Category: Business

Three Trinidad & Tobago/Caribbean blogs

Hi there,
MEP runs blogs for three of its popular Caribbean publications — Caribbean Beat, Discover Trinidad & Tobago, and the Caribbean Review of Books:

• Antilles (2004): antilles.blogspot.com
• Caribbean Beat (2006): caribbean-beat.blogspot.com
• Discover TnT (2008): discovertnt.blogspot.com

We’d love to see them listed.
Thanks!

good list – please add me

I’m gonna link to this list from my blog – would like to be added – I’m in Barbados but St. Lucian also, so either place is fine!
TIA

Plotlines: Take a look at GM shares vs. liabilities

General Motors shares jumped on news that the automaker reached a deal with its union members on Wednesday, but the stock is well down from its peak in 2000. The blue line shows GM’s shrinking market cap. The red area represents the automaker’s mushrooming liabilities. The agreement allows GM to shift more than $50 billion of retiree health-care liabilities to an independent union-aligned trust.

–Dan Burns

The media and the McCanns

When Madeleine McCann disappeared in Portugal on the evening of May 3, her parents pursued every possible opportunity to raise public awareness. Kate and Gerry McCann proved to be highly savvy media operators as they pulled out all the stops and achieved unprecedented worldwide publicity for their daughter.

But as the days turned to weeks and months with few outward signs of progress in the police investigation, the initially sympathetic hearing that the McCanns received in the media waned. Rumours began and persisted, countered initially by claims from the McCanns supporters, that the Portuguese didnt like this constant reminder that a little girl had disappeared in their midst.

There was even criticism that the McCanns appeared to revel in all the publicity that theyd generated. And, finally there were leaks, apparently from the police but, actually, very little of it from named sources, that evidence pointed to the parents themselves being somehow complicit in Madeleines disappearance.

Now, with both parents named as official suspects in the case, the newspapers and news bulletins are full of details as to the supposed nature of the supposed evidence against them, lots of it from apparently unnamed sources.

The McCanns, meanwhile, are back in the UK but besieged by a media army outside the front door of their Leicestershire home while they await developments.

Whatever hopes the McCanns might have had for some privacy for their two other children now look rather forlorn, dashed at least in part by the ongoing tide of speculation in the press as to whether UK social services might step in, whatever that means.

However this desperate case turns out, the McCann family will now never shake off the media interest in their lives. Even if Madeleine were to turn up fit and well, a prurient interest in her and her family would doubtless persist into her adulthood. And if she is never seen again, her parents will always have the stain of responsibility on their names, irrespective of whether any of the evidence discovered proves relevant or not.

We all accept that the media has a responsibility to report the goings on in this case. But is there a line that has been crossed? While the media displayed its best traits in publicising Madeleine McCanns disappearance, is it now showing a familiar dark side? Or is all this coverage, as some would say, no more than completely reasonable in the circumstances?

YouTube… Did citizen video raise the level of debate?

Getting campaigning candidates to directly answer questions isn’t an easy task for reporters… or citizen journalists either. The CNN/YouTube-sponsored debate of Democratic contenders on Monday featured videos questions submitted by viewers. (CNN transcript and Reuters video highlights)

The questions sparked a clash beween Hillary Clinton and rival Barack Obama, but do you think the video questions drew more revealing answers than the usual debate format? Comment below.

The New York Time felt “the experiment by CNN and YouTube looked less like a breakthrough in the democratic process than a high-tech town hall.” But blogger Andrew Sullivan liked it, saying the candidates “dodged anyway. But it was more obvious. That’s a step forward. More, please. ”

The CNN/YouTube debate was “fairly good” for Josh Marshall at left-leaning talkingpointsmemo.com blog. “I agree with a lot of viewers who have said that having actual voters posing the questions made it harder for the candidates to duck the questions. Perhaps a third or maybe a quarter, though, were just silly.”

Captain’s Quarters didn’t find the questions riverting either. “Let’s hope that CNN can pick better questions in the next YouTube debate in September, with the Republicans — and that YouTubers give them better material.”

Live score – France v New Zealand

Latest scores from Saturday’s international in Paris.

Another Route 66 museum but this ones free!

If youre driving west along Route 66 and still do not feel satiated by the two museums dedicated to the highway in Oklahoma, you could do worse than stop in at the museum in Lebanon, Missouri.

It is smaller than the other two, so there is less to see. But there is a mock old-fashioned gas station, an old diner and a rather shabby looking fake motel room, plus two Route 66 armchairs that any true aficionado of Americas Main Street might eye with envy.

And what this museum lacks in size it makes up for in generosity. Thats because this museum is free of charge, courtesy of the people of Laclede County, to which Lebanon belongs.

The museum has been housed in the local public library for the last three years and the librarians here said that the local populace had decided that it would be best to share their Route 66 heritage with travelers free of charge.

There is a donation box, should you feel inclined to thank them for this kindness.

Afternoon with Albuquerque’s ‘gang suppression unit’

Sergeant Larry Bitsoih (left) says gangs have been active in Albuquerque since at least the 1930s and are likely to be around for a long time to come.

Gangs have always been around, they are a cultural issue in America, said the head of a new gang suppression unit set up by the city last week as part of a public campaign by Mayor Martin Chávez to combat gang violence.

Although we only just started the new unit, its already beginning to make a difference in what we do, added Bitsoih added. We can never get rid of gangs altogether, but we can make it more difficult for them to operate here. Larry Bitsoih on the gang violence cycle here

There are around 7,000 known gang members in the state of New Mexico – which has a population of under 2 million – and some 200 gangs with the average age of members between 14 and 25. Around 190 of those gangs can be found in Albuquerque, where the metropolitan area population grew from 485,000 in 1980 to 712,000 in 2000.

For some time the police force has tried to avoid naming gangs or specific gang members in the media to deprive them of attention.

Detective Sullivan (pictured upper left) said that gangs also use media coverage as a recruitment tool. He describes it here

Sullivan and Bitsoih scope out graffiti on walls to check for new gang activity, which is constantly changing and passes from generation to generation. They also talk to gang members on a daily basis in an effort to glean information about what is happening on the streets and track gang movements.

Much of what they do is also aimed at persuading children not to join the gangs.

Once theyre in, its so much harder to get out, Sullivan said. We know plenty of older gang members who want to quit gang life, but have no way out.

Good reason for those flag-waving trucks in Bloomfield, NM

OK it’s true: Bloomfield, New Mexico is actually more than 120 miles north of the path that old Route 66 took across this stark, beautiful state. But sometimes it pays to veer off the beaten path.

You reach Bloomfield from Gallup by taking state route 491 north through the heart of the Navajo Nation’s tribal lands. The journey is one that’s not easily forgotten: stunning natural beauty side by side with grinding poverty.

Bloomfield and Farmington are not just off the Navajo reservation — they’re practically on another planet, thanks to oil fields in the surrounding San Juan basin that provide well-paying jobs to many of the locals.

Which brings us to the subject of the flag-waving trucks. Venture into Farmington or Bloomfield and you’ll quickly see them everywhere: trucks of every size with long, white plastic poles poking up into the sky from just behind the driver’s cab — like CB radio antennas of old, only longer — waving small colored flags.

The flags, it turns out, are an informal safety device employed by oil field workers to avoid collisions when they race around in the unpaved, hilly badlands where the wells are located.

“It lets you know when other trucks are coming at you,” says Bill Wilson, 52, who works as a switcher and pumper in the fields, and spend much of his day out in the basin.

“Some guys don’t like them,” Wilson says, “because they can get hung up on things. But they really work — as long as people put them on the driver’s side. Ninety-nine percent of them do. But some people put them on the passenger’s side and that doesn’t make sense. Because when you’re out there in the basin and you see the flag coming at you on the other side of a hill, you assume it’s on the driver’s side. And then if you come around the corner, and it’s on the passenger’s side, you just don’t have the room you thought you did. And that can be a problem.”

The gateway to Greenland’s mysteries

KANGERLUSSUAQ, Greenland - The town that is the gateway to Greenland doesn’t look particularly inviting at first sight. Touching down in a plane filled with scientists, journalists, tourists and locals returning from Copenhagen, we are greeted by a barren, harsh and unforgiving landscape dotted with drab cinder block buildings tiny-windowed to keep out the deep winter freeze.

Luckily, nobody comes here for the town, but for what lies right outside. A short drive up a gravel road reveals a startling landscape of frozen lakes rimmed by hills on which woolly musk oxen graze and finally, 16 miles (26 kilometres) in the distance, the Greenland ice cap, which may hold the answer to how fast and how much the worlds oceans will rise due to climate change.

The Americans turned this former hunting outpost into an air force base in World War II and continued to use it through the Cold War until 1992, when they handed it over to Greenlands home rule government. Greenland, the worlds largest island if you dont count Australia, is an autonomous territory of Denmark. It has about 57,000 inhabitants, most of them Inuit, only about 550 of whom live in Kangerlussuaq.

The Americans are gone, but they left behind their buildings, which give the place its air of cold military efficiency. More importantly, they also left behind the airport. The locals brag that its the best airport in the world as far as the weather is concerned, at least. The wind never blows sideways on the runway and it rarely snows here, so the airport is open year-round, making Kangerlussuaq the ideal entry point to Greenland.

The town’s name means The Long Fjord, because it lies at the beginning of a 100-mile fjord that leads out to the islands west coast. A short hike up the rocky cliffs surrounding Kangerlussuaq offers a spectacular view of the fjord, choked here at its endpoint by sand blown in periodically off the ice cap.

We get more sand storms here than snow storms, says Kim Petersen, a local guide who runs Arctic Caving Adventures and takes thrill-seekers spelunking inside dangerous ice tunnels formed by water inside the ice sheet.

I hike with Petersen through shrubs and up a hill to try to sneak up on some musk oxen. We are lucky to get close enough to see five grazing peacefully, looking prehistoric with their curved horns and flowing wool. They get alarmed when they spot us and trot away. Spring is here now and with temperatures up to 15 degrees Celsius (59 Fahrenheit), it gets harder to find oxen close to the town. Their thick coats get too hot and they move toward the ice cap to seek relief.

And thats exactly where were going, too.

Scientists agree the earths climate is warming and most believe its very likely that much of the increase in temperature is a result of human activity. What still isn’t fully understood is the dynamics of the miles-high ice cap in Greenland, which has been melting faster. Scientists believe that if it melts completely, the world’s oceans would rise by about 7 meters, flooding London and New York City and drowning island nations like the Maldives.

So Reuters photographer Bob Strong and I are heading north to visit a team of scientists led by University of Colorados Dr. Koni Steffen, who has been studying the melting of the ice sheet for years at a research camp halfway between Greenlands western coast and the ice cap’s highest point.

Aerial view of a fjord in Greenland. Photo by Bob Strong, Reuters.