Norway (in orange) – Image from Wikipedia
By Raffique Shah
Sunday, March 30th 2008
ONE can easily learn to love Norway only for its majestic fjords that are almost unique to that country. But its beauty extends far beyond the landscape and seascape. Here’s a country that discovered oil off its coast at the same time Britain, Holland and others did in the North Sea. That was some 70 years after the first productive oil well was drilled in Trinidad. True, the quantities differed vastly: ours never exceeded 300,000 barrels per day (bpd), while Norway ranks 10th among oil producers at 3.2 million bpd. Its reserves are also far bigger than ours, both in oil and gas.
Continue reading Norway: good governance, better discipline
Pandemonium broke out in the Lower House yesterday as Speaker Barendra Sinanan suspended Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday for using his laptop without permission. 
When I grew up in Tacarigua in the nineteen forties and fifties my mother made sure I attended Tacarigua E.C. School while my grandparents immersed themselves in their Yoruba religion. Each year, we celebrated the Christian holidays (Christmas, Easter, etc.,) but on those glorious nights of October when the Shango drums rang out through the village we all went to Mother Gerald’s Shango tent. Cousin Lily’s thanksgivings; Tantie Lenora’s devotion to the Shouter Baptists; and the respect we paid to our ancestors on All Saints Night were parts of that corpus of ritual belief that gave village life a sense of purpose and wholeness.
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?
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.
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.