Editorial

On Friday last, millions of people around the world watched aghast as the news and social media proliferated with photos and videos of what was virally proclaimed as an “eye of fire” burning in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last Thursday, with the start of this summer’s Tokyo Olympics a mere three weeks away, the news broke that American sprint sensation Sha’Carri Richardson had tested positive for a chemical found in marijuana at the USA Olympic Trials, where she had blown away the field on 19th June, in a time of 10.86 seconds.

The Guyana Police Force finds itself, not for the first time in recent years, between a proverbial rock and a hard place, the consequences of that circumstance having implications for its public image as much as for its ability to hold itself up above the sorts of controversies that impinge on its ability to discharge its responsibilities without having to look over its shoulder to encounter expressions of derision and scorn.

Police Commissioner (ag) Nigel Hoppie has been left in a veritable quandary at the end of the latest bout of confrontation in public life – this time between the Executive and the Police Service Commission (PSC).

Much has changed in Guyana over the fifty-plus years since Independence except for one thing: the politics.

This year’s Fourth of July celebrations find America at a political crossroads.

One of the consequences of Covid is the widening of the gap between the affluent and the poor, a problem which applies to developed countries as much as developing ones.

In 2019, North Carolina filed a lawsuit against American electronic cigarette (e-cigarette)  company, Juul, alleging that it had deliberately targeted teenagers resident in that state in its advertising and was therefore instrumental in creating what was described as “a vaping epidemic”, by the state’s attorney general.

Whilst the West Indies were reverting to familiar ways (pre the last six months) last week Sunday, collapsing for under 200 like a set of bowling pins for the fourth time in as many innings in the Second Test against South Africa, in St.

There will, presumably, be an inquiry into the likely cause of the June 19 fire that effectively rendered the North Ruimveldt Multilateral School unusable that, in its own way, has added to the current crisis in our education system resulting from the advent of Covid-19 and the necessity to close schools and place the formal education of thousands of our children on an indefinite hold.

It has been more than a month since the Ministry of Health announced that second doses for Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccines have not been available.

Minister Robeson Benn announced recently that the Central Fire Station was to be relocated from Stabroek Market Square to somewhere in the vicinity of D’Urban Park.

The forced closure of Apple Daily is the clearest sign yet of China’s exasperation with democracy in Hong Kong.

The world’s current technological frontier is space. As a matter of fact, this has been so since the Second World War, and was given an additional impetus by Soviet-US competition.

“We need to harness the significance of people’s obsession with food right now, and understand how waste is sinful, criminal, as well as financially foolish.”

In his major work, ‘Les rites de passage’ (The Rites of Passage, 1909), French ethnographer and folklorist Arnold van Gennep delved into the ceremonies marking the important stages of various cultures, laying the groundwork for other anthropologists to expand on.

The sudden, meteoric rise in the global public awareness of the South American nations of Guyana and Suriname – hitherto two of the least mentioned countries in the hemisphere – on the international stage, has everything to do with their near simultaneous world class oil discoveries within the five-year time span and the implications of these occurrences not just for their own future developmental prospects but also for their strategic interest to the rest of the world.

Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon’s assault on the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine batch being used here is reprehensible and raises serious questions about his judgement.

The public made a discovery on Monday, and so, it might be added, did the opposition. 

The G7 summit last weekend closed with optimistic headlines about the group’s efforts to help end the pandemic.