Crime, Car­ni­val, casi­nos, cli­mate change and the tail-end of the Cli­co col­lapse...the same sto­ries play out across the Caribbean, and be­yond–but with a dif­fer­ent twist in each coun­try. A small Bar­ba­dos com­pa­ny pi­o­neers waste re­cy­cling. There's a gold-min­ing boom in Guyana and Suri­name as both coun­tries search for off­shore oil and gas.

The for­mer pre­mier of the Turks and Caicos is held in Rio de Janeiro's San­tos Du­mont air­port, and awaits ex­tra­di­tion on cor­rup­tion charges. We can learn from the up­side, and the down–but too of­ten, Caribbean and over­seas news is bare­ly re­port­ed in the T&T me­dia.

Mark Wil­son has been re­search­ing, writ­ing and lec­tur­ing about the Caribbean since the 1980s, work­ing main­ly with over­seas pub­li­ca­tions. Born in Britain, he has lived in Bar­ba­dos and the Ba­hamas as well as in T&T. This week, he launch­es a new col­umn, Out­side Track, in the Sun­day Guardian, be­gin­ning with a look at Be­lize City's George Street gang–which blames the po­lice Gang Sup­pres­sion Unit for killing four of their mem­bers, in­clud­ing sec­ond-in-com­mand "Ghost" Mey­ers.