Star­bucks is fac­ing a con­sumer law­suit over claims that the pro­tein drinks la­belled “sug­ar-free” on its cafe menus may ac­tu­al­ly con­tain more sug­ar than a Reese’s peanut but­ter cup.

In keep­ing with the adage, “you’re nev­er too old to learn,” for­mer jour­nal­ism and busi­ness com­mu­ni­ca­tion pro­fes­sor Mervyn Crichlow is a tes­ta­ment to the en­dur­ing val­ue of learn­ing at every stage of life.

Crispy turkey and goat cheese em­panadas, a touch of pi­men­to caviar, and the rich deca­dence of ox­tail mac and cheese cro­quettes of­fered me­dia guests a first taste of what is to come when Dîn­er en Blanc re­turns to Port-of-Spain on No­vem­ber 14.

A creamy bowl of ice cream is the ul­ti­mate com­fort, but for health-con­scious con­sumers, it fre­quent­ly clash­es with fit­ness goals. Thanks to en­tre­pre­neurs Je­re­mi­ah Cruick­shank and Je­nae-Marie Price, dessert is be­ing trans­formed from a guilty in­dul­gence in­to a de­li­cious way to reach your dai­ly pro­tein tar­gets.

Fyz­abad, the birth­place of the labour move­ment, was once a bustling south­ern town where oil work­ers, shop­pers and farm­ers moved through its streets and busi­ness­es stayed open late to ser­vice those ben­e­fit­ing from Trinidad’s oil for­tunes.

There was a time when the roads through Fe­lic­i­ty were lit­tle more than tracks cut­ting be­tween fields of sug­ar cane and rice.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, “si­nus” can mean al­ler­gies, a blocked nose, a headache or a cold. Mean­while, some­one of­fers a cough mix­ture that doesn’t work. A co-work­er rec­om­mends an­tibi­otics. An aunt has al­ready put the ket­tle on with a plan for “fever grass” mixed with a dash of al­co­hol.

Toe walk­ing is sim­i­lar to tip­toe­ing. It’s where a per­son walks on their toes or the balls of their feet with­out their heels touch­ing the ground. In adults, tip­toe­ing is nor­mal and rep­re­sents an ef­fort to walk qui­et­ly, where­as in chil­dren it may be ab­nor­mal. Most of the time, it is nor­mal. So, for ex­am­ple, it’s nor­mal in some tod­dlers. It oc­curs in about one in every 200 tod­dlers and usu­al­ly dis­ap­pears by the time they are three. Some­times it be­comes a habit and per­sists past three. This re­quires eval­u­a­tion.

For many, it is of­ten a re­lief when their loved ones are dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal. But while the hos­pi­tal doors may close be­hind them, for many old­er pa­tients, the jour­ney to­wards pa­tient safe­ty has just be­gun.

Hear­ing that an X-ray or oth­er imag­ing test has re­vealed a bone tu­mour or le­sion can be fright­en­ing. For many peo­ple, the first thought is can­cer.

When econ­o­mists dis­cuss the Or­ange Econ­o­my in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean, the con­ver­sa­tion in­stinc­tive­ly turns to mu­sic, fash­ion, Car­ni­val and food. Yet one of its most lu­cra­tive and high-im­pact fron­tiers re­mains large­ly un­der-mon­e­tised: cre­ative ser­vices with­in the built en­vi­ron­ment.

World Teach­ers’ Day is to­day. I want to praise those teach­ers who pos­sess a com­mit­ment to ex­cel­lence, dis­play courage and demon­strate un­fail­ing re­silience. In my younger days, I taught in both pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. Dur­ing these brief teach­ing stints, I was able to wit­ness ded­i­cat­ed and car­ing teach­ers who spent ex­tra time with slow learn­ers. Yes, there are teach­ers who help pover­ty-strick­en stu­dents, men­tor those from abu­sive homes and coun­sel those who are be­ing bul­lied.