Editorial

Guyana’s Tier 2 status with regard to human trafficking remains unchanged for the second year running, according to the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report for 2012.

It is a sign of the continuing political and psychological distance between the English-speaking countries of the Caribbean and other states in the region, that there should have been so little commentary on the presidential election that has recently taken place in the Dominican Republic, a member-state of the EU-Caribbean Forum countries that are party to the Economic Partnership Agreement  signed in 2007.

Arguably, there had always been reason to suspect that the Burrowes Commission of Enquiry had not slain all of the ghosts that dwell inside City Hall.

The proposed US$138M Chinese-funded expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International  Airport, Timehri has from the inception triggered notable and well-founded concerns.

In an interview with the National Communications Network on Wednesday, President Ramotar let it be known that he would not give his assent to bills passed by the opposition unless the government had had some input into them.

Any idea how much sugar you consume daily? If you have diabetes, high blood pressure, lipid problems, a sizeable girth, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease or heart disease you may be conscious of your sugar consumption.

Why have people in the Caribbean got so hot under the collar about Denesh Ramdin’s message – “Yea, Viv, talk nah” – to West Indies cricket legend turned commentator, Sir Vivian Richards?

It is time for a serious enquiry into what passes for medical care at the public hospitals in Guyana, but more urgently there is need for an in-depth investigation into what is happening at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH), particularly in terms of maternal and neo-natal health.

As anticipated for some time now, the latest private sector innovation in air transportation in the Eastern Caribbean (also serving Guyana) has come to an end, leaving LIAT, the publicly owned airline of the area as once again the only substantial inter-island player in the region.

Under sustained pressure from international football’s governing body, FIFA, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has announced the temporary suspension of a law banning the consumption and sale of beer in stadia for the duration of the 2014 football World Cup.

In two separate reports, Stabroek News has exposed to the public glare the disastrous work done on roads in Amelia’s Ward, Linden as part of a $300M project.

Last Thursday, Reuters issued a report headlined ‘Guyana oil exploration stirs up Venezuela border dispute.’ 

George Orwell famously described sport as “war minus the shooting,“ since it activated passions that pandered to the baser forms of nationalism, racism and xenophobia.

Some of us might have noted the delicious irony of Guyana-born Colleen Harris, former press secretary to Queen Elizabeth II’s son, Prince Charles, being invited by the BBC World Service, on the occasion of the monarch’s Diamond Jubilee Thanksgiving Service on Tuesday, to provide insights into that most hallowed of British institutions, the Royal Family.

Violence, including sexual violence, against women and girls is sweeping across Guyana like an epidemic, leaving in its wake tombstones and grave markers, scarred and traumatized women and children, mute legislators and a justice system that is apparently unable to cope.

Somewhat surprising news has been coming out of some of the BRICS, concerning their diminished rates of economic growth in recent times.

Collectively, the rising tide of violent schoolchildren, the erosion of the authority of the school and the threat which these pose to the effective delivery of education constitute a problem of crisis proportions.

A full six months after the general elections of November 28, 2011 the people who voted – no matter which party – must be hard pressed to find anything positive flowing from the casting of their vote.

In a Reuters report carried in this newspaper yesterday, it was said that the eight nations which make up Alba had praised President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria.

The sensational story of a man who videotaped a murder and posted it online is a cautionary tale for our times.