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CONTENTS UNDILUTED pays tribute to John Maxwell by featuring two previous columns by him from the Hot Calaloo UNDILUTED archives:
Not just a book but an invitation to join the Goodwill
Revolution against an unfair, unjust and deceptive system that
keeps the world poor and without hope. Find out how you can join,
quit the rat race, and achieve a happier more meaningful life for
yourself and others through goodwill to all
--------------- 
For
the Life of Laetitia
by Trinidad -born Merle Hodge
Price: $10.54a wonderful book about a young girl in the Carribean, the first of her family to go to secondary school.
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Trump's
executive order on Venezuela threatening Jamaican economy
Jamaica’s
Minister of Science, Energy and Technology, Dr Andrew Wheatley, informed
the House of Representatives that
Jamaica is being affected by sanctions issued under an executive order
imposed on Venezuela in August by US President Donald Trump. He stated
that as a result of the
executive order (EO 13808), payments to and from Petrojam, Jamaica's
only petroleum refinery, which is jointly owned by the Petroleum
Corporation of Jamaica(PCJ) and Venezuela's PDV Caribe, a subsidiary of
Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), have been subjected to increased due
diligence by primary financiers/suppliers of lines of credit, as well as intermediary
banks, pending clarification on whether the EO is applicable to Petrojam.
Jamaica
has also made it clear that Petrojam is neither wholly owned nor
controlled by the Venezuelan government, and is a public company
registered in Jamaica and controlled by the government of Jamaica.
So
far, the sanctions have cost the Jamaican Government $12.6 billion, or
14 per cent of what it is spending on public debt.
Puerto
Rico abandoned
The news from Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria continues to get
worse. Not only does the majority of the island remain without power
nearly 40 days after Maria made landfall, but the government
response remains completely inept and negligent. People still don’t
have money to buy the food and supplies they desperately need, and many
are dying from contaminated water and a collapse of the health care
system. Yet government officials (both in San Juan and in Washington)
are awarding and then canceling fraudulent $300 million contracts
to random, suspicious companies to rebuild the power grid. All of this
does not bode well for improving conditions when it comes to the health,
well-being, and safety of the millions of residents living on the
island.
San
Juan mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz was scheduled to meet with FEMA in order
to discuss recovery efforts. She made it all the way to Washington, DC,
only to have her meeting “suddenly” cancelled.
Carmen
Yulín Cruz said she was supposed to meet with FEMA Administrator Brock
Long to discuss the agency response to the September 20 hurricane, which
to this day has left 75 percent of the island without power—only to
discover the meeting had been scrubbed and not even been rescheduled
after she landed in the U.S. capital.
“We can’t fail to note the dissimilar urgency and priority given to the emergency response in Puerto Rico compared to the U.S. states affected by hurricanes in recent months,” said Leilani Farha, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on adequate housing.
Puerto
Rico population to drop 14% after hurricane
Puerto
Rico's population is set to decrease by 14 per cent to 2.9 million
inhabitants by 2019 due to an exodus of residents fleeing the
devastation caused by Hurricane Maria in September, a study has found.
The
Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York estimated
in a report released last month that about 114,000 to 213,000 Puerto
Rican residents will leave the island annually "as a result of
Hurricane Maria." Between 2017 and 2019, the US territory stands to
lose 470,335 residents, it added.
UN:
Violence against women most prevalent in Latin America, Caribbean
A
New United Nations report says Latin America and the Caribbean make up
the most violent region in the world for women.
The UN Women and the UN Development Program (UNDP) found assaults on
women persisted in the region, despite severe laws aimed at curbing the
phenomenon.
The
rate of sexual violence against women outside of relationships is the
highest in the world in the region, and the second-highest for those who
are couples, the report noted, adding that three of the 10 countries
with the highest rates of rape of women and girls were in the Caribbean.
” in Central America and that two out three women murdered died
because of their gender.
The
report noted, too, that while 24 of the 33 countries in Latin America
and the Caribbean have laws against domestic violence, only nine have
passed legislation that tackles a range of forms of other violence
against women in public or private.
EU
blacklists 17 nations as tax avoidance havens
The
European Union has put 17 non-EU countries on a blacklist of those it
deems guilty of unfairly offering tax avoidance schemes.
These include Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and St. Lucia. EU
Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis said that beyond the 17 nations, over
40 more were put on a “grey list” to be monitored until they are
fully committed to reforms. The EU said those blacklisted had refused to
cooperate and change their ways after almost one year of consultations.
The
seventeen countries are: American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada,
Guam, South Korea, Macau, Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau,
Panama, St Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia, and United Arab
Emirates.
US
ends temporary permits for almost 60,000 Haitians
Sixty
days before temporary status for the Haitians was set to expire the
Trump administration declared that it
was ending a temporary residency permit program (TPS). This program has
allowed almost 60,000 citizens from Haiti to live and work in the United
States since a 2010 powerful earthquake shook the Caribbean nation.
The Homeland Security Department said conditions in Haiti have improved
significantly, so the benefit will be extended one last time — until
July 2019 — to give Haitians time to prepare to return home. Advocates
and members of Congress from both parties had asked the Trump
administration for an 18-month extension of the program. Haitian
President Jovenel Moise's government also requested the extension.
Advocates for Haitians say conditions in the island nation haven't
improved nearly enough for Haitians to be deported. While Haiti has made
advances spurred by international aid since the quake, the Caribbean
nation remains one of the poorest in the world. More than 2.5 million
people, roughly a quarter of the population, live on less than US$1.23 a
day, which authorities there consider extreme poverty.
The United Nations last month ended a peacekeeping mission in Haiti
that, at its peak, included more than 10,000 troops. Its new mission is
comprised of about 1,300 international civilian police officers and 350
civilians who will help the country try to reform a deeply troubled
justice system. Since taking office, Trump has ended temporary permit
programs for Sudan and Nicaragua. He postponed until next July a
decision on how to deal with a similar program for 86,000 residents from
Honduras.
Sugar
cane production falls to 27-year low in Guyana
Sugar
output in Guyana is expected to fall by nearly a quarter from last year,
as the Caribbean trade bloc's largest sugar-producing nation struggles
with a decline in demand from the European Union.
State-run
Guyana Sugar Corporation, known as Guysuco, said Sunday that the nearly
140,000 metric tons produced in 2017 are the lowest in 27 years.
The
decline comes as Guysuco struggles with a debt load of more than $500
million and prepares to permanently shutter three of its six industry
facilities and fire about 4,000 of its 15,000-member workforce by
December 31.
Guysuco,
which was run by Bookers Corp. in the United Kingdom before it was
nationalized in 1976, said most of its sugar cane plants have already
been harvested and production won't climb significantly higher during
the last week of the year.
Sugar
was once the country's largest source of foreign exchange, with an
average of around 300,000 tons produced yearly up to the early 1990s.
But
the crop has been in steady decline over the last decade due to
crippling labour strikes, manpower shortages, unseasonal weather and the
massive decline in demand of the European Union.
The company said it will sell about 60,000 tons of sugar to the bloc next year, down from 170,000 tons five years ago. Earlier this year, Europe eliminated its system of sugar production quotas and minimum pricing, opening up the sugar beet market and reducing dependency on raw cane sugar from Guyana and other Caribbean countries.
Antigua
not letting US 'off the hook' in WTO case
The Antigua and Barbuda government says it has no intention of
letting the United States “off the hook” for its
internationally-binding obligation to allow internet gaming into the
country until fair compensation is paid for the 14 years of damage done
to the island’s economy.
Antigua and Barbuda’s lead negotiator, Sir Ronald Sanders, made the
statement as he addressed the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute
Settlement Body (DSB. Sanders told the DSB, comprising over 100
countries, that “it continues to be most unfortunate that, despite 14
long years of deprivation, Antigua and Barbuda has to appear before this
body, year after year, to report that the United States has not seen it
possible to offer fair and equitable terms to my small country for the
significant losses in trade revenues that it has suffered as a result of
US violation of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS)”.
He also rejected a US submission that it had offered Antigua “a
broad range of useful suggestions to settle this dispute in November
2013” but that the government ignored it “before finally indicating
that it was not acceptable”.
Sanders pointed
out that successive Antigua and Barbuda governments had refused the
offer because it did not add up to two million US dollars when the trade
losses to the country in the matter totaled well over US$200 million.
New
medical tourism facility in Jamaica
According
to Jamaica’s Prime Minister Andrew Holness, “Jamaica is ideally
poised for this growing market, which was valued approximately US$20
billion in 2016 and is estimated to reach approximately US$47 billion by
2021” .
This
new facility for that purpose, the GWest Centre is located
in Fairview, Montego Bay. GWest has put the Jamaica in an ideal
position to capitalise on that market. In short, this is a shopping mall
for medical services and in a quality internationally accredited
environment.
The
GWest Centre was established by a group of Jamaican medical and business
professionals. It is housed in a modern multi-purpose commercial complex
and provides a wide range of high-quality medical services in the same
location.
Already
the building houses the second location of Kirlew's Radiology West
imaging practice, Dr Doon Quah's Facial and Oral Surgery Associates,
Zierlich International Dialysis Centre operated by UK-trained dialysis
practitioner and Jamaican businesswoman Dainty Powell, the Heart Smart
Centre operated by cardiologist Dr Claudine Lewis, the GWest General
Medical Practice suite for resident and visiting doctors, and North
Coast Imaging offering MRI services.
Ganja
use & sex
A
study by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine
indicates that, despite concerns among physicians and scientists that
frequent marijuana use may impair sexual desire or performance, the
opposite appears more likely to be the case.
The
findings, published online in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in October,
are based on an analysis of more than 50,000 Americans ages 25-45. And
they're unambiguous, a recent release said.
“Frequent
marijuana use doesn't seem to impair sexual motivation or performance.
If anything, it's associated with increased coital frequency,” said
the study's senior author, Dr Michael Eisenberg, assistant professor of
urology. The lead author is Dr Andrew Sun, a resident in urology, the
release said.
“The
overall trend we saw applied to people of both sexes and all races,
ages, education levels, income groups, and religions, every health
status, whether they were married or single, and whether or not they had
kids,” he is quoted as saying in the release.
The
study is the first to examine the relationship between marijuana use and
frequency of sexual intercourse at the population level in the United
States.
Reinsurers
suffer losses due to powerful hurricanes
The
trail of death and destruction left across the region following the
passage of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, have had a devastating
impact on the financial results of international reinsurers.
According
to the Association of Trinidad and Tobago Insurance Companies (ATTIC),
local insurers should anticipate being faced with significantly higher
reinsurance costs, which will in turn have an impact on local market
rates.
In
a statement ATTIC noted that most of the reinsurers are major
providers of protection in the Caribbean, and based on the significant
financial losses attributed to the hurricanes as well as earthquakes in
Mexico, leading international experts have indicated that there will be
a global increase in premium rates and not just for loss-affected
territories.
One
company, Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurer, recently reported
overall losses of US$3.8 billion for the third quarter from the
hurricanes and other natural catastrophes. The three hurricanes made up
the bulk of the losses for the quarter, with losses expected to be
US$3.2 billion. The global reinsurer posted a loss of US$1.65 billion
for the period July to September 2017, and further noted that recent
catastrophe losses will jeopardise its profit target for 2017.
Swiss
Re, the world's second largest reinsurer, also reported losses of US$3.6
billion, and realised a net loss of US$468 million for the first nine
months of 2017.
Scor,
Another top five reinsurer, reported overall losses of US$310 million
for the same period, with combined losses of US$696.0 million
Caribbean
hotel insurance rates to increase by 40%
Jamaica
national soccer coach deserves better
Whitmore has been
among the best football coaches Jamaica has had. The bias towards
foreign coaches is shameful. The Jamaica Football Federation (JFF)
makes all sorts of resources available to foreign coaches, but not so
for Whitmore. I remember how he was unable to get a friendly match with
World Cup game imminent. He lost his whole backline for that game and
still produced a competitive performance against a strong US team.
This prophet should not continue to go unrecognized in his own country.
He is a valuable coach and deserves a salary comparable to foreign
coaches, not the insulting one offered so far. Shame on JFF!
Let us know what you think. Email us at hotcalaloo@yahoo.com