News Briefs

Six years for fatally set daughter afire

 

NASSAU (CMC):

A High Court judge says he is satisfied that a woman who killed her two-year-old daughter by dousing her with gasolene and setting her alight in 2017 needs mental treatment.

Philippa Marshall was sentenced to six years at Sandilands Rehabilitation Centre.

“The fact of the matter is that a child is lost and the family has been ruptured. I sought to do justice, according to my understanding of the law. If I’m incorrect, then the Court of Appeal is available for review and appeal,” Justice Bernard Turner said

The judge he was also satisfied that Marshall’s mental disorder warrants her being detained in a “hospital for treatment” for murdering her daughter, Philicia Marshall, whom she had locked in a bedroom on December 28, 2017.

The child died on February 14, 2018, from complications from the burn wounds.

 

MBJ boss leaving

 

Chief executive officer of MBJ Airports Limited, Dr Rafael Echevarne, will be leaving the airport operator effective January 31, 2020.

He will take over the role of director general of Airport Council International Latin America and the Caribbean in February.

Echevarne has been CEO for the past four and a half years and was credited as being instrumental in the transformation of the Sangster International Airport. MBJ has also praised him for enhancing airport operational safety and efficiency.

 

Barbados 'back' with S&P rating upgrade

 

BRIDGETOWN (CMC):

The recent rating upgrade by the United States-based Standard and Poor’s (S&P) indicates that Barbados “is back” after years of economic downturn, a senior economic government adviser has said.

S&P raised Barbados long and short-term foreign currency ratings to ‘B-/B’ from ‘SD/SD’ and assigned its B- to foreign currency debt delivered in the exchange. The agency also affirmed rating of its ‘B-/B’ long- and short-term local currency sovereign credit and B-issue-level on the island’s long-term local currency debt.

Dr Kevin Greenidge stressed that the upgrade was quite an achievement for the country, as the Barbados Economic Recovery and Transformation Programme was just a year old.

 

Time for healing, Johnson urges

 

LONDON (AP):

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged Friday to heal Britain's divisions over Brexit after his gamble on early elections rewarded him with a commanding majority in Parliament and a new mandate to take his country out of the European Union at the end of January.

Johnson's promise to “get Brexit done'' and widespread unease with the leadership style and socialist policies of opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn combined to give the ruling Conservative Party 365 seats in the House of Commons, its best performance since party icon Margaret Thatcher's last victory in 1987. Corbyn's Labour Party slumped to 203 seats, 59 fewer than it won two years ago, vote totals showed Friday.

Johnson also offered an olive branch to Britons who want to remain in the EU, saying he will respect their “warm feelings” and build a “new partnership” with the bloc as “friends and sovereign equals”.