The Ustream iPhone Viewing Application is now available in the Apple App Store.

The Ustream iPhone Viewing Application was pending approval from Apple and was approved in time for the inauguration. Now any iPhone owner can watch the inauguration from their iPhone. Presently, the Ustream iPhone Viewing Application is WiFi only to ensure the highest quality broadcast on the iPhone, but stay tuned for developments.

“Ustream is excited to join the app store and bring a great application to the iPhone. Now iPhone users can watch and chat with any Ustream show directly from their iPhone. So now, wherever you are, you can be part of the global community around shared live experiences.” John Ham, Founder and CEO of Ustream

“The Ustream iPhone Application is a major advance in bringing the full power of the internet to mobile phones. Now anyone can watch everything from Taylor Swift concerts to your out of town high school football game live on the iPhone.” Brad Hunstable, Founder and President of Ustream

“Ustream has developed a technically amazing application for the iPhone. The iPhone has an amazing viewing experience and is a great platform for showcasing the Ustream experience. It was a pleasure developing an application for the iPhone and the Apple developer support was amazing.” Dr. Gyula Feher, Founder and Head of Technology of Ustream

The application can be downloaded at this iTunes link: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=301520250&mt=8

After that just search for Linkage Radio……

have Fun

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release January 14, 2010 Remarks by the President on Recovery Efforts in Haiti
Diplomatic Reception Room
10:10 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. I’ve directed my administration to launch a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives and support the recovery in Haiti.

The losses that have been suffered in Haiti are nothing less than devastating, and responding to a disaster of this magnitude will require every element of our national capacity — our diplomacy and development assistance; the power of our military; and, most importantly, the compassion of our country. And this morning, I’m joined by several members of my national security team who are leading this coordinated response.

I’ve made it clear to each of these leaders that Haiti must be a top priority for their departments and agencies right now. This is one of those moments that calls out for American leadership. For the sake of our citizens who are in Haiti, for the sake of the Haitian people who have suffered so much, and for the sake of our common humanity, we stand in solidarity with our neighbors to the south, knowing that but for the grace of God, there we go.

This morning, I can report that the first waves of our rescue and relief workers are on the ground and at work. A survey team worked overnight to identify priority areas for assistance, and shared the results of that review throughout the United States government, and with international partners who are also sending support. Search and rescue teams are actively working to save lives. Our military has secured the airport and prepared it to receive the heavy equipment and resources that are on the way, and to receive them around the clock, 24 hours a day. An airlift has been set up to deliver high-priority items like water and medicine. And we’re coordinating closely with the Haitian government, the United Nations, and other countries who are also on the ground.

We have no higher priority than the safety of American citizens, and we’ve airlifted injured Americans out of Haiti. We’re running additional evacuations, and will continue to do so in the days ahead. I know that many Americans, especially Haitian Americans, are desperate for information about their family and friends. And the State Department has set up a phone number and e-mail address that you can find at www.state.gov — www.state.gov — to inquire about your loved ones. And you should know that we will not rest until we account for our fellow Americans in harm’s way.

Even as we move as quickly as possible, it will take hours — and in many cases days — to get all of our people and resources on the ground. Right now in Haiti roads are impassable, the main port is badly damaged, communications are just beginning to come online, and aftershocks continue.

None of this will seem quick enough if you have a loved one who’s trapped, if you’re sleeping on the streets, if you can’t feed your children. But it’s important that everybody in Haiti understand, at this very moment one of the largest relief efforts in our recent history is moving towards Haiti. More American search and rescue teams are coming. More food. More water. Doctors, nurses, paramedics. More of the people, equipment and capabilities that can make the difference between life and death.

The United States armed forces are also on their way to support this effort. Several Coast Guard cutters are already there providing everything from basic services like water, to vital technical support for this massive logistical operation. Elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division will arrive today. We’re also deploying a Marine Expeditionary Unit, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, and the Navy’s hospital ship, the Comfort.

And today, I’m also announcing an immediate investment of $100 million to support our relief efforts. This will mean more of the life-saving equipment, food, water and medicine that will be needed. This investment will grow over the coming year as we embark on the long-term recovery from this unimaginable tragedy.

The United States of America will also forge the partnerships that this undertaking demands. We will partner with the Haitian people. And that includes the government of Haiti, which needs our support as they recover from the devastation of this earthquake. It also includes the many Haitian Americans who are determined to help their friends and family. And I’ve asked Vice President Biden to meet in South Florida this weekend with members of the Haitian American community, and with responders who are mobilizing to help the Haitian people.

We will partner with the United Nations and its dedicated personnel and peacekeepers, especially those from Brazil, who are already on the ground due to their outstanding peacekeeping efforts there. And I want to say that our hearts go out to the United Nations, which has experienced one of the greatest losses in its history. We have no doubt that we can carry on the work that was done by so many of the U.N. effort that have been lost, and we see that their legacy is Haiti’s hope for the future.

We will partner with other nations and organizations. And that’s why I’ve been reaching out to leaders from across the Americas and beyond who are sending resources to support this effort. And we will join with the strong network of non-governmental organizations across the country who understand the daily struggles of the Haitian people.

Yet even as we bring our resources to bear on this emergency, we need to summon the tremendous generosity and compassion of the American people. I want to thank the many Americans who have already contributed to this effort. I want to encourage all Americans who want to help to go to whitehouse.gov to learn more. And in the days ahead, we will continue to work with those individuals and organizations who want to assist this effort so that you can do so.

Finally, I want to speak directly to the people of Haiti. Few in the world have endured the hardships that you have known. Long before this tragedy, daily life itself was often a bitter struggle. And after suffering so much for so long, to face this new horror must cause some to look up and ask, have we somehow been forsaken?

To the people of Haiti, we say clearly, and with conviction, you will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten. In this, your hour of greatest need, America stands with you. The world stands with you. We know that you are a strong and resilient people. You have endured a history of slavery and struggle, of natural disaster and recovery. And through it all, your spirit has been unbroken and your faith has been unwavering. So today, you must know that help is arriving — much, much more help is on the way.

Thank you very much, everybody.

END
10:16 A.M. EST

Resident walk next to a dead body after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
What makes the apocalyptic earthquake that ravaged Haiti on Jan. 12 especially “cruel and incomprehensible,” as U.S. President Barack Obama put it, is that it struck at a rare moment of optimism. After decades of natural and political catastrophes — including the violent 2004 overthrow of then President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and four deadly hurricanes in 2008 — a U.N. peacekeeping force and an international investment campaign headed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton had recently begun to calm and rebuild the Caribbean nation, the western hemisphere’s poorest. “We were hearing more positive things from Haiti for once,” says Danielle Romer, a Miami social worker with family in Haiti. “Things were coming around.”

But what Romer heard on her cell phone from Haiti Tuesday evening was horror instead of hope. A relative in Carrefour, a suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince, described the quake’s devastation during another powerful aftershock and the sudden blackout: neighbors were buried under the rubble of their collapsed homes, while shrill cries pierced the darkness and explosive fires were the only light amidst the vast gray cloud of dust enveloping the city.
(See pictures of earthquake devastation in Haiti.)

The 7.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest to hit Haiti and the Caribbean basin in more than 200 years, swallowed the country’s positive momentum as viciously as it razed the flimsy concrete buildings of densely populated Port-au-Prince, where 2 million people live — and where tens of thousands may now be dead. “My mind can’t conceive it,” says Romer, who has not been able to contact her relatives again since their call was cut off. In the capital, just 10 miles from the quake’s epicenter (and only six miles above it), even the presidential palace, the parliament building and the U.N. mission collapsed along with countless houses, businesses and hospitals. It severely injured the leader of the Haitian Senate, Kelly Bastien and killed the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Port-au-Prince, Joseph Serge Miot, as well as the head of the U.N. mission, Hedi Annabi. Haitian President Rene Preval said, “There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.” His wife, Elisabeth Preval said she was “stepping over dead bodies.”
(Will disease follow the earthquake in Haiti?)

Port-au-Prince’s streets were just as rife with the walking wounded, as stunned and battered residents wandered aimlessly in any open space they could find. One woman described how the quake had struck just before 5 p.m. Tuesday as she was driving her small pickup truck home to the affluent Petionville suburb. The Route du Canape Vert, a major artery into and out of Port-au-Prince, began buckling so violently that it took every ounce of her strength on the steering wheel to keep on the road. “I could still feel the vibrations in my arms for six hours afterward,” she says. She almost turned into a roadside gas station for refuge — until it collapsed before her eyes, burying everyone inside. She has remained outside ever since. “It’s the only thing I know for sure to do,” she says.

The quake destroyed much of the Route du Canape Vert, according to eyewitnesses, leaving both Haitians and relief workers arriving from the U.S. and around the hemisphere with one fewer piece of infrastructure that was actually serviceable. Even in good times, services like potable water and sanitation are primitive in Haiti. But in the quake’s aftermath, in an e-mail to friends and family, an official with one international organization based in Port-au-Prince wrote bluntly, “The city [now] has no infrastructure for health care, no security forces, all roads are full of debris and [fallen] walls. My hotel has totally collapsed.” He says there is “nothing on the ground to support relief,” and adds, “I will need help to make it through the next few days. I am faced with a decision to evacuate or stay here to help.” He signs off somewhat ominously by noting, “There are already people knocking on our gates for help.”

There were other ominous developments: the head of the national police told CNN that he believes there may be 1,000 criminals on the loose after the country’s main prison collapsed in the quake. Port-au-Prince is already vulnerable to gang law during emergencies like this, and it will be hard for relief workers to do their jobs if they do not feel secure. Meanwhile, buildings continued to totter in the wake of the temblor. Ian Rodgers, Save the Children’s Emergency Response Adviser wrote on the group’s blog: “We could hear buildings still crumbling down five hours after the earthquake.” And the destruction wasn’t just confined to Port-au-Prince: officials say the quake affected at least a third of Haiti’s 9 million people.

Help — especially water, medical supplies and fuel for generators — was en route Wednesday from countries like Venezuela, Brazil and the U.S., which was dispatching helicopters, the U.S. naval hospital ship the USNS Comfort and Coast Guard cutters including the Forward and the Mohawk. The Forward is providing air traffic control, allowing planes to land, since the airport tower is not functioning. On Wednesday evening, however, air traffic control was still sparse. “We can’t afford not to help,” says Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida’s 20th district, which has the second largest population of Haitian Americans in the U.S. “The more dire that things get in Haiti that’s when we see an uptick in Haitians taking to the seas on rafts and washing up on our shoreline. And we can’t afford that. We’ve got to make sure that Haiti is stable enough and that we can help them restore and improve on their quality of life so that they have a reason to remain in their country.”

Still, Haiti experts like Jocelyn McCallan, a Haitian-American development consultant in New York, say that if there’s one silver lining to the disaster it’s precisely that it occurred at an unusually optimistic time. Before the quake, McCallan notes, Haitians were experiencing an unusual sense of common purpose and material upgrade — traffic lights were even working 24/7 for a change — and the international community “was stepping up for Haiti in ways it hadn’t before,” giving the world a glimpse of a Haiti that might be redeemable after all. That, he believes, “could accelerate recovery.” That is a welcome outlook at this dismal time. As desperate as Haiti has been, it has never felt this hopeless.

With reporting by Jay Newton-Small/Washington

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953379_1953494_1953515,00.html#ixzz0cZxawg95

Dawn is supposed to bring hope. But today — sunlight revealed hundreds of dead in the streets of Port-Au-Prince.

CBS News anchor Katie Couric reports parents have lost children, and children have lost their parents.

Survivors not overcome with grief used their bare hands to remove the rubble that trapped their families and neighbors. It’s now a race to save the people buried under the destroyed hillside neighborhoods and shanty towns of the capital city.

“Information on the full extent of the damage is still scanty,” said United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

How to Help Victims
Blog: The Latest Developments
Complete Coverage: Devastation in Haiti

A third of all Haitians – 3 million people – need emergency aid. One of the first priorities is setting up medical care for the thousands of injured. All three hospitals operated by Doctors Without Borders have collapsed or had to be abandoned. Many of its doctors are missing.

What infrastructure Port-Au-Prince had — is practically gone. The presidential palace, which weathered decades of political unrest, is in ruins. There’s little water, spotty electricity, and no place to store the dead.

Adding to the chaos is that the biggest relief organization in Haiti — the United Nations — is in shambles. At least 14 UN workers are dead. More than 100 others may be buried under their collapsed headquarters.

A search and rescue team from Virginia is already here. They’ll be joined by other teams as far away as Europe and China. A U.S. aircraft carrier is on its way. Two thousand Marines may follow.

“We’re looking at all the options to make sure we have as much flexibility as possible,” said General Douglas Fraser, U.S. Southern Command.

In the best of times, Haitians endure daily hardships. Four out of five people here already lived in poverty. Few could imagine the catastrophe unleashed by the 30 second earthquake that left Port-Au-Prince covered in a cloud of dust.

The coming days will be about survival: for the injured, the orphaned, and an entire nation that now faces the greatest crisis in its history.

They strode into the restaurant supply store in Harlem shortly after 3 p.m. on Thursday, four young men intent on robbery, one with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol, the police said. The place may have looked like an easy mark, a high-cash business with an owner in his 70s, known as a gentle, soft-spoken man.

But Charles Augusto Jr., the 72-year-old proprietor of the Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corporation, at 523 West 125th Street, near Amsterdam Avenue, had been robbed several times before, despite the fact that his shop is around the corner from the 26th Precinct station house on West 126th Street.

There were no customers in the store, only Mr. Augusto and two employees, a man and a woman. The police said the invaders announced a holdup, approached the two employees and tried to place plastic handcuffs on them. The male employee, a 35-year-old known in the community as J. B., struggled with the gunman, who then hit him on the head with the pistol.

Watching it happen, Mr. Augusto, whom neighborhood friends call Gus, rose from a chair 20 to 30 feet away and took out a loaded Winchester 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with a pistol-grip handle. The police said he bought it after a robbery 30 years ago.

Mr. Augusto, who has never been in trouble with the law, fired three blasts in rapid succession, the police said, although Vernon McKenzie, working at an Internet company next door, heard only two booms, loud enough to send him rushing to a window, where he heard someone shout: “You’re dead! You’re dead!”

The first shot took down the gunman at the front. He died almost immediately, according to the police, who said he was 29 and had been arrested for gun possession in Queens last year and was the nephew of a police officer.

Mr. Augusto’s other two blasts hit all three accomplices, who stumbled out the door, bleeding.

One of them, a 21-year-old, staggered across 125th Street and collapsed in front of the General Grant Houses, a nine-building complex with 4,500 residents, one of the city’s biggest housing projects. Someone called 911, and an ambulance rushed him to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, where he was dead on arrival. The police said he had a record of arrests for weapons possession and robbery.

Another wounded man left a blood trail that the police followed to 125th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. The fourth wounded man was picked up, on the basis of witness descriptions, at 128th Street and St. Nicholas Terrace. Both were taken to St. Luke’s.

The names of the men who were shot — two dead and two wounded — were not immediately released by the authorities. The two at the hospital, both 21 years old, were in stable condition late Thursday night, the police said.

Outside the emergency room entrance of the hospital, at 113th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, relatives and friends of the dead and wounded men screamed and wailed in anguish as word of what had happened spread.

“No! No!” a woman cried. “They said he just died!”

Another crying woman, surrounded by family members, heard one of her relatives had been shot trying to rob a store.

“Oh my God!” she wailed. “Why would they want to rob a store?” She started to scream: “Damn! Why? Why would he go to a family store? He got money!” She slumped against the wall and began to pray.

Later, a man ran into the emergency room and came out screaming, “Oh, God!” He held his head in his hands and sat at the curb, apparently devastated.

A youth about 16, crying and pacing at the emergency room entrance, slammed his fist into a yellow pole.

The scene back at Blue Flame was also grim. Ordinarily, 125th Street between Amsterdam and Broadway is a placid setting: a couple of storefront businesses; Our Children’s Foundation, an after-school program; the Antioch Baptist Church and the Manhattan Pentecostal Church; the facades of the housing project looming up; a lot of passing and parked cars. The facade of the store is brick and concrete, with the words “Blue Flame” emblazoned in faded blue on the front of the three-story building.

Two hours after the shootings, the body of a man lay on the sidewalk, its upper half covered in white plastic. Gray pants and white sneakers, with the toes pointed up, were visible. And there was the inevitable crowd of bystanders.

“How the hell are you going to rob someone in broad daylight?” said Sarah Martin, president of the General Grant Residents Association. Looking around at the crowd of people, she added, “They’re very upset, the people who live in this area.”

Gene Hernandez, 47, sympathized with Mr. Augusto, but not with the would-be robbers. “If I were him, I would kill a dozen of them,” he said. “You have to protect your workers and your family. Case closed.”

Stefany Blyn, who leases a commercial building from Mr. Augusto, described him as a “laid-back, unexcitable guy,” who often lounged in his chair on the sidewalk.

She said she was “not totally amazed” at the robbery, because he had told her that he had been robbed several times before and that he dealt in a lot of cash in his business, which was the sale and service of stoves and other kitchen equipment. The shop opened in 1929, according to news articles about it.

“He was trying to make a living in his business,” said John E. Walker, who works at Drum Television Network, next door.

Venus Singleton, 51, said she hoped that Mr. Augusto would not get into trouble over the shootings. “I hope that the gun was licensed and that he was in his rights,” she said.

Paul J. Browne, chief spokesman for the Police Department, said that Mr. Augusto had not been arrested or charged. He was being treated like a witness and was still being questioned early Friday at the station house. It was unclear if the shotgun was registered, but Mr. Browne said, “There is a lower threshold for owning a shotgun in the city, a permit as opposed to a license.”

A law enforcement official said that the district attorney was considering a possible misdemeanor weapons charge against Mr. Augusto, indicating that he did not have a permit for the shotgun.

Under long-established New York law, a person is allowed to use deadly physical force when he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to meet the imminent use of deadly physical force and there is no reasonable chance of retreating from the danger.

A woman who answered the telephone at Mr. Augusto’s home in Irvington, N.Y., said the family would have no comment.

August 11, 2009

BOSTON (AP) — President John F. Kennedy’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who carried on the family’s public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of the mentally disabled, died early Tuesday surrounded by relatives at a Hyannis hospital. She was 88.

Shriver had suffered a series of strokes in recent years and died at Cape Cod Hospital, her family said in a statement. Her husband, her five children and all 19 of her grandchildren were by her side, the statement said.

“She was the light of our lives, a mother, wife, grandmother, sister and aunt who taught us by example and with passion what it means to live a faith-driven life of love and service to others,” the family said.

The hospital is near the Kennedy family compound, where her sole surviving brother, Sen. Edward Kennedy, has been battling a brain tumor.

Sen. Kennedy said his earliest memory of his sister was as a young girl “with great humor, sharp wit, and a boundless passion to make a difference.”

“She understood deeply the lesson our mother and father taught us — much is expected of those to whom much has been given,” he said in a statement. “Throughout her extraordinary life, she touched the lives of millions, and for Eunice that was never enough.”

President Barack Obama said Shriver will be remembered as “as a champion for people with intellectual disabilities, and as an extraordinary woman who, as much as anyone, taught our nation — and our world — that no physical or mental barrier can restrain the power of the human spirit.”

As celebrity, social worker and activist, Shriver was credited with transforming America’s view of the mentally disabled from institutionalized patients to friends, neighbors and athletes. Her efforts were inspired in part by the struggles of her mentally disabled sister, Rosemary.

“We have always been honored to share our mother with people of good will the world over who believe, as she did, that there is no limit to the human spirit,” her family said in the statement.

Shriver was also the sister of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, the wife of 1972 vice presidential candidate and former Peace Corps director R. Sargent Shriver, and the mother of former NBC newswoman Maria Shriver, who is married to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. With Eunice Shriver’s death, Jean Kennedy Smith becomes the last surviving Kennedy daughter.

Schwarzenegger said his mother-in-law “changed my life by raising such a fantastic daughter, and by putting me on the path to service, starting with drafting me as a coach for the Special Olympics.”

A 1960 Chicago Tribune profile of the women in then-candidate JFK’s family said Shriver was “generally credited with being the most intellectual and politically minded of all the Kennedy women.”

When her brother was in the White House, she pressed for efforts to help troubled young people and the mentally disabled. And in 1968, she started what would become the world’s largest athletic competition for mentally disabled children and adults. Now, more than 1 million athletes in more than 160 countries participate in Special Olympics meets each year.

“When the full judgment on the Kennedy legacy is made — including JFK’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy’s efforts on health care, work place reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,” Harrison Rainie, author of “Growing Up Kennedy,” wrote in U.S. News & World Report in 1993.

It was Shriver who revealed the condition of her sister Rosemary to the nation during her brother’s presidency.

“Early in life Rosemary was different,” she wrote in a 1962 article for the Saturday Evening Post. “She was slower to crawl, slower to walk and speak. … Rosemary was mentally retarded.” Rosemary Kennedy underwent a lobotomy when she was 23, though that wasn’t mentioned in the article. She lived most of her life in an institution in Wisconsin and died in 2005 at age 86.

The roots of the Special Olympics go back to a summer camp Shriver ran in Maryland in 1963. Shriver would “get right in the pool with the kids; she’d toss the ball,” said a niece, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who volunteered at the camp as a teen. “It’s that hands-on, gritty approach that awakened her to the kids’ needs.”

Realizing the children were far more capable of sports than experts said, Shriver organized the first Special Olympics in 1968 in Chicago. The two-day event drew more than 1,000 participants from 26 states and Canada.

“She believed that people with intellectual disabilities could — individually and collectively — achieve more than anyone thought possible. This much she knew with unbridled faith and certainty,” her son Timothy, chairman of Special Olympics said in a statement.

By 2003, the Special Olympics World Summer Games, held that year in Dublin, Ireland, involved more than 6,500 athletes from 150 countries. The games are held every four years.

Well into her 70s, Shriver remained a daily presence at the Special Olympics headquarters in Washington.

“Today we celebrate the life of a woman who had the vision to create our movement,” said Special Olympics President and COO Brady Lum.

Juvenile delinquency was another issue that interested Shriver and spurred her to action. In his 1991 book “The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America,” author Nicholas Lemann said the Kennedy administration’s juvenile delinquency commission, “a pet project that had been created to placate Eunice,” became the precursor of the vast federal effort to improve the lot of urban blacks.

After he took office, President Lyndon B. Johnson tapped R. Sargent Shriver to lead his War on Poverty.

Eunice Shriver was the recipient of numerous honors, including the nation’s highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which she received in 1984. In May, the National Portrait Gallery installed a painting of her — the first portrait commissioned by the museum of someone who had not been a president or first lady.

Shriver was born in Brookline, Mass., the fifth of nine children to Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She earned a sociology degree from Stanford University in 1943 after graduating from a British boarding school while her father served as ambassador to England.

She was a social worker at a women’s prison in Alderson, W.Va., and worked with the juvenile court in Chicago in the 1950s before taking over the Joseph P. Kennedy Foundation with the goal of improving the treatment of the mentally disabled. The foundation was named for her oldest brother, Joseph Jr., who was killed in World War II.

In 1953, she married Shriver. He became JFK’s first director of the Peace Corps, was George McGovern’s vice-presidential running mate in 1972, and ran for president himself briefly in 1976.

Survivors include her husband, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2003, and the couple’s five children: Maria Shriver, who is married to Schwarzenegger; Robert, a city councilman in Santa Monica, Calif.; Timothy, chairman of Special Olympics; Mark, an executive at the charity Save the Children; and Anthony, founder and chairman of Best Buddies International, a volunteer organization for the mentally disabled.

In remembrance of Shriver, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston will make condolence books available for the public to sign during normal hours.

BLAINE, Wash. – New rules requiring passports or new high-tech documents to cross the United States’ northern and southern borders are taking effect Monday, as some rue the tightening of security and others hail it as long overdue.

The rules are being implemented nearly eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks and long after the 9/11 Commission recommended the changes. They were delayed by complaints from state officials who worried the restrictions would hinder the flow of people and commerce and affect border towns dependent on international crossings.

In 2001 a driver’s license and an oral declaration of citizenship were enough to cross the Canadian and Mexican borders; Monday’s changes are the last step in a gradual ratcheting up of the rules. Now thousands of Americans are preparing by applying for passports or obtaining special driver’s licenses that can also be used to cross the border.

“It’s sad,” said Steve Saltzman, a 60-year-old dual Canadian-American citizen as he entered the U.S. at the Peace Arch crossing in Blaine, Wash., on Thursday. “This was the longest undefended border in the world. Now all of the sudden it is defended, and not nearly as friendly.”

Near the border crossing, local Blaine resident Mike Williams disagreed.

The play’s the thing! Except when President Obama and the First Lady show up.

Some of the loudest applause at “Joe Turner‘s Come and Gone” Saturday night was for the First Couple, who received a five-minute standing ovation from before the show.

“We had no idea he was going to be here,” Maisha McGill, 28, said. “We were really lucky to come tonight. People were standing on top of their chairs clapping for him.”

The show finally started more than 45 minutes late at 8:47 while employees flickered the lights on and off in an attempt to calm down the clapping audience.

The Obamas had arrived shortly before curtain time and theatergoers who crowded the sidewalk were delayed by heavy security.

Nobody seemed to mind.

Jean Lundy, a 39-year-old unemployed finance worker from Jersey City, was sitting four rows in front of the President near Meryl Streep and Olympia Dukakis.

“We were in the presence of greatness,” he said.

He didn’t know the Obamas were going to the show and even tried selling his tickets before the show after a date canceled on him.

Instead, he brought Caesar Collins, 37, a Jersey City firefighter.

Collins updated his status on Facebook.com throughout the show.

“Some people were just hating on me,” he said with a chuckle.

The Obamas’ day started with daughter Malia’s soccer game near the White House before they dolled themselves up and jetted off to New York to have dinner at Blue Hill.

“I am taking my wife to New York City because I promised her during the campaign that I would take her to a Broadway show after it was all finished,” the President said.

As the motorcade left Greenwich Village and drove up Sixth Ave. to the theater, crowds of people – at times about eight deep – gathered on the sidewalks of the blockaded streets to wave as the Obamas passed.

For their date night – a tradition the Obamas have tried to keep up since moving into the White House – the President chose a dark suit and a white shirt, but skipped the tie. This was his first visit to the city as President.

Michelle Obama stepped out in a sleeveless black dress, open-toed sandals and a sleek updo.

Ernie Hudson, who plays Seth Holly in the August Wilson play, said the cast was elated to perform for the Obamas.

“We just do our best job every day,” said Hudson, famous for his role in the “Ghostbusters” movies. “It’s an amazing play about African-American migration at the turn of the century. It’s a very powerful play.”

Ray McGill, 24 of Queens said the play was “amazing” although somewhat eclipsed by Obama.

“A lot of people were excited and taking pictures of him,” he said. “He didn’t attract too much attention, all things considered.

ALEXANDRIA, St Ann – Prime Minister Bruce Golding yesterday ordered the closure of the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre in this parish after a fire killed five wards of the state, injured 11 others and destroyed a dormitory at the all-girl facility Friday night.

At the same time, the prime minister has appointed retired high court judge and former president of the Court of Appeal, Justice Paul Harrison to conduct an inquiry into the tragedy that took the lives of Ann-Marie Samuels, Nerrissa Gooden and Rachel King, all 17 years old; and Kaychell Nelson and Shauna-Lee Kerr, both 15 years old.

Pudence Doeman holds a photo of her daughter, Shauna-Lee Kerr, who died in Friday night’s fire at the Armadale Juvenile Correctional Centre (in background). (Photos: Alesia Edwards) Photos Digitally Enhanced by Rorie Atkinson

“What happened here last night (Friday night) was a terrible tragedy, five of the girls here perished, a number of others injured, three of them quite seriously,” Golding said following a tour of the centre early yesterday morning. “We have made contact with the families of those who died, we are doing everything possible to provide them with comfort and consolation.”

He described the centre as unsafe and said that the remaining girls should not be allowed to continue living under the present condition.

“This facility will have to be closed,” said the prime minister. “I have spoken with the acting commissioner of corrections… we are identifying alternative locations where we hope to be able to move them very quickly, and we are hoping that within a very short period of time we will be able to have them relocated.”

Yesterday, National Security Minister Dwight Nelson, who visited the centre with Golding and Police Commissioner Hardley Lewin, said that following discussions with the Ministry of Education, the remaining 45 wards will be moved to the Tranquillity Bay facility in St Elizabeth. Until then, however, they will be temporarily relocated to the Stony Hill Heart Academy in St Andrew.

Describing the tragedy as “unfortunate beyond description” Nelson extended condolences and sympathy to the families and loved ones of the victims and said that his ministry, which has overall responsibility for juvenile correctional facilities, “stands ready to assist in anyway that is deemed necessary”.

Nelson also welcomed the prime minister’s decision to set up a commission of inquiry into the fire which the Government expects will determine the full extent of the incident, the condition that existed at the centre and how it could be addressed.

Shauna-Lee Kerr in happier times.

“The facilities here are clearly not adequate, and it is possible that that might have contributed, to some extent, to the tragedy, but given the severity of the tragedy and given the casualty that we have suffered – five of our girls having died – it is something that warrants investigation at the highest level,” Golding said.

Both Golding and Nelson said that the Government would assist with the funerals of the girls.

According to the police, about 8:00 pm Friday they were called to quell the rowdy behaviour of some of the girls, but stones and other missiles were hurled at cops who responded to the call.

The police said that while they were trying to restore order, they discovered that a section of the dorm, which housed 23 girls, was on fire. The fire spread quickly, engulfing the entire building and trapping the girls inside.

Police said they were able to rescue some of the girls through a rear window. However, after firefighters put the blaze out the bodies of the five girls were found among the rubble. The injured girls were rushed to the St Ann’s Bay Hospital for treatment. Three have since been transferred to the Kingston Public Hospital.

Neither firefighters nor Armadale officials have said how the fire started, even as it was alleged that the blaze was triggered by the lighting of a mattress by one of the girls who was misbehaving.

It was also alleged that when smoke was seen coming from the building, security officials assigned to the centre could not immediately find the key to open the door.

News of the tragedy brought Pudence Doeman, mother of Shauna-Lee Kerr, to the centre early yesterday morning. The visibly shaken woman, who travelled more than 111 kilometres from Hanover, clenched two photos of her daughter who was placed at the centre just over a month ago.

“A carelessness mek mi pickney dead, straight negligence and everybody a hush, hush. Mi want to know what happen to her,” Doeman demanded. “What dem a tell me don’t mek sense, but mi just listen ’cause she gone already. Mi think she woulda safe, that’s why me mek her come here, ’cause she wasn’t behaving herself. Betta mi did mek her stay pon di road and give trouble.”

Another mother, who claimed her daughter was the first to make it out of the burning building, said she would be seeking legal advice on how she could get back her uncontrollable daughter from the Government.

“Five of them from one dorm, it is sad, I am upset, and Monday morning I will be going to the Children’s Advocate and Probation Officer for my daughter because she and the other girls are not safe and I want her back alive, not dead,” the mother, who did not want to be identified, told the Sunday Observer.

Other relatives of the wards wept uncontrollably when security personnel at the gate failed to provide information on the status of their loved ones. One woman threatened to break down the gate if she could not see or hear from her child. Shortly after, the child was taken to a window, much to the delight of the mother.

Within the last year, the wards have been involved in at least three incidents. Eleven of the girls reportedly escaped from the centre last year to attend a dance in a nearby community. They were also involved in another incident which led to some of them being transferred to the Fort Augusta Adult Correctional Centre in St Catherine.

In February this year, the juveniles became unruly, injured several warders at Fort Augusta and doused others with excrement during a riot.

“They are an unruly, ill-mannered bunch of girls and we do not want them to deal with anymore,” one warder told the Observer at the time.

FREDA Fraser used to spend hours in the sun, ploughing the Manchester clay soil to plant cash crops, while anxiously hoping they would not be destroyed by heavy rain or drought.

Last Wednesday, as heavy rains pounded the parish forcing many farmers to wait nervously on the inside of their homes, she comfortably tended to a bountiful yield of tomatoes – thanks to the greenhouse technology.

Princess Ferguson (left) explains how early she must get to the market in order to get good produce while her colleague Lucy Palmer looks on. (Photos: Garfield Robinson)

Fraser is now able to work at a moderate pace throughout the day, protected from all elements. She is gratefully aware that another farmer in her Yonder Pond community would have to plant six times the amount to get the yield she is expecting in a few months.

“I really experience plenty and learn a lot about greenhouse,” she said beaming. “When I am under here, I am in the cool and can do any amount of work. If I was outside in the sun I couldn’t.”

Unfortunately, Fraser does not yet own her own greenhouse but works at the Christiana Potato Growers’ Co-operative Association’s mother farm greenhouse project in Devon, Manchester. She longs for the day when she can set up her own but for now the high cost makes it almost impossible. It costs upwards of $300,000 for the smallest greenhouse.

“Every farmer should be exposed to this technology because it is a wonderful thing and I can see the benefits,” Fraser said.

The technology has taken off in the farming constituency of Manchester North East, where many farmers have eagerly bought into its benefits. Now they say that while they welcome their member of parliament Audley Shaw’s support for agriculture so far, they want him to provide financial assistance to small farmers so they can acquire their own backyard greenhouse.

Frederick Mills tends to his cabbage field.

For those who can make the investment, the yields received, they say, will give greater returns if they can be guaranteed steady markets for their produce.

Frederick Mills had to scamper for shelter as the rain came down suddenly while he tended his cabbage farm during the Sunday Observer’s visit to his home in Ticky Ticky. He, too, wants a greenhouse so that he can work even when it rains, while providing him with higher yields.

“Things are so expensive (yet) when you get something out of the field the price is so cheap you can’t see your way,” he said.

Princess Ferguson has to reach the Christiana market by midnight ahead of other vendors, if she is to buy the finest produce from St Elizabeth farmers at the right price.

“Me come by 12:00 am fi buy the load then me go home and have a nap and come back by 7:00 am,” she said, adding that she sells six days a week.

Some days business is good but this rare. With the rainy months coming, Ferguson will be forced to sell carrot at “dirt cheap” prices since it cannot stay for long in the fields. The greenhouse technology will benefit her too, since it would enable farmers to reap all year round and to sell at more reasonable prices. At the same time, most constituency residents believe the unemployed and unskilled youth roaming the community can now go into farming since it no longer has to be a ‘dirty’ job.

Through the efforts of the Christiana Potato Growers’ Co-operative Association, more farmers say they will become involved in the technology sooner than later. The co-operative has also established its own tissue culture lab which will make life easier for the more than 17,000 registered members in Manchester, Trelawny, St Ann, St Elizabeth and Clarendon.

Tissue culture is a scientific method of multiplying clean plants which are not disease-resistant, but will not become contaminated with bacteria and fungus.

Dr Gordon Lightbourn, the plant molecular breeder at the lab, said the plant is placed in a fertiliser-type mixture in a test tube then sterilised with distilled water. The lab, which has been open three months, can accommodate up to 70,000 plants, with one test tube producing over 10,000. Current plants in the lab include cucumber, melon, various types of irish and sweet potatoes, ginger and even ornamental plants. The goal, Lightbourn said, is to produce 100,000 plants per month.

“From this three test tube of irish potatoes we got 36 test tubes in four weeks,” he said.

Alvin Murray, general manager of the co-operative which has been around since 1959, said farmers with greenhouses will be able to supply large hotels and restaurants, thus putting a permanent ban on the importation of ground produce.

He noted that most farmers are idle from November to February as they await the end of drought. But if rain water is harvested in catchments for greenhouse irrigation, Murray said they can produce all year. He wants to see the hillsides of the constituency become fruit orchards, with the lower slopes used for greenhouses and the huge craters left by
the bauxite companies utilised as water catchments to provide irrigation.

Murray added that with greenhouse generating greater yields, markets must be found to allow farmers to bypass middlemen and go straight to the buyer.

“If you look at the list of things the hotels want, their challenge to us is that we would never be able to supply that amount,” he said, adding that the farmer working outside stops reaping after four months while the greenhouse produces all year.

Those farmers who believe they will never afford a greenhouse said they want Shaw to assist with cheaper seeds and fertiliser. And greenhouses aside, many of the more than 50,000 residents say they long for piped water.

“Sometimes we haffi tek taxi go get water,” explained one resident who said this can cost as much as $400 both ways.

Devon residents are also clamouring for Shaw to return the health centre to the community as they can no longer afford transportation cost to Christiana for even the most minor medical services.

Hundreds of students camped outside the offices of the Students’ Loan Bureau (SLB) offices in this file photo. – File

STACI-ANN regrets going to the Students’ Loan Bureau for assistance to finance her tertiary education.

She claims her peace of mind has been disturbed since she graduated from the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) four years ago.

Financing her loan repayment and basic living expenses at the same time from the salary she earns was driving her to the cliff, Staci-Ann says.

“I was repaying my student’s loan but I had to stop because I realised that it was ridiculous. I was paying them and I could not live,” Staci-Ann tells The Sunday Gleaner.

The student-loan delinquent is a hybrid of frustration and desperation. Her voice cracked every decibel it rose as the sounds of the depressed woman filled the small Kingston apartment which she calls home.

“The worse thing I ever did in my life was to get a loan from the Students’ Loan Bureau. It has been a nightmare,” Staci-Ann tells The Sunday Gleaner.

One week ago, The Sunday Gleaner reported that more than 7,000 students owe the SLB over $760 million.

The story rubbed Staci-Ann’s sensitive nerve and she did not hesitate to tell her story.

“You look around you at everyone failing and challenge yourself to do differently and so you end up making a deal with the devil. Sad. That is exactly how it feels after taking this loan,” Staci-Ann said in her email to The Sunday Gleaner.

Her debt

The NCU graduate said she borrowed less than $500,000 from the SLB to pay her tuition fees at NCU, where she read for a bachelor’s degree. When she graduated in 2004, the SLB wrote to her telling her that it was time to begin settling her account. Her debt with the bureau stood at nearly $800,000 and she was required to pay almost $30,000 per month for six years to clear her loan.

Last week, Staci-Ann’s father received a letter from a collection and recovery service which warned him that should he fail to pay nearly $1.5 million within seven days the bureau would be taking action, including seizing his assets.

“I don’t have any assets, all I have is my life. I would love to pay it but I don’t have the money to pay. She is struggling too. Last Sunday, I called her in Kingston and she said ‘Daddy, I don’t even have dinner …’.”

He adds: “I love my children and she wanted to learn. It has been me alone; no mother; just me … . I have stood up with her and now they want to hang me … but I am not hiding and I am not running away,” Staci-Ann’s father says.

Staci-Ann tells The Sunday Gleaner that she made an attempt to pay the SBL but at great sacrifice. Then one day she gave up.

As anguish and despair rippled though her voice Staci-Ann related her life of challenges deep in Manchester and her continued fight for survival in the Corporate Area. She says that if the Bureau was structured in such a way to take into account her socio-economic conditions, and that of so many other delinquents, only then would the true story about non-payment of SLB loans be told.

“I am not looking for excuses but I wish those persons who say we are unwilling to make the sacrifices to pay back our student’s loan could understand,” Staci-Ann says.

Her story begins.

“Life was so bad. When I was younger, clothing was luxury, one I never got. My father was a carpenter, to this day I am still trying to find out why he did not build a proper house.

“I used to sleep on board, a bed with cloth on it … there were no sheets,” Staci-Ann said.

She tells The Sunday Gleaner that she would spend nights as a child crying and singing to herself on top of a rugged hill where her house rested.

“I have always wanted better and I thought education was my way out,” Staci-Ann says.

She says that her father withdrew the last $30,000 from his account for her to start university. At NCU Staci-Ann said she took a job in custodial services to help her meet daily expenses. But it was always clear to her that the SLB would be her only option.

She tells The Sunday Gleaner that she tried her best at university and even though she did not graduate with honours she entered the working world with a sense of glee and hope.

“… I was wrong. I was naive to believe that I would get a degree, work and be able to honour my loan obligation and at the same time stay alive.

“When I started working, the SLB wanted almost $30,000 per month and that was virtually all my take-home pay. There were times when I paid the student loan and just cried because I could neither travel to work nor pay my rent. I could no longer handle it, I had to stop,” Staci-Ann says.

“When I came to Kingston I did not have anywhere to live. It was my friend who asked somebody who asked a friend to put me up. I lived in a cellar – a basement … . I never said that to anybody; not even my family knows.”

No more sacrifice

The 28-year-old debtor tells The Sunday Gleaner that, once she stopped paying student loan, she took the opportunity to acquire things such as a bed, sofa, chest of drawers and refrigerator – things she never had before.

“I didn’t have a home. I needed a home for once. I grew up without a home. I have lived in so many places with so many people having them tell me it’s time to go. I needed a home, a real home. This is what I always wanted,” Staci-Ann says, her eyes surveying the 8×10-feet quad in which she now lives.

“Does this mean that I am not sacrificing, or is it because I am not sacrificing my well-being anymore?”

The feisty young woman tells The Sunday Gleaner that she has every intention of repaying the bureau and she intends to start doing so soon. Today, her monthly net salary amounts to approximately $44,000 per month, which matches her expenses.

A Bronx real estate broker who hosted a radio show on WBLS and WLIB inviting distressed homeowners to contact her for help was charged Thursday with ripping them off instead.

Lavette Bills, head of MTC Real Estate, was charged along with Kirk Lacey, a Jamaican who lives in Florida, in a brazen $800,000 mortgage fraud scheme that allegedly preyed on people fearful of foreclosure.

In one case, Bills, 36, persuaded a Bronx homeowner who had called the show for help to put Bills’ name on the deed to her house on Tinton Ave. by promising to get the homeowner a loan to pay off the $38,000 mortgage.

Bills sold the home to a straw buyer, according to the U.S. attorney’s office and the FBI.

Bills allegedly made $150,000 on the crooked deal, including taking a $50,000 broker’s fee for the bogus sale.

The homeowner, who just wanted to pay off the small mortgage, is now in foreclosure. Thanks to Bills, the new mortgage on the house totals $337,500, prosecutors said.

Antoine Brown, 34, the homeowner’s grandson, said he was unaware of the pair’s arrest, but was glad other people would not fall victim to their scheme.

He first learned about the pair in a radio commercial.

Bills’ business cards describe her as a “foreclosure specialist,” and she hosted a program on WBLS (107.5 FM) and WLIB (1190 AM) in 2007 on which she discussed mortgages and foreclosures, prosecutors said.

Her Web site warns customers who go elsewhere “you have a right to feel cheated.”

Bills and Lacey, 36, were each charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud and face 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines.

At an arraignment in federal court, Bills was freed on $250,000 bond. Lacey was freed on $150,000 bond and was ordered to surrender his passport and handgun.

The New York Post runs a small editorial this morning about Sean Delonas’ ape-stimulus cartoon, which ran in the paper earlier this week and which some have characterized as a racist swipe at Barack Obama. In some quarters the editorial is called an “apology,” but it’s way too pugnacious for that. “It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill. Period,” says the punchy notice. “To those who were offended by the image, we apologize. However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past — and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback. To them, no apology is due.” So if you ever were mad at the Post, you can go fuck yourself.

The response has the intended effect: “Post writes apology so canned, even a trained monkey could have done it,” says a Farker. “Sean Delonas is a hateful, intolerant, homophobic, racist, jackbooted conservative who has been penning deliberately inflammatory cartoons for years,” says Flaming Pablum.

Meanwhile recording artist John Legend has issued a lengthy statement against the cartoon which includes this interesting passage: “Freedom of speech still comes with responsibilities and consequences. You are responsible for printing this cartoon, and I hope you experience some real consequences for it.” Settle down — he means a boycott, a la Reverend Al. Air America obligingly lists the paper’s national sponsors.

Everyone get enough press out of this? Good, because it’s time to laugh at Huffington Post, which got punked by a fake video of a Fox News anchor doing something similar (“John Gibson Did Not Compare Eric Holder To Monkey With Bright Blue Scrotum [UPDATED]“). We’re still waiting to see what people make of the Politico article which refers to the Obama cabinet’s “Black Hole.”

JAMAICA HAS become an environment in which life is cheap. There appears to be a lack of compassion and a fascination for the macabre. As a nation, we have become desensitised to death and suffering.

On any murder scene, men, women and children can be seen viewing the body with little or no emotion, even as the victim’s family members wail.

Let’s consider the mentally ill young man who, in his distress, climbed on to a top-floor window-ledge of the Kingston Public Hospital and threatened to jump.

The response of many of our fellow Jamaicans on the ground was beamed around the world. Many stopped what they were doing to get a better view; laughter and mockery could be heard; mobile phones sprung into action; the crowd bayed for blood as communal chants of “Jump!” “Jump!” “Jump!” rang out.

He jumped and was impaled. Some persons turned away in disgust, but others, their need for destruction now satisfied, all but burst into a round of applause.

What is it in our psyche that drives our rush to view mangled and twisted, even decapitated bodies? How have victims of murder or accidents become just another thread in our rich tapestry of social entertainment?

The answer may lay in our traumatic, dehumanising history in which a lynching would be served up as a social spectacle and a deterrent to other slaves.

Historical context

Jamaica’s history can be compared to that of the borderline individual.

The island nation was born out of a four-hundred-year period of dehumanising brutality and exploitation in which people were regarded and treated as commodities.

The sum total of slavery was the complete ownership of the individual – the slave had no rights over his body, his mind, his sexuality, his offspring; even the union of marriage was forbidden. His life could be taken at his master’s whim.

Death and suffering were a common sight. As a nation, we have been physically, emotionally and sexually abused. This was Jamaica’s childhood.

Our slavers, our colonial masters, our mother country – ironically they were all one and the same – abused us.

What can we make of this unhealthy attachment and what is the impact today?

Is this the reason the country has borderline personality disorder?

AN INVESTOR

in the troubled David Smith-led foreign-exchange trading club, Olint, has failed in his bid to have the Supreme Court bar the National Commercial Bank (NCB) from paying over money which it holds in accounts opened by Olint.

Dr Christopher Walker, who lives and practises in Florida, claimed that he had US$2.4 million invested with Olint and for the past 17 months, he has not received any money from his account.

He said he feared that if the money in the NCB accounts was paid to Olint, it would be dissipated without the trading club settling its debts.

Ownership of Olint money

According to Dr Walker, a substantial amount of the money in the Olint accounts belonged to him.

He was seeking an injunction from the Supreme Court to bar NCB from paying out the money to Olint. He said he wanted the money to remain in the Olint accounts for at least 15 days.

This would give him time to obtain the support of like-minded investors so they could pursue a final order to bar NCB from paying out the money to Olint.

Attorney-at-law David Rowe, who also practises at the Florida Bar, represented Dr Walker.But Michael Hylton, QC, who is representing NCB, opposed the application which was heard in chambers last Friday before Justice Lloyd Hibbert.

Last week, the United Kingdom Privy Council gave NCB the go-ahead to close Olint’s account.

The Court of Appeal had ruled last year that the account should remain open until the civil suit between Olint and NCB had been determined.

Failed to comply

The bank had served notice on Olint that it was going to close its accounts because it had failed to comply with certain requests, which included the presentation of audited financial statements.

Olint went to the Supreme Court, which turned down its application to bar NCB from closing the accounts. Olint appealed and the Court of Appeal ruled in its favour.

But NCB took the issue to the United Kingdom Privy Council and won.

Smith was arrested last Thursday in the Turks and Caicos Islands on fraud charges. He is on US$1 million bail with surety. The arrest stemmed from months of investigations into the operations of Olint.

The Jamaican Court of Appeal is to hear legal arguments tomorrow in an appeal which Olint has brought against a Supreme Court ruling in December 2007.

The court upheld a cease-and-desist order issued by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) in March 2006. The FSC issued the cease-and-desist order on the grounds that Olint had breached the Securities Act and was not licensed to carry out foreign currency trading activities.

PRESIDENT OF the Jamaica Employers‘ Federation, Wayne Chen, says “rapid economic growth” must be the central theme of the current social-contract discussions involving the Government and stakeholder groups.

Going forward “will require a deeper level of mutual understanding and the making and keeping of commitments that lead to greater levels of trust and cooperation,” Chen argues in a Sunday Gleaner article. He adds that the sacrifice required for sustained national development must be “equitably shared”.

In this regard, Chen expects the Government to be efficient, responsive and accountable; and the business sector to aim at being “world-class”, while remaining committed to nation building. “More business leaders need to recognise that efficient management is enlightened management and that happy workers are more efficient and productive,” Chen advises.

Chen’s comments coincide with the recent research conducted by the Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), which found support for the resumption of social-partnership dialogue between the relevant stakeholder groups.

Based at OPM

CaPRI argues that the worsening economic crisis facing the country compels the establishment of a social partnership, which ideally should overlap with the writing of the country’s next budget, to facilitate the emergence of a “fully integrated growth strategy”. CaPRI suggests that for the social-partnership agreement to be effectively implemented, it should be based in the Office of the Prime Minister.