Mark An­tho­ny Cony­ers, for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad Pub­lish­ing Com­pa­ny (TPC), the fore­run­ner to Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, died on May 4 at age 95.

Nir­vaana Sug­rim has al­ways marched to the beat of her own drum. At six years old, she sat among peo­ple many times her age, play­ing a male-dom­i­nat­ed in­stru­ment al­most twice her size. When one aca­d­e­m­ic de­gree did not ful­fil her, she pushed for an­oth­er. Cur­rent­ly an at­tor­ney, she wants to use her brazen yet hum­ble ap­proach to life to help oth­ers reach their full po­ten­tial.

It is usu­al­ly the case where af­ter Car­ni­val ca­lyp­so­ni­ans have very lit­tle work to sus­tain them­selves in the in­dus­try and are forced to find al­ter­na­tives.

As the pan­dem­ic rages on, ac­cel­er­at­ing in trans­mis­sion across Trinidad and To­ba­go, so do anx­i­eties and stress about COVID-19 and the vac­cines, with “FEAR” be­com­ing just as con­ta­gious in its pro­lif­er­a­tion, pos­si­bly even more dam­ag­ing health wise.

As an in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, I feel moral­ly ob­lig­at­ed to pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on what we are see­ing from a trans­mis­sion dy­nam­ic per­spec­tive and how it ap­plies to the so­cial dis­tanc­ing mea­sures. Like any good sci­en­tist, I have no­ticed two things that are ei­ther not well ar­tic­u­lat­ed or not present in the “lit­er­a­ture” of on­line me­dia. (I have al­so re­lied on oth­er in­fec­tious dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gists for peer re­view of this piece.)

Ten fire of­fi­cers as­signed to the San Juan Fire Sta­tion kicked-off a clean­ing ex­er­cise on Sat­ur­day geared to­wards up­lift­ing the sur­round­ings where they work.

If there was ever a par­ent that need­ed a vil­lage around them, it is the par­ent of a spe­cial needs child, and in this case, an autis­tic child. As com­pared to the in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, the so­cial sup­port and pub­lic health sys­tems in place for par­ents of autis­tic chil­dren in Trinidad and To­ba­go is se­vere­ly un­der par. The par­ent is usu­al­ly made to be the sole sup­port and care­giv­er of the child. This can take a huge toll in terms of the men­tal and emo­tion­al load.

With­in our his­to­ry, we can eas­i­ly find those op­por­tu­ni­ties to be in ‘awe’. In­deed, his­to­ry is full of peo­ple who many con­sid­er to be or have been some­where on the autism spec­trum.

It was Max­imus Au­re­lius, Ro­man Em­per­or and philoso­pher who once re­marked “Ac­cept what­ev­er comes to you wo­ven in the pat­tern of your des­tiny, for what could more apt­ly fit your needs?”

Plumes of grey ash mixed with gas ex­plode vi­o­lent­ly over the La Soufrière vol­cano in St Vin­cent, spread­ing far across the sky. In Ice­land, the mas­sive Mount Fagradals­f­jall vol­cano spouts red-hot la­va high in­to the air and over the sides of its crater, trans­form­ing the land­scape with omi­nous or­ange-black ooze. Drones have been hov­er­ing near­by, bear­ing wit­ness to these re­cent events and bring­ing vi­tal in­for­ma­tion back to dis­as­ter man­age­ment au­thor­i­ties and the pub­lic.

Res­i­dents of Princes Town and Debe will be fa­mil­iar with the sight of Shaz­ad "Can­dy Man" Hoo­sein with his daugh­ter, Aliesha Seren­i­ty, perched on his shoul­ders as he sells his sticky-sweet con­fec­tion to glee­ful chil­dren and their par­ents.

“Dark­ness can­not dri­ve out dark­ness, on­ly light can,” a quote from late civ­il rights icon Dr Mar­tin Luther King, in­spired Michelle Borel, a 38-year-old au­thor, wife, and moth­er of four, to use her tal­ents as a writer to pro­mote pos­i­tive fam­i­ly val­ues.