Newsday Editorial
Thursday, March 27 2008
At long last, the Government through National Security Minister Martin Joseph had admitted to a link between the high murder rate and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP). The question is, what is going to be done about it?
It has taken the PNM administration a long time to reach even this partial admission. Indeed, at the start of the year, even as he acknowledged that the Government’s crime-fighting initiatives had failed, Mr Joseph denied the link between murder and URP — and mere days later denied that he had even said that the Government had failed. And it was only a few weeks ago that, after High Court judge Anthony Carmona spoke publicly about the URP link to crime, Mr Joseph declared stoutly that he had “no evidence of that”. Now, at a press briefing last Tuesday, he says that such a link is “very possible.”
Continue reading URP and Crime
A POPULAR Bar-B-Que vendor, 48, of Cunupia who accused his wife of being unfaithful, gave his four-year-old son a poisonous liquid to drink and then took a dose himself sometime between Easter Sunday night and yesterday morning. 
As quiet as it is kept, Trinbagonians seem to be in long-term denial that there is a direct correlation between Soca music and moral decadence in TnT. As of this writing, the evidence is very clear and convincing that immorality and public sexual vulgarity have surpassed the nadir of their bottomless pit.
Thank you for the opportunity to provide first hand evidence of the positive success side of the mission of the flag-ship Mount Hope Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex (EWMSC) to provide, inter alia, caring and timely health services to the nation. I write this letter in the face of potential allegations of medical negligence being currently attributed to the institution. Mount Hope was built by Sodeteg, a French Company under a Government-to-Government arrangement in the 1980’s. It was named in memory our first Prime Minister against his express wishes.
THERE’S never a dull moment in Trinidad and Tobago. The Government ensures that every week new, controversial issues erupt to spark debate, cussing, outrage. If not allegations of corruption, there’s always the arrogance of ministers who believe they are anointed by God, not elected by people. If government pauses for a moment, the gangsters and murderers and bandits fill the vacuum with mayhem and massacre to let us know the masses are Good Friday ‘bobolees’. And if both stay aloof, then rest assured politicians out of office would fill the breach with manure that could suffocate us all.
The President of the Republic, His Excellency George Maxwell Richards, and the head of Government, Prime Minister Patrick Manning, have, in their different ways, raised serious concerns about the current state of Trinidad and Tobago. In the instance of the Head of State, President Richards has warned about the challenge of staying on track amongst the recognised and viable states of the international community and not becoming a “failed state.”
On February 20, the University of the West Indies inaugurated its Year of Sir Arthur Lewis as part of its celebration of the three Nobel Laureates from the English-speaking Caribbean. 
