Are you saying Trump is like our insatiably greedy and bullying Snake? Or perhaps he is more like a mix of Snake and that other gluttonous thug Sebas Bastian?

The necessary independence in the review process could only be achieved by a commission of suitably qualified individuals appointed by the UK government. The appointees should all be UK nationals, with strong legal, accounting and/or business backgrounds, and have no known ties to the Bahamas or any other country in the Caribbean/West Indian region, including Bermuda. There should be at three commissioners, ideally five.

The commissioners should all have access to a team of top notch legal and accounting specialists based in the UK with the same independence requirements.

The over arching constitutional question is whether the UK government has the will and power, acting through the Commonwealth Secretariat and our Governor-General, to force the appointment of such a commission before the Bahamian people are fleeced of most of their nation's most valuable assets by a corrupt cabal of rapacious marauders led by a handful of people like Snake, Tony Ferguson, Sebas Bastian, the Greek, and so on.

Your use of the word **black** might well be appropriate to @quavaduff's comment, but not mine.

By the way, in one of his many famous uncalled for quote, Trump referred to certain failed states around the world by their actual name when he described them as being "s-hole nations." He never actually used the word **black** in doing so. That was the fake news media putting a word in his mouth for their own political agenda.

Oh please, spare me! No one in their right mind thinks a possible positive change in the economic outlook of The Bahamas is in the cards that would make government borrowing from external sources cheaper. You're either delusional, dishonest or just as stupid as any one of the three persons I referred to above.

I guess the life jackets were on the jet ski that drifted away.

Sadly too, many Bahamians either do not know how to swim or are not good swimmers.

Unfortunately, not just limited to the jet ski owners/operators.

Record numbers of US tourists to The Bahamas have been filing serious complaints with the US State Department upon their return to the US with many of them claiming they were afraid to report instances of violence and other crimes committed against them to our local law enforcement authorities or to US embassy officials. Not good!

Someone in the FNM leadership neglected to tell Pintard that the adage "Keep Your Friends Close, But Your Enemies Closer" does not apply to the wickedly nasty and arrogant likes of Tyrant Minnis.

**Dominican Republic to crack down harder on migrants as Haitians flee violence 11:42 AM ET, 04/07/2025 - Associated Press santo domingo, Dominican Republic (AP) — Cont'd from above.**

Abinader also announced that legislators would debate a new bill calling for stricter penalties against those who help migrants cross into the Dominican Republic illegally. “The violence that is destroying Haiti will not cross over to the Dominican Republic,” Abinader said. The president added he would try to have businesses hire only Dominican workers in certain sectors. “For far too long, agriculture and construction have depended on illegal workers,” he said. Abinader spoke a week after an ultranationalist movement organized a protest in a Dominican community where many Haitians live to demand that the government impose measures against illegal migration as it threatened to hold a national protest if its demands were not met.

Abinader’s announcements also come as gangs in Haiti that control at least 85% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, continue to attack once-peaceful communities in a bid to control more territory. More than 4,200 people have been reported killed across Haiti from July to February, and another 1,356 were injured, according to the U.N. Two journalists also have been reported missing in recent days. The home of Jean Christophe Collègue, former correspondent for Voice of America, was set on fire, and he hasn’t been seen since, according to a statement by the Association of Haitian Journalists.

Meanwhile, a video posted on social media shows Radio Ginen reporter Israël Roger Claudy and his brother being kidnapped by gangs. “Every journalist killed or missing, every media company vandalized or set on fire is an attack against democracy,” the Association said. Abinader called on the international community to “do their duty,” noting that Haiti needs help and that the Dominican Republic “cannot and should not be made to disproportionately bear the burden of a crisis that is not theirs.”

I had to laugh at The Tribune's disabling of comments on Neil Hartnell's article in today's newspaper about concerns expressed by Therese Turner-Jones, a former senior Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) executive.

The article was captioned *"Nation must brace for likely global depression"* and had a distinct anti-US, anti-Trump, tone to it. With the help of Hartnell, Turner-Jones's Chicken Little chorus that the Sky is Falling made for interesting reading. Just as interesting was the following AP news story today:

**Dominican Republic to crack down harder on migrants as Haitians flee violence
11:42 AM ET, 04/07/2025 - Associated Press**
santo domingo, Dominican Republic (AP) — Dominican President Luis Abinader has announced more than a dozen measures to crack down on migrants who have entered the Dominican Republic illegally as people in neighboring Haiti flee a surge in gang violence.The measures that Abinader qualified as “painful but necessary” in a speech Sunday include charging patients for hospital services and sanctioning those who rent homes or commercial businesses to migrants who lack proper documentation.“The rights of Dominicans will not be displaced. Our identity will not be diluted. Our generosity will not be exploited. Here, solidarity has limits,” Abinader said.

Abinader also said that starting on April 21, hospital staff will be required to ask patients for their identification, work permit and proof of residence. If a patient is unable to present any of those documents, they will receive medical attention and then be deported immediately. He added that a migration agent will be stationed at every hospital to ensure compliance.The government also will deploy an additional 1,500 soldiers to the border that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, boosting the total number of personnel stationed there to 11,000.

He also announced he would speed up construction of a border wall to add another eight miles (13 kilometers) to the 34 miles (54 kilometers) already built. “I recognize that many are concerned about the threat Haiti poses. Concerned about the irregular migration it causes. Concerned about the burden this places on our hospitals, our schools, the risks to our security, and the strain on our economy,” Abinader said. So far, his administration has deported more than 180,000 suspected undocumented migrants since it announced in October that it would deport 10,000 of them a week. Human rights activists and dozens of those who have been deported have accused the government of abuse, including breaking into homes without a warrant to arrest people.

***Story cont'd as "Reply" immediately below.***