By Dr. Kumar Mahabir
May 25, 2007
The Indian heritage day will be observed as a national holiday on Wednesday May 30th.
On May 30th 1845, the Fath Al Razak docked in the Port of Spain harbour in Trinidad and Tobago with 225 adult passengers on board. The passengers were immigrants from India who had come to the British colony to work in the sugarcane plantations after the abolition of African slavery. They had spent 103 days on sea during the arduous and dangerous journey that spanned 14,000 miles (36,000 km). The immigrants were contracted for five to ten years to work in the sugarcane estates in a system that ended in 1917.
Continue reading Indian Arrival Day in Trinidad and Tobago
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning got advice at least five times from a woman who has been described as his “prophetess.”
Nobody should be surprised that international agencies like the World Bank and the IMF have rated Trinidad and Tobago among the leading countries with respect to economic development. It would have taken a complete fool in government, or a big-time bandit so placed, to have done otherwise given the high levels of revenue we have enjoyed over the past five years or so. So our GDP and GNP will have grown in tandem with the steep increases in prices of oil, gas and downstream energy products that account for most of our revenue. These and other indicators used by such agencies will also show a major reduction in poverty levels and almost zero unemployment.
It seemed an ordinary enough church until someone pointed me to the angels. 
ONE of my favourite sergeant-majors in the Regiment used to say to private soldiers who committed infractions of any kind: “Boy! You is a nawsty awss!” His peculiar accent and the manner in which he berated some poor soul would elicit stifled giggles in the ranks, and laughter among officers who happened to overhear him. 
Like most Torontonians, I too enjoyed last year’s extended summer and unseasonably mild winter. Red peppers were still growing in my garden in late December and in early February; perennials were promising to bloom – again. I fired up my backyard BBQ in tee shirt and jeans,, washed my car by hand in the scorching sun, and then suppressed the heat with an ice cold beer. “This is the life”, I mused. Dreadfully fearful of bone chilling winters, I wanted summer to last forever. Imagine for a moment, a land of perpetual sunshine, BBQ and beer. On my CD player the incomparable Louis Armstrong sang, “What a Wonderful World” and a wise old friend assured me that “within everything, life hard but it sweet”.
THE country’s 100th murder was recorded yesterday morning when a Santa Cruz man was gunned down while asleep.