Mark Wil­son

Is Vy­bz a mur­der­er?

Kar­tel's tri­al in Kingston starts back on Jan­u­ary 6. He is ac­cused, with as­so­ciates, of killing 27-year-old dancer Clive "Lizard" Williams, in a quar­rel over two miss­ing guns in Au­gust 2011. Last Ju­ly, he was tried for the mur­der of Bar­ring­ton "Bossy" Bur­ton. That pros­e­cu­tion col­lapsed when a key wit­ness could not be found. This rounds, stand by for a Jan­u­ary ver­dict.

Was Di­no pack­ing coke?

Di­no Bouterse, son of Suri­name's pres­i­dent De­si Bouterse, spent Thanks­giv­ing in a New York prison, await­ing tri­al on big-time drugs and ter­ror­ism charges. Will his 13 chil­dren see Dad­dy home be­fore next Christ­mas? Prob­a­bly not. Will Grand­dad­dy De­si be even slight­ly em­bar­rassed, ei­ther way? I doubt it.

Will the gold price plum­met?

Just be­fore Christ­mas, gold slipped be­low US$1,200 an ounce, its low­est since mid-2010. A year ear­li­er, it was at US$1,675. Bad news for Guyana and Suri­name, whose economies have grown steadi­ly since 2006 on the back of a gold boom.

So far, all seems fine. Guyana's small and mid-scale gold min­ers have an­nounced record out­put. A Cana­di­an com­pa­ny Guyana Gold­fields plans a US$250 mil­lion Au­ro­ra mine, for start-up in ear­ly 2015, with fi­nance from the World Bank's In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nance Cor­po­ra­tion and pro­duc­tion costs around US$527. Gold has been com­fort­ably above this lev­el for six years.

Suri­name looks less sun­ny. The gov­ern­ment has dropped plans for a US$500 mil­lion bond to fund a stake in two big min­ing projects. And back in Guyana, the pro­posed US$400 mil­lion To­toparu mine now looks iffy. It would have just a 16 per cent re­turn on cap­i­tal with gold at US$1,200.Both main­land economies were in deep trou­ble in the 1980s and 1990s. The cur­rent gold price is a set­back, but no dis­as­ter. Free fall would be an­oth­er sto­ry.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers