Editorial

The satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo became notorious again this week as two of its cartoons spread across the Internet, filling social media with outrage and briefly reviving the hashtag #JeNeSuisPasCharlie.

Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the United Kingdom’s main opposition Labour Party, is regarded as a rarity in politics: an honest man who generally gives straight answers to questions, even if his views might be as unfashionable and messy as his clothes.

A primary school head teacher from Region Three created a buzz at a seminar held on Tuesday when he announced his desire to have a cash crop farm, a recycling facility and a modern laboratory at his school.

As the mass of migrants, largely from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries have continued to flow to Europe, particularly through the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, the European Union itself has now decided to take the issue as an holistic one, affecting the continent as a whole, and not just specific countries.

Observers in search of signs that the customary post-elections season of brooding and sniping might be approaching an end would not have been encouraged by a photograph of President David Granger and Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo taken at a recent meeting between the two and released by the Office of the Presidency to the media.

Aside from the loss to the economy in taxes, royalties, foreign exchange earnings and the undervaluing of the GDP, the large-scale gold smuggling which the new government says it detected when it entered office in May will be a major test of its intent to unearth the depths of this crime and prosecute fully.

It was Dr Henry Jeffrey in his column last week who drew public attention to something which everyone in the local political universe knows only too well, namely, that the PPP/C might have lost the general election, but it won seven of the ten regions of Guyana.

Responding to consumer pressure, the fast food giant McDonald’s recently announced that it would remove eggs laid by caged hens from its food supply chain.

Following the defeat of the People’s Partnership (PP) government in Trinidad and Tobago on Monday night, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the outgoing prime minister and leader of the PP’s dominant coalition member, the United National Congress (UNC), told reporters that she didn’t think that “anything went wrong, quite frankly,” in the campaign she led against the victorious Dr Keith Rowley and his People’s National Movement (PNM).

It was recently made public that two private sector business entities and an opposition Member of Parliament are indebted to the Guyana National Stadium at Providence.

It is doubtful that any, or many of the leaders of Europe Union thought, as they planned and executed, in 2011, the Nato bombing of Libya ridding that country of Gaddafi, that within a few years, thousands of Libyans would, like Gaddafi, now be fleeing from their country, anxious to reach Britain and other EU countries, in search of a more peaceful existence.

“Very disturbing” was part of the response proffered by Education Minister Dr Rupert Roopnaraine to the report of a violent confrontation between two secondary school boys on the first day of the new school year.

Quite understandably, the region has been transfixed by the forced resignation of Guatemalan President Otto Perez last week amid a maelstrom of corruption allegations that stripped his Cabinet of ministers and left him facing the prospect of charges of stealing customs revenues.

Little has been heard about culture in the narrow sense since the new government took office.

The death of Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy whose corpse was photographed on a Turkish beach earlier this week, brings to mind Edmund Burke’s troubling observation that evil comes into the world when good men do nothing.

Last Friday, we celebrated Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt as the greatest of all time and as “a supreme champion of the Caribbean people and the Caribbean spirit.”

It should come as no surprise to anyone that senior nurses are speaking out about the malady affecting the operations at Guyana’s premier public health institution – the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).

It is worth taking account of the difficulties being experienced by our neighhbour Brazil, as President Dilma Rousseff continues into her second term of office.

Our politicians, as they are wont to do, can preach all they want about their commitment to media freedom.

In his contribution to the debate on the 2015 budget, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo stated that his ministry will be producing a white paper on public information policy.