Culture Minister Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly was in attendance.

President of the Trinidad and Tobago Calypsonian Organisation, Lutalo Masimba addressed patrons at the opening.

Here are some highlights of the evening.

Boothman said he has been operating out of his living room or bedroom over the years but this is the one.

The studio is a room inside a room with six-inch loaded blocks, “it is sound proof to the maximum and furnished with stateof- the-art equipment.

I had advice from my friend Howard Lindeman,” said a smiling Boothman.

He has been experimenting with African, Caribbean and jazz music to come up with a sound. His son Stefan is the producer and they are working together on several projects but he is into mentoring the younger artistes who come to the studio.

Boothman said it is very difficult as they come as songwriters/ singers with their ideas and the training is difficult as they have their own codes.

“They sometimes come around and see it is necessary as I show them I have proven myself over and over.” Stefan is currently working with an artist called Chosen and they are producing several songs together, they are also working with Saucy Wow presently.

Boothman said the studio is a sort of one-stop shop where the artiste can be mentored, tutored, recorded and videoed.

Steve Sealy has been helping him with the engineering along with Marlon Roach. Amanda Agarat is the studio manager while Jamalli is the man behind the videos.

Boothman and Poui Tree Studio hope to release several songs this coming week

In the first incident, at 11 pm on Tuesday, an 18-year-old man boarded a PH taxi at the corner of Queen and Henry streets in Portof- Spain and asked the driver to be taken to his home in Belmont.

Apart from the teen, who sat in the front passenger seat and the male driver, two other men were sat in the backseat.

The driver proceeded north along Belmont Circular Road and then turned into Makai Lands off Belmont Valley Road, where the car came to a halt.

The teen later told police that the man seated behind him, reclined the front seat and held on to his hands. The second man and the driver then held down the teen victim and pulled down his pants. As the driver indecently assaulted him, the teen began to scream for help and tried to break free.

The two male passengers spoke in broken English with a heavy foreign accent. A passerby who heard the screams later walked up to the car and knocked on the back door, causing the three men to let go of the teen who unlocked the door, jumped out of the car, put back on his pants and run off.

The teen later made his way to the Belmont Police Station and filed a report.

Police said that there are several reports of a man pretending to be a PH driver who has been preying on young men seeking transport at nights.

The driver, police sources said, rides with two other men. Police have contacted the Counter Trafficking Unit to assist them in this investigation.

In an unrelated incident, at about 4.30 pm on Tuesday, a 36-year-old woman boarded a car at Harris Promenade in San Fernando asking the driver to take her to Princes Town. The victim observed two men seated in the back of the car. Instead of proceeding to Princes Town, the driver drove to Balisier Avenue in Pleasantville.

Police said that when the woman asked the driver why he had diverted from the route, one of the men in the backseat grabbed her. The woman was blindfolded and gagged.

She was taken to an unknown located and raped by one of the men. The woman was then dropped off in Golconda. A report was made to San Fernando police.

In the third incident, a 23-yearold bar attendant boarded a Nissan B14 taxi at Library Corner in San Fernando at 4.35 am on Wednesday and asked to be taken to Sobo Village in La Brea. Police said that on reaching Sobo Village, the driver pointed a knife at the woman and threatened to kill her. He then brought the car to a stop at an abandoned shack close to the main road and pushed the woman into the shack.

The woman was raped by the man who later left her in the shack and drove off. She made her way to the La Brea police station and made a report. Police are calling on men and women to exercise extreme caution – especially at night – when seeking transport.

When possible, police said, try and travel in groups and avoid seeking the service of PH drivers.

No arrest has been made in these three incidents and investigations are continuing.

Kaur who travels the globe mentoring to men and women as a motivational speaker, sports a full beard on her face.

It is a feature she has grown to embrace as an aspect of her womanhood.
The journey to this acceptance has not been easy. And it is this message: embrace yourself…flaws and all; embrace your everything, she brought to a conference yesterday at the Arthur Lok Jack School of Business in Mt Hope.

She said that people must love themselves no matter what society thinks of them. Rather than shaving or waxing, Kaur decided to let her facial hair grow for the past nine years.

She even gave her facial hair a persona because she felt that by calling her beard “that” or “it”, would be a disrespect to a part of her body and her being. “If I change my hair (by shaving or waxing) I would change who I am.This is me! My life is all about embracing different characteristics of my body.

“I am all about embracing my so called flaws, to embrace my scars, to embrace my stretch marks to embrace the fact that I am a little bit chubby. That is what my life is about…to love myself and love others for what they are, flaws and all,” Kaur said at the International Women’s Resource Network’s (IWRN) conference titled, ‘The power within: Love your body, love you’.

Kaur, a British-born Sikh, has Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) symptoms of which include an over abundance of facial hair, reduced fertility, weight gain and acne. According to the National Health Service one in every five women in the United Kingdom lives with PCOS.

Kaur told her audience that after enduring years of bullying, during her adolescent phase, she decided that there were two choices available to her. Be body shamed, depressed, angry and even suicidal.

Or, be body confident, free, happy and strong. “If you understand that God is side by side with you and you have the power of love and strength, you will never feel fear,” she said.

“I am not afraid to talk about what people say are my ‘flaws’ as it is these very flaws that give me my strength. A strength to say who I am and that I am happy and proud of who I am. Anything that anyone says is not going to affect me because I am liberated…I love myself,” she continued.

Kaur explained that once you accept yourself it would be easier to embrace and accept others. She said there is a need to peel away the superficialities of this modern world and connect with one’s inner being. “We need to focus on who we are and how we portray ourself to the rest of the world. We must embrace each other,” she said.

“I can’t understand why people body shame each other, I don’t understand why we discriminate. My skin is brown, your skin is white or black, but when we strip away everything, our clothes, the scars and these flaws, don’t we all have the same beating heart? Don’t we all have red blood? Because our bodies are different, we tend to discriminate, be rude, be racist, can you image how many wars or how much bullying or discrimination can end if we simple love and accept each other,” she asked.

At the opening of the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts of Trinidad and Tobago’s (COSTAATT) new Chaguanas campus on Wednesday, Minister in the Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, said based on Ministry data, schools in coastal regions perform below acceptable standards. The situation, he said, required special attention from the Ministry of Education in order to ensure equitable education.

Speaking with Newsday yesterday, Lindsay Doodhai, President of the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers Association (TTUTA) explained that one of the contributing factors for this underperformance of coastal and rural schools was students missing days of school to help their parents fish and farm.

“What you find is that many families in coastal and rural areas are farmers and fisherfolk,” said Doodhai. “We noticed that on Wednesday and Thursday, some students aren’t in school because their parents are going to market on those days and they want their help. Sometimes they stay away for extended periods of time and only start coming consistently when SE A is coming up. They end up not benefitting from the full extent of their education.”

Full-time school attendance or an alternative source of education as approved by the Education Minister is compulsary for children ages five through 16 according to the Education Act. Section 77 of the Education Act also places the immediate responsibility for school attendance on parents.President of the National Parent Teacher Association, Zena Ramatally, said to Newsday that high levels of poverty and single parent families in coastal and rural communities sometimes result in students having to contribute to the household by working alongside their parents. “The Ministry needs to implement outreach programmes for these communities to impress upon parents the value of a good education for their children,” said Ramatally. “Many well-educated persons in society will tell you that they too came from these communities and they did so because their parents showed them the value of education.”

Speaking with reporters after yesterday’s inauguration of the new THA at the Assembly Legislature in Jerningham Street Scarborough, Charles said he will engage the security services on the island in addressing the Tobago situation.

“I don’t have a crime plan as I speak to you, but of course security is essentially a Central Government issue,” Charles said. “I indicated that we would engage the security services here to ensure that at the end of the day, whatever crime plan that they do have, that it is tailored to suit the peculiarities of the Tobago situation.” He noted however that there are some issues to be dealt with immediately.

“The issues of tourism and agriculture, productivity, our education system, customer service, those are some of the big tickets items that we would immediately take steps to initiate concrete action on.” Charles noted that the task given to him by the Tobago electorate is not easy.

“People are going to come to you with all kinds of demands and one has to try and see how one can reconcile those demands in relations to one’s principle, in relation to what is available, in relation to the constraints that exist.”

In fact, we fully endorse De Silva’s assertion that there should be a forensic audit of all of Carnival’s special interest groups: the Trinbago Unified Calypsonians’ Association (TUCO) and the National Carnival Bandleaders’ Association (NCBA) in addition to Pan Trinbago.

It is also welcome that De Silva is quite willing to subject the statutory NCC which he heads to a similar audit. “What’s good for one is good for all,” De Silva is quoted as saying yesterday. We complement that by pointing to the local dictum: “Those who don’t have cocoa in sun should not be afraid of rain.” By the same token if the latter holds true, then De Silva and the leadership of the special interest groups must do everything possible to remove the pall that has descended over Carnival 2017 with the goings-on at Pan Trinbago that have triggered the audit action as revealed Wednesday by the Minister of Community Development, Culture and Arts, Dr Nyan Gadsby- Dolly.

“The Cabinet has been noting with growing concern, allegations of financial mismanagement by Pan Trinbago,” the minister said.

“These concerns began when there was a public furore regarding non-payment of remittances for 2016 and it has been steadily growing with allegations becoming more and more damning as time goes by.” This is not a pretty picture of an organisation that represents hundreds, or indeed thousands of prime Carnival stakeholders, the steelbandsmen and steelbandswomen, who not only give their all in wanting to attain supremacy, not for individual financial gain – they get just $1,000 from the NCC for playing – but in preserving and continuing to promote something that bursts us all with pride, the steel pan.

So that Panorama is more than a Carnival calendar event, and the tens of millions of dollars that are pumped into its organisation are reflective of the extent to which the Government – on behalf of the people – treasures it. Indeed, $87 million over a three-year period is no little bit of money, but we stand to lose much more if the behaviour of those charged with steering the pan movement allows it to be thrown into an abyss of confusion and bacchanal.

The intended audit must therefore be more than an accounting exercise. It must correct the weaknesses that are inherent to disorganisation and inexperience in setting goals and translating these into action for related results. We are sure the organisation also has strengths which could and should be capitalised on.

For too long the pan movement has been energised only at Carnival time. Looking only to the fete is madness. Too many people have studied and compiled reports about the efficacy of Carnival including the place of the steelband to render this facet of our culture moribund when it comes to ideas to take it to another level.

And so it has to be also with the bodies to whom the other elements of Carnival – mas and calypso – have been consigned. They too have their controversies, but there is hope in that so far these have not been related to ugly questions over money. We have been down this Pan Trinbago road before, up to a few days ago, and we make no apology for returning.

In times of little as the country is now experiencing, we are challenged with being creative with what we have. Therein lie other possibilities of doing more with less if indeed we have been mismanaging and wasting what we have been receiving over the years.

The audit will speak volumes.

Bring it on.

Because there are so many biographies of great Presidents from the founding fathers – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and James Madison to Lincoln, who led the nation through its civil war and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who got the US through economic crises and World War II – Americans tend to forget presidential duds.

History favours charismatic leaders like Ronald Reagan, who injected a bit of Hollywood drama in his presidency (“Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall”), or John F Kennedy who gave great speeches.

Many bad Presidents have had a difficult time finding their way to the bottom of the heap. Richard Nixon had the Watergate break-in of the Democrats’ headquarters, but Nixon established diplomatic relationships with China so that redeemed him somewhat.

Warren G Harding had the Teapot Dome Scandal. Harding transferred federal oil reserves from the navy to the Department of the Interior in 1921, and his Secretary of the Interior, Albert Bacon Fall, granted the Mammoth Oil Company exclusive rights to the Teapot Dome in Wyoming. Fall fell further from grace when US$200,000 in Liberty bonds found their way to his account. Congress stepped in to straighten out the mess. Harding’s reputation was in shambles, but he’s guilty mostly of trusting miscreants.

You could ask, “How did Americans manage to put a peanut farmer in the White House?” But Jimmy Carter’s historic peace treaty between Egypt and Israel trumps his inability to secure the release of US embassy hostages. Carter’s bungled rescue attempt left Special Forces operatives dead in the Iranian desert, but he’s not at the bottom of the pile of Presidents.

Bill Clinton had his sex scandal, but a buoyant economy saves him from the wall of infamy. Poor behaviour won’t land you at the bottom of the heap nor will crudeness.

Trump is crude, but he walks through doors when entering the White House. Andrew Jackson climbed in and out of the windows.

Trump behaved despicably bad towards Hillary Clinton in the election campaign, but no one could throw a monkey wrench in a presidential election like Jackson. When Jackson lost the election of 1825, which had to be decided by Congress, Jackson prevented the sixth President of the US, John Quincy Adams (a much more qualified candidate than Jackson), from achieving anything in his presidency by stirring up Congress against Adams. In my book, the two top candidates for worst President are James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, bookends for the civil war.

Buchanan, who could make no decisions unless they were bad ones, invaded Paraguay and supported the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which allowed slave owners to reclaim runaway slaves.

South Carolina seceded from the union under Buchanan’s watch on December 20, 1860, months before Lincoln took office. Buchanan basically sat back and allowed it to happen.

Arguably, the civil war would have started some time so that leaves Andrew Johnson as the winner of the worst President.

The southern President from Tennessee, who inherited the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination, bungled reconstruction by not forcing the South to comply with procedures that would have forced civil rights issues.

He allowed questionable, racist characters to reclaim their positions in the South. Johnson’s lenient position with the South affects civil rights’ issues to this day.

So far I’m casting my vote for worst President with Johnson.

I’m hoping Trump won’t end up the worst President ever.

The exercise which started at 8 am and ended at 3 pm, was coordinated by Snr Supts Radcliffe Boxhill and Florice Hodge-Griffith and led by ASP Ajith Persad and Sgt Andre Lopez.

Officers from Besson Street CID, Port-of-Spain CID, the Inter- Agency Task Force (IATF), K-9 Unit and the Criminal Gang and Intelligence Unit were involved in the operation.

Shortly after midday, ‘Bak’ and his handler PC Samaroo were in an area near the tanks at Picton Hill searching for illicit items when ‘Bak’ was attacked by a swarm of bees near some galvanize sheets. PC Samaroo dragged his dog to safety and the dog was taken to a vet for treatment.

The incident caused the exercise to be temporarily halted.

About half an hour later, the exercise resumed and police who were digging the ground near the Picton tanks and the nearby Basketball court when they unearthed a quantity of 5.56 ammunition.

At one location, officers dug up an army camouflage kit. Last week another similar exercise was carried out at John John where officers found a quantity of ammunition and three firearms buried in the ground.

Aerial surveillance revealed several freshly dug holes in backyards and vacant lots of land which led officers to believe that illegal weapons and ammunition are being buried for safe-keeping.

Apart from using sniffer dogs, police used scanners to detect metal objects buried in the ground.

Police said that once these scanners indicate a buried metallic object was detected, officers used forks and shovels to dig the earth and this was how the rounds of ammunition were located. Apart from the ammunition and camoflage kit, police said yesterday’s exercise yielded a quantity of marijuana.

Residents of Picton and Africa in Laventille welcomed the presence of the police in their communities and said the time had come for Laventille to be cleaned up so those law-abiding citizens can once again walk the streets without fear. Residents claim that gang members have changed the landscape of the Laventille community and made life unbearable for citizens. No arrest was made during the exercise yesterday.

An autopsy done yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, on the body of 44-year-old Kwesi Mona, revealed he was strangled.

The other man, who is 23, remains warded at the Eric Williams Medical Science Complex (EW MSC) in Mt Hope. It is expected that he will be interviewed by police who are investigating Mona’s murder.

Relatives yesterday said Mona who was a father of one, lived a secret lifestyle but they do not know if his murder had anything to do with his double personality. Both men were discovered just before midnight shortly after screams were heard coming from Mona’s apartment. As he regained consciousness, the man told police that he was drinking alcohol at Mona’s home when Mona began making sexual advances toward him. The man claimed he did not know what happened after.

“We don’t know if his death had anything to do with his alternate lifestyle,” said a relative yesterday at the Forensic Centre. “We are trying to figure out what happened. We don’t know if he was hanging out with someone and an argument ensued. We just don’t know.” Mona was described as an amicable person who moved to Trinidad from Guyana 19 years ago and worked as a security guard.

“We don’t understand why anyone would do this to him. He was such a nice guy,” said the relative.

“He was very helpful. Anything that you needed, he would try to help as long as he had the time. All people mattered to him and I think that is how people should live with one another. It should not matter what kind of life you lead…you did not give life, so you should not take it.” The pathologist who performed the autopsy noted multiple injuries including lacerations to Mona’s head and face but cause of death was caused by strangulation. No arrest has been made.