Last week, we not­ed how mod­ern strate­gic think­ing in busi­ness has been in­flu­enced by mil­i­tary the­o­ry and prac­tice. How­ev­er, whilst there are analo­gies in the tech­niques, the sim­i­lar­i­ty quick­ly ends as war is a very ex­pen­sive and de­struc­tive busi­ness. Few peo­ple would want a long war, as it mag­ni­fies the de­struc­tion and the cost of re­build­ing. There­fore, mil­i­tary plan­ners must be clear about the ob­jec­tives they wish to achieve be­fore they un­der­take a war and bal­ance those ob­jec­tives with the di­rect and in­di­rect costs. No one in their right mind will start a war that they do not ex­pect to win.

Did you know the world’s dead­liest an­i­mal is the mos­qui­to? An­nu­al­ly, mos­qui­toes cause up to one mil­lion deaths glob­al­ly be­cause of the dis­eases they trans­mit. Un­like snakes or sharks, mos­qui­toes do not kill di­rect­ly. In­stead, they spread in­fec­tions that can cause se­ri­ous ill­ness and death in hu­mans.  

To­mor­row, March 15, the Unit­ed King­dom and Ire­land will ob­serve Moth­er’s Day, al­so known as Moth­er­ing Sun­day. It is al­ways held on the fourth Sun­day of Lent (Laetare Sun­day), three weeks be­fore East­er Sun­day.

Glau­co­ma, an eye con­di­tion that af­fects the op­tic nerve, usu­al­ly due to in­creased in­traoc­u­lar pres­sure (IOP), af­fects about 80 mil­lion peo­ple world­wide. In the Unit­ed States alone, more than 3 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have glau­co­ma.

It is said ca­su­al­ly, of­ten with a small shrug, as if poor sleep were sim­ply an­oth­er in­con­ve­nience of mod­ern life. COVID ex­ac­er­bat­ed the sit­u­a­tion.

The emer­gence of the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC3) rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant op­por­tu­ni­ty for T&T, and by ex­ten­sion the wider Caribbean, to strength­en its ca­pac­i­ty to con­front the grow­ing threat of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

When I was a lit­tle girl, my fa­ther of­ten told me that we can­not con­trol what peo­ple say to us, but we can con­trol how we re­spond. I thought about that last week af­ter see­ing a so­cial me­dia post by for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly in re­sponse to a state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The Prime Min­is­ter spoke about stu­dent mis­con­duct, vi­o­lence, bul­ly­ing, in­dis­ci­pline in schools and the need for stronger parental ac­count­abil­i­ty. It is one’s right to dis­agree but dis­agree­ment should not pull us so far from the re­al is­sue that we lose sight of it al­to­geth­er.

A com­mon de­c­la­ra­tion that I hear from busi­ness­es is, “Our com­plaints are down by X per cent.”

As bombs fly in the Mid­dle East, it is im­por­tant for be­liev­ers to re­main ground­ed in faith and hope. As a stu­dent of his­to­ry, I ap­pre­ci­ate the pow­er of his­toric build­ings to re­mind us that our an­ces­tors have lived through chal­leng­ing times like the two world wars and still sur­vived to build the na­tion we have to­day.

On Sun­day (March 8), the world ob­served In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. One of the themes this year was Give to Gain. Of course, as is to be ex­pect­ed, both in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal com­pa­nies pro­duced ad­ver­tise­ments that touched the hearts of their cus­tomers/fol­low­ers.

If a per­son with a men­tal health dis­or­der is will­ing enough to be open, there are al­ways “pre­scrip­tions” from those with whom they share. Some­times, with­in fam­i­lies/house­holds and com­mu­ni­ties, pres­sure mounts to find al­ter­na­tive op­tions, es­pe­cial­ly when the prog­no­sis comes with psy­chi­atric med­ica­tion.

Some months ago, I wrote of “a wel­come new mo­men­tum in re­la­tions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der the lead­er­ship of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.” US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio al­so spoke of the “close part­ner­ship” and looked for­ward to “con­tin­ued col­lab­o­ra­tion in pur­suit of re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty, eco­nom­ic growth and last­ing sta­bil­i­ty.” The PM re­spond­ed that Ru­bio’s words “reaf­firm the en­dur­ing bonds be­tween our coun­tries-ground­ed in shared de­mo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues and our com­mon com­mit­ment to peace, pros­per­i­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.”