Replacing the spirited guitars of the Gypsy Kings in Moorea, the Steel Ensemble offered a flamenco dance of pan and brass at the May 6 event. The brass notes were manly and striding, but were soon caressed by soft and swaying pan tones, groovy and feminine .

Pan, plus brass, joined in the Indian Classical Ensemble’s lively and unique rendition of the 1980 Bollywood disco-styled hit Aap Jaisa Koi, among others. Even in Takeda’s Lullaby, a 1969 Japanese song of a young girl watching the mountains and yearning for her faraway family, pan held its own, as confident and adaptable .

When the Steel Ensemble took centre stage, pan comfortably drifted back in time 300 years ago to so elegantly play Handell’s Water Music, Hornpipe, of 1717 .

Opera star Andrea Bocelli’s Con Te Partido was beautifully handled by pan en masse, with solo vocalist Sadie Baxter, conducted by Jessel Murray .

The Steel Ensemble also offered the carefree saunter of Morning Dance by Jay Beckenstein, Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud, Ben E King’s Stand By Me, and two local pan compositions namely Mark Loquan’s Pan Kingdom and Pan Groove composed by UWI student Raine Rivas .

Pan’s parent, the African drum, also took centre-stage .

The Drumming Ensemble provided a powerful backing to the impassioned rendition of Ella Andall’s Missing Generation by vocalists Rondez Lewis and Christelle London, with Keisha Codrington on tenor pan and Alexander Evans on guitar. Then the 12 drummers let loose with their own passionate and pounding composition, Drumology. All in all an amazing musical journey around the world showing pan’s versatility in all climes

Last Tuesday, fishermen in the area made the discovery while trying to acsertain the cause of an overpowering stench.

When Newsday visited, the heads of the endangered species were seen individually wrapped in plastic bags in a corner of the lagoon.

In a press release on Friday, the EMA said the incident gives rise to serious concern.

“It reminds us of, despite the remarkable work of civil society organisations such as ‘Save our Sea Turtles’, ‘Turtle Village Trust’, and ‘Nature Seekers’ in conjunction with the networking of community volunteers who tirelessly patrol and protect turtle nesting sites across Trinidad and Tobago, ultimately, individual conscience and personal responsibility are the critical success factors to achieve our goal.” The authority said it is regrettable that this environmental crime took place despite the legal protection afforded to the endangered species with the declaration in 2014 of five species as environmentally sensitive species.

“The EMA recognises the tremendous progress made in the fight to protect these endangered creatures with the partnership of civil society, the state and local communities working hand in hand to bring about positive change. The number of recorded poaching incidents has dramatically decreased in recent years and despite this setback, all parties remain committed to achieving the goal of zero slaughter,” it stated.

In the interim, Senior Superintendent of Police Joanne Archie has indicated that while no official report was made to the police, the matter is a criminal offence and will be further investigated.

The fine for endangering any of the environmentally sensitive species is $100,000 and imprisonment for two years.

The announcement was made by a relative, Melissa J Plummer, on her Facebook page at approximately 10pm that night. She said Plummer died at the Port-of-Spain General Hospital from a seizure.

“We thank you for all your prayers and well wishes at this time,” Melissa said.

Maracas beach goers were very familiar with Peter since he was known to serenade anyone who will listen to him play his acoustic guitar and sing a range of songs.

Peter even did some extempo at times depending on how exuberant he was at that given moment.

Facebook lit up with tributes to Peter. One such posting from Alvin Ramsarran read: “He is a perfect example of not judging a book by its cover, (he) made people laugh with his jokes and music. No amount of money in (the) world could replace the joy he brought to us all. Thanks for blessing us with your earthly presence, now you would be entertaining the angels above. rest in peace.” Another from Sandra Williams stated: “He was the Maracas Bay Calypsonian. He could make up anything on the spot and sing for you. He was nice.” After Arlene’s funeral service last month, Peter serenaded mourners outside the Assumption Church, Maraval, in tribute to his sister, 65, who passed away March 27.

The patriarch Dudley “Buntin” Plummer, 86, went to his maker on August 6, 2011, and mom Barbara 87, in April, 2010.

Denyse’s only remaining sibling now is her younger sister Belinda.

The man of Lendore Village, Chaguanas, was before Justice Hayden St Clair Douglas charged with having sex with a minor under the age of 14 .

The incident allegedly took place at his home on October 20, 2006 when he was 17 and the girl was 13 .

After deliberating for almost four hours on Friday, the jury returned with seven jurors voting in favour of acquittal while two found him guilty .

The alleged victim claimed that she was invited over by the accused who then raped her. She did not report the incident to her family or police until February 2007 after she realised she was pregnant .

The State presented DNA evidence which proved the man was the father of her child .

The man’s lawyers Sean Cazabon and Shane Kingston challenged the alleged victim’s claims that she was attacked by him .

In his defence, he admitted having sex with the girl but said they were in a relationship and he believed she was older since she told him she was 16 .

The case was prosecuted by Trevor Jones.

On Thursday afternoon an electric breaker in a standard one classroom overheated and began smoking .

Reports are that the school disconnected the electrical supply and instructed students to gather at the school’s muster point. MP for Mayaro Rushton Paray said the problem was contained and classes were suspended .

But PTA president Dexter Douglas, on Saturday, accused Paray and school officials of giving false information to the media .

“They did not evacuate the school or send students to the muster point,” Douglas said .

“They moved children to another class and the children remained in school. They did not even contact the Fire Service until the PTA intervened.” Douglas said fire officers then contacted T&TEC as it was primarily an electrical issue and T&TEC recommended that the breaker be changed .

“School went on as normal the next day.” He fears, however, that the overheating would have weakened the copper brackets and made the wires more susceptible to fire, thus requiring more than a change of breaker. Douglas also said the school does not have a functioning fire hose with an independent water supply and its fire extinguisher had not been serviced in years. All of these problems, along with their concerns about the school being guarded by only one security officer, were protested by the PTA all of last week .

The PTA has scheduled an emergency meeting for tomorrow to determine the best approach to having their issues addressed .

ANY CRITICISM by me of the Basdeo Panday administration and its leader, however justified, sends the somewhat mendicant Raymond Ramcharitar, surviving on the merciful charity of a conglomerate, into a fit of violent rage and uncontrolled vituperation with the indulgence of editors at the Guardian. His scurrilous attacks would not, however, deter me from putting on record the truth about the abandonment of sugar workers whose backs carried some to political glory.

After the completion of the 2000 sugar crop under my watch with an immense effort which saw sugar production increase from approximately 80,000 tons to 120,000 tons, I went to prime minister Panday in July of that year to discuss an outline strategy for restructuring Caroni (1975) Ltd, release of resources of land and labour for redeployment and investment in non-sugar agricultural endeavours over a six or seven-year period as elaborated in the previous column.

For any proposal to even get off the ground, there was the absolutely unavoidable imperative to engage sugar workers and their representatives in dialogue with the objective of convincing them that it was in their long-term interest to be flexible and amenable to other employment options.

Mr Panday, having taken no initiative for five years regarding sugar workers’ future, dismissed the idea out of hand and instructed me to leave Caroni (1975) Ltd severely alone. After the general election of December 2000, the Ministry of Agriculture was reconstituted as the Ministry of Food Production and Caroni (1975) Ltd was transferred to the portfolio of the Ministry of Industry and Trade under Mervyn Assam, who was to collaborate with Minister of Finance Gerald Yetming on Caroni (1975) Ltd’s future.

In 2003, then prime minister Patrick Manning was in an undue haste to liquidate Caroni (1975) Ltd and summarily retrench all of its workers. This retrenchment was the largest single exercise of termination in any industry or sector in the history of Trinidad and Tobago.

The main reason advanced by the then PNM government was that the company was incurring substantial losses and was a drain on the Treasury to the tune of approximately $150 million to $200 million annually. However, so too were the majority of the other State enterprises incurring losses of hundreds of millions a year.

In addition, the colossal drain on the economy was realised through the make-work programme of the government, such as URP and CEPEP, the many untargeted subsidies and the large number of ill-conceived and ineffective social programmes.

It is therefore a matter of speculation as to the other major reasons for the precipitate closure of Caroni (1975) Ltd.

There was of course the option of restructuring Caroni (1975) Ltd and investment in the infrastructure and operations (with private sector involvement) for non-sugar agricultural activities and redeployment of workers. Such an exercise could have been financed by the value of the retrenchment packages including cash and land assets in excess of $2.5 billion.

The easy option, however, and multi-pronged objectives were to summarily shut down the industry and let the workers fend for themselves with their retrenchment pittances which were quickly dissipated with hardly any alternative employment possibilities.

The decision to close down Caroni (1975) Ltd was monumentally flawed on many fronts. It deprived agricultural development in the country of resources of land and labour.

Of the approximately 3,000 twoacre plots that were distributed, only a minuscule number is currently under some form of cultivation.

The overwhelming majority lay abandoned for over a decade while a few were sold for non- agricultural purposes.

It was and is a phenomenal waste of agricultural land resources as would be the approximately 4,000 t w o – a c r e plots yet to be distributed.

The economics of this distribution exercise was grossly flawed.

Ramroop raises requirements for preventing the transformation of large scale events into large scale disasters. Mitigation measures must accompany the building or renovation of any stadium and for the planning for any anticipated massive crowd.

Ramroop advocated systems for the safe evacuation of buildings and venues. He said a command centre with a good communication system and protective services staff who enforce protocols and law can save more lives than 100 safety officers with a poor communication system. Hospitals should be able to cater for a surge capacity of an extra 20 percent of their normal capacity, he calculated, and have field response teams able to initially stabilise victims at the incident site, so as to prevent a crush at the hospital.

These requirements should go beyond the limited meaning of Ramroop’s traditional definition of large scale events and should entail preparedness for the rainy and hurricane seasons which we dismiss until reality hits us in the face.

Indeed, now that the rains are upon us and the Atlantic readies to spawn its seasonal turbulence, we must ask whether the standard operating procedures to mitigate any adverse consequences and enable us to better weather any storm have been shared with all respondents.

We have grown quite accustomed to watching disasters – natural and man-made – unfurl with devastating effects on their locale. Most times we view them as a passing story without sparing much thought that it can happen here.

The head of the Seismic Research Centre keeps reminding us that we are due for “the big one” any time, but we are indifferent to her words until the next violent shake, relegating our exchanges only to who felt it and when and where and what they were doing at the time. Earthquakes we cannot predict, but we have a better handle on the type of weather that can occur at particular times of every year.

Our witness in Trinidad and Tobago to the characteristic Caribbean hurricane is mostly that of feeder bands with just enough rain to trigger inundation of homes and plains with flash flooding thankfully most times without irreparable damage.

But despite the ominous signs of what can happen from a larger event, we do not go much beyond quarrelling over spill-off issues like the lack of dredging and the presence of clogged waterways from the waste we carelessly dump everywhere.

All of therefore Ramroop’s letter and its warnings assume added significance because he knows that rain and hurricanes can also be large scale events and we must prepare for them with the same diligence as we do for the traditional.

He was speaking with the media during the Police Service annual sports day on Saturday at the Police Training Academy, St James.

At least 39 people have been killed during a month and a half of protests by citizens and opposition forces against the government of President Nicol?s Maduro. The country has also been plagued by severe shortages of medical supplies and food, the latter of which Trinidad and Tobago provided assistance in 2016 by having locally manufactured goods sent to the country.

On Saturday, Dillon reported that there has not been a “substantial increase” of Venezuelans for this period. He pointed out that throughout history there has always been movement of Venezuelans and Trinidadians across the border. “And I am from Point Fortin and I can tell you I know Venezuelans coming across.” He said, however, that they have seen Venezuelans coming to purchase goods, especially food items, to take back to Venezuela.

Asked about Venezuelans remaining in the country illegally Dillon responded that there are some Venezuelans who enter the country and remain “but not a substantial amount.” He added that they have been able to track them as well and they have the figures, but reiterated that it was not large.

A group of Venezuelans in Trinidad have expressed solidarity with the protesters in Venezuela and held demonstrations at the Venezuelan Embassy and the Queen’s Park Savannah to denounce Maduro as a “dictator”. Last week the Joint Trade Union Movement visited the Venezuelan Embassy to express solidarity with Maduro and his government and blamed the suffering of the people on opposition forces.

The figure was presented during an overview of the company’s performance for the past fiscal year. On May 5, Petrotrin hosted its Exploration and Production (E&P) technical meeting with the Ministry of Energy and Energy Industries at Pointe-a- Pierre.

According to a statement from Petrotrin, this annual presentation “provides the company with the opportunity to formally update the Ministry of Energy and its regulatory bodies on business performance in its core areas of operations.” The company said a similar presentation is scheduled to be hosted for its refining and marketing operations later this month.

At the meeting , Petrotrin said, “Despite challenges experienced in the energy sector, its exploration and production division continued to be a key contributor to the company and the country, accounting for 57 percent of the country’s total national crude oil production.

Production over the year was, however, impacted by falling oil prices and total equity oil and gas production for the year averaged 65,322 barrel of oil equivalent per day.

Crude oil production on land averaged 12,374 barrels per day while Trinmar recorded an average crude production of 20,947 barrels of oil per day.

Petrotrin also gave an account of its exploration and production activities during the 2016 fiscal period and put forward plans for the 2016/2017 year.

Among key activities during the period, Petrotrin drilled and completed 18 wells in its own operations on land.

Of these, nine wells were completed via primary drilling and nine were enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects. Drilling and reactivation activities and the requisite upgrade and installation of facilities and infrastructure also continued in South West Soldado.

In fiscal 2017, Petrotrin stated that it will continue “to push forward with strategic projects focused on fostering innovative strategies to build its business.

Plans for fiscal year 2017 include the continued implementation and development of an asset integrity programme in all E&P operations in conformance with international standards (incl abandonments); drilling and workover projects both onshore and offshore; the implementation of two new steam-flood projects in Forest Reserve and the continued implementation of the South West Soldado Project.

Petrotrin stated that despite its current challenges, it remains committed to building a sustainable business and return value to its stakeholders.

The 20-year-old Champs Fleurs resident gave birth to a girl at 12.01 am at the Mt Hope Women’s Hospital, Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, Mt Hope .

Cradling her sleeping daughter Moana Justine, Peters said she started getting labour pains on Friday morning but it wasn’t until Saturday night that she checked into the hospital .

Asked about the delivery, Peters told reporters it was “terrible because there was a lot of pain. But I’m thankful for the blessing of my child.” Moana, named after the lead female character in the Disney movie of the same name, weighed 6.3 pounds at birth and is the second child for her father, 24-year-old Shaka Cruickshank .

A smiling Cruickshank told reporters, “I’m excited to have a daughter. I have a seven-year-old son.” The family was also visited by Health Minister Terrence Deyalsingh who jokingly asked Peters if he could take her baby girl home because their two children are all grown up but his wife still loves having babies around .

The new mom asked, “Just for the day?” to which the minister joked, “No, forever.” As everyone burst into laughter, Peters told Deyalsingh Moana’s father wouldn’t allow that .

Deyalsingh also asked Peters about her treatment by staff .

“The treatment was very nice .

Everybody has a different experience but my experience was nice. It was lovely and I thank all the staff for that.” On the other end of the East West Corridor, 32-year-old Mellissia Celestine of Barataria gave birth to a boy at the Maternity Ward of the Port-of-Spain General Hospital at 1.20 am .

Weighing just over seven pounds, Andel Ameer Celestine slept in his mother’s arms while she was being interviewed yesterday morning .

This is her third child; Celestine has an older son and daughter; one is 14, the other is 12 .

Deyalsingh also asked the mother if she had experienced poor treatment that is sometimes talked about in reference to the public health sector .

“That is old talk,” Celestine said with a smile .