Every year, since I can re­call, there have been these Car­ni­val post-mortems de­signed to con­sid­er, among oth­er things, the so­cio-eco­nom­ic val­ue of this an­nu­al event. Some of it has been well-in­formed ex­am­i­na­tions guid­ed by mea­sur­able out­comes, oth­ers sim­ply to ex­hib­it lim­it­less ca­pac­i­ty to en­gage in self-serv­ing chat­ter and fan­ta­sy.

The launch of the Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion last Sat­ur­day may well be dri­ven by a gen­uine de­sire to con­front the grow­ing pow­er of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal car­tels.

A rel­a­tiv­i­ty un­known en­ti­ty with ad­mirable in­ten­tions, the Healthy Caribbean Coali­tion, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with an­oth­er amor­phous group, “Caribbean Pae­di­a­tri­cians,” is call­ing on so­ci­ety to do some­thing about obese chil­dren, de­clar­ing that they were the first to raise the alarm about the prob­lem of obe­si­ty in chil­dren five years ago.

The Amer­i­c­as Counter-Car­tel Coali­tion (AC­CC), an­nounced at the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da, sig­nals a bold at­tempt to con­front the hemi­sphere’s decades-long strug­gle against pow­er­ful transna­tion­al drug car­tels.

The T20 form of crick­et, af­ter al­most 20 years as the great­est pure spec­ta­cle of the grand old game of the Eng­lish Vil­lage Green, fur­ther es­tab­lished it­self at the 2026 World Cup with great per­ma­nen­cy as the most at­trac­tive, dy­nam­ic and fi­nan­cial­ly re­ward­ing for­mat for all in­volved.

The late Sat­gu­ru Sivaya Sub­ra­mu­niyaswa­mi, known as Gu­rude­va (1927-2001), was the Hin­du spir­i­tu­al leader of the largest Hin­du ashram out­side of In­dia. This fa­mous ashram is lo­cat­ed in Hawaii, and all its re­li­gious per­son­al­i­ties are put in “white swamis,” they pro­duce the in­ter­na­tion­al mag­a­zine “Hin­duism to­day” and ad­vise on Hin­du con­cepts.

Lead­er­ship prob­lems are a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge fac­ing democ­ra­cy, as is ev­i­dent when lead­ers un­der­mine the rule of law and po­lit­i­cal­ly in­de­pen­dent in­sti­tu­tions, at­tempt to ma­nip­u­late bound­aries, cen­tralise pow­er, and use pop­ulist rhetoric that weak­ens in­sti­tu­tion­al checks and bal­ances.

Ge­og­ra­phy re­mains a crit­i­cal force shap­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal strate­gies. As the south­ern­most Caribbean is­land and the clos­est to Latin Amer­i­ca, the coun­try ben­e­fits from main­tain­ing good re­la­tions with its Latin Amer­i­can neigh­bours, a mar­ket of about 670 mil­lion peo­ple, and the Unit­ed States, the re­gion­al eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary hege­mon. This in­ter­est is re­flect­ed in its mem­ber­ship in the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Amer­i­can States (OAS) and the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank, as well as in its de­ci­sion to host the 5th Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as in 2009.

Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Nicholas Mor­ris, act­ing as Leader of Gov­ern­ment House busi­ness yes­ter­day, gave an op­ti­mistic run­down for Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s at­ten­dance at the US’s Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to at­tend to­day’s Shield of the Amer­i­c­as Sum­mit in Flori­da thrusts Trinidad and To­ba­go in­to the spot­light of a ma­jor geopo­lit­i­cal con­ver­sa­tion shap­ing the West­ern Hemi­sphere.

At yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, pro­vid­ed the first of­fi­cial cal­i­bra­tion of the pos­si­ble im­pact of the on­go­ing war in the Mid­dle East, sug­gest­ing that T&T is not go­ing to be the ben­e­fi­cia­ry of a wind­fall due to high­er oil and nat­ur­al gas prices.

Three days ago, the Op­po­si­tion Leader cau­tioned the pop­u­la­tion that the State is now polic­ing both free­dom of move­ment and ex­pres­sion un­der the guise of safe­ty. She was re­fer­ring to Sec­tion 11 of the Emer­gency Pow­er Reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing the lat­est State of Emer­gency (SoE), which can crim­i­nalise pub­li­ca­tions, in­clud­ing so­cial me­dia posts.