He said it requires drive passion a lot of sacrifice and a high appetite for risk add- ing that for every successful entrepreneur there are probably a hundred failures.

Camps made the comments as he launched the first of a number of events hosted by the business school this week to observe Global Entrepreneurship Week 2016 the first time it was marking the week with a whole week of events according to Stacy Charles liaison officer for the Business Incubator who delivered some remarks at the start of the evening’s programme.

Camps said the school’s Business Incubator was working with several different companies including one which provides information technology (IT) services; another which develops mobile apps and several which are involved in agriculture including one in aquaphonics another working with cocoa and one in e-commerce showcasing local and Caribbean products to the world market. He said yet another was involved in social entrepreneurship which he described as taking women in situations of conflict and giving them an opportunity to create and sell jewellery. He said the incubator helps these entrepreneurs by helping them avoid the mistakes that new entrepreneurs make by providing mentorship and helping them source financing for their businesses.

By way of inspiration Camps told the entrepreneurs that he had always felt driven to make his own money rather than have it given to him by his parents and that his own journey as an entrepreneur began when he was twelve years old and he began delivering newspapers to make money. He said he and his friends eventually decided to go into business as disc jockeys to make more money and they soon realised that in order to make even more money they needed to play at bigger parties which in turn meant that they needed bigger speaker boxes. He shared some of the challenges of fulfilling that desire admitting that eventually his mother put a stop to that ambition by forcing him to abandon his dream of becoming a DJ in favour of studying for his exams and eventually shipped him overseas to take advantage of further educational opportunities.

He confessed that he sometimes regretted the end of his dream of becoming a DJ considering the strides made by local DJs.

Also delivering some brief remarks was Dr Balraj Kistow a lecturer at the business school and the programme director for the school’s Master of Small and Medium Enterprise Management (MSMEM) programme. He spoke about “Growing Your Business” and outlined the different methods of achieving growth such as organic growth expanding by growing the business’ customer base increasing sales per customer or expanding through inorganic growth which is by focussing externally or by merging with another business or acquiring another business. He led them in asking themselves the question “what is holding you back?” saying the answer might be too many competitors; too much risk; being too focussed on the current customers of the business as opposed to focusing on attracting new customers.

He suggested that the new business might be hampered by inadequate working capital asking whether the young business people had given sufficient thought to where their revenue was coming from and the timing of the income of that revenue.

PC Joseph, 36, who last worked at the San Juan Police Sub-Station was brought in handcuffs to the courthouse and later stood before Senior Magistrate Nanette Forde- John who read a charge that on Friday last, PC Joseph was at Soledad Road and being armed, did rob Weihu Zhu of 406,000 in cash, an Apple Iphone 7 valued $7,000 and a FX Revolution Air Rifle valued $20,000. The charges, she told Joseph, were committed with the use of personal violence.

A second charge, Magistrate Forde-John read to Joseph who is from Rapsey Street in Curepe, alleged that he had in his possession 22 rounds of .380 ammunition.

A third charge, read out in court, was that PC Joseph robbed Jinfu Zhu of an Apple Iphone 6 valued $6,000 and immediately after, did use personal violence against Jinfu. Joseph’s attorney Sade Lee-Duprey asked for bail to be granted saying her client had no previous conviction or pending court matters.

The charges were laid by Sgt Dindial Chulan of the TT Police Service’s Professional Standards Bureau. Court prosecutor Cleyon Sedan told Magistrate Forde-John that as a condition for the granting of bail, Joseph be ordered to surrender his passport and not communicate with the victims, whether directly or via social media networks. Lee- Duprey told the court that Joseph who was an SRP for the past three years, was not the holder of a TT Passport.

Magistrate Forde-John remanded Joseph into custody and asked that police check with the Immigration Department to confirm the matter of whether a passport was ever issued to the accused.

She adjourned the case to today when the issue of bail would likely be determined. The victims, both Chinese nationals, were not present in court for the hearing.

Outside the courthouse, a large crowd of curious onlookers gathered to catch a glimpse of the policeman as he made his way inside to hear his case.

The illicit harvest was wrapped in heavy-duty plastic and found in the downstairs room of a two-storey house. Gloria was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labour while her son was sentenced to 25 years also with hard labour. Also convicted along with mother and son was Morissa Mohammed, Jason’s girlfriend, who will be sentenced on December 15.

Testifying in court were acting Sgt Sheldon Peters and Inspector Vetus Hernandez. The State was represented by prosecutor Nigel Pilgrim and Giselle Ferguson- Heller while attorney Ian Brooks represented the Benns and Mohammed.

He attributed the claims made by Opposition Senator Wade Mark to the local govermment election campaign and said Mark, “is trying to scare people.” Referring to the legal opinion on these issue which he received from the Treasury Solicitor, Imbert explained, “I asked for this opinion for two reasons. One to be careful and secondly, I did not want to advise myself.” He explained that the opinion confirmed that matters contained in the Provisional Collection of Taxes Order, which took effect on October 20 during the Budget debate, “needed to be confirmed in the House of Representatives only within 21 days.”

Imbert said Government confirmed the Order in the House on November 9, well within the 21 day period. He added the Order confirmed the collection of the online purchase taxes and one of the tobacco taxes. Regarding motions to approve customs and excise duties on alcohol and tobacco products, Imbert explained, “The law simply requires that the measure be submitted to Parliament within 21 days. There is no requirement that the motions dealing with the customs duty and the excise duty on alcohol and tobacco be passed by the Senate within 21 days.” He said this was done when, “we submitted them to the Parliament on or before November 9 when it went to the House.”

Imbert was unfazed by Mark’s threat of legal action. “He’s (Mark) been in Parliament for a very long time and he is well aware of the four month provision with respect to confirmation of taxes imposed in the Budget. That has been done so many times, it’s not funny,” Imbert said. Observing that over the last year 80 percent of the matters dealt with in Parliament were financial ones, Imbert said a careful analysis over the last 30 years would show that the Finance Act is always handled within a four month period. “There is no urgency to do it. We could have done it within the time period if we wished to but there is no requirement for it to be done within the 21 days,” he reiterated.

Noting all these matters were dealt with during the Budget exercise over the last month, Imbert said the new Standing Orders make it “virtually impossible” to complete the Budget exercise and then return to Parliament to do a provisional collection of taxes order within 21 days. He explained this was due to the Budget exercise now taking place over three weeks.

The minister hinted it may be necessary to extend the period from 21 to either 28 or 35 days for the confirmation of taxes order.

Imbert also said he sought the Treasury Solicitor’s opinion because of a threat by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to challenge the legitimacy of the online tax in the House on November 9. He observed that although he got the evidence to show this tax is legal, Persad-Bissessar “didn’t even turn up (in the House on November 9).” Imbert said he felt it wise the Treasury Solicitor also examine the customs and excise duties on alcohol and tobacco. He added this was how the Treasury Solicitor reached her opinion on all of these issues. “That was my motivation,” Imbert said.

“When they were in Opposition, they would hold press conferences saying they could solve all the problems in the country including crime. Now they are in power they cannot solve crime,” Persad-Bissessar said, adding that murders have left ordinary citizens in fear for their lives.

Addressing a local government election campaign meeting on Tuesday evening at the Arena Community Hall in Freeport, she said that the amount of persons murdered far exceeded the amount of days gone in this year. She claimed that statistics presented to her, showed that 438 persons were murdered so far in 2016. She said that citizens could express their disapproval of the government’s performance by voting against the PNM in the upcoming local government election.

She also criticized government’s decision to defer debate regarding the collection of taxes, including alcohol and tobacco taxes, and signalled that this could be challenged in the courts. “They are boasting of what they collect and what they did not collect. Now the law makes provision where the (Finance) minister must come to Parliament to get approval from all elected members. This is how democracy works and this is how it has worked for centuries in the UK where we inherited our Westminster System of democracy,” she said.

“Now they summoned all members of the Senate on Tuesday only to postpone the hearing. They now say they don’t have deal with tax bill, and they have four months to do this. But they are collecting taxes (in the mean time). And I am wondering whether these taxes are legal.” Persad-Bissessar noted that the Central Bank was recording its lowest ever ratings which would translate into “more job losses and bigger taxes.” Government, she said, has no plan in sight on how to create jobs and how to grow the economy,” Persad- Bissessar claimed.

She later endorsed the UNC’s local government candidates Anil Balliram (Freeport/ Chickland) and Vishan Mohammed who is contesting for St Mary’s/ Carlsen Field.

Psychological testing will ensure a general mental wellness among recruits, while psychometric testing will ensure a candidate in cognition and aptitude is a best-fit to this demanding job.

Mental health problems are said to be common in this society, perhaps brought on by past situational trauma, biochemical imbalances in the brain, genetics, substance addictions, and the strains of daily life.

Even loud noise from boom boxes or firecrackers can stress out the best of us.

Sadly, this society offers little to combat these daily stresses on the mind, and indeed mental health has hitherto been widely seen as a taboo topic, and this is likely to be even moreso in the macho culture of a Police Service.

To that end, mental assessment should not just be an initial oneand- done screening process to filter out the mentally unfit, but should also offer an ongoing programme of support, guidance and counselling to officers with a highly stressful daily existence. While an Employee Assistance Programme is open to police officers, does potential stigma impede accessibility? New recruits will face the tests proposed by Dillon, public scrutiny with their photos published in the newspapers, and the rigours of the Police Academy, but what next? Even if recruits then enter the Police Service in good nick, they will then face both the harsh realities of their onerous 12-hour daily shift and possible reputed corrupt influences within the ranks.

So, while Dillon’s testing can try to filter out at the onset anyone with a latent predisposition to mental health problems and/or antisocial tendencies, the officers must be given more support in the months and years as their careers develop.

This should be done before things deteriorate to the state of needing the input of the Professional Standards Bureau whose role is to probe corrupt officers.

While we’d like to think of most officers as well-intentioned, sadly we have also seen far too many officers unable or unwilling to maintain the highest standards of integrity demanded by this job.

At present the arrest of five police officers for a $400,000 heist done in full uniform and using official police vehicles shows the futility of hiring more officers if they ultimately turn out to be corrupt.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley is urging local government reform that includes the addition of 100 municipal officers to each of the country’s 14 local government corporations, but he himself has warned that if corrupt officers are recruited these communities will be hit hard. We fully agree.

As an aside, we also welcome his call for more community policing even by way of police officers on bicycles interacting with residents, rather than whizzing past in tinted, air-conditioned SUVs as now obtains.

We also hope for a more qualified and more capable officer to be hired by psychometric testing, in this computer age.

While recruitment has traditionally focused on the need for “brawn” to be able to seize miscreants — as stated in the requirement to be “of good physique and at least 167 centimetres in height” — we hope focus can now shift to “brain”.

The new tools of the TTPS will surely be the use of sophisticated equipment, the ability to spot patterns in crime data, and a deep insight into human behaviour. We offer our suggestions to the TTPS, to try to avert the crisis of confidence in law enforcement that has plagued many nations, as most starkly shown by the recent Black Lives Matter protests in the United States.

Like the world’s press, I am finding it hard not to focus on the rise of the ultra right in the USA. Memories of just what woes can befall us through the insidious growth of populism are hard to put away.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of the dubious Stephen Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior adviser is worrying many since Bannon, through the Breitbart News, allowed for the airing of white nationalist views and radical politics.

Some commentators believe that the President-elect is not himself as extreme as the policies he has been voicing but they have only just stopped short of renaming Bannon, Svengali. Apparently, Bannon coaxed the presidential contender into some of his most controversial opinions. That may be true but it is clear that Trump was already partial to ethno-nationalism.

The decisive role of the US media in the years leading up to the election deserves some examination.

The Democrats wanted Hillary Clinton. The media largely went along with that and therefore ignored Bernie Sanders who was tapping into a constituency that was overlooked by his party. Sanders complains that the media were fixated on the Clinton email scandal once that arose and would not allow him to discuss issues.

Trump, however, did tap into the funk that a large part of the population had slipped into, and he knew how to get his message across.

Watching the pro-Trump Fox channel which never challenged their candidate and watching other US broadcasters that made him a mere joke was like being on two separate planets. Nobody was getting the story right.

Now the liberal US media are being attentive to the fact that they must keep guard as the purges and retribution in the Trump camp have begun. The soul-searching about how Trump stole victory from under their noses and the open fear of what will come next are pervasive.

The US has decided it does not want expanded healthcare, a regulated Wall Street or reproductive rights. It has chosen a different path. For relief, consider this revolution.

An uneducated man in India, Arunachalam Muruganantham, having grown up with sisters who used rags instead of sanitary pads because they could not afford them, decided he would make life for menstruating women more bearable.

When he discovered that there was nothing more to a small box of pads — that cost three days’ worth of groceries — than ten grams of cotton, he became obsessed with the idea of making an affordable sanitary pad for his wife.

After much trial, including simulating menstruation himself, and error (his wife divorcing him) and a lot of unhelpful taboo-shy feedback from his female relatives, he eventually was able to succeed in making a pad that did not leak and felt dry against the skin.

He travelled throughout the country introducing millions of women to his low-tech method of producing their own sanitary pads using machinery he had developed and produced. Now over 2,100 such local factories exist in India, run by women, and their pads cost a fraction of the luxury commercial varieties.

The technology has spread to many developing countries and now corporate manufacturers are seeking partnerships, but Muruganantham is moving in another direction.

Instead of greater efficiency in production he is innovating so that production could happen without electricity and reach even poorer women. He is determined that the percentage of women wearing sanitary pads should go from ten percent to 100, and not only in India.

Forced by circumstance, India’s innovators are mastering lowtech adaptations of imp or t e d technologies.

What will Trump have to say about that?

Williams yesterday addressed the weekly police press briefing at Police Administration Building in Port-of-Spain – his first address to the media since returning from extended three-month vacation.

Referring to a policeman appearing in court, also yesterday, to answer armed robbery charges, Williams said: “Instances like these will be the exception, and we will be doing everything possible to minimise the recurrence of events like the one I described. The TTPS will take a tough approach to any criminal conduct which is alleged against any police officer.” Williams lamented, “The public is vesting trust in the police service and we must do nothing to undermine that trust.

Clear, decisive and timely action will be taken in every case to remove what we can describe as rogue elements from the police service.” He indicated that SRP Sean Joseph appeared in the San Fernando Magistrates Court to answer counts of robbery with violence and possession of ammunition. Williams said the investigation continues with a clear intention of identifying, arresting and charging other persons involved in that robbery.

“As we focus on the issue of misconduct by way of that police officer, I also want to highlight that recently, we have been faced with a number of murders and the police service has identified that most of these murders are being committed in two Divisions…Northern Division and Central,” the top cop said, adding that recent administrative changes were made aimed at arresting homicide and other crimes in these two divisions.

“Those adjustments involved changing Divisional Commanders and providing additional resources to these divisions so we can in fact take full control of the challenges of crime in these two divisions.”

Police said that Shavaughn Sobers, 30, died at hospital hours after his father Leon and another man were shot dead at their Sobers’ house at Harper Circular in D’Abadie.

The hunt continued yesterday for the gunman who rode on a bicycle when he shot the three men who at the time were cleaning the yard.

While relatives were yesterday reluctant to speak at the Forensic Science Centre in St James, Newsday understands that the men were approached by the gunman shortly after 7 pm on Tuesday.

Without warning the man began firing at the men hitting Joel Alexander, Leon Sobers and Shavaughn Sobers multiple times before he got back on his bicycle and pedalled away.

Two other men, Christopher Dottin and Nijsanne Charles, remain warded at hospital both in stable condition.

Newsday was told that Leon was a contractor and father of three.

Shavaughn, who recently got married was a father of two.

A relative of 36-yearold Alexander said he worked with the elder Sobers, transporting construction goods to his home which is under renovation.

Newsday was told that Alexander was a truck driver for a number of years. He was also a father of two.

While a motive has not yet been established, police are working on the theory that this shooting may have had a connection to another shooting in the area which claimed the lives of three persons on November 5.

In that incident, Frank Joseph and his son Kevin Plaza as well as 38-year-old Ricardo Singh were shot multiple times by unknown gunmen on John Lane, in D’Abadie less. No arrests have been made in connection with either incidents.

The victim Kareem Michael lived in Romain Lands. According to reports, at about 10 pm, Michael hired a taxi to drop him and a woman, who he had met recently at a concert, off at a specific location.

However, as the vehicle neared Trinidad Citrus Growers off the Eastern Main Road, the woman jumped out of the car and ran off. Four men pulled up in another vehicle and shot Michael several times. He died at the scene as the gunmen drove off. Relatives yesterday said Michael was a hard-working young man, who encouraged people in his community to strive for excellence. A relative revealed that this was not the first time Michael was attacked by gunmen. The relative claimed that persons became jealous when Michael was involved in a State-funded contract to carry out construction work in the area and they were left out. Up to press time, no arrest was made and investigations are continuing