed around the same time. Air Jamaica has eliminated other routes and trimmed its workforce in recent years.

Jamaica expects to divest itself from the airline by April. Prime Minister Bruce Golding has said the carrier was losing US$141 million a year.

Source: forbes.com

Israel Prepares Itself For Gaza War Crimes Charges

 

More than 1,300 Palestinians killed

Thirteen Israelis killed

More than 4,000 buildings destroyed in Gaza, more than 20,000 severely damaged

50,000 Gazans homeless and 400,000 without running water

Source: BBCNews

Israel’s prime minister has assembled a team to defend the country against charges of war crimes in its recent offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Ehud Olmert asked Israeli Justice Minister Daniel Friedman Thursday to lead an inter-ministerial team to prepare legal defenses for Israeli officials and military personnel.
Israeli Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz warned earlier this week that Israel may face a wave of international lawsuits over its 22-day offensive, which ended Sunday.

U.N. human rights expert Richard Falk said Thursday there is evidence that Israel violated humanitarian law by conducting the offensive, “against an essentially defenseless population.” He called for an independent investigation to see if Israel committed war crimes.
Israel insists its troops did their best to limit civilian casualties in heavily-populated battle zones. It also accuses Hamas militants of hiding behind Palestinian civilians and firing at Israelis from civilian and U.N. buildings.

The Israeli military has banned publication of the names of Israeli commanders who took part in the offensive for fear they could face prosecution when traveling overseas.
Falk is the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. He made his comments in a phone call to reporters in Geneva from his home in the U.S. state of California.

Falk also accused Israel of trapping Gaza’s civilian population in the war zone and preventing children, the sick and wounded from fleeing the territory.
Israel says it launched the offensive as an act of self-defense against hundreds of indiscriminate Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli communities.  
Israel and Hamas both declared cease-fires Sunday, ending major combat. Thirteen-hundred Palestinians and 13 Israelis died in the violence.

Israel’s government says it will allow journalists free access to Gaza beginning Friday ( 22/01/09). Israel barred the media from entering the territory during its three-week offensive.

Source:voanews.com

• UN ‘shocked’ By Gaza Destruction

Israeli Soliders Shot Children Says Gaza Family

Souad Abed Rabbo was in her apartment on the edge of the Jabalya refugee camp near the Israeli border on January 7 when the call came from Israeli soldiers for everyone in the area to come outside.

 Her apartment had been bombed, and there was an Israeli tank unit approaching the building.

“We started coming outside of the apartment, and we were waving white flags to show that we were not fighters,” she said through a translator yesterday.

 Among the first to exit the building were one of her sons, Khaled, and his wife and three daughters, Amal, 2, Sammer, 4, and Souad, 7.  Two soldiers were standing on either side of the tank outside the house, she said. Another of her sons, Husam, told the Herald that one of the soldiers was an officer.

“They were standing there just looking at us, and they were eating chips and one had chocolate and they were talking to each other,” Husam said.  “We were waiting for about 10 minutes for directions on where we should go.”

Husam and another son, Ahmed, said a third soldier rose from inside the tank, holding his rifle.  Their mother says she did not see the third soldier until he started shooting.

“He did it very slowly,” Ahmed said. “He took careful aim at the little girls, and shot Amal and Souad three times. Sammer started running back up the steps toward the house and he shot her also.”

Their grandmother started shouting, trying to push her son, Khaled, the father of the two shot girls, and his wife, back into the house. She was also shot, three times.  One bullet passed through her upper arm, another passed through her torso underneath her rib cage, and another was lodged in her abdomen.  Ahmed, Husam, and another son, Farj, recall that their mother and the three girls were dragged inside the house. “When the soldiers realised that two of the girls were dead, they said Khaled could take her to the hospital,”

Khaled starting shouting for help. One neighbour who heard him was Ehab al-Asheikh, an ambulance driver, who told the Herald he went outside to see what had happened.

“I wanted to use the ambulance to drive Khaled to the hospital but I was prevented from doing so by the soldiers,” he said.

Khaled said the soldiers told him he could take his daughter to the hospital, and he set off on foot with Sammer in his arms. His wife walked with him, carrying one of the dead girls, and another brother, Ibrahim, carried the second dead girl. Sammer was taken to Shifa hospital, then transferred to a hospital in Egypt and is now in intensive care in a hospital in Belgium and reportedly has severe spinal injuries.  The Israeli Defence Forces later destroyed the building, and all the other residential buildings in the neighbourhood. Ehad al-Asheikh showed the Herald his ambulance which, was crushed almost beyond recognition underneath the rubble of his former home.

An Israeli military spokesman, Captain Benjamin Rutland, said the allegations were being treated seriously and being investigated.

“With regard to this particular incident, this is being investigated at the very highest levels of the IDF,” Captain Rutland said. “It is a very thorough investigation.”

Captain Rutland stressed that at no stage did the IDF target civilians.  Khaled Abed Rabbo showed pictures of the dead girls taken on his mobile phone. He also claims that he has video footage of the girls, taken after they had died, but this was not shown to the Herald . Khaled Abed Rabbo is on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank city of Ramallah, as a policeman. The family is associated with the Fatah movement of the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, and is not believed to have any connections to Hamas.

He is demanding a full inquiry and wants the chance to present his own evidence. 

“Why do they come after us?” Khaled asked the Herald . “We are not militants here. We are not Hamas. We are just ordinary people.

“Somebody did this to my daughters and I want the world to know what is going on here.”

Source: canberratimes.com.au

Brutal Facebook Killer Jailed For 18 Years

A British man who murdered his wife after becoming enraged when she changed her relationship status on Facebook to “single” has been jailed for at least 18 years. Edward Richardson, 41, stabbed wife Sarah, 26, to death in a “frenzied and brutal” attack at her parents’ home in Biddulph, central England, in May.

The couple had been living apart since the previous month, said Fiona Cortese, a spokeswoman for the Crown Prosecution Service. “Richardson became enraged when Sarah changed her marital status on Facebook to single and decided to go and see her as she was not responding to his [text] messages,” Ms Cortese said. “He gained entry by breaking the front door window and made his way into the property. “He found Sarah in her bedroom and subjected her to a frenzied and brutal attack with a knife and then attempted to take his own life.” Sarah Richardson’s parents, Beryl and Alan Boote, said they were left devastated by her murder after the verdict on Thursday. “We hope that Richardson will be an old man before he’s ever allowed out of prison,” they said

Source: canberratimes.com.au

Venezuela Again Seeking Cubana Plane Bomber From US

 Venezuela will press the Obama administration in the coming days to extradite a former senior official in Venezuela’s secret intelligence police so that he can be tried for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people, according to lawyers for the government here.

The move will test the new administration’s willingness to engage on a festering issue that has further strained America’s relations with Venezuela and Cuba. Both nations have depicted the case of Luis Posada Carilles, an elderly Cuban exile who is a naturalized Venezuelan and a former  C.I.A operative, as an example of hypocrisy by Washington in its fight against terrorism.

Mr. Posada, 80, is charged here with masterminding the bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane as it flew above Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, including dozens of Cuban civilians and a 9-year-old Guyanese girl. It was the Western Hemisphere’s first act of midair terrorism, the bloodiest of a series of bombings aimed at weakening ’s Fidel Castro’s government.

At the time of the bombing, Mr. Posada was operating a private security firm here, after holding senior posts in Venezuela’s intelligence police. He was imprisoned in Venezuela for nine years while facing charges of plotting the bombing with another Cuban exile, but escaped in 1985 to El Salvador aboard a shrimp boat.

Mr. Posada has lived freely in Miami since 2007, when a federal judge in Texas dismissed an indictment against him on immigration fraud charges. He had entered the United States from Mexico, and was detained for two years until his release. He now spends his days painting landscapes, which are sold by the dozens at shows in Miami frequented by a shrinking but powerful group of hardened anti-Castro exiles.

“The Bush administration did not want to extradite Posada, because of its close ties to extremist elements in Miami that protect Posada,” said José Pertierra, a lawyer in Washington who represents Venezuela’s government. “We are hopeful that the Obama administration will see the case differently.”

FULL STORY

Source: nytimes.com

Crisis In Caribbean Tourism

In recent years, the once vibrant Caribbean tourism industry has been plagued with a number of challenges, including natural disasters and competition from new destinations.

But this year, it was the weakening global economy that has dealt the hardest blow to the industry.Across the region, hundreds of tourism jobs have been lost to the financial crisis.   Luxury resorts, reporting a drop in visitor arrivals, were forced to lay off staff and in some countries, tourism development projects were halted because of a lack of funding.  And there are no immediate signs that things will change. Governor of the Barbados Central Bank, Marion Williams, warned that a prolonged recession could result in a 20 percent drop in tourism revenue.  But the executive vice president of the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA), Sue Springer, said that would be disastrous.

“If we are talking 20 percent we can all pack up and go home, because that would be the end of the tourism industry in Barbados and it will have a catastrophic effect,” Ms Springer said.

Julia Blenman, who manages a small hotel, foresees tough times ahead.

“We’re a small property, competing among a lot of people here in Barbados, larger hotels who may lower their rates just to get people to come in.

“So that’s going to be hard for us,” she told BBC Caribbean.

Air Passenger Duty

In addition to lower visitor arrivals, reduced spending and job losses, the industry was dealt another blow in November.  The British government announced plans to introduce a new tax, the Air Passenger Duty, as part of a drive to reduce carbon emissions.  Under the new law, passengers flying within 2,000 miles of London will have to pay incremental taxes on their ticket fare.

The new tax take effect from November 2009.

St Lucia’s Tourism Minister Allen Chastanet described the tax as a slap in the face for the Caribbean, and he warned that it would spell further problems for the  . Dominican hotelier Judith Pestaina agrees and she says regional governments should lobby against the levy.

“Here it is we have had our bananas, rum, sugar – all these major commodities – affected by WTO rulings, now you have an additional tax being imposed on travel.

“This is something I think our ministers should be lobbying aggressively against, so that we can safeguard our tourism,” she said.

FULL STORY

Source: BBCCaribbean.com

Guyana President, Separated Wife In Public Spat

The president of Guyana and his wife have had another public disagreement.

Former first lady Varshnie Singh said in a statement that security agents barred her from the presidential house. She has lived there in separate quarters from President Bharrat Jagdeo since their separation in 2007.

She also demanded certain government concessions and retention of what she described as “first lady privileges”. Later, President Jagdeo issued a separate statement saying the decision to tell his former wife to vacate was “painful,” but she had reneged on numerous promises to move out.

Mr Jagdeo added he was prepared to meet all his legal obligations to his wife but could not provide his her fe with any government resources.

Source: BBCCaribbean.com

Islamic Party Ramps Up ‘Ban Rihanna’ Campaign In Malaysia

Islamic leaders in Malaysia are pressing ahead with calls to ban Rihanna from performing in the country – just weeks after she promised to tone down her forthcoming live concert.

The controversy over Rihanna’s saucy stage act has re-emerged after a new report from the Pan-Malaysian Islamic party (PAS) claims her performance, planned for Kuala Lumpur on 13 February (09), would be an insult to Asian values.
The Malaysian government has strict rules when it comes to female performers, and artists are required to cover up from their shoulders to their knees.
The PAS has urged authorities who issue concert permits in the primarily Muslim country to reject the organiser’s application.
The organisation, which has launched protests against the U.S. over its support of Israel in the ongoing struggle in the Middle East, has also warned that ticket buyers are contributing to the United States’ economy.
PAS youth wing leader Kamaruzaman Mohamad tells Malaysian newspaper the Star, “Whether Rihanna realises it or not, we know that the taxes she has paid also contributed to the war in Gaza.”
Mohamad claims the event would be “akin to insulting Eastern culture, belittling local artistes, internationally causing losses to the country’s economy and supporting Israel’s war policy, which is supported by America”.
Umbrella hitmaker Rihanna, who is known for donning flesh-baring PVC corsets and knee-high boots for her gigs, agreed to abide by Malaysian laws earlier this month (Jan09).
Pineapple Concerts, the promoters behind the show, maintained Rihanna’s management is “aware of the country’s regulations and the difficulties of doing a show”.
Artists including Avril Lavigne and Gwen Stefani have previously faced protests in the country for their choice of clothes, and the former No Doubt singer lashed out at the government by claiming she made “a major sacrifice” when she gave in to the dress rules for her show in the country last year (08).

Source: contactmusic.com

• Rihanna Agrees To Cover Up For Malaysia

Kenyans Party It Up For Obama Inauguration

Bulls and goats have been slaughtered for the feast. Beer has been stockpiled. Movie screens and projectors were erected.

Across Kenya, neighbors engulfed in political violence only a year ago came together Tuesday to celebrate the U.S. presidential inauguration of Kenya’s favorite son, Barack Obama. Among the revelers will be Dr. Joseph Osoo, who was shopping at a Nairobi market for goat meat for his inauguration party. Osoo, who runs a clinic in one of Kenya’s biggest slums, recalled that at this time last year, he was stitching up machete wounds inflicted by rival party members in rioting that followed Kenya’s disputed election.

“Our election in Kenya really had problems with ethnicity,” he said. “America has shown that this doesn’t have to be that big problem. … Democracy can work.”

The celebrations have helped bring together Kenyans from different ethnic groups who were drawn into the country’s political violence last year. The struggling country of 38 million is proud to boast the birthplace of Obama’s father and it is hard to exaggerate the enthusiasm Kenyans feel for America’s new president.

Role model
The election of a black American president stands as a powerful symbol of unity on this continent, where many countries are still riven between competing ethnic groups and the older generations still remember the injustices of colonialism.

Teachers mention Obama as a role model to their students, advertisers plaster his face across everything from phones to beer and foreigners who sing songs about him at the ubiquitous police roadblocks can be let off without paying a bribe.  For many, the inauguration was a chance to make a little extra cash. One in five Kenyans struggle to get by on less than a dollar a day and many hope to cash in on the country’s Obama connection.

There are plans for a museum in his family’s home village and tour companies are already hawking Obama-themed holidays. Denis Mwangi, a 21-year-old business student, said he had sold 50 Obama T-shirts on Monday, more than he usually sells in a weekend.

“Obama is a great inspiration for all of us,” he said. “Obama should inspire people to be better and stop judging people according to their ethnicity.”

Nairobi’s famous Carnivore restaurant, where tourists dine on alligator and giraffe, said it had ordered an extra 240 crates of beer for partygoers watching the inauguration.  Bulls and goats were slaughtered in Kogelo village in western Kenya, where many of Obama’s Kenyan family live. Around 3,000 people congregated at a local primary school to celebrate. Women dressed in colorful printed cloths performed traditional dances to the rhythms of cowhide drums.

In the nearest city, Kisumu, a local Obama look-a-like drove through the town in a honking convoy of cars, motorbikes and bicycles before he arrived at a local sports stadium, where he planned to deliver one of Obama’s speeches.  But the celebrations have not been without controversy. Kenyan papers reported a team of ministers has flown to America to watch the ceremonies. However, the ministers had no invitation to the ceremonies, and would be watching the festivities from their hotel room televisions.

Anti-corruption campaigner Mwalimu Mati said Kenyans should not just be celebrating, but looking carefully at their own leaders.

“In Kenya, the biggest problem is a failure of leadership. People are getting poorer by the day,” he said. “Obama is an icon of hope, but he should also be a standard.”

Source: msnbc

Barrack Obama Sworn In As First Black US President

Invocation by Pastor Rick Warren

Obama Oath Of Office & Inauguration Address

 

 

Barbados PM To Shake Up Immigration Department

The Honourable David Thompson, Prime Minister of Barbados, is promising a shake-up of the island’s Immigration Department over growing concerns by immigrants, including Guyanese.
The Department has been at the centre of much debate in recent weeks over allegations that larger-than-usual numbers of immigrants were having their applications for work permit extensions denied, or were being deported for overstaying their time. 

“I believe that there are going to be major administrative changes coming; there will be a shake-up. That is the one thing I can say,” he told a press conference last week.
He insisted that the large number of applications for work permit extensions being denied had only to do with the fact that there was a backlog of cases.
“Matters just weren’t dealt with… and I think that has created some of the challenges,” said Thompson, as quoted in The Nation newspaper of Barbados.
The steady increase in the number of Guyanese being rejected renewals to their work permits had caused Guyana’s Honorary Consul Norman Faria to urge employers in Barbados to assist their Guyanese workers. Faria wrote to Harry Husbands, the Executive Director of the umbrella group Barbados Employers Confederation, to pay more attention to their personnel departments.
“There are, of course, firms that deal most professionally with all their employees, and we must commend the generally progressive and vibrant nature of the Barbados private sector; but the Consulate is, nevertheless, concerned about the high number of reports to their Consul by workers questioning difficulties they are experiencing at the Immigration Department, in particular when renewing their work permits.”
He insisted that Government was not targeting any particular nationality, saying: “Out there, there are some people who think that we are targeting illegal Guyanese immigrants. There are some people who are stirring up that element of strife.
“I have spoken to President [Bharrat] Jagdeo about it on several occasions, and I think he understands our position.
“Our position has nothing to do with the origin of the immigrants. The fact that there are more Guyanese immigrants in Barbados means that whatever actions taken in relation to immigration policy will impact more on them. But nobody should be of the view that our policy is targeting one group.”
Thompson’s position comes on the heels of comments by his Agriculture Minister, Haynesley Benn, who said he wanted to help Guyanese facing immigration woes on the island, recognizing the critical need for workers in the agricultural sector. Benn said he was willing to help local farmers get the “eyes and ears” of the minister with responsibility for immigration to look at the situation with Guyanese labourers and work permits.
“If Barbadian farmers cannot get Barbadian labourers, and we want to see agriculture go forward, we would need to help them. Guyanese farmers are renowned for their hard work on farms, and expertise,” Benn was quoted as saying.
“Some farmers have even advertised for local labour, and it seems as though the response from our people is not as forthcoming as the farmers would like, hence they have asked for assistance.”

Source: Kaieteurnews

Barbados Awards Oil Exploration Rights

Barbados has awarded its first offshore oil-exploration rights in a bid to diversify its tourism-driven economy, an energy official said Friday.

The government licensed Melboure, Australia-based BHP Billiton to evaluate two undersea blocks southeast of the Caribbean island, said Philmore Best, deputy permanent secretary of Barbados’ energy ministry. He gave no details on the financial terms of the deal.

Barbados plans to open as many as 26 blocks for exploration. Best said he believes multinational oil companies could boost the island’s energy production enough to soon rival tourism as its biggest industry.

The island sits in the southeastern Caribbean near oil-rich Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. Barbados now produces just 1,100 barrels of oil a day from wells on land, making it a net oil importer.

“Based on how the Caribbean and South American plates jam together, there should be an environment where you find oil and gas offshore,” said Frederick Kozak, an energy analyst at Canaccord Adams, an investment firm in Vancouver, Canada. “The problem is you don’t really know where it is.”

The former British colony has considered offshore drilling since the 1990s, when a study by the U.S. oil company then known as Conoco Inc. noted promise in nearby areas. Barbados solicited its first bids in 2007.

Source: msnbc

Sandy Lane’s Chef Food Gets Low Praise

Michael Winner has made more than 30 films in his career as a director, but is arguably better known for his outspoken restaurant reviews. His weekly Winner’s Dinners column for The Sunday Times features visits to the world’s great eateries.

My friend Gordon Ramsay famously said, “Michael Winner knows nothing about food.” At last I’ve found someone who knows less about food than me.

Not only less about food, but less about presentation, about how to treat people . . . in fact I’ve met the most awful example of the so-called “hospitality industry” I’ve come across in 70 years of eating in the finest restaurants all over the world. Quite a nonachievement. This man is ridiculous.

Stop. Don’t get overexcited. “Calm down, dear, it’s only a chef.” He’s Grant MacPherson, culinary director and head chef of Sandy Lane, Barbados. His food is unbelievably awful. He struts round the dining room like a waxwork on display, a carefully tended little triangle of white hair under his lower lip. One lady on the beach said, “I’d like to rip it off.” I understand her angst. If I had £1 for every guest who said to me, “Be sure to hammer that ghastly chef,” I’d be . . . well, about £53 richer.

MacPherson is far and away the worst choice of chef since Dermot Desmond so beautifully rebuilt and improved Sandy Lane. It’s been the subject of a considerable makeover, largely successful. The Bajan Blue dining area looks much better, but the surfaces available for displaying food are considerably reduced. So choice is limited. One of the star items of the Sandy Lane buffet was always the suckling pig, with its lovely crackling skin. This year chef MacPherson cut me a piece, saying, “That’s real crackling.” It wasn’t. It was inedible rubber.

When I asked why after 27 years Sandy Lane could no longer produce a properly cooked pig MacPherson replied sneeringly, “I don’t know about Bajan pig, I know about Hawaiian pig – that’s cooked in the earth.”

“We’re not in Hawaii,” I said to Geraldine. “We’re in Barbados and it’s on his menu.”

If you said anything to MacPherson that wasn’t total praise he looked as if you’d vanished, and walked away. He came over one evening with a single duck pancake on a plate, as if presenting a rare diamond. The duck was old and tired. The pancake was like leather. Guests passed by saying how awful the duck pancakes were. MacPherson swanned around in his own little world. Mr Chef on a pack of playing cards.

The Christmas goose was dry and horrid. The Christmas cake solid goo with no taste, no liquidity, no texture. The brandy butter was just pathetic pouring cream. The mince pies, hard and with no flavour. Last year both were superb. Under Richard Ekkebus a couple of years ago the food was fantastic. Grant MacPherson came from running 4,000-room casino hotels in Las Vegas. What has that to do with a small, luxury beach resort? One VIP guest said, “When you cater for casino gamblers they never even know where they are let alone what they’ve eaten or what time of day it is. There are no clocks.” MacPherson and Sandy Lane are a total mismatch.

The new general manager, Robert Logan, on the other hand, came from six years in charge of Raffles hotel, Rangoon. I liked him. If he can flex his muscles and not sink under the gargantuan ego of chef MacPherson I think he’ll do well.

Some of the other memorably awful food I ate included pizzas with a soggy base; dreary sausage and mash; chewy, tasteless flank steak; feeble spare ribs; shepherd’s pie, all potato, little meat; sweet and sour pork like school dinners at their worst; chicken curry with cashew nuts, soggy and grotesque. Some good food, but not, in my opinion, enough to satisfy many guests, paying for food alone Bd$181.50 (£66), and on Friday and Sunday Bd$302.5 (£110). So with drinks and coffee five days would be at least £80 a head, the other two days £130 a head. No wonder the well-heeled were moaning. There were shallow bowls of food on offer. Underneath, cold plates to eat from. “What happened to plate warmers?” I asked MacPherson. “It’s a design fault,” he said dismissively. Nothing was ever down to him.

Sandy Lane’s website said MacPherson “spearheaded the evolution of the new all-day dining restaurant”. Spearheading obviously didn’t include ordering plate warmers. The day before I left, some overhead heaters turned up which made the plates so hot Geraldine couldn’t pick them up. Another MacPherson spearheading example was two display units. They replaced the highly effective ice-base used before with a supposedly cold area. The surfaces were not that cold. One of the units had a boiling-hot half.

“Why are the chilled Scottish langoustines sitting on a hot surface?” I asked. The food and beverage manager said, “It’s the motor.”

A famous London restaurateur walked by. “Look, Jimmy, cold fish on a hot place, that’s novel,” I said.

“I wouldn’t eat that,” said Jimmy, adding of the area in general, “The presentation of it is nice, but the practicality isn’t.” I could go on, probably will.

Source: Timesonline

Red Legs In Barbados

I was delighted that Caroline Walsh focused on the plight of Ireland’s lost tribe, the Red Legs, in her article a couple of weeks ago on Barbados. This group, made up of the descendants of 50,000 Irish men and women who were sold into the white slave trade between 1652 and 1659, have been largely ignored, apart from in Seán O’Callaghan’s wonderful To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland , published almost 20 years ago.

They were innocent Irish people who were rounded up from across the country by teams of Oliver Cromwell’s “man-catchers”, bound in chains and shipped to Barbados to work on sugar plantations.

Their descendants are still there today – some of them in absolute poverty – isolated, unassimilated and uneducated. It is about time we acknowledge them, our beleaguered kinsmen, innocent victims first of British injustice, then of landlord cruelty and now of our lack of interest.

I’ve wanted to go out and visit them for a long time, and perhaps make a documentary about them, but I was warned off by O’Callaghan’s stories of outsiders being driven away with hoes and pitchforks from the isolated, rundown settlements in which they live.

Thankfully, a braver group, Moondance Films, has made a documentary, which will be aired on TG4 soon. I’ll be intrigued to find out what it learned. So little known is about the Red Legs. Like any oppressed people, they were too focused on survival to have had the luxury of documenting their history. Their connection with Ireland was cut off many centuries ago; their surnames were taken from them and they were forbidden to practise their faith. Perhaps all that remains is their red hair, freckles and blue eyes.

Most accounts refer to their arrogance and alcoholism. One describes them as “lazy, worthless drunks of unworthy Irish/Scots origin, who have neither ambition nor intelligence, yet are white and proud. They believe they are a cursed people.”

Of course, some Red Leg families thrived when they were eventually emancipated, in 1834, when slavery was abolished. Illustrious island families such as the Mayers

and Goddards proudly trace their lineage back to slave ancestry, but most tend to be poorer than the black population. They farm smallholdings of sugar cane on the arid eastern coast of the island or live in Bridgetown, the capital, drinking in local grog shops or running white brothels for middle-class blacks.

I must stress that all of this is based mostly on rumour and on research done 20 years ago. We will know the truth only when TG4’s documentary is aired.

In the meantime what we know is that Cromwell decreed that troublemakers – the poor, the hungry, clergy and Catholic landlords who refused to move to Connacht – be sent to Barbados. They were herded south into holding pens in Cork and Waterford, then crammed into African slave ships in chains. One in five died en route; those who survived were scrubbed in readiness for the slave mart. The women – nuns, soldiers’ wives, Catholic gentry and teenagers – were stripped and checked for virginity. Good breeders were sold to studs, to make future slaves and brothel girls. The men were checked for muscle tone and strength of teeth, then branded with their owners’ initials.

Ironically, the Irish are now returning to Barbados, the elite of Ireland’s post-boom aristocracy – Desmond, Magnier, Smurfit, O’Reilly – converting old plantations into luxury resorts. Who knows how many of our ancestors were whipped to death right on the sites of these new pleasure palaces?

Source: Irish Times

• To Hell or Barbados – The Ethnic Cleansing Of  Ireland

Dell Slashes 1900 Irish Jobs Stuns Country

Ireland suffered its biggest economic blow in years on Thursday when Dell, the American computer group, said that it was slashing its workforce that is based in Limerick and shifting its European manufacturing operations to Poland.

Dell, which is Ireland’s second largest corporate employer and its biggest exporter, said that it was cutting 1,900 jobs in Limerick.  Economists calculate that each Dell job in the country underpins another four to five jobs. It has been calculated that Dell contributed about 5 per cent to Ireland’s GDP in recent years.

Managers at the Limerick plant called in all workers to break the news at 9am on Thursday. They were told that of the company’s 4,300 Irish employees 1,900 — overwhelmingly assembly-line workers — would lose their jobs between April 2009 and January 2010.  By then, the company said, it plans to have transferred the entire Irish production of laptops and desktop computers to a new plant in Lodz, Poland’s third-largest city — where labour costs are at least two-thirds of Dell’s rates in Ireland — and to subcontractors, chiefly in Asia.

Sean Corkery, vice-president of operations, who broke the news to large groups of employees, said: “This is a difficult decision but the right one for Dell to become even more competitive and deliver greater value to customers.”

John Gilligan, the mayor of Limerick, called yesterday “the blackest day” in the city’s history and accused Dell of lacking corporate responsibility by concealing its decision for as long as three years. He added: “It is not a question of 2,000 people being out of work …15,000 people could be impacted.” Mr Gilligan said that he expected comparable state funding to the €185 million (£167 million) that it made available to the pork industry in December after the tainted pig meat scare.

Dell is the dominant employer in Limerick where unemployment is higher than a soaring national rate, nearing 8 per cent.

“The anger inside there is unbelievable,” said Mike Killeen, 36, outside the Dell assembly line where he has worked for seven years. He said Mr Corkery “was savaged inside — and rightly so”.

Mr Killeen added: “This is not about a company that is in trouble. This is about greed, corporate greed. They’re going to Poland because apparently they can make an extra 3 per cent.”

Source: timesonline.co.uk

British Retail Chain Marks & Spencer To Close 25 Food Stores

Marks & Spencer, one of the leading supermarket chains in Britain, will close 25 of its small Simply Food stores and two other normal stores, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported Wednesday. 

The closures will mean the loss of 780 jobs, even as M&S plans to cut 450 head office jobs, BBC said.

 The announcement came with M&S’ Christmas trading statement, which indicated that in the 13 weeks to Dec. 27, its like-for-like sales in Britain fell by 7.1 percent.

  M&S warned that its margins would be lower this year as a result of discounting, especially in food. In the run-up to Christmas, the retailer held two sale days when it cut prices by 20 percent. Overall group sales fell by 1.2 percent, though there was a 26.9 percent increase in international sales and a 29 percent rise in online sales. Total sales in Britain fell by 3.4 percent.

 The retailer hopes that its redundancy program, store closures and pension cuts will reduce its annual running costs by between 175 million pounds (about 253.7 million U.S. dollars) and 200 million pounds (about 290 U.S. dollars).  Analysts are predicting falling profits, despite the cost-cutting measures.

 The M&S plan to close the food stores came two days after the official closure of more than 800 outlets of Woolworths, which turned out to be the first supermarket chain to crash in Britain’s economic downturn.

Source: Xinhuanet.com