The SoE was extended at 12.27am on Thursday. The Mid-year Review will hand out the salary money tomorrow. Between the two, the AG said the alternative to extending was Haiti, and the Public Utilities Minister called the nurses racist. This is not conversation. It is rhetoric in place of one.
A Trinidadian writer's prize-winning short story has been flagged by AI detectors as machine-written. He denies it. The detection science is contested. The Foundation backs him. The truth in this case may be unknowable – but the bigger question is not, and Caribbean writers must talk about it.
The State of Emergency lapses at midnight on June 17. In the meantime: a protest order, a DPP warning, thirteen unions threatening a constitutional challenge, and a Prime Minister who will not back down. Nine days to decide what we want this country to be.
Fifteen no-protest zones, signed by the Police Commissioner the same day riot police arrested a grieving best friend at a vigil. We have been asking for weeks what the State of Emergency was actually for. This week we got the answer in writing.
An opposition MP in Jamaica opened her speech on culture in the language most Jamaicans actually speak. The Speaker shut her down within seconds. It happened in Kingston, but every Trini who has ever code-switched at an immigration desk knows exactly what it felt like.
The AG told Parliament a gang member triggered enhanced protection for MPs. The Police Commissioner backed him up. Parliamentary security, government senators and the Opposition say they never heard about it. For a claim that will be used to justify policy, the country needs more than "trust us."
Kes The Band's NPR Tiny Desk concert was not just a good gig. It was the kind of soft power we usually only talk about when we are losing it. Pair it with the laptops and prosthetics from India last week, and you start to see what punching above our weight actually looks like.
A 23-month-old is dead in Belmont, the Defence Minister calls it a reprisal, and the same ZOSO Bill that collapsed in the Senate weeks ago is being brought back. Before we vote it through this time, someone has to explain what changed about the answer – or whether we are just recycling it.
The UNC in Power, One Year Review
A seven-part audit of the UNC government's first year. Genuine wins on jobs, pensions and paediatric care sit beside an Auditor General's qualified opinion, a collapsed security bill, a nurses' walkout, and Trinidadian fishermen killed in US strikes our government endorsed.
While the nursing dispute dominates the news, three premature triplets – the smallest ever delivered in T&T – went home from a Port of Spain NICU last week. The Health Minister also unveiled plans for a national prosthetics centre. Two reminders of what our health workers can do.
T&T's nurses are now enforcing a 1:6 patient ratio – a policy the government approved but never implemented. The Health Minister says there is no health crisis. With nurses still on 2013 salaries and a brain drain in motion, the bill for years of austerity is coming due.
On April 19, Acting Corporal Anuska Eversley was murdered inside her own police station. The armoury was emptied. Three men, including a serving officer, are now charged. This isn't a security failure - it is an institutional one, and the warning signs were there for months.