Amid the on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the award of $3.4 bil­lion in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) con­tracts, there is the un­der­ly­ing ques­tion of whether State-fund­ed hous­ing projects go­ing back a few gen­er­a­tions have ad­e­quate­ly met the needs of res­i­dents for ba­sic and, in cer­tain in­stances, ex­pand­ed qual­i­ty shel­ter.

Hos­til­i­ties in the Mid­dle East cast a gi­ant shad­ow over the glob­al econ­o­my. IMF man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Kristali­na Georgie­va has warned that the war in Iran is “per­ma­nent­ly scar­ring” the glob­al econ­o­my, dri­ving up in­fla­tion and slow­ing glob­al growth due to dam­age to en­er­gy in­fra­struc­ture and sup­ply chain dis­rup­tions. The out­look for glob­al growth de­pends on how quick­ly the hos­til­i­ties in Iran end. The longer the fight­ing per­sists, or the Hor­muz Strait re­mains block­ad­ed by ei­ther Iran or the Unit­ed States, the worse the eco­nom­ic out­look.

The “heads on­ly” What­sApp mes­sage from Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is an elec­tron­ic in­dict­ment of the process sur­round­ing the heads’ de­ci­sion at their Nevis re­treat in Feb­ru­ary to af­firm a sec­ond term for her. Bar­nett’s cur­rent one ends in Au­gust.

The de­ci­sion by the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor to halt the award of $3.4 bil­lion in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) con­tracts un­der­scores both the fragili­ty and the im­por­tance of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­ist­ing pro­cure­ment frame­work.

A last­ing res­o­lu­tion to the back-and-forth state­ments be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Cari­com chair­man Dr Ter­rance Drew, Prime Min­is­ter of St Kitts and Nevis, may well need to be de­cid­ed by the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

The move by the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to seek and ob­tain court-sanc­tioned des­ig­na­tions for Hezbol­lah, Hamas and the Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC) as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties marks a sig­nif­i­cant, if qui­et, shift in our na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture.

The per­sis­tent scourge of vi­o­lence against women in T&T re­quires sus­tained, co­or­di­nat­ed and mea­sur­able ac­tion from every arm of the State and so­ci­ety.

The cur­rent Mid­dle East war un­der­scores the need for re­gion­al uni­ty. Rapid­ly emerg­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges will im­pact Cari­com states, ex­pos­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and test­ing re­silience. The longer the con­flict en­dures, the greater the con­se­quences.

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) has long prid­ed it­self on a qui­et but ef­fec­tive tra­di­tion: set­tling its most sen­si­tive mat­ters through con­sen­sus. That ap­proach has not al­ways been seam­less, but it has pre­served uni­ty. To­day, how­ev­er, that tra­di­tion is un­der vis­i­ble strain as a dis­pute over the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett threat­ens to test the re­gion­al body’s co­he­sion in un­prece­dent­ed ways. This mat­ter re­quires ur­gent res­o­lu­tion—not on­ly for ad­min­is­tra­tive clar­i­ty, but for the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the re­gion­al project it­self.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment on Wednes­day that a diplo­mat­ic del­e­ga­tion will trav­el to Cara­cas sig­nals a cau­tious re­open­ing of a re­la­tion­ship that has drift­ed from co­op­er­a­tion in­to ten­sion.

The en­tire world must sure­ly have felt re­lieved by the de­ci­sion of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump to hold off on his threat to bomb Iran in­to a pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry.

The world is once again star­ing down the bar­rel of an en­er­gy cri­sis - this time trig­gered by the war in­volv­ing Iran and the clo­sure of the Strait of Hor­muz, through which rough­ly 20 per cent of glob­al oil sup­ply flows. What be­gan as a geopo­lit­i­cal flash­point has rapid­ly evolved in­to what the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency now de­scribes as the most se­vere en­er­gy shock in mod­ern his­to­ry, sur­pass­ing even the crises of 1973 and 1979.