J’can truck driver sentenced to life in prison

HOUSTON (AP) – A truck driver from Jamaica has been sentenced to life in US prison, avoiding a death sentence for his role in the United States’ deadliest human smuggling attempt in which 19 illegal immigrants died from dehydration and suffocation inside an overheated tractor-trailer.

Tyrone Williams, 36, was convicted last month on 58 counts of conspiracy, harbouring and transporting immigrants.

A jury deliberated Thursday for 5 1/2 days before sentencing Williams, himself an immigrant from Jamaica.

Williams was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for each of the 19 counts of transporting the illegal immigrants who died.

Williams looked down as the verdict was read and gave no visible reaction. His attorney, former US Rep Craig Washington, wept and wiped his eyes with a tissue.

In May 2003, Williams’ tractor-trailer was packed with more than 70 immigrants from Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic. Nineteen of the immigrants died from dehydration, overheating and suffocation during the smuggling attempt from South Texas to Houston. Williams abandoned the trailer at a truck stop near Victoria, Texas.

Guyanese opposition holds protest against sales tax

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) – Hundreds of people have marched through the Guyanese capital’s business district to protest a new sales tax they say hurts the poor.

Chanting “Ax the tax”, an estimated 700 protesters – mostly supporters of the opposition People’s National Congress – converged outside Parliament on Thursday.

“The government is behaving as though it has the right to trample on the working poor of this country,” PNC leader Robert Corbin told the crowd.

Corbin’s party is calling for a 50 per cent reduction of the 16 per cent sales tax, which took effect at the beginning of January and is meant to replace a series of taxes levied on various goods.

But confusion over the tax has led to price increases on many basic products. Tax Commissioner Kurshid Sattaur has said some vendors are incorrectly applying the levy to exempted items such as milk and other food staples, and encouraged consumers to challenge abuse of the new tax scheme.

Plans to introduce casino gambling also have fuelled the opposition demonstrations with more protests planned to oppose legislation that would allow gambling in hotels near a new stadium being readied for the 2007 Cricket World Cup.

Cayman streamlines disaster agency

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands (AP) – The Cayman Islands has streamlined its disaster management agency to ensure that resources and specialised personnel are available for any emergency, the government says.

Jamaican Barbara Carby, director of the island’s National Hurricane Committee, heads the agency which has 10 full-time staff.

Carby, who resigned last year as head of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, advised the British Caribbean territory’s government to adopt the change to coincide with disaster preparedness efforts in other nations.

The reorganised agency, Hazard Management Cayman Islands, will improve the ability of emergency responders to safeguard lives and property from disasters ranging from oil spills to terrorism, the government said in a statement Thursday.

Under the new rules, the relevant expert will take a lead role in managing a specific hazard and in communicating with the public in the three-island chain of 45,000 people.