This is your bucket list of your e-cats that will be at 1.8.27. Barbellian students and their regional counterparts get an additional 3 weeks to prepare for their CXE exams. At the height of a strong lobby by Teachers' Union, the group of concerned parents and the Caribbean Coalition for Exam redress and the Jamaican Education Minister, CXE registrar Dr. Wayne Wesley delivered a new timetable for the test and other measures to benefit students. A delay in the sitting of the regional examinations by 3 weeks. This will provide candidates with additional time to prepare for the examinations. Therefore, examinations will commence on Monday the 23rd of May 2022 and the results projected to be released in late August or early September. The details will be determined and communicated accordingly. Secondly, extension of the submission of school-based assessment from June 30, 2022 by a further two weeks for the submission of Board CAC and CSER SBAs. And thirdly, that the release of broad topics be communicated to the candidates. CXE will share with the Ministry of Education the comment for a communication with candidates. The broad topics to be assessed on paper two. President of the Barbidus Secondary Teachers' Union, Mary Ann Redman is elated at CXE's change of heart. During the meeting, moral-minded, fairness, reasonableness have been the buzzwords of Chairman, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, as he chaired the meeting this morning. They underscored his impassioned submission, which truly properly persuaded the majority at the meeting to vote in favour of a three-week post-apointment of exams, the release of broad topics, and a further rescheduling of the submission dates for the SBAs. Excellent contributions also came from our Minister of Education, the Honourable K. McConey, and also to the Jamaican Minister, the Honourable Favour Williams. The Barbidus Economy Post said double-digit growth for January to March and is set to continue this trend for the remainder of the year, foreign threatening challenges on the global front. Central bank governor, Clevverson Haines delivered the upbeat news and his quarterly FNR review this morning. The 11.8% growth was largely spurred by a rebunked enterism arrivals, and the optimistic governor Haines is wary that global travel could be negatively affected by the war in Ukraine, the prevailing Covid-19 pandemic, and other issues. We are a small open economy. We are very dependent on our primary trade as tourism, and therefore the uncertainty about what is happening in particular in relation to the war is something that concerns us because it could work either way. It could be that persons decide they are not going other places and they are going to look for warm destinations such as the new Caribbean, and we could benefit in that context, but there is also the risk that persons decide to stay closer to home because of the uncertainty and therefore not travel. That is something that we can totally predict. We can look at the forward bookings which I understand are relatively encouraging, but as you would appreciate, persons can also cancel if they see a change in the overall global outlook. That really is our primary concern right now. What is happening internationally? Hold that impact on what we do here, and therefore, where we are still optimistic that we will be able to achieve or double digit increase for 2022, we are also mindful that there are significant downside risks associated with that forecast. The Barbados Workers Union signals that the pay high is not at the top of this agenda this time, instead General Secretary 20 Moore made clear that while the issue is not completely off the table, she is focused on matters to improve the overall condition of workers. The Barbados Workers Union signals the government that whereas we may not focus so heavily on an increase what we need to focus on, and it is to say that the idea of an increase is off the cards, but what we recognize is that there are more immediate and longer term conditions that will have implications for people not only during their working life, but well into the post-work-in-life in retirement that we need to have regular raise, and that's where our focus has been. More outlines some of the issues the union has tackled so far. Terms and conditions of service that would regular raise a number of the anomalies in the public sector, which relate to positions, people who have still been working in jobs, functioning for a number of years, whose jobs are not established and who would need to have those establish so that they can be confirmed at higher levels. We have situations still relating to changes that COVID brought about, working arrangements and so on, so our focus is definitely that. The Barbados Workers Union has been working very, very hard with statutory boards in particular, trying to ensure that where workers for instance, and the government have made put on contract, we have the government observe all of the relevant legislation relating to what is a contract for service versus a contract of service, and so at the transport board for instance, we have been able to get a number of workers converted into the rightful status so that they can be remunerated and treated accordingly. These regional and international news after this short break. To reach the news, Gannis, President Dr. Irfan Ali met with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson today and the British leader expressed interest in securing much needed all supplies from Georgetown in later Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Prime Minister Boris also alluded to the fact that we must move towards government-to-government dialogue, G2G dialogue, in which we will identify the high priority areas, identify areas in which we can have for the collaboration and identify areas in which the government can work together with each other in transformational projects. For example, one such thing that we discussed, given what is taking place in Ukraine, how the UK energy security and he was very much interested in Ghana and what role we can play in this regard. You know, we are right now discussing whether we go with a national company or whether we go out on auction of all the blocks. So all of these were part of the discussion and the technical team and our task with defining the areas for the government talks and government collaboration. On the international front, the UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss says Russian forces must be pushed out of the wall of Ukraine. In a keynote speech in London today, Mr Truss said victory for Ukraine was known as strategic imperative for the West. The fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance. But let's be clear, if Putin succeeds, there will be untold further misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe. We would never feel safe again. So we must be prepared for the long haul. We have got to double down on our support for Ukraine. We must follow through on the unity that we have shown in the crisis. That's news, but for the very latest, visit our website at www.borbidestoday.be. 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