Editorial

The WPA has let half a cat out of the bag.

A common theme among the many claims routinely made for digital technology and the efflorescence of social media is the bold idea they are collectively abolishing the traditional constraints of time and distance.

As expected, President Hugo Chávez and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) obtained a majority of representatives in the National Assembly in last Sunday’s legislative elections.

From a meeting at the Office of the President on Tuesday, it has emerged that local religious leaders have “agreed to be more active in helping to curb domestic violence” and have indicated “their willingness to be part of a standard training programme specifically designed to sensitize and equip them to deal with the issue.”

A curious event occurred last week, and continues into this week, in the area which the Western powers (and we ourselves following them), have traditionally referred to as the Far East.

The official ‘Response of the Government of Guyana to the Universal Period Review’ presented by Ms Gail Teixeira in Geneva on September 13 was a dangerous setback for public security.

A series of visits to agricultural communities by SN reporter Gaulbert Sutherland has focused a piercing light on many issues connected with the government’s Grow More Food campaign.

The thing about Guyanese politics at the moment is that everything is in suspension.

Last month, Nicholas Negroponte, leader of the One Laptop per Child Foundation and founder and former chairman of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, warned his audience at a technology conference that printed books would be “dead” within five years.

The rotating chairmanship of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) was officially transferred from Ecuador to Guyana at a meeting of foreign ministers, on Tuesday, in New York, in the margins of the UN General Assembly, and it was agreed to hold UNASUR’s next summit in Georgetown on November 26.

There might have been a time when people in the Caribbean viewed Alzheimer’s disease and other age-onset dementias as problems associated only with North America and Europe, simply because these are the continents where they have been recognised for what they are for years.

Controversy and differing interpretations continue to follow Fidel Castro’s statement that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for Cuba any more,” with experts trying hard to read the tea leaves in the still intensely closed political system of that country.

Senior officers of the Guyana Police Force seem to make their strongest statements about the virulence of the illegal narcotics trade only after some tragedy has occurred.

Chief Justice (ag) Chang’s ruling that Clico (Guyana) be wound up will bring immeasurable and welcome relief to hundreds of hard-working Guyanese who had health and other insurance policies with the company and had been lured by unrealistic rates to invest in a business whose parent was spinning Ponzi-like schemes.

It is not often that cases of Amerindian exploitation come to public attention through the media, which is not the same thing as to say that they are a rare occurrence, because one has every reason to believe they are not.

South Africa’s Big Brother reality show became notorious this week when it broadcast a quarrel inside the house that ended with one of the male contestants punching a female.

Following Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in January 1998, there was a joke that summed up the issue of different perspectives vis-à-vis Fidel Castro.

Two months after they had been left to fend for themselves, seven children between the ages of 15 months and 14 years were taken into the custody of the Linden branch on the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security’s Child Care and Protection Unit.

Perhaps the most immediate issue in the minds of Caribbean policy-makers and commercial interests on the eve of last May’s general elections was the effect of an Air Passenger Duty (APD) or tax which the then Labour government proposed to introduce on persons leaving Britain for other destinations.

Commissioner of Police Mr Henry Greene reported last week that there had been 96 murders this year so far compared with 77 murders for a similar period – about 250 days – last year.