Archive for July, 2013
West Bay woman faces jail time over stabbing
(CNS): A West Bay woman (21) who was charged with stabbing a man outside a house on North West Point Road, West Bay, during a social gathering some 18 months ago has been found guilty of unlawful wounding. Following a judge alone trial presided over by acting Justice Michael Mettyear, Bianca Vega escaped the first more serious charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm but was warned she still faced jail time after the judge rejected her claim of self-defence and stated that she had “overreacted”. Vega had admitted stabbing Norman McLaughlin but the judge was not convinced that she was under the threat she had claimed as he cautioned her to prepare for an immediate prison sentence, as he delivered his verdict Friday and extended her bail for one more week.
During the trial Vega claimed she was waiting in the yard for a friend when the victim began acting belligerent and calling her names while accusing her of gossiping about his sexuality. She said the victim threatened her and motioned with a chair that he was going to hit her twice. It was after he faked the motion a third time that Vega stabbed him twice in his chest with a 3-inch push-up blade, which was never recovered as the defendant said she threw it in the ocean.
Following the incident Vega gave herself up to the police andtold them she had stabbed McLaughlin in self-defence.
Justice Mettyear rejected most of the witnesses' accounts as he believed they were drunk and unreliable. In addition, he expressed regret that, despite there being many witnesses to the incident that could have helped, most chose not to come forward.
While he observed that most of the witnesses appeared to be unreliable he also said he didn’t accept Vega's allegation that the victim faked the intent to hit her with the chair twice. He also said her reaction was “not reasonable”, adding that she “grossly exaggerated the threat posed to her” when she stabbed McLaughlin twice. The wounds led to his lungs collapsing, and although he did make a full recovery, the injuries were serious.
“Exactly what happened at the vital moment is not possible to determine as each of the witnesses is less than wholly reliable,” the judge stated. He found that Seth Rivers gave the most reliable account of what had happened that night, although he noted that he displayed no interest in the matter by his continuous yawning during cross-examination.
Based on the various accounts that the victim was drunk, the judge concluded that Vega did not need to stab him. He added that had the defendant not used her knife the incident would have simply passed off without injury to anyone. He said Vega was also loud, angry and overreacted.
In his ruling, the judge said that although Vega had a previous conviction of cheque fraud, she had no previous convictions for violent offenses. In handing down his verdict however, he warned that an immediate custodial sentence was almost inevitable and that the 21-year-old defendant should begin preparation to serve her prison term.
OT minister doesn’t want a pay rise
CNS): Mark Simmonds, the Foreign Office minister with responsibility for the overseas territories, among other duties, does not think that UK members of parliament should receive pay increases. In response to the suggestion by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which proposed that MPs' salary should be raised to £74,000 in 2015 (an increase of 11%), Simmonds told the local newspaper in his constituency of Boston and Skegness that he doesn’t support the plan. The man who holds CIG’s purse strings at present said they should not get more money when the public sector is under such tight restraints.
Simmonds told The Boston Standard that he supports the issue of MPs' pay being handled by an independent body, which was established after the scandal of the extravagance of some MP’s expenses claims, but said he did not think it was appropriate for him and his parliamentary colleagues to get more cash.
“I do not think that MPs' pay should be going up while public sector pay is being constrained. “It is important that MPs don’t decide their own pay and the matter is referred to an independent body,” he said.
Simmonds, as parliamentary under-secretary of state in the Foreign Office, receives £97,000 a year in his pay packet but he also received £50,000 a year from Circle Health Care and payments as chair of Mortlock Simmonds Brown chartered surveyors.
Travel policy planned for CIG
(CNS): The government is planning to introduce a travel policy that will cover overseas trips for public servants as well as members of the Legislative Assembly. As a result of the controversies surrounding the travel bill racked up by the previous administration, since taking office more than eight weeks ago, ministers in the new administration, as well as civil servants, who have been travelling on government business have been flying economy or paying for their own upgrades. According to the deputy governor’s minutes of the most recent chief officers' meeting, once it is confirmed, the new policy, which will require justification for any travelling, will be made public.
In the minutes released by the governor’s office from the 10 June meeting, the civil service heads discussed the new policy, which is designed to implement service-wide standards for assessing whether travel is required, as well as managing expenditure on travel across the public sector.
“The policy will include a travel rate sheet which outlines the per diem amounts for travel and includes the need for a Business Case requiring the Department to justify any need to travel in order to effectively achieve their business objective, as opposed to using a travel alternative,” the minutes state. The policy will also set the class of travel that civil servants can access when travelling overseas.
With government struggling to balance the budget and the tax-payer picking up the ever-growing operational expenses of the CIG, the extravagant travel bills of some ministers in the last administration were a major source of contention for voters. A number of FOI requests by CNS and other media houses over the last four years revealed a significant amount of money was spent on trips that were, in some cases, far from vital to the business of government.
Having criticised the previous administration over the sums involved, Alden McLaughlin led by example when he took up the position of premier and was required to travel to the UK at the invitation of the UK prime minister. Taking the smallest delegation possible to London to deal with public finances and last month’s pre-G8 meeting, the public purse only paid for economy-plus tickets on the British Airways flight.
On his short trip to Miami last week to meet with the cruise lines and the cruise association, Tourism Minister Moses Kirkconnell also travelled economy and did so again this weekend when he and Sports Minister Osbourne Bodden flew to Bermuda for the 2013 NatWest Island Games.
As well as supporting the 112 athletes attending from Cayman, the two mnisters are hoping to pick up some ideas to help boost the government’s plans for sports tourism, which is already taking shape with the advent of the CONCACAF U-15 football tournament next month. Kirkconnell said, in justification of the trip, that in addition to being able to support Cayman’s athletes, the games provided an opportunity to gain first-hand knowledge about sports tourism working in a small island nation.
“Sports tourism can offer many opportunities, especially for island nations, to improve their tourism product. We will be seeing how Bermuda is using this opportunity,” he said adding that the goal is for Cayman to host the Island Games sometime in the future.
Local man critical following water related incident
(CNS): A 32-year-old man is currently in the Cayman Islands Hospital in a critical but stable condition following a water related incident at Rum Point in North Side on Sunday. Although details about what happened to the man have not yet been reported, an RCIPS spokesperson said that the police responded to a call at about 4:24pm on Sunday that a man was in difficulties in the water off the popular beach area. Emergency crews found the man was still breathing but he was unresponsive. He was transported to the hospital in George Town by ambulance, where he is currently being treated.
The incident comes following a report of Cayman’s tenth water-related death on Friday since the beginning of the year after 73 year old James Klein of Erlanger, Kentucky, died as he was ascending to the surface during a dive off Little Cayman.
ESO team updating household register
(CNS): Staff from the Economics and Statistics Office (ESO) have begun collecting information in communities across all districts in the Cayman Islands to update the Household Register. The team began the research field work on 8 July and will continue until the end of next month, collecting the necessary basic information. The Household Register is a list of all household addresses in the Cayman Islands and provides a sampling frame from which households are selected for surveys. It is usually updated prior to the annual Labour Force Survey. This year’s update is a partial one, in which only dwellings that were previously listed as of August 2012 as “under construction” or “vacant” will be visited.
New dwellings are also visited to determine if they have become occupied as households.
“ESO generally enjoys good cooperation from the community in our various household surveys, and we thank them anew in advance for their support this year,” said ESO Director Maria Zingapan.
ESO staff members can be identified through their IDs. She therefore advises that concerned community members should always ask for the field workers to present their IDs before providing key information.
Woman denies $439k theft
(CNS): A former employee of Bodden Corporate Services Ltd has denied stealing almost half a million dollars from one of her former employers' clients. In another major white collar crime to reach the local courts, Patricia Glasgow (45) pleaded not guilty on Friday to three charges relating to the disappearance of US$439,300 that reportedly belonged to Rochester Ltd, which has filed a separate civil action in the Grand Court holding Glasgow’s former employers responsible for the money, which it said was "misappropriated" from its accounts sometime between September 2008 and August 2011. Glasgow is not due to face trial now until June next year as a result of the heavy workload of her attorney, Ben Tonner, of Samson & McGrath.
Glasgow was charged with theft, obtaining money transfer by deception and making documents without authority. She pleaded her innocence before Justice Michael Mettyear on all three counts.
Rochester's attorneys, Nelson & Co, filed a civil suit in May to recover the missing funds, requesting compensation and damages. According to the details of the claim, Rochester is holding thedirectors and staff of Bodden Corporate service Ltd liable for the missing cash as well.
Alleging fraud, theft, dishonest receipt, dishonest dealing, breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence, Rochester claims the money was "misappropriated" from its account by Glasgow between September, 2008 and August, 2011 while she was employed by the corporate defendants.
Rochester is an offshore company that incorporated here in 1986 and the firm alleges in its suit that Glasgow took the money and is asking the court to allow it to attempt to recover the money from her. In addition, the firm accuses BCSL of acting “contrary to normally acceptable standards of honest conduct” and of turning “a blind eye” to what Glasgow was doing.
Ocean claims another diver
(CNS): A 73-year-old American tourist has become the tenth person to die in Cayman waters this year, one of the highest number of deaths recorded in the islands during a six month period. James Klein of Erlanger, who was on holiday in Little Cayman with his wife from Kentucky USA, got into difficulty while diving Bloody Bay Wall on an organised boat dive . Police said that at 12.25pm the man lost consciousness as he was ascending. He was transported to shore on the dive boat as crew carried out CPR. A nurse met the boat at Salt Rock Dock and continued CPR while the man was taken to the local clinic in the dive company’s vehicle, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
A police spokesperson said that enquiries continued but there appeared to be no suspicious circumstances surrounding the death.
The visitor’s death at sea comes less than one week after 80-year-old William Lemuel Lawson Jr, who was visiting from Florida, died while diving off the Double Wall dive site northwest of Cayman Brac.
The number of water-related deaths in Cayman this year has already exceeded the annual average, with only half the year gone. Eight of those deaths have involved ocean swimmers, snorkelers or divers, the youngest of which was Pablo Perez Lara (41), a swimmer with the Special Olympics team from Uruguay, who died during an 800-metre race. Mostof the other victims were visitors from the US who were over 50 years of age.
The other two water-related deaths include the drowning of a 9-year-old boy in a swimming pool and a 21-year-old man who died in a boat incident.
Mental health patient throws rock at driver
(CNS): Police have arrested and detained a 25-year-old man in George Town who is understood to suffer from a mental health problem after he reportedly threw a rock at a man who was driving along Sheddon Rock near Funky Tangs. The rock struck the victim in the head but police say he refused medical attention, and despite receiving a head wound, the injuries were not life threatening. The incident occurred at around 1.55 on Friday afternoon and is currently under investigation by George Town uniform officers. Anyone who may have witnessed this assault is asked to call PC Ava Parkinson at GTPS at 9494222.
DoE recovers and releases captive stingrays
(CNS): Following the passage of an amendment to the Marine Conservation Law to protect stingrays in Cayman waters, one of West Bay’s captive dolphin facilities was forced to hand over the six stingrays it was holding to government or face prosecution. On Friday morning a team of scientists and marine experts collected the five males and a single female stingray from Dolphin Discovery and took them by boat back out to the North Sound. Department of Environment Director Gina Ebanks-Petrie said that in light of recent discoveries that there are considerably fewer male stingrays at the Sandbar than females, the release of these rays was an important contribution to the North Sound population. The DoE director said she was very hopeful that these stingrays would integrate well with the existing population.
However, she noted that experts were still not sure how well captive rays re-adapt when returned to their natural habitat.
The rays were certified as healthy by experts before they were transported by truck in small tanks from the tank at the dolphinarium to the quay in the Morgan’s Harbour area before being taking out to sea aboard one of the DoE’s vessels.
Ebanks-Petrie (right) confirmed that the return of these six rays means that, as far as the DoE was aware, there are now no more of the creatures still in captivity. Pleased with the change in the legislation which enabled these Stingrays to be released, she also noted that going forward these incredible creatures, which have created a unique tourism attraction for Cayman at Stingray City, will enjoy protection no matter where they now choose to journey in the ocean.
The rays that were released today were part of a group of ten stingrays which were taken into captivity by Dolphin Discovery. A local vet who was visiting the facility saw that four of them had been tagged and reported her observation to the authorities. Having been identified as stingrays from the Sandbar, which is a wildlife interaction zone (WIZ) where the creatures were offered protection, the facility agreed to their release. But the captive dolphin business refused to give up the other six which were not tagged. As the rays come and go from the WIZ and with no previous protection for them outside the zone, there was no law to compel the facility to return the remaining rays.
With the change of legislation earlier this year, however, rays were given across-the-board protection and the holding of stingrays and other types was made unlawful, paving the way for the liberation of this last group.
Local scientists and those from overseas have continued to count the stingrays at the Sandbar, where the population is still believed to have declined by as much as 40% from the original population.
The researchers involved in the current census are using an ultrasound machine to check for pregnant rays. Petrie-Ebanks said she was hopeful that the five males that will now be returned to the wild will help to boost the population and re-balance the gender gap that the population is facing.
Ebanks-Petrie thanked everyone involved in the release of the rays, including Billy Farrington of Marine Diesel, who allowed the DoE to use his dock.
Kremlin buys typewriters ‘to avoid leaks’
(BBC): Russia's agency responsible for the Kremlin security is buying typewriters – a move reportedly prompted by recent leaks by WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden. A 486,540-rouble (£9,860) order for electric typewriters has been placed by the FSO agency on the state procurement website. The FSO has not commented on why it needs the old-fashioned devices. But an agency source told Russia's Izvestiya newspaper the aim was to prevent leaks from computer hardware. "After scandals with the distribution of secret documents by WikiLeaks, the exposes by Edward Snowden, reports about Dmitry Medvedev being bugged during his visit to the G20 London summit (in 2009), it has been decided to expand the practice of creating paper documents," the source said.
The source added that typewriters were already being used at Russia's defence and emergencies ministries for drafts and secret notes, and some reports had been prepared for President Vladimir Putin by typewriter.
Unlike printers, every typewriter had its own individual typing pattern which made it possible to link every document to a particular machine, Izvestiya said.