So­cial me­dia lit up on May 22, as peo­ple re­port­ed ob­serv­ing un­usu­al lights or “UFOs” mov­ing across the evening sky.

For a pop­u­la­tion that is renowned for hav­ing a nine-day mem­o­ry, it is note­wor­thy that four months af­ter the trag­ic death of Joshua Sama­roo and the se­ri­ous in­jury of his girl­friend Ka­ia Sealy in a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing, the mat­ter con­tin­ues to grab na­tion­al head­lines.

A back­yard pump­kin planter from Princes Town needs sci­en­tif­ic and prac­ticed at­ten­tion to be paid to his ex­per­i­ment in food crop farm­ing. It is not every day that any­one, kitchen gar­den­er, sci­en­tif­ic agri­cul­tur­al­ist and/or reg­u­lar grow­er of food, pro­duces a 600-pound pump­kin.

It is no se­cret that tra­di­tion­al mass me­dia face nu­mer­ous, po­ten­tial­ly ter­mi­nal per­ils to­day.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s (PSA's) re­jec­tion of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer’s (CPO's) lat­est pro­pos­al on out­stand­ing wage ar­rears was pre­dictable.

There is noth­ing in­her­ent­ly wrong with gov­ern­ments us­ing so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers. In the mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions land­scape, dig­i­tal cre­ators have be­come pow­er­ful ve­hi­cles for pub­lic en­gage­ment. They reach au­di­ences that tra­di­tion­al me­dia of­ten can­not. They shape con­ver­sa­tions, mo­bilise at­ten­tion and in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion across plat­forms, such as In­sta­gram, Tik­Tok, Face­book, YouTube and X.

Lis­ten­ing to the ra­dio these days leaves one with a sink­ing feel­ing. Apart from the ab­sence of any of the sort of mu­sic that I like and which is freely avail­able any­time I go to Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos or re­al­ly any oth­er coun­try, the re­peat­ed bad news em­a­nat­ing from Par­lia­ment, plus the racist opin­ions of so many callers, plus the num­ber of char­la­tans mas­querad­ing as doc­tors, is amus­ing if not down­right fright­en­ing.

Every gov­ern­ment points to its cur­rent suc­cess, re­al or imag­ined, and blames the for­mer regime for the coun­try’s cur­rent fail­ures. Blam­ing pre­de­ces­sors is a uni­ver­sal po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy used to de­flect ac­count­abil­i­ty, man­age pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions and sim­pli­fy com­plex sys­temic is­sues. Lead­ers use this “blame game” to ex­plain away un­ful­filled promis­es and main­tain a nar­ra­tive of progress de­spite on­go­ing hard­ships.

If the 13th Par­lia­ment’s First Ses­sion opened in May 2025 with cer­e­mo­ni­al panache, it end­ed yes­ter­day with un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous po­lit­i­cal punch­es in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Sen­ate.

The lat­est twist in the Joshua Sama­roo case has once again forced this coun­try in­to a fa­mil­iar de­bate: when dead­ly en­coun­ters oc­cur be­tween po­lice of­fi­cers and civil­ians, where does the truth re­side?

The last six weeks have been a par­tic­u­lar­ly tor­rid pe­ri­od for this na­tion's chil­dren: On April 8, sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Saydee Jo­gie, along with three mem­bers of her fam­i­ly, were se­ri­ous­ly in­jured by a jet ski while bathing at Pi­geon Point, the world-fa­mous beach in To­ba­go; on April 18, 2026, po­lice in east Trinidad com­mu­ni­ty of Cu­mu­to dis­cov­ered the bod­ies of 50 in­fants and six adults dumped in a mass grave at its ceme­tery; on April 19, nine-year-old J'Lay­na Arm­strong was among four peo­ple ex­e­cut­ed in car on the La­dy Young Road in Mor­vant; on May 7, 23-month Aki­ni Kafi was killed af­ter the car in which he was be­ing dri­ven to day­care was blocked and the three oc­cu­pants killed.

Two meet­ings in Chi­na’s cap­i­tal, Bei­jing, which in­volved the three lead­ers who have the great­est eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er in the world to­day, have not de­liv­ered de­fin­i­tive re­sults to at least re­duce the po­ten­tial for se­ri­ous mil­i­tary con­flict. Nei­ther have those meet­ings un­blocked the Strait of Hor­muz to ease the pres­sure on the price of oil and its im­pact on the glob­al econ­o­my.