A last­ing res­o­lu­tion to the back-and-forth state­ments be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cari­com chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew, Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis, may well need to be de­cid­ed by the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

The move by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to seek and ob­tain court-sanc­tioned des­ig­na­tions for Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties marks a sig­nif­i­cant, if qui­et, shift in our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture.

The per­sis­tent scourge of vi­o­lence against women in T&T re­quires sus­tained, co­or­di­nat­ed and mea­sur­able ac­tion from every arm of the State and so­ci­ety.

The cur­rent Mid­dle East war un­der­scores the need for re­gion­al uni­ty. Rapid­ly emerg­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges will im­pact Cari­com states, ex­pos­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and test­ing re­silience. The longer the con­flict en­dures, the greater the con­se­quences.

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) has long prid­ed it­self on a qui­et but ef­fec­tive tra­di­tion: set­tling its most sen­si­tive mat­ters through con­sen­sus. That ap­proach has not al­ways been seam­less, but it has pre­served uni­ty. To­day, how­ev­er, that tra­di­tion is un­der vis­i­ble strain as a dis­pute over the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett threat­ens to test the re­gion­al body’s co­he­sion in un­prece­dent­ed ways. This mat­ter re­quires ur­gent res­o­lu­tion—not on­ly for ad­min­is­tra­tive clar­i­ty, but for the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the re­gion­al project it­self.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment on Wednes­day that a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion will trav­el to Cara­cas sig­nals a cau­tious re­open­ing of a re­la­tion­ship that has drift­ed from co­op­er­a­tion in­to ten­sion.

The en­tire world must sure­ly have felt re­lieved by the de­ci­sion of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to hold off on his threat to bomb Iran in­to a pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry.

The world is once again star­ing down the bar­rel of an en­er­gy cri­sis - this time trig­gered by the war in­volv­ing Iran and the clo­sure of the Strait of Hor­muz, through which rough­ly 20 per cent of glob­al oil sup­ply flows. What be­gan as a geopo­lit­i­cal flash­point has rapid­ly evolved in­to what the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency now de­scribes as the most se­vere en­er­gy shock in mod­ern his­to­ry, sur­pass­ing even the crises of 1973 and 1979.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s young ath­letes have once again lift­ed a na­tion, stirred its pride, and re­mind­ed us of what is pos­si­ble when tal­ent meets de­ter­mi­na­tion. At the Carif­ta Games in St George’s, Grena­da, this coun­try’s ju­nior track and field team de­liv­ered per­for­mances rich in courage, dis­ci­pline and com­pet­i­tive ex­cel­lence, earn­ing not on­ly medals but ad­mi­ra­tion.

With­out East­er and the Res­ur­rec­tion from the dead of Je­sus Christ, Chris­tian­i­ty can be count­ed as a use­ful at­tempt to get the world com­mu­ni­ty be­liev­ing in a form of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty which promis­es a bet­ter life af­ter our earth­ly ex­pe­ri­ence. If that does not be­come re­al, then the doc­trine falls away in its claim to be of eter­nal im­por­tance.

To­day is East­er Sun­day. To Chris­tians, it sym­bol­is­es the tri­umph of hope and res­ur­rec­tion—a new be­gin­ning. Oth­er re­li­gious fes­ti­vals around this time (Passover, Holi, Vesak, Nowruz, Ra­madan) do not share the same the­o­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance as East­er but re­flect sim­i­lar themes of re­new­al, re­birth and hope. The align­ment of these fes­ti­vals is dri­ven by the sea­son, as they all co­in­cide with spring. Spring rep­re­sents re­birth, fer­til­i­ty and new life, mak­ing it a nat­ur­al time for re­li­gions to cel­e­brate re­new­al, whether in na­ture or through spir­i­tu­al re­demp­tion.

Good Fri­day is the most sig­nif­i­cant day of the year on the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar. As a child grow­ing up at the cor­ner of Joyeau and Bushe Streets in Curepe, I still re­mem­ber my cousins car­ry­ing me to the near­by Our La­dy of Fa­ti­ma RC Church for the Sta­tions of the Cross ser­vice.