The most strik­ing find­ing from the Sun­day Guardian’s re­port on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders un­der suc­ces­sive States of Emer­gency (SoEs) is the rel­a­tive­ly low num­ber of de­tainees ul­ti­mate­ly charged with crim­i­nal of­fences.

Re­cent events, in­clud­ing the start of the 2026/2027 aca­d­e­m­ic year and the open­ing of the new law term, have high­light­ed not on­ly the im­me­di­ate chal­lenges con­fronting Trinidad and To­ba­go but al­so the re­al­i­ty that many of our in­sti­tu­tions re­quire deep­er re­form rather than tem­po­rary fix­es.

The Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion is mov­ing to­wards leg­is­la­tion to hold par­ents ac­count­able for the be­hav­iour of their chil­dren, plac­ing parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at the cen­tre of its re­sponse to school vi­o­lence.

On Wednes­day, on the steps of the Hall of Jus­tice in Port-of-Spain, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared that she loves Venezuela’s in­ter­im Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez and looks for­ward to meet­ing her on the side­lines of the Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly lat­er this month.

Twen­ty-five years ago, I was dri­ving across the over­pass at Barataria, near Mar­itime Plaza, head­ing north to­ward Mor­vant Junc­tion on my way to St Ann’s Hos­pi­tal.

News head­lines are of­ten dom­i­nat­ed by pol­i­tics, crime, eco­nom­ic chal­lenges and the con­tro­ver­sies of the day. Yet amid these press­ing con­cerns, it is im­por­tant to pause and recog­nise in­sti­tu­tions whose con­tri­bu­tions to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment have en­dured across gen­er­a­tions. Such is the case with the Tran­quil­i­ty Methodist Church, which this year cel­e­brates 120 years of ser­vice.

I be­lieve the idea of Caribbean uni­ty – in all its var­i­ous ge­o­graph­i­cal/his­tor­i­cal/po­lit­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions – is some­thing that en­chants most (not all) peo­ple who live in our re­gion.

The video-record­ed fight that went vi­ral in­volv­ing stu­dents from a San­gre Grande school, on the very first day of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year, has once again thrust the is­sue of school in­dis­ci­pline in­to the na­tion­al spot­light.

I once knew a girl in St Au­gus­tine who claimed to know 50 ways to kiss. We all tried to test out her knowl­edge but failed. At least those boys and girls that I knew said so.

The most im­por­tant in­vest­ment Trinidad and To­ba­go makes each year is not mea­sured in con­crete, steel or bal­ance sheets. It is found in class­rooms across the coun­try, where the na­tion’s fu­ture is be­ing shaped one stu­dent at a time.

The case of Na­dia Pooran, as re­port­ed in yes­ter­day’s Sun­day Guardian, lays bare the com­plex and of­ten trag­ic cy­cle of crime, pun­ish­ment and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion. Her young life was shaped by ex­ploita­tion and forced pros­ti­tu­tion, fol­lowed by se­ri­ous crim­i­nal be­hav­iour that led to in­car­cer­a­tion. Yet the abuse she suf­fered be­hind prison walls, the State’s fail­ure to pro­tect her, and the chal­lenges she faced af­ter serv­ing her sen­tence of­fer trou­bling in­sight in­to the fac­tors that con­tin­ue to fu­el crim­i­nal­i­ty in so­ci­ety.

With an ele­phant head, body of a man, the Hin­du God Ganesh, at first ap­pears un­gain­ly, but among Hin­du Gods his pop­u­lar­i­ty abounds. Mur­tis of Gane­sha can be found in tem­ples, homes, mo­tor ve­hi­cles, and on of­fice desks.