iNews Briefs & Community Events
Community Events
APRIL 30
Needs Assessment Unit Closure
The Needs Assessment Unit will be closing on Thursday (30 Apr) at 2pm.
Boundaries Commission North Side Meeting
The Boundaries Commission is hosting a public meeting at the North Side Civic Center on Thursday (30 Apr) at 8pm.
“Circle of Sight” Eyeglasses collection
The Lions Club of Tropical Gardens presents “Circle of Sight” Eyeglasses collection . For the next few weeks boxes for the donation of old glasses will be at all four Burger King locations
Brown Bag Exercise
The Rotary Club of Cayman Brac invites you to participate in the Sister Islands annual brown bag exercise. Clean up your medicine cabinet and return all old, expired and unused medicines to your pharmacy.
Batabano Le Masque
As part of Batabano, Lime presents Le Masque on Thursday (30 Apr) at Pedro St. James at 7pm. For more information call 916.0055.
Local scholarship period
The Scholarship Secretariat advises Caymanians that the local scholarship period runs through April 30th. For more information, log on to education.gov.ky/scholarships
MAY 1
Passport Office Closes for Training
The Passport and Corporate Services Office will open at 10.30am and close at 4.00 pm on Friday 1 May 2015 due to staff training. It will close again all day on Wednesday 6 May 2015 for the same reason. Management apologises for any inconvenience caused.
Man cooked alive with FIVE TONNES of tuna after getting locked in 35-foot industrial oven
By Scott Campbell From Daily Express UK
A factory worker was cooked alive with five tonnes of tuna after he was locked in an industrial oven, according to reports.
The man was locked in an oven with five tonnes of tuna
Employees searched for 62-year-old Jose Melena after he went missing during an early morning shift at Bumble Bee Foods.
He had been performing maintenance in a 35-foot long oven at the plant when a co-worker filled the pressure cooker with more than five tonnes of canned tuna and switched it on.
The colleague mistakenly believed Melena was in the bathroom – but he was locked inside the machine, which reached a temperature of 132C.
His body was only found two hours later when the oven was turned off and opened.
Now the Los Angeles company, its plant operations director Angel Rodriguez and former safety manager Saul Florez have been charged with three counts of violating health and safety rules.
Rodriguez, 63, and Florez, 42, could face up to three years in prison and fines up to £163,000 if convicted of all charges, prosecutors said.
Bumble Bee Foods faces a maximum fine of £1million over the October 2012 incident.
Case against Cayman Islands building company re unpaid overtime dismissed
Cayman Islands building company, Island Builders Ltd. who had been charged with 107 counts of failing to comply with the Labour Law by not paying overtime had all charges dismissed by Magistrate Angelyn Hernandez last Monday (27).
The magistrate ruled the Department of Labour and Pensions had not brought the charges within the six-month period required by law.
Hernadez said she was aware there were a significant number of employees affected “but justice requires that the court enforces the law equitably”.
“It is evident from these matters that the department requires a complete re-education of its responsibilities and its obligations under the law,” she added.
However, Crown counsel Greg Walcolm gave notice of appeal after the magistrate had agreed for costs incurred by Island Builders to be taxed.
UN issues dire warning for Caribbean: 80% of region’s coral reefs destroyed
By George Davis
The United Nations and conservation groups are warning the Caribbean that their economies are in peril with the decline of coral reefs.
A report from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says years of overfishing, boating and environmental degradation are causing coral reefs in the Caribbean and around the world to disappear.
The report says erosion threatens not just fish and marine life that are supported by coral ecosystems, but a vast tourism economy.
Researchers at Stanford University in California say coral, the stony substance secreted by millions of tiny animals, minimizes the force of sea waves.
The researchers say it helps protect an estimated 2-hundred million people in islands and coastal states from storms and rising sea levels.
The Stanford scientists estimate that up to 60-percent of coral reefs around the world have been wiped out, adding that things could be getting worse in the Caribbean.
Recent studies show the region may have lost 80 percent of its coral reefs.
Tax Planning – the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
– a new market research report on companiesandmarkets.com
Outrage in the press can cause confusion about the process of tax planning. The nuanced relationship between the spirit and the letter of the law, and wider issues such as the conflict between disparate national tax systems and competitive international trade are therefore often missed. This report gives detailed examples of tax planning involving both multinationals and private individuals.
International tax treaties have not kept pace with developments in national tax laws. An unintended consequence of the free movement of capital and labor, giving rise to multinational corporations, has been the ability to take advantage of this lack of coherence in national legal systems.
Ugland House, a single building in the Cayman Islands, is the registered office for nearly 19,000 corporations. This type of concentration is likely to change once the OECD makes its final recommendations about changes to international tax law.
Tax planning sits on a complex continuum running from the simple application of commonly known reliefs such as the creation of a tax free savings account, all the way to the creation of multiple entities across numerous borders to carry out a particular transaction.
SOURCE: http://reports.pr-inside.com/outrage-in-the-press-can-cause-r4242015.htm
Richard Branson holding digital currency summit on private Caribbean island
By Nina Zipkin Entrepreneur
Image credit: REUTERS | Fred Prouser
Most people wouldn’t turn down a few days in the Caribbean, but the sunny locale isn’t necessarily the first place that comes to mind when you think of cryptocurrency.
But this May, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson is set to hold the Blockchain Summit on Necker Island, his 74-acre private island in the British Virgin Islands, to discuss the future of Bitcoin, Blockchain and digital currency. (Blockchain is the software infrastructure that supports Bitcoin transactions — not to be confused with Blockchain.info, which is a digital wallet service.)
Branson is sharing hosting duties with Valery Vavilov, the CEO of Bitfury, a company that develops servers for “Blockchain transaction processing,” Pro kiteboarder Suzi Mai and VC Bill Tai, the co-founders of MaiTai Global and George Kikvadze, the managing director of the Georgian Co-Investment Fund.
The Summit participants — who are likely to be on the receiving end of Branson’s penchant for practical jokes — hail from the worlds of venture capital, finance and technology, including Lars Rasmussen, Facebook’s former engineering director and inventor of Google Maps, futurist Marshall Thurber, James Newsome, a former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Matthew Roszak, the founder of Tally Capital and Young Sohn, the president and CSO of Samsung Electronics.
The discussions will be moderated by The Wall Street Journal senior columnist Michael J. Casey, The Economist’s Globalization Editor Matthew Bishop and Hernando de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy.
Branson has been a supporter of exploring Bitcoin for some time. Last fall, ahead of the first the Global Digital Currency Conversation Forum in Australia, Branson explained his rationale for investing in the cryptocurrency, writing “There’s a real desire for greater levels of control, freedom and scrutiny over what happens with our money, Bitcoin addresses these concerns and that is why so many people believe it represents the future.”
For more: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245590
Cayman Islands Volleyball: Cuba, USA dominate as NORCECA Tour serves off
From Digicel Sportsmax
Cuba men and United States women were the big winners at the 2015 NORCECA Beach Volleyball Tour in Cayman after registering wins over Puerto Rico and Canada respectively.
The Cuban pair of Nivlado Diaz and Sergio Gonzales took only 30 minutes to get by Puerto Ricans Erik Haddock and Roberto Rodriguez, winning in straight sets – 21-13, 21-15 – to claim the men’s title.
Diaz and Gonzales added to the gold medals previously won in Guatemala City, Antigua and Huixquilucan.
On the women’s side, the USA-B’s Jenny Kroop and Whitney Pavlik took a little less than an hour to get by the Canadian B pair of Julie Gordon and Brandie Wilkerson, 22-20, 21-17. Kroop and Pavlik were back on tour and playing as partners for the first time in two years.
Despite hosting a successful tournament, it was tough going on the sand for the home team.
The women’s team of Jessica Wolfenden and Stefania Gandolfi went 0-3 while the other team of Illean Powery and Chante Smith Johnson went 0-4.
Cayman’s men’s team of Olney Thompson and Philippe Deslandes went 0-3.
Dishonest restaurant employee handed 266 years
By Alan Oakley From Blacknet
A Nigerian court has sentenced a woman to a total of 266 years in jail for stealing from her employer, Sweet Sensations restaurant in Ogun State.
At Ogun State High Court, Justice A A Akinyemi sentenced Oluremi Olayinka to seven years each on 30 counts of stealing money and fourteen years on each of four further counts. The sentences are to run concurrently, meaning Olayinka will serve a maximum of fourteen years in jail.
In addition, Justice Akinyemi ordered her to return the money she stole, some 8 million Naira (£26,000), in restitution to her victim.
For more: http://www.blacknet.co.uk/dishonest-restaurant-employee-handed-266-years/
Cayman Islands Basketball Classic will be a reality says minister
Cayman Islands Sports Minister Hon. Osbourne Bodden says the Cayman Islands will have a facility in place suitable to host the Cayman Basketball Classic, an NCAA preseason men’s basketball tournament starting in 2017.
For years an NCCA basketball tournament has been mooted but officials always said a proper facility had to be in place before the project could be given the green light.
Bodden said a facility must be built and ready to go one year before the tournament’s start in order to get approval by the NCAA but he is very confident.
One proposal is to stage it at the proposed Cayman Ice Palace, a US $30 million ice rink and entertainment centre developers say could open by next year. If that doesn’t work out there is the John Gray High School gym that is currently under construction.
The NCCA stands for National Collegiate Athletic Association and is the organization that regulates athletes of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations, and individuals, and organizes the athletic programmes of many colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.
High temperature records broken in Cuba
From Caribbean News Now
HOLGUIN, Cuba (ACN) — The second highest temperature in the history of weather records in Cuba and the highest in the province of Holguin was reported last Sunday by two weather stations in the area, which recorded 38.7 degrees Celsius (101.66 deg F).
These reports were recorded at the Pedagogical University José de la Luz y Caballero in the city of Holguin and in the town of Velasco, in the municipality of Gibara, where high temperatures are very common.
The Provincial Meteorological Center said that conditions of intense solar radiation during Sunday morning and afternoon, fewer clouds and a weak, very warm surface flow from southwest to south, with periods of calm, favoured the high temperatures.
Specialists Dariel Gonzalez, Ernesto Chang and Frank Cordova added that this mark is only a tenth of degree below (0.1°C) the absolute record for Cuba, which is 38.8 degrees, recorded by the station of Jucarito, in the province of Granma, on April 17, 1999.
They reported that the weather station of Guaro, in Mayari, registered an absolute record for the city with a maximum of 38.1 degrees Celsius, while the station Pinares de Mayari, in the mountainous region, matched its record for the month of April with 32.1°C.
In addition, Jíquima station in the municipality of Calixto Garcia, also reached its peak with 37.8 degrees, said the website of Radio Angulo provincial station.
For more: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-High-temperature-records-broken-in-Cuba-25882.html
Cayman Islands will not be represented after all at Miss World
For the fourth year in a row the Cayman Islands will not be sending a representative to the Miss World Pageant later this year.
In January, the Miss World organisation changed its age limit to 25, making both the current Miss Cayman Islands, Tonie Chisholm and First Runner Up, Adrianna Christian ineligible.
Dominica: Judge warns of child abuse epidemic
From Jamaica Gleaner
A High Court judge has warned of a growing epidemic of child abuse in Dominica as he sentenced a 36-year-old man to eight years in prison for having sex with three minors.
Justice Errol Thomas said that he was outraged and dismayed at the behaviour of Clife Elijah Charles after he pleaded guilty to having sex with three minors, aged six, seven, and eight years old.
The maximum sentence for such offenses against minors is 25 years.
The judge said that the man’s actions, allegedly committed on December 22, 2012, were perplexing.
For more: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/caribbean/20150429/dominica-judge-warns-child-abuse-epidemic
PAHO to announce Americas region as world’s first to eliminate rubella
A press conference announcing the recent declaration by an international expert committee that the Americas have successfully eliminated rubella and congenital rubella syndrome (CRS). Experts from the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the UN Foundation will explain the significance of the achievement and describe the Pan American immunization efforts that made it possible.
WHEN: Wednesday, 29 April 2015 TIME: 11:00 am Washington, DC
Rubella is a viral disease that causes mild symptoms in children and adults but can cause multiple birth defects or fetal death if contracted early in pregnancy. An international committee recently declared the Americas free of endemic transmission of rubella and congenital rubella syndrome (CRS). Rubella and CRS are now the third and fourth diseases to be eliminated in the region, following smallpox in 1971 and polio in 1994. In all four cases, the Americas region was the first in the world to eliminate these diseases, thanks to mass immunization efforts coordinated by PAHO/WHO in partnership with ministries of health and with support from CDC, UNICEF, and others.
Bahamas power company in crisis, says chairman
By Royston Jones Jr. Nassau Guardian Staff Reporter From Caribbean News Now
NASSAU, Bahamas — The Bahamas Electricity Corporation (BEC) is in crisis mode and faces a worsening situation in the absence of urgent action on energy reform, BEC executive chairman Leslie Miller indicated on Monday.
Miller’s latest statements came as thousands of customers in New Providence were left without power for hours as the corporation lost one of its 26.5 megawatt engines at the Clifton Pier Power Station around 11:30 a.m.
“It would be good if the government could make a decision on the way forward so that we could ease the burden off the backs of the Bahamian people,” said Miller.
“I think it is clear now to everyone what needs to be done.”
While businesses and residents were impacted, hundreds of motorists were forced to navigate busy roads without the assistance of traffic lights.
Miller said engineers were attempting to diagnose the problem and get the engine back online, but he projected that load shedding would continue until early next week.
He said the loss of the generator put BEC in “bad shape”, with an engine at its Blue Hills Power Station still out of commission since a fire triggered a “catastrophic failure” and caused an island-wide outage last month.
Miller claimed this time around the outage was not island-wide, but he admitted that it was extensive.
For more: http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/topstory-Bahamas-power-company-in-crisis,-says-chairman-25880.html
‘Louie Louie’ singer Jack Ely dies in Oregon at 71
From Fox News
IMAGE: April 16, 2009: Jack Ely, co-founder of the early 60’s band The Kingsmen and best known for his 1963 rendition of the song “Louie, Louie”, plays his Fender bass guitar at his home in Terre Bonne, Ore. (AP)
PORTLAND, Ore. – When he stood on his toes, leaned his head back and began to incoherently shout “Louie Louie” into a microphone 52 years ago, Jack Ely had no idea he was creating a rock ‘n’ roll classic.
Or, for that matter, did the lead singer of The Kingsmen know he was laying the groundwork for one of the first federal investigations into dirty song lyrics, while simultaneously creating a tune so memorable that everybody from the Beach Boys to Nirvana would later record it.
Ely, who died Tuesday at age 71, had simply walked into a tiny Portland recording studio with his band one day in 1963 to cut an instrumental version of a song that had been a hit on Pacific Northwest jukeboxes — one that kids could dance to.
“Right out of his mouth, my father would say, ‘We were initially just going to record the song as an instrumental, and at the last minute I decided I’d sing it,” Ely’s son, Sean Ely, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
When it came time to do that, however, Ely discovered the sound engineer had raised the studio’s only microphone several feet above his head. Then he placed Ely in the middle of his fellow musicians, all in an effort to create a better “live feel” for the recording.
The result, Ely would say over the years, was that he had to stand on his toes, lean his head back and shout as loudly as he could just to be heard over the drums and guitars.
It might not have helped, either, that the 20-year-old musician was wearing braces at the time, although Ely maintained that the real problem was trying to sing with his head tilted back at a 45-degree angle.
In any case, the end result was that about the only words anyone could clearly understand were contained in the song’s first two lines: “Louie Louie. Oh no. We gotta go.”
But the driving, three-chord instrumental progression was maddeningly memorable, as were the song’s opening lines, delivered with just the right amount of rebellious if slurry snarl.
It didn’t hurt either that with people unable to understand what Ely was singing, some began to claim they were hearing lewd words about a girl the singer was to meet up with. Radio stations began to ban “Louie Louie,” and the FBI launched an investigation, eventually determining the song was “unintelligible at any speed.”
Sean Ely said his father got “quite the kick” out of that latter development.
For more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2015/04/29/louie-louie-singer-jack-ely-dies-in-oregon-at-71/
Ralph Lauren must face Rolex trademark lawsuit
By David Bario, From The Litigation Daily
Rolex SA, one of the world’s best known luxury brands and a constant target of cheaper knock-offs, has an obvious interest in protecting its IP. So when Polo Ralph Lauren applied to register various trademarks that included “RLX,” Rolex quickly opposed the applications on the grounds that the marks could confuse consumers.
Siding with Ralph Lauren, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the last of those challenges in 2012, paving the way for the company to potentially sell RLX-branded watches under its Ralph Lauren Extreme line. In a ruling made public on Monday, however, a federal judge in Manhattan refused to throw out a follow-on lawsuit brought by Rolex later the same year, keeping Ralph Lauren and its attorneys at Greenberg Traurig on the defensive.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa ruled that Rolex, represented by King & Spalding, can press ahead with claims that the PTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board improperly dismissed its challenge to the trademarks “RPX Ralph Lauren” and “Ralph Lauren RPX.” The judge declined to grant summary judgment to either side in the case, finding that neither had established conclusively whether Ralph Lauren intended to commercialize the marks at the time of the original applications.
That question is key to the case because under the Lanham Act, a trademark application is void unless the filer has a “bona fide intention to use the mark[s] in commerce.” It’s also a question that had never been decided on summary judgment by a court in the Second Circuit, according to the ruling.
In the end, Griesa refused to side with Rolex because Ralph Lauren showed that it was already selling RLX branded products like ski apparel and sunglasses when it applied to use the mark for watches and jewelry. But he also refused to grant summary judgment to Ralph Lauren because the “evidence of its intent is mostly circumstantial.” For example, the judge noted, Ralph Lauren couldn’t point to a business plan or product designs showing it planned to market an RLX line of watches at the time.
The judge’s decision was originally filed under seal on March 31 but was released with redactions on Monday. Griesa also dismissed a counterclaim for declaratory judgment of non-infringement filed by Ralph Lauren, ruling that any potential claims of infringement were too hypothetical to support jurisdiction.
Ralph Lauren (technically PRL USA Holdings Inc.) is represented by Daniel Schloss, Daniel Navarro and Melissa Berger of Greenberg Traurig. Rolex Watch USA Inc. has Kathleen McCarthy of King & Spalding.
Suzanne Crough, youngest ‘Partridge Family’ sibling, dead at 52
By Sandra Gonzalez From Mashable
Suzanne Crough, best known for playing youngest Partridge Family daughter Tracey, has died. She was 52.
The Associated Press reports that Crough, who hadn’t appeared in movies or TV since 1980, was found dead Monday at her home near Las Vegas. A cause of death 
has not been revealed.
Crough starred in the The Partridge Family from 1970-74, and though it only lasted four seasons, the cast reunited a number of times over the years, including once on My Three Sons and a few times for talk shows.
Their most recent gathering was in 2010 on the Today show.
Following the cancellation of the program, Crough appeared in a few TV shows — like Mulligan’s Stew and Wonder Woman — but largely left the entertainment business.
Crough is survived by her husband and two children.
IMAGES:
Suzanne Crough, seen here in 1973, has died at age 52.IMAGE: ABC PHOTO ARCHIVES/DISNEY ABC TELEVISION GROUP
Film and Television IMAGE: REX FEATURES VIA AP IMAGES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Top Iranian adviser: Obama is ‘Weakest of US Presidents’
By Sandy Fitzgerald From Newsmax
President Barack Obama is “the weakest of U.S. presidents” and his time in the White House has been “humiliating,” a top Iranian official said in an interview with the country’s Fars News Agency, according to a translation provided to The Free Beacon.
“Obama is the weakest of U.S. presidents, he had humiliating defeats in the region,” said Ali Younesi, senior adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in comments coming as the United States is trying to persuade his country to join the international coalition fighting against the Islamic State.
“Americans witnessed their greatest defeats in Obama’s era: Terrorism expanded, [the] U.S. had huge defeats under Obama [and] that is why they want to compromise with Iran,” Younesi said.
Younesi is not alone in his criticism of Obama, with even former members of the president’s staff, such as ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, critiquing Obama’s leadership skills in his memoir.
Younesi also complained that conservatives in the United States are “warmongers,” Free Beacon reports.
“They cannot tolerate powers like Iran,” he said. “If conservatives were in power they would go to war with us because they follow Israel and they want to portray Iran as the main threat and not ISIS.”
He was more complimentary to Obama’s political party, saying Democrats view Iran as “no threat.”
“We have to use this opportunity [of Democrats being in power in the U.S.], because if this opportunity is lost, in future we may not have such an opportunity again,” Younesi said.
But lawmakers on both sides are pessimistic about Iran’s tactics, saying Tehran is trying to stall for time while it builds a nuclear weapon.
Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iranian dissident and associate fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told Free Beacon that Obama believes “by rewarding Iran and permitting it to do whatever it wants in the region, the mullahs in Tehran will be convinced to compromise.”
However, Iran now controls three Arab capitals, Damascus, Beirut, and Baghdad, he said, and its allies just captured a fourth one, Sana in Yemen. Further, Iran’s economy has improved significantly.
“Unfortunately, it does not seem that the mullahs reached the conclusion desired by the administration,” he said. “Iranians believe this administration is weak, it has lost its economic leverage over Iran and there is no credible military option on the table. Iran has been rewarded upfront, they now ask for more while are determined to keep their nuclear program intact.”
For more on this story go to: http://www.Newsmax.com/Newsfront/obama-weak-president-iran/2014/10/23/id/602803/#ixzz3H54aGt44
