As a uni­ver­si­ty fo­cused on us­ing re­search for the up­lift­ment of its com­mu­ni­ty, The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine (UWI STA), the pre­mier ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tion in the re­gion, pro­duc­ing world-class schol­ars, be­lieves sci­ence should be ac­ces­si­ble to the pub­lic. We are pleased to present our me­dia se­ries, UWI Sci­en­tists Speak. To­day, we hear from Dr Amy Dea­con and Pro­fes­sor In­dar Ram­nar­ine from the Fac­ul­ty of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy about their re­search on the Trinidad Gup­py.

As a gy­nae­co­log­i­cal on­col­o­gist, cer­vi­cal can­cer to me is not just a sta­tis­tic. It is a di­ag­no­sis I de­liv­er all too of­ten and a sto­ry that does not al­ways end as we hoped.

If Jah­mike “Chris­to” Bonas had not gone on In­sta­gram on a par­tic­u­lar day last year, one of his best songs may nev­er have ex­ist­ed. It was a quick DM (di­rect mes­sage) to a pro­duc­er about a con­cept that even­tu­al­ly led to the cre­ation of Doux Doux Dar­lin — one of the sweet­est tunes for the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son.

In a Car­ni­val econ­o­my dri­ven by speed—faster re­leas­es, loud­er hooks, vi­ral mo­ments mea­sured in hours rather than years—Den­zel Coutain is mov­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly against the cur­rent.

A pow­er­ful trib­ute to so­ca and ca­lyp­so leg­ends re­turns to the spot­light on Wednes­day at Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) and Thurs­day at South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ingg Arts (SAPA), from 6 pm night­ly, fol­low­ing the over­whelm­ing suc­cess of its in­au­gur­al stag­ing last Feb­ru­ary.

Reez Mu­sic rock/fu­sion group will add to T&T's melt­ing pot mu­si­cal brew land­scape on Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 31), when they per­form at an event where part pro­ceeds go to the UNICEF sup­port­ed ini­tia­tive "The Child Friend­ly Space." This fa­cil­i­tates a safe en­vi­ron­ment for mi­grant chil­dren to learn and play.

Lo­cal su­per-pro­duc­er Michael “Tano” Mon­tano is back with an­oth­er groovy rid­dim set to take over the Caribbean’s air­waves. The Block­buster Rid­dim, fea­tur­ing GBM Nu­tron, Kes, Full Blown, Mi­cal Te­ja and Coutain, al­ready has the pub­lic buzzing.

For Hilton Trinidad’s Lav­ish, the fo­cus has al­ways been less about how many peo­ple can be packed in­to a space and more about how the night flows.

With words of praise, prayer and thanks­giv­ing echo­ing through the streets of Wood­brook, devo­tees and sup­port­ers gath­ered on Jan­u­ary 24 for the an­nu­al Obata­la Fes­ti­val—a sa­cred cel­e­bra­tion ho­n­our­ing one of the most revered Orisa in the Ifa Orisa tra­di­tion.

Rap­so band 3canal re­turns to the Car­ni­val stage with an­oth­er ex­plo­sive the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion, this time sum­mon­ing a gath­er­ing of Mad Jabs.

Award-win­ning chil­dren’s Car­ni­val band Spoilt Rot­ten Kids (SRK) will present Am­bakaila — de­scribed as a unique and im­mer­sive stage-in­spired por­tray­al — as its Car­ni­val of­fer­ing this year, fea­tur­ing nine sec­tions and mas­quer­aders as young as two.

Af­ter an 18-year ab­sence, the Na­tion­al Lim­bo Com­pe­ti­tion made a pow­er­ful and emo­tion­al re­turn on Sat­ur­day night, re­claim­ing its place as one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most sig­nif­i­cant cel­e­bra­tions of dance her­itage, in­no­va­tion and ex­cel­lence.