PM ducks storms on way to surgery

Prime Minister Patrick Manning was last night set to fly out from Piarco Airport to Cuba for heart treatment, just hours before a storm was due to hit the Eastern Caribbean. Manning was due to depart Trinidad aboard BWIA Flight BW438 at 8.40 pm which is due to arrive in Cuba at 12.30 am Havana-time. He would avoid both Hurricane Charley which has exited the Western Caribbean and a new Tropical Storm Earl entering the Eastern Caribbean. The recently-inaugurated Boeing 737 flight goes non-stop, direct to Cuba twice per week. Reports are that Manning will be accompanied by his wife, Minister of Education, Hazel Manning, while the President’s House said Minister of Community Development, Senator Joan Yuille-Williams, will act as Prime Minister. Information was sketchy about the medical details of his trip. Even his official staff seemed to know little, with the trip seemingly being treated as a private matter.

Sunday Newsday could not contact his physician, Dr Rasheed Rahman, whose wife said he was in a meeting. Rahman will not be travelling with Manning to Cuba. Elsewhere Emmanuel Moolchan of the Meteorological Office at Piarco assured that there was at present no storm activity between Trinidad and Cuba to affect Manning’s flight. He noted that Hurricane Charley no longer posed a threat to Cuba. “It’s now over the Carolinas (United States) and is heading North.” Not yet a threat, he added, was a tropical depression east of Tobago heading north-northwest. “It is forecast to become a tropical storm (Earl) in 12 to 24 hours. It should pass close to Barbados by Sunday morning.” Also out in the Atlantic, he said, was Tropical Storm Daniel located 730 kilometres east-southeast of Barbados, moving west-northwest at 39 kilometres per hour and containing winds up to 55 kph.