TT are fifth in the six-team table in the final round of CONCACAF qualifying, popularly known as the “hex.” TT are eager to get some points on the board after losing their opening two qualifiers vs Costa Rica (2-0) and Honduras (3-1).

TT are only ahead of USA (zero points) on the standings.

Costa Rica lead the standings with six points, followed by Mexico (four points), Panama (four points) and Honduras (three points).

Each team will play eight more matches with the top three teams qualifying automatically for the World Cup, while the fourth place team will compete in a playoff match to qualify.

Lawrence, who replaced Tom Saintfiet as head coach in January, won his only match in charge so far – a 2-0 win over Barbados in a friendly earlier this month.

Following the Panama match, TT will face Mexico on Tuesday at the Hasely Crawford Stadium from 7 pm.

TT midfielder Nathan Lewis knows the importance of tonight’s match against Panama.

“We need the three points, we need to go out there and put our best foot forward. We need the three points,” Lewis said.

Striker Jamille Boatswain, who had a dream debut for the national team when he scored both goals against Barbados, is hoping for a solid team performance.

Boatswain said, “First to begin we have to keep the ball, defend, play hard, work together as a team and try to get as much goals as we could.” The striker is counting on the TT public to be the 12th man in the match. “I hope that everyone come out in their numbers and show their face and give us that support that we need. Because as good as the team (can be), crowd support is another part of football.” Defender Aubrey David is not looking too far ahead, preferring to focus on tonight before Mexico.

“My mindset is just very focused, looking ahead to the first game against Panama and aiming to get points from that game. That is the main focus right now, just the first game against Panama and then after that we will deal with Mexico,” he said.

David said TT must utilise the home conditions. “We need to be dominant as the home team, we need to stamp our authority on the pitch. We also need to be disciplined and play together, one love, and I think we just need to be focused and we will get the job done. “The vibes in the camp is very good.

Everybody knows each other, it is a brotherly love, we are all just getting ready for this game and we want to make our country proud.”

TT squad Goalkeepers: Marvin Phillip, Jan Michael Williams, Glenroy Samuel
Defenders: Radanfah Abu Bakr, Aubrey David, Curtis Gonzales, Sheldon Bateau, Daneil Cyrus, Mekeil Williams, Tristan Hodge, Carlos Edwards, Alvin Jones Midfielders: Andre Boucaud, Joevin Jones, Khaleem Hyland, Kevan George, Hughtun Hector, Hashim Arcia, Kevin Molino, Leston Paul, Levi Garcia, Cordell Cato, Nathan Lewis

Strikers: Kenwyne Jones, Willis Plaza, Jamille Boatswain

Panama squad Goalkeepers: Jaime Penedo, Jose Calderon

Defenders: Roman Torres, Felipe Baloy, Harold Cummings, Amir Murillo, Luis Ovalle, Adolfo Machado, Fidel Escobar, Erick Davis

Midfielders: Anibal Godoy, Armando Cooper, Miguel Camargo, Ricardo Avila, Edgar Barcenas, Gabriel Gomez, Amilcar Henriquez, Josiel Nunez, Alberto Quintero

Strikers: Blas Perez, Abdiel Arroyo, Luis Tejada, Tony Taylor

That was how relatives found 23-year-old Chaguanas mother, Sharlene Somai yesterday – two days after a relative reported her missing.

In less than an hour after the discovery, police detained a 35-yearold close male relative who, up to last night, remained in custody.

Relatives said he is originally from Sangre Grande and assisted in the search for Somai.

Police reports state that shortly after 1pm yesterday, officers went to an access road off Petersfield Main Road, Chaguanas and found the body in some bushes in a parcel of land belonging to the now defunct Caroni (1975) Limited.

Somai was clad only in a pink teeshirt and black bra with the bag over her head and a piece of wire around her neck. She lived with her common- law husband, Suraj Toolsie, and other relatives a short distance away along Petersfield Main Road in Chaguanas.

Although relatives say they believe that she may have been abducted for unknown reasons, police investigators are working on the theory that she was killed by someone she knew.

On Wednesday, Toolsie reported to Chaguanas police that the night before, at about 8 pm, she left home to go to a nearby parlour. However, she did not return home and all calls to her cellular phone went unanswered. Somai, the mother of a four-year-old boy, was last seen wearing a brown vest, short pants and brown slippers.

At the scene of the discovery yesterday, Somai’s mother Kamla Rampersad wept uncontrollably and kept repeating that she wanted to see her daughter’s body – a request which was denied by police.

Aunt Wendy Singh explained that Somai normally frequented and spent time at the parlour. So when a male relative told them that she had gone there, no one paid much attention. The relative said he was getting the child ready for bed and subsequently he fell asleep.

Singh added that he told relatives that at about 9 pm that same night, he woke up but Somai was nowhere to be seen. He then enquired from her brother her whereabouts.

“They looked outside and the lights were still on at the parlour so they assumed she was still there.

The relative went back to bed and at about 11.45 pm he again woke and discovered she was not there,” Singh added.

At that time the parlour was already closed and relatives became concerned and began to telephone her. During a frantic search for Somai, relatives discovered that she never made it to the parlour the night she was last seen alive.

“However, she was taken from the compound, the phone fell down in the gallery. They (relatives) found it at about 8 am the next morning and they knew immediately that something was wrong.” About three weeks ago, Somai and a relative began operating a fast food outlet at Bamboo, near the Grand Bazaar interchange. Singh does not believe that the killing is linked to the business.

“It is not as if they have money put away or anything. We were hoping to find here alive. She was in a relationship for nine years. They had a good relationship. They did not have any problems that we knew about. She did not have enemies that we knew about,” Singh added.

She called on neighbours to look out for each other adding that praying and fasting alone will not solve the crime situation.

“Even when we were asking neighbours for help, no one was willing to come forward. No one was willing to say, ‘this is what we saw’. Everybody was hush-hush.

Sharlene was a jolly, lively person.

Everyone around her seemed to have liked her a lot.” Somai’s brother, Christopher Somai, 21, said relatives did not observe any strange activities the night she went missing.

“Sharlene and I had the best bond in the family. It is real sad. I cannot believe this happened. This is shocking, it is weird for something like this to happen to her. She was just so nice, just like me.” Another sibling, Anthony Somai, 24, said he believes that the death was “some sort of jealousy thing”.

Friend of the family, pastor Keith Ramdass of the Redemption Worship Centre at St Thomas Village in Chaguanas called on the authorities to stop the blame game.

Ramdass said, “If you are in power, you have the responsibility to govern and the blame game has to stop. Somebody has to act. Other than prayer, we need all arms to get on board and say enough is enough.

There is too much tears falling, too much bloodshed.” An autopsy is expected to be performed today at the Forensic Sciences Centre at St James.

The woman, 65-year-old Petra Manwaring, was manager of her own firm, Industrial Contracting Company, which undertook repairs of facilities at Petrotrin. Her death came as a shock to neighbours and villagers who had seen her the day before.

“She was a wonderful person who would take time to stop and talk to people on the street,” one neighbour told Newsday yesterday.

Manwaring was last seen alive by her neighbours at about 5 pm on Wednesday.

Her bloody corpse was found in her living room shortly after 10 am yesterday. Villagers rushed to her Southern Main Road, La Romaine home in disbelief on hearing of her death Manwaring’s driver Maurice White was in shock more so because he had gone to her home a couple hours before the body was found to undertake an errand for her. He told Newsday that Manwaring had asked him to pick up a vehicle and take it to the garage for repair.

“I came here at her home at 8.30am and called out to her,” White said. “Her relative told me she will be out in a moment.” White said he waited for an entire hour but Manwaring did not come out of her house so he decided to leave. He said he found this to be very strange but dismissed the thought, thinking that she may have been ill. He also telephoned Manwaring several times but the calls went to voice mail.

Police were yesterday interviewing two of Manwaring’s relatives, one of them who lived with her full time, and the other who White knew was from Chaguanas and visited from time to time.

White said he met Manwaring three years ago and she gave him the job as her chauffeur.

“When work became slow at her company she told me to find another daytime job,” he said, adding that she gave him the work to repair the company’s vehicles when he had the time.

She has been identified as Rochelle St Louise, 22, of Arima.

According to reports, at about 7.10 pm a Cunupia woman was driving west along Soogrim Trace, in Chaguanas when she lost control of her vehicle and smashed into a Toyota Corolla in which St Louise was a passenger.

Four people were injured.

Emergency services were contacted and an ambulance took the injured people to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex.

Doctors tried their best to stabilise St Louise but she died by the end of the night.

The Cunupia woman told police that she got a bad drive which caused her to lose control of her car. Attempts to reach relatives of St Louise proved futile.

The number of road fatalities stand at 16 for the year.

“Sometimes it does’nt come to our notice, until it has already come into the country,” the minister explained. Robinson-Regis said normally the Food and Drug Division of the Health Ministry, “would do testing on food items that come into the country.” However, she indicated this has not been happening because of a problem which was never fixed under the former People’s Partnership (PP) government. Stating that Government is addressing this issue, Robinson-Regis said, “Thankfully, we do get reports that come from other countries and it is from those reports that we acted with regards to the corned beef.

The minister said if retailers are advised about having tainted food items and they fail to adhere, “then the ministry goes in and removes the items from the shelves.” Robinson-Regis also announced that Cabinet agreed that the Solid Waste Management Company Limited’s (SWMCOL) mandate would be refocused for it to become a recycling authority in TT.

She said this would not result in any job losses at the company but rather job creation.

Explaining that this exercise should take about two to three months and could involve some changes in legislation, Robinson- Regis said recycling could offer a host of opportunities for economic advancement at the community level. She added that the issue of the future of landfills in TT is one which remains under active consideration by the Government.

It is the latest in a series of attacks all over Europe over the last few months, and it is another major attack on London.

Not only has the city not forgotten the 2005 attacks, but it also houses many citizens who lived through a different, but similarly brutal, age of terror. The IRA attacks on London saw constant fear in all quarters in the 1930s, the 1970s and post-2000.

In fact, a review of London’s history reveals the city has long been the subject of attacks, not just in relation to people aligned with religious causes. There have been attacks by groups aligned to issues as diverse as the anarchist agenda to Palestine.

We express our sympathies to those who have lost loved ones.

We condemn outright the perverse and maleficent actions of the plotters.

The authorities have identified British national Khalid Masood as the perpetrator of this dastardly act. According to reports, Masood, 52, born in Kent, had a clear history of violence. The Metropolitan police said he had previous convictions for a number of violent offences including grievous bodily harm and assault, but had never been found guilty of terror offences.

Be that as it may, questions must be asked. One relates to how this individual came to this point. If the claim of the terrorists sect is to be believed, what was their mode of operation? How did they recruit this individual? Was this simply a case of a lone actor, whose actions are being opportunistically exploited by the group? Also, how did this individual slip below the radar? How effective and accurate are monitoring measures? Or has the time come for us to now admit that no matter how much resources are put into security, there will always be gaps, always be failings, always be matters which not even law enforcement authorities can predict or prevent? What should the response to an event like Tuesday’s be? The most immediate reaction is likely to be noticeable on a social level. An upsurge in Islamophobia will attend the fact that yet again the perpetrator was a person who claimed to be from that religion. To those inclined to see through the tinted lenses of prejudice, it will matter not that Masood was British-born.

Those riding the tide against immigration and asylum seekers will be emboldened by the mere fact of Masood’s race.

The appropriate response, therefore, is not to turn to hate and racism under the guise of security. It is to clinically reform and to push forward with social engagement. Society must continue to uphold the values we hold dear. Freedom, inclusive of the right to live life without discrimination, must remain our goal. This means furthering our understanding and assimilation of all ways of life, notably Islam, and neutralising the claims made by those who would exploit the failings of capitalistic democracy to justify acts of pure evil.

Where does this leave all of us? If London could be attacked in the way that it has been, what are we to make of the prospects elsewhere? In Trinidad and Tobago, the 1990 attack by a terrorist group remains a raw nerve. Today the nation has the ignominious status of having the highest rate of recruitment to foreign terror cells in this part of the world, according to recent reports.

We are left with a choice. Stay at home in fear, mindful of vulnerability anywhere. Or go out and live life bravely in furtherance of our values. We say we must do the latter

This holiday commemorates the repeal on March 30, 1951, of the 1917 Shouter Prohibition Ordinance that prevented the Spiritual Shouter Baptists from practising their religion. During that time the Shouter Baptists worshipped in secret and risked persecution or jail because the British had deemed the religion inappropriate.

Spiritual Shouter Baptist Liberation Day symbolically represents the freedom we all have to choose how we worship in this country. As a society, we are deeply indebted to the Spiritual Shouter Baptists.

Their strong spirit and perseverance helped lay the foundation for dignified protest that led to the end of British colonialism in this nation.

Their contribution is immeasurable.

Although the Baptists have protested the use of Baptist rhythms in secular music, their unintentional influence on this nation’s music has created defining moments in our musical history. Our musical history is a chronicle of the Baptist struggle for acceptance.

In the 1930s, Growling Tiger submitted a song to the censors entitled What is the Shouter? The censors rejected the song because his lyrics were so negative. Tiger’s scorn merely mimicked public sentiment tainted by colonial prejudice.

Not yet able or willing to embrace our own voice as a people led many people to publicly scorn the Baptists. But the Baptists were making waves.

In 1929, two famous anthropologists landed in Trinidad after finishing field work on the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana. While they waited for a ship to take them back to the US, Melville Herskovits and his wife Frances read a newspaper article about the Shouter Baptists.

They vowed to return to Trinidad to study the Baptists.

Twenty years later, the Herskovits returned to conduct research on what was to become the first anthropological study of a Protestant Negro culture in the English- speaking Caribbean. In 1949, the Herskovits published their ethnography entitled Trinidad Village.

They recorded a CD of Baptist songs called Peter Was a Fisherman.

We have the Baptists to thank for that important anthropological study.

Calypsonians’ ridicule of the Shouter Baptists continued through the 50s. Their recordings, however, unconsciously evoked a national sense of spirituality separate from the image and feeling of conformity that colonialism demanded.

The Baptists’ journey from banned religion to freedom of expression is best captured in Earl Lovelace’s novel The Wine of Astonishment.

With the emergence of the People’s National Movement, Baptists became a symbol of resistance; a symbol of freedom on both a national and spiritual level.

Then came Calypso Rose, the first woman to be crowned Calypso Monarch and Road March winner. Her music featured Baptist rhythms.

SuperBlue (then Blue Boy) rose to fame in 1980 from his soca hit Soca Baptist. The Baptists claimed the song was sacrilegious, and they asked the late Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams to ban the song on the radio. His reply, “Let good sense prevail.” Protest aside, Soca Baptist has remained one of our most defining calypsoes.

In 1986, David Rudder became National Calypso Monarch and Road March King partly because of his Baptist rhythms in Bahia Gyul, a David Rudder/Pelham Goddard composition.

In 1991, this nation rallied around SuperBlue’s Carnival offering, another Baptist-influenced soca, Get Something and Wave.

When SuperBlue offered Trinidad and Tobago hope “that soon we will rise again,” his unwavering conviction came from consulting the bell-ringing Mother Muriel.

Today, Carnival is filled with calypsoes featuring Baptist rhythms.

The Baptists, once scorned, ridiculed and even pe r s e cut ed, have emerged as a symbol of hope. Their music has become the heartbeat of this nation.

Shekar Beephan,. of Heliconia Drive in. Roystonia, Couva, told. Newsday that based on. information received,. the police are following. certain leads and they are. expected to bring some. closure to this investigation. in quick time. He. added that investigators. have been keeping him. abreast on the status of. the case.

Beephan said when. the Waterloo Secondary. School student went. missing on Monday, he. found it quite peculiar. that a student would. claim that he saw Jesse at. the St Mary’s taxi stand at. about 2 pm that day. According. to Beephan, his. son never travelled and. he believes that information. was fed to the police. to throw them off.

He described Jesse as. a good person and said. that on Monday his son. did not have any classes. but he still decided to go. to school to lime with his. friends.

Beephan said that is. something Jesse used to. do so it was not unexpected. that his son would. leave home for school. when he did not have any. classes.

Police sources revealed. that several students of. the Waterloo Secondary. School were interviewed. yesterday by Homicide. officers.

Newsday also understands. that when Jesse. went missing on Monday,. no searches were carried. out for him by the police. and it was only after a. senior officer intervened. and contacted officers. of the Anti Kidnapping. Unit, that statements. were recorded.

Jesse’s decomposing. body, still dressed in his. uniform, was found in a. drain behind his school. located at Raymond Jurawan. Street off the Waterloo. Main Road in Carapichaima.

He had injuries to the. right side of the face and. the autopsy revealed that. he died from blunt force. trauma to the head.

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The dead man has been identified as Matthew Algernon, a father of two.

Newsday understands that at about 7 pm on Wednesday, Algernon was with a group of friends at a house on St George Terrace, Gonzales, Belmont.

They were approached by an unknown gunman who fired several shots.

The group scattered and ran to safety, but Algernon was shot multiple times.

He died while being treated at hospital.

Relatives of the slain man say they are in shock after his death.

They described Algernon as a humble, friendly man who had just started a business selling produce with his common law wife.

“I am so confused,” said one relative.

“I never expected anything like this to happen, in any manner.

His mom died two years ago and that sent shock waves through the family.

Now this has happened.” In an unrelated incident, a man who was shot dead at a bar near the Chaguanas Magistrates Court on Wednesday night, has been identified as Christopher Khan.

Relatives at the Forensic Science Centre yesterday did not wish to speak to members of the media, but Newsday understands that the murder occurred at Railway Road, Chaguanas.

According to reports, Khan was liming at a bar when he was approached by a gunman who shot him several times.

Khan tried to run, but collapsed in front the doorway of the business place.

He made the assertion based on findings from the PAAC’s previous interview of the TTPS, and then sought more details from Ministry of Finance deputy permanent secretary, Savitri Seepersad.

He asked if she knew of any talks between her ministry and Acting Commissioner of Police, Stephen Williams, regarding initiatives to audit the TTPS’s arms and ammunition? Seepersad replied that she did not know of any such talks. Earlier Comptroller of Accounts, Catherine Laban, supported Mark’s suggestion for a new body to be set up to oversee the internal audit of different Government Ministries.

The committee had already learnt of a general shortage of internal audit staff in many ministries and doubts as to whether the staff were adequately qualified and trained, leading Mark to lament “a crisis of verification and a mismatching of skills, expectations and possible outcomes”.

He asked Acting Auditor General Lorelly Pujadas, if a new body was needed to oversee internal audits across the State. She replied that there was a need to define who was responsible for the internal audit function, as this was not stated in legislation.