Truck­loads full of por­tu­gals (some­times pro­nounced as po-ti-gal) are pop­ping up across T&T over the month of Feb­ru­ary.

On nights when you can’t af­ford to go out, in­stant ra­men is your best friend. Ready in about three min­utes, you can have a full meal of hot broth and a gen­er­ous serv­ing of noo­dles. Plain ra­men can some­times be un­der­whelm­ing when you are crav­ing a meal with the full work. Up­grade your ra­men with this easy and af­ford­able recipe that us­es in­gre­di­ents that many of you might al­ready have in your re­frig­er­a­tor or pantry. The spe­cial sauce mix­ture adds an­oth­er lev­el of di­men­sion and flavour that is guar­an­teed to not on­ly fill you but sat­is­fy your taste­buds.

With all the good so­cial me­dia has there is al­so the dark side. Par­tic­u­lar­ly I’m talk­ing about the im­pact so­cial me­dia has on the youths of to­day, the im­pres­sion­able teenage years.

The great­est show on earth is al­most here again. Did you know that your eyes are con­sid­ered one of life’s great­est gifts? Here are some tips to pro­tect your eyes this car­ni­val sea­son.

This is one of my favourite times of the year, when Christ­mas has passed and in the evenings around the tracks, across the play­ing fields and by the Sa­van­nah you see many per­sons, young and old ex­er­cis­ing and train­ing for many rea­sons.

Fes­ti­val Ra­dio is an on­line ra­dio op­er­a­tion pro­duced by Tri­ni Good Me­dia, the com­pa­ny run by jour­nal­ists Ar­dene Sir­joo and Fran­ka Philip.

With a spate of in­ci­dents dom­i­nat­ing the news in­volv­ing chil­dren in acts of school vi­o­lence, fights, at­tacks on teach­ers, van­dal­ism and promis­cu­ity in the black­board jun­gle, ac­tress, di­rec­tor, pro­duc­er, teacher, moth­er and ac­tivist Pene­lope Spencer is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic and in­flu­en­tial peo­ple who young peo­ple look up to in so­ci­ety to give of their time and adopt a class.

In De­cem­ber 2019 a new strain of the Coro­n­avirus fam­i­ly was iden­ti­fied in per­sons show­ing up at hos­pi­tals in Chi­na. The most re­cent World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) up­date (Sitrep #20, on 9th Feb­ru­ary, 2020) puts the to­tal num­ber of in­fect­ed per­sons at 37, 558 and the to­tal num­ber of deaths at 813, with the ma­jor­i­ty of the cas­es oc­cur­ring in Main­land Chi­na and a lim­it­ed num­ber of cas­es in 24 oth­er coun­tries world-wide.

Sad­ly, bul­ly­ing seems to be more com­mon­place in our schools, with in­creas­ing num­bers of in­ci­dents re­port­ed in the me­dia.

Chi­ropodist/Po­di­a­trist Doc­tor Ann Li­ma re­cent­ly re­ceived a Ser­vice award from the Ro­tary Club of Pe­nal for her ex­cel­lent vo­ca­tion­al skills in the field of pre­ven­tive health care. Li­ma, who stud­ied in Cana­da and Eng­land, has great knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence in her field and is high­ly sought af­ter the dust set­tles from Car­ni­val. She of­fered some ad­vice to those play­ing mas and at­tend­ing fetes dur­ing this sea­son.

In­ter­na­tion­al con­dom day is cel­e­brat­ed each year on Feb­ru­ary 13th, to pro­mote the use of con­doms as a means of pre­vent­ing un­want­ed preg­nan­cies and sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted in­fec­tions (STIs).

Sta­tis­tics from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice's Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis Branch (CA­PA) re­vealed that an av­er­age of 25 women were mur­dered every year in DV/IPV (do­mes­tic vi­o­lence or in­ti­mate part­ner vi­o­lence) cas­es in 2018.