TT , racing to the lead after solid performances in the Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados legs, maintained their advantage in South Dakota (Guyana) to finish with an unassailable total of 1481.5 points ahead of Barbados (688.5), Guyana (648.5), Jamaica (492), Cayman Islands (60) and USA (15).

This country’s victory was made extra special as it was the 50th anniversary since the first TT driver competed in Guyana.

The local drivers that helped bring home the title this year include Marc Gill, Darryl Ali, Franklyn Boodram, Frankie Boodram, Zachery Boodram, Ronald Wortman, Luke Bhola, Haresh Nanan, David Lions, Che Carrington, Ravi Singh, Bridget Singh and Paul Viera.

Speaking to Newsday yesterday, Wortman commended the rest of the drivers on their success in what was a consistent showing this year. “We really went down there (Guyana) to race real hard.

Once we finish one race, it didn’t have enough points for one country to come up and beat us,” Wortman declared.

He expressed scepticism though about their ability to defend their crown in 2017 due to increasing financial constraints as the sport is currently not funded by the Government.

“Trinidad eh win in a long time.

Yeah, due to the lack of having a track, we have nowhere to prepare and test cars.

Last year we lost the Championship by eight points which is like one person placing fifth in a race.

We set out this year to win the Championships and prove to the Minister of Sport (Darryl Smith) and different people in Government that we have a real good motor sporting fraternity here and motor sport could go a long way for tourism and different things in this country,” Wortman added.

Asked which of the four legs posed the most challenge, Wortman was in no doubt that it was the finale.

“The Guyana leg was the toughest because it has the most amount of competition. It’s the stiffest in terms of quality.

All the good competitors like to go to Guyana because the interest down there is really good. It’s a well attended event,” he explained.

On the issue of lack of major sponsors, he confessed: “No one person sponsored the team. All the individual cars have their individual sponsors.

You pay your own way. Seaboard is a big sponsor of the Caribbean championship, they pay to ship the cars down and keep the Championship going.

Right now we have a good strong team but due to the economy now, a lot of the fellas saying they may not be able to travel the Circuit next year because every time to travel it costs n the vicinity of $20,000 to $50,000 depending on what category your car in, how expensive the tyres are.

A couple of the fellas was talking and saying we won’t be able to campaign if money hard.”

Presentation took an early lead when Tyrell Williams’ left-footed free kick from the right side found the back of the net after a botched attempt to punch the ball away by the Shiva Boys goalie to give Presentation the lead in the ninth minute.

In the 29th minute, though, a wonderfully dinked pass setup Tyrell Baptiste on the right of the penalty area and he blasted the ball past goalie Jabari Gray and into the net to bring Shiva Boys level once more at 1-1 at the halftime interval.

After a tense second half, Nion Lamy thought he found the winner for ‘Pres’ after he dribbled his way through the Shiva Boys defence on the left and from a tight angle unleashed a thunderous left-footed shot which hit the underside of the bar and went in at the 89th minute.

However, there was to be further drama as Shiva Boys captain Tyrell Emmanuel stunned the entire stadium with an audacious lob from the kick-off that nestled into the back of the net to send the Shiva supporters wild in the stands as he was mobbed by teammates.

The ‘Pres’ goalie could hardly be at fault despite being slightly off his line but the precision of the shot was enough to elude the back-pedalling goalie.

With the match needing penalties to decide the South champions, Shiva Boys, who won the Premier Division League title earlier in the season, had a disappointing penalty shootout only converting one of their five attempts.

The bar and the post both stood in Shiva Boys’ way in a horrendous shooting performance while ‘Pres’ goalie Jabari Gray came up with the decisive save to keep out Yohannes Richardson on the fifth kick.

Pres scored two of their four attempts from the spot to secure the title. President Anthony Carmona was present to see his alma mater lift the trophy.

The Barbados Pride closed the day on 214 for seven with left-handed opener Alleyne getting ample support from Kenroy Williams who scored 46. Red Force leg spinner Imran Khan continued where he left off in the last match against the Windward Islands Volcanoes, grabbing 3/49 in 21 overs to finish as the top bowler on the opening day. Among the other wicket takers were Yannick Ottley (1/13), Jon Russ Jagessar (1/55) and Marlon Richards (1/24). TT could have dismissed Barbados yesterday but they failed to hang on to numerous half-chances during the day.

Alleyne and fellow opener Omar Phillips got the Pride off to a solid start, putting on 45 for the first wicket before Phillips was caught by Jeremy Solozano off Khan for 22. Shamarh Brooks, who has been playing club cricket for many years in Trinidad, did not last long as Richards removed him for a duck.

Alleyne found an able partner in West Indies Test batsman Roston Chase as the pair put on 73 for the third wicket in a partnership dominated by Alleyne. After guiding the Pride to 66/2 at lunch, Alleyne and Chase took the score to 127 before the latter was bowled for 21 by Khan attempting a pull shot.

The loss of Chase did not slow down Alleyne as he eased into the eighties with a four through covers off Khan. Barbados were reduced to 141/4 when Kevin Stoute was trapped leg-before for three attempting a sweep shot to give Khan his third wicket of the day.

The two quick wickets stemmed the flow of runs for the Pride before the tea break. Alleyne presented a half chance to the Red Force as his sweep shot ballooned into the air but Solozano running to his left could not get his hands on the ball.

After taking the Pride to 155/4 at tea, Alleyne failed to add to his score in the final session as spin bowler Jagessar got the vital breakthrough as Alleyne was caught by wicketkeeper Steven Katwaroo for 88. Alleyne faced 201 deliveries in his 235-minute stay at the crease with 12 fours.

Kenroy Williams and Justin Greaves rode their luck in a 51-run sixth wicket partnership that took the visitors past 200 as TT failed to capitalise on their half chances.

Firstly, Greaves edged through first and second slip off Roshon Primus, before Primus misjudged a catch fielding at mid on. The partnership started to grow as Williams struck two fours through the leg side off Primus. Shortly after missing a difficult caught and bowled opportunity, Red Force captain Ottley found the breakthrough, getting rid of Williams caught by Katwaroo for 46 off 103 deliveries. Williams’ knock comprised five fours.

Greaves was the next to go as a mix up between himself and Mario Rampersaud led to his demise.

Attempting a single, Greaves was halfway down the wicket before he was sent back by Rampersaud and Solozano with an excellent throw in the covers ran out Greaves for 17. Rampersaud and Kemar Roach took Barbados to the close with Rampersaud on three and Roach not off the mark.

Play resumes today from 10 am.

However, in a quick response, Opposition Member of Parliament for Princes Town Barry Padarath – who was Persad-Bissessar’s personal advisor when she was PM – demanded that Rowley bring any evidence he has to prove the $350,000 roti bill is true.

Speaking at a local government election campaign meeting in Cocoyea, San Fernando on Wednesday evening, Rowley was in a no-nonsense mood as he barked accusations against Persad-Bissessar of choosing to focus on the personal lives of government ministers instead of discussing national issues relevant to the upcoming election. In making the $350,000 roti bill allegation, Rowley failed to go into details – was the money paid for roti skins (plain roti) or roti complete with curried filling.

He said discovery of the massive roti bill was made while he was going through documents at the OPM on Wednesday, a few hours before journeying to San Fernando to address the campaign meeting. “I want you to wave the receipts for the roti,” a fiery Rowley said as he waded into Persad-Bissessar for attacking “ministers’ wives” over contracts and also for questioning his (Rowley) having more ‘outside’ children than ‘inside’ children.

“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in roti for one Divali function at the Prime Minister’s residence! Look at this, if I give every one of you two roti, I can’t spend that kind of money,” the prime minister charged.

SHOW ME THE BILLS Hours later, in a media release issued yesterday, MP Padarath demanded that Rowley make public any receipt/ s for the alleged $350,000 in roti. He said that at no time did the PP spend $350,000 on roti for a Divali function at the Prime Minister’s Residence and Diplomatic Centre in St Ann’s. “Produce the bill for $350,000 in roti or publicly apologize for lying to the nation,” Padarath demanded in his press release.

Describing the roti claims as mischievous, Padarath said Rowley had added several bills with respect to food, non-alcoholic beverages, service charge, delicacies, cutlery and utensils for over 4,000 attendees, to arrive at the grand roti total of $350,000. He questioned whether Rowley’s comments were meant as a distraction from burning issues such as rampant crime and sees it as a means of diverting attention away from the Government’s inept performance over the past 15 months in office.

NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS At the PNM meeting on Wednesday, Rowley also slammed Persad- Bissessar for making allegations against his family. The crowd hung to every word he said, cheering as he fired salvo after salvo on the Opposition and Persad- Bissessar. He made it clear the number of children he has, “inside and outside”, of his marriage was none of Persad- Bissessar’s business.

“One year after leaving office, there is a local government election and she (Persad-Bissessar) can say nothing useful about local development and other issues. You know what her issue is? Is that I have more children ‘outside’ than I have ‘inside’.

You understand? But I want to tell Kamla Persad-Bissessar tonight…that is none of your goddamn business! Because as long as Sharon (Rowley’s wife) is happy with how much I have outside and how much I have inside, Rowley is happy with that!” $$ FOR WATER Teasing the crowd and asking if they wanted to hear more, Rowley spoke of a $47,000 monthly payment to clean a pool at the PM’s residence under the PP and which now costs $15,000 and a water valve which was cemented in order for someone to get a contract to supply water to the premises. He spoke of water problems he encountered since moving into the prime minister’s residence and that he was forced to call in WASA.

“They told me there was no real problem.

The problem is somebody under the last regime, cement a valve close to the prime minister’s residence and that generated an opportunity for a contractor to supply water to the prime minister’s residence. All that WASA had to do was to break the concrete, open the valve and we have had water flowing ever since.” He also spoke of the Ministry of Diversity which he renamed the Ministry of nothing. Rowley said: “We just received in the government the annual report of the ministry of diversity. Ask me what the annual report contained, absolutely nothing because it is a ministry of nothing.”

The Opposition leader continued, “Given the crime situation, given the insecurity, you have a Minister of Government with this hate talk promoting violence from a PNM platform.” She called on Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to distance himself from Hinds’ statements.

She further asked the Commissioner of Police to provide protection for her supporters and placed them all on “high alert.” “Security alert to all UNC supporters…all UNC candidates, be on high alert because you have Minister Hinds telling people to kill you dead. Shocking!” Later in her speech, the former Prime Minister responded to Rowley’s assertion that the Housing Development Corporation contracts which she claimed were given to Energy Minister Franklin Khan’s wife and Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s wife, were actually given by her People’s Partnership government.

“Those two contracts I spoke about were never given out by the Partnership (administration) they were given out by the PNM. For people who spend five years crying all over the country saying that my government only gave contracts to friends and family, they rushing, they hurry now to say my government gave their ministers’ wives contracts.”

Lozado, 46, was also charged with one count of trafficking counterfeit money as well as one count of illegal money transfer of $20,000 through Western Union Money Transfer to someone in Bolivia.

Lozado, who was aided by an interpreter in court, was also charged with being in possession of several large quantities of cash in Trinidad and Tobago, United States, Eastern Caribbean, Bolivian and Paraguay currency which he knew was criminal property, and possession of marijuana.

It is alleged that the criminal acts took place between October 3 to November 10, at various banking locations in Maraval, Diego Martin and Glencoe. His lawyer’s application for bail was denied by the chief magistrate after prosecutors argued he was a flight risk and had no fixed place of abode in Trinidad.

Lozado, who has two children, was staying at Monique’s Guest House in Maraval, and arrived in Trinidad in September.

His passport is being held by the Fraud Squad Office and Lozado is expected to return to court on December 1. The Bolivian national was held on November 10 at a guest house in Maraval and instructions to charge him was given by Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard SC, on Wednesday.

The Transnational Organised Crime Unit assisted by the Fraud Office worked on the case.

PSA president Watson Duke, speaking with reporters at a press conference at the Union’s Tobago office, said when he demits office to take up the reigns at the Tobago House of Assembly (THA) as Chief Secretary when the election is called, the replacement, who he did not name, will be ready.

“I will gladly put down my crown as president of the PSA and take up the crown of the THA because Tobago needs representation. Even now, I am, by necessity, doing both jobs. It is tough for me but it must be done.

The PSA will not be left without proper leadership and Tobago needs leadership, so I would not abandon one for the other.” Questioned further about the identity of the aspiring president, Duke said, “The person is there already and, at the right time, he would be introduced.

He is not ready for introduction as yet. Certainly he is no stranger to the PSA, but he is not identified as that person just yet.” Duke is the candidate for Roxborough / Delaford under the Progressive Democratic Patriots (PDP), the party which he leads, in the upcoming THA elections which is constitutionally due in 2017.

He said the party will contest all 12 seats in the upcoming elections and eventually they will get to the point of all the seats in Trinidad.

He engaged with pupils, parents and teachers from 20 primary and five secondary schools in the area at the School Improvement Project Rally on Wednesday at the Queen’s Park Savannah, a pilot project to be rolled out eventually to other parts of the country. Rowley rightly told the pupils to have high expectations of themselves.

“Once you tell yourself what you want to be, let nobody tell you that you can’t get there because of where you are from,” he advised. “All of you know me as the Prime Minister but I wasn’t always the Prime Minister.

I was just like you, probably even worse off.” Citing the event’s mantra, “I am the change”, he said pupils must positively influence their communities, just as their parents and teachers are working very hard for them.

“Where there is indiscipline it will require resources to deal with it,” he warned. “Every act of indiscipline, whether it is breaking a window or taking up a gun, requires a consumption of resources to respond to it.” It is a laudable project that deserves all support, far and wide, and everyone concerned should be congratulated, and more than that, must work towards implementation all over Trinidad and Tobago. It is not a patronising exercise. It is supposed to boost school infrastructure, safety, parental involvement, and numeracy and literacy, much explained by Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, Dr Lovell Francis, previously to Newsday. “Fixing education is like juggling ten balls at the same time, but it has to be done,” he had remarked.

Francis said research shows a link between strong parental involvement with pupils and academic success. In that vein parents and school staff should maximise the use of channels of communication, such as participation in PTA and school boards, attendance at Parents Day and even by regularly communicating with teachers via the devices that are now commonplace among all young people.

The minister had also spoken of the key role played by a school principal, and we would certainly prescribe that these administrators share their best practice.

Francis explained the project further, saying, “So we are really trying to bolster the leadership at the school level by giving them a framework to manage their school and manage all of the tangibles and intangibles that make up a school.” While public attention is often grabbed by the nation’s high-fliers, Francis has pointed out the plight of some 3,500 pupils scoring below 30 percent in English and math in the recent Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) Exam.

“This is indeed far too large in vital areas of study, and the ministry is to be complimented for doing a ‘tracer’ to guide an intervention, targeting these students for literacy and numeracy, as well as following their progression through school.

“One of the things we’ve noticed at the primary level is that students who do poorly at Standard One are the same students who also do poorly at the SEA Exam in Standard Five.

There’s a direct correlation.” Regarding weak pupils entering secondary school, Francis proposed an intervention at Form One to boost literacy and numeracy and then trace their development in later years, so they don’t just “pass through” school.

“If you can read and count that is a platform for learning and development, but if you can’t read your secondary schooling is really lost on you.” We hope that the project with its goals of more parental involvement, better school administration, and remedial help for weaker pupils will not be impeded by the ministry’s reduced budget.

After all, University of the West Indies St Augustine deputy principal, Prof Rhoda Reddock, at a forum on Wednesday, said that a small expenditure on education today can avert a much bigger bill for law enforcement tomorrow. We concur and ask all concerned to take note.

The study, led by researchers from Yale University’s School of Public Health, says that “adults who reported reading books for more than three and a half hours a week were 23 percent less likely to die over the next 12 years compared to people who didn’t read.” Researchers can’t quite figure out exactly why this is true, but they are searching for the answers. (On an interesting note, the report said that 75 percent of American adults have read at least one book in the past year).

Here’s what else researchers noted: 1. Reading reduces stress, which is responsible for about 60 percent of all illness and diseases. Stress raises the risk of stroke by 50 per cent and heart disease by 40 per cent. The study points out that stress bombards us from all directions every single day of our lives, and reading can be a major stress reducer.

A study in 2009 conducted by the University of Sussex claimed that reading can reduce stress levels by as much as 68 per cent. One of the co-authors, Dr David Lewis, a neuropsychologist, says that just six minutes of reading anything – a book, a newspaper, a magazine – showed a measurable reduction of stress in people.

There are other studies that back up these two studies.

2. Reading can slow cognitive decline: Readers, it seems, have sharper memories because reading is like exercise for your memory. A study conducted at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center with 294 adults who had an average age of 89 years proved this. For up to six years before their deaths, participants went through activities to test their memory.

When the participants’ brains were analysed after their deaths, researchers found “…those who engaged in reading, writing, and other mentally stimulating activities in early and late life were less likely to show physical evidence of dementia…” Again, other studies support this finding.

3. Reading can improve sleep: Studies show that watching electronic devices before going to be bed can make it difficult to fall asleep, but a book before bedtime, the Mayo Clinic says, “can promote better sleep by easing the transition between wakefulness and drowsiness.” So, for all those people who give me the excuse “reading puts me to sleep,” the answer is this: it’s supposed to put you to sleep.

4. Reading can enhance social skills: I know that most people think of readers as nerds, but studies published in the journal Science seem to support my claim that readers are actually more interesting people than non-readers because they have more information to talk about.

You could say people who read have more experience in dealing with people because they “meet” a variety of people in books.

Readers also score higher on tests that measure empathy. Keith Oatley, the author of a study at the University of Toronto, Canada, says “fiction can augment and help us understand our social experience (better).” 5. Reading may boost intelligence: This point needs little if any explanation.

When you read, you become more knowledgeable.

We have known about the importance of reading from many ongoing studies since the 1950s when research has measured the benefits of reading in terms of academic progress.

Now, it is possible for science to me a s u r e how reading actually affects our health.

Reading really is a lifesaver.

On November 2, when Paul, 72, made his second court appearance on the charge, the magistrate set the trial date for yesterday. But when the matter was called, Paul’s attorney James Philbert, a retired Acting Commissioner of Police, informed the court that his client was experiencing chest pains. Philbert produced a letter to Magistrate Chankar who noted that the document was dated November 7.

She stated, based on the document, the Mayor was complaining of chest pains. It further stated Mayor Paul had an appointment for a treadmill test at 9.45 am yesterday.

The magistrate adjourned the case, in Paul’s absence, to next week Wednesday, the new date set for trial. A charge against the mayor, as read out in court, alleges that on October 18, at Grant Trace in Rousillac, Paul drove a motor vehicle after consuming so much alcohol that the proportion of it in his breath exceeded the legal prescribed limit of 35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The mayor was granted $5,000 station bail and on his first court appearance on October 20, he pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Court prosecutor Sgt Ancil Corrie noted that there are three prosecution witnesses to testify at the summary trial.