News in brief

Portlander kills wife

The Portland police are investigating two murders which occurred 12 hours apart. The victims are 38-year-old Janice Linton and German national, 48-year-old Ute Sobtaier.

Linton, a resident of Baker Hill, Hope Bay in Portland, was allegedly stabbed to death by her common-law husband in the parish yesterday.

Meanwhile, Sobtaier's body was discovered outside her house at Park Mountain, None Such, lying in a pool of blood. She too had multiple stab wounds to the body.

The Portland police have since taken into custody, two persons including a female, who they believe might have committed the act and Linton's boyfriend.

Poor president

Jose Mujica lives in a one-bedroom farmhouse in the middle of a field, drives a bashed-up Volkswagen Beetle and only flies economy class. None of which would be so remarkable, says Jonathan Watts in The Guardian, if he weren't the president of Uruguay.

The 78-year-old has become known as "the world's poorest president" because of his modest lifestyle: he donates 90 per cent of his salary to charity, and has turned the presidential palace into a shelter for the homeless. But he dismisses the idea that he is especially virtuous.

"I'm not the poorest president. The poorest is the one who needs a lot to live," said Mujica.

NCB launches bank of future

Men, imagine turning up at your bank and being able to access more than financial services. Well, the National Commercial Bank will be rolling out a week of activities starting January 27, which is aimed at providing its customers with information on male health issue such as prostate cancer.

"We at NCB want to do our part to help reduce death from prostate cancer in Jamaica and offer resources which can help our Jamaican men - and by extension, their families - improve their health and quality of life," said Antonio Spence, Regional Manager of National Commercial Bank Insurance Company.

Urologist professor Arthur Burnett from John Hopkins in the United States will be among several professionals who are set to visit select NCB branches in an effort to have customers better understand the importance of planning for those unforeseen health issues.

OCG wants help to monitor contracts

The Office of the Contractor General (OCG) has embarked on an initiative to get the public more involved in the monitoring of government construction projects.

The work quality assessment process, which was launched in December, is geared at encouraging citizens to pay closer attention to infrastructural work being done by the Government or those under government contracts.

The OCG has said the process will "allow persons to report on completed government works projects that we deemed poorly executed and substandard in quality".

These projects could include anything from road works, bridges, walls, buildings or anything else related to construction.