HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - The 25-year-old son of a Bermuda cabinet minister has been jailed for 18 years in Florida for a string of violent offences. Tyler Abbott, son of the Minister Without Portfolio Leah Scott, received the sentence after a plea bargain. US law enforcement authorities said that Abbott had threatened an 87-year-old woman and stole her purse and led police on a high-speed chase that ended in a car crash last March.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - Parliament has passed legislation allowing the One Bermuda Alliance government to borrow an additional one billion US dollars after it said it needed to act swiftly before it ran out of funds.
The Government Loans Amendment Act 2013 was approved by a majority vote allowing the government to raise the national debt ceiling from US$1.45 billion to US$2.5 billion.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - A new survey has found that children as young as seven have experimented with drugs and alcohol in Bermuda. According to the “Report of the Survey of Student’s Knowledge and Attitudes of Drugs and Health 2012”, one-third of Primary 5, Primary 6 and Middle 1 students had tried drugs, cigarettes or alcohol. Some students admitted trying alcohol at the age of six and marijuana at seven.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - An outbreak of gastroenteritis has struck almost 30 patients and staff at the King Edward VIII Memorial Hospital. This has resulted in the quarantine of one of the wards at the institution. A spokesperson from the Bermuda Hospital Board said access to Gordon Ward is likely to be restricted through Friday. Five staff members
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC –The Bermuda government says it will crack down on tax dodgers who owe it a whopping US$85 million in unpaid taxes. A Finance Ministry spokesman said the sum is the total amount of unpaid tax receivables more than 90 days old at the end of 2012. The bulk of the figure, which does not include social insurance contributions, comes from unpaid payroll tax and represents almost 10 per cent of government’s estimated $871 million revenue for the coming financial year.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - Community Development Minister Wayne Scott says government has ruled out giving the green light to same-sex marriages. Government said earlier this month it proposed to amend the island's Human Rights Act by adding sexual orientation to the list of prohibited categories of discrimination in the areas of the provision of goods, services and accommodation. But, he said, the changes will not go any further and same-sex marriages are not on the government's agenda.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC - The new One Bermuda Alliance (OBA) government plans to introduce human rights regulations that will protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. Attorney General Mark Pettingill says Bermuda, a British Overseas Territory, is at present in violation of European laws that makes it an offence not to provide protection for gays and lesbians within its Human Rights Act. Pettingill told the Royal Gazette newspaper that government was moving quickly to amend the law and that changes would be put before parliament “within the next number of weeks”.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, CMC – Speculation is rife here that opposition parliamentarian Terry Lister will announce his resignation from the Progressive Labour Party (PLP) during Friday's sitting of the House of Assembly. Unconfirmed reports say Lister, a former cabinet minister, will sit as an independent. He has twice put himself up for the PLP leadership but failed on both occasions.
HAMILTON, Bermuda, Feb 10, CMC - Four Irish sailors bound for the Caribbean were rescued from their stricken yacht, which later sank, 70 miles north of Bermuda. According to reports the sailors had planned to stop in Bermuda before heading to Antigua following the incident marine officials reported that the sailors are now heading to Turkey. The men - two in their 70s and two in their 50s , had to deal with battery failure 400 miles off the Delaware coast as well as engine failure on board the Wolfhound, a 48-foot Swan class sloop, a day after departing Westbrook, Connecticut.
MCALLEN, Texas, (Reuters) – U.S. authorities seized $2.2 million from a bank account they said was controlled by a former Mexican official-turned-fugitive who is accused of stealing public funds in a scheme that involved hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent bank loans, according to court papers released yesterday. Federal authorities seized the money from the Bermuda bank account believed to have been controlled by Hector Javier Villarreal Hernandez, a former finance secretary in Mexico’s Coahuila state on the border with Texas.