(CNS): After a number of problems surrounding efforts to find a buyer for the Water Authority's sewerage system another request for proposals has been advertised. The government company is once again inviting eligible companies to submit a tender to assume ownership of the public wastewater infrastructure on Grand Cayman, and to operate and maintain the sewerage system and to provide wastewater services under an exclusive 25-year licence. Grand Cayman’s waste is estimated to be worth about $20million s sum government had included in this year’s budget but with an August deadline on the RFP that cash will now miss the 2011/12 financial year leaving a hole in the public coffers.

(CNS Business): Almost 90 percent of a €436 million bond payment made by the Greek government to investors who rejected the country's debt revamping deal in March went to Dart Management, according to The New York Times, which described it as “a secretive investment fund based in the Cayman Islands”, and cited “people with direct knowledge of the transaction”. The Times called Dart “one of the best known of the so-called vulture funds, which have a track record of buying the distressed bonds of nearly bankrupt countries — and if they do not get paid, suing the governments for the money”. Read more on CNS business

(CNS Business): Some twelve years after finishing his Professional Practice Course and a winding road through the police, the civil service and politics, former Cabinet minister Charles Clifford was finally called to the Bar on Friday 4 May. Having completed his articles in judicial administration, the former tourism minister said during his admission speech that he had no regrets about his unusual and circuitous route to the Bar. “I do not regret the deviations that I have taken along this journey to becoming an attorney-at-law. I truly believe that those deviations were for the greater good,” he said before announcing his intention to open his own practice. Read more on CNS Business

(CNS): With the irony unlikely to be lost on them, twelve new recruits to the customs department were advised of the importance of common sense, being thorough with the rules and a good grasp of the reason the rules are applicable as they graduated from their training course last week. The new batch of junior customs officers finished four weeks intensive training, in which they covered the legislation, communications, defusing situations, drugs identification, firearm handling, passengers and baggage search, ethics and integrity, and customer service.

(CNS Business): Offshore financial centres such as the Cayman Islands are likely to be front and centre stage in tax debates during the US presidential election, as highlighted by political strategist and columnist Donna Brazile, who spoke at the STEP Caribbean Conference launch on Sunday. In light of the anticipated increased focus on OFCs in the coming months, former Cayman Islands Monetary Authority chairman Tim Ridley detailed the ways in which OFCs could survive and prosper through this heightened scrutiny. Private client professionals should note that wealth was being generated by new sources other than within the traditional countries in the west and that the west had developed an aggressive stance against offshore jurisdictions. Read more on CNS Business

(CNS): Caymanian television news journalist Kenneth Bryan has resigned from his job with Cayman 27 because he is considering running for election next year and believes it would be unethical for him to remain on the news stations team. Bryan, who is 31, said that he has not yet made up his mind about entering the political fray but he admitted he is giving it serious consideration. Refusing to be drawn on which of the parties he hopes will invite him to run on their ticket or if he favours an independent approach, Bryan said he had plenty of time to consider his options.

(CNS): An attempt by the crown to prosecute a local mechanic for perverting the course of justice in a fatal hit and run case was thrown out by a Grand Court judge Monday after the crown presented a particularly weak case. Justice Alex Henderson told the prosecuting counsel his case “was hopeless” after he heard the crown’s evidence against the accused man, whom he discharged less than three hours after the case opened.  The public prosecutors had contended that Lancelot Ming had tried to conceal a fender when he learned it was from the car involved in the killing because he had placed it on the top of a container at his garage.

(CNS): Currently General Manager of National Concrete, 36-year-old Garth Arch received the Young Cayman Leadership Award 2012 on Saturday. The only man nominated this year, Arch beat Dara Flowers Burke, Casandra Morris, Orchid Morrison and Samantha Widmer. Taking the title from the 2011 winner, Natalie Urquhart, he joins a growing list of Caymanians who have spent a year as a local role model inspiring young people. As the chair of the Children and Youth Services (CAYS) board,  Arch is already involved with troubled youth, and as the first a Honorary Consul of Spain in Cayman, he developed a new scholarship for young Caymanians to study in that country.

(CNS Business): The Cayman Islands Law Society is committed to ensuring that as many Caymanian students as possible are given the opportunity to qualify as attorneys-at-law, according to its president, Charles Jennings. At a time when, due to the global recession, it is getting harder for law graduates in England to obtain training contracts with law firms, Cayman firms actually maintained, and in some cases even increased, the number of positions on offer, he noted. Responding to the attorney general’s recent speech in the Legislative Assembly calling for members of the islands’ legal fraternity to face their moral obligation to train the next generation of lawyers, Jennings pointed out that obtaining Articles is not a right for law graduates but is earned on merit and is subject to supply and demand. Read more on CNS Business

CNS): As pressure mounts around the premier to step aside while he remains the subject of three police investigations, a memo he sent to the collector of customs requesting the release of a shipment of dynamite has raised questions over whether or not it is a request or a direction. Although McKeeva Bush has claimed that the letter was nothing more than an effort to see if he could assist a friend, it forms part of one of the three police investigations into Bush. The opposition says that, coming from the premier, such a request could be interpreted as abuse of office as it reads more like a demand than a request.

(CNS): As distressing as it is to see women put up with being abused by their husbands and partners, it is the role of those who care for them when they run from their abusers to help them get on with their lives in a non-judgmental way. Battered women must make their own decision to leave their abuser and this means, on average, running away from their husband or partner seven times before they finally see the light, according to Cayman Islands Crisis Centre Director Ania Milanowska-Sedgley. She said that with domestic violence one thing was sure – it always got worse, not better, until the victim left for good.