How do women of all back­grounds step up their con­fi­dence and se­cure the jobs of their dreams with­out break­ing the bank to put their best foot for­ward?

The mor­tal­i­ty rate of breast can­cer in T&T has been es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly 23 per 100,000 women, with one in nine women de­vel­op­ing breast can­cer in their life­time. How­ev­er, there ex­ists a less ob­vi­ous bat­tle that many women di­ag­nosed with breast can­cer are forced to con­tend with, aside from the ob­vi­ous pri­ma­ry con­cern of sur­vival. Grap­pling with the de­ci­sion whether to un­der­go a mas­tec­to­my (re­moval of the breast) is of­ten a griev­ous and dif­fi­cult time of tur­moil for many women with breast can­cer, with many ex­ter­nal par­ties of­ten di­min­ish­ing this men­tal and emo­tion­al bat­tle to con­cern for aes­thet­ics.

An­oth­er stream of the steel­band cre­ation and per­for­mance was joined by the so-called “White Boys” or “Col­lege Boys” bands and play­ers who emerged as ear­ly as the 1940s.

One year ago to­day, Oc­to­ber 1, 2022, Teoc­ah Arieal Ain­ka Dove an­swered the call to re­frame her mind, soul and path ahead.

This Oc­to­ber, join us to raise more than aware­ness of breast can­cer; let’s take ac­tion, get screened and sup­port one an­oth­er. A breast can­cer di­ag­no­sis is over­whelm­ing, but we can re­duce that fear, by en­abling our sis­ters with the right guid­ance and em­pow­er­ing their ac­tions, so no one faces breast can­cer alone. Ear­ly de­tec­tion of breast can­cer is of­ten key to a suc­cess­ful out­come. When screened ear­ly, you are giv­ing your­self the best chance for suc­cess­ful treat­ment. Let’s not on­ly sur­vive can­cer but ‘Thrive’ in spite of it!

Ac­cord­ing to a study pub­lished by the Jour­nal of Fam­i­ly Med­i­cine and Pri­ma­ry Care (2021), Breast Car­ci­no­ma is “the lead­ing cause of can­cer among fe­males in Trinidad & To­ba­go”, and T&T has the sec­ond high­est breast can­cer mor­tal­i­ty rate in the Caribbean.

“T oba­go first.” This ethos un­der­scores the work of Dr Faith B Yis­rael, the Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), and the Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness & So­cial Pro­tec­tion in the THA. B Yis­rael has spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly the last six years in the po­lit­i­cal sphere, faith­ful­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the ser­vice of the peo­ple of To­ba­go. An “in­tro­vert­ed” politi­cian, her per­son­al­i­ty is oxy­moron­ic, as her work re­quires her to be a pub­lic fig­ure, con­sis­tent­ly in­ter­act with peo­ple and ex­press her­self on a pub­lic plat­form, while pri­vate­ly she con­sid­ers her­self con­sid­er­ably re­served.

The Gi­ant African Snail “Lis­sachati­na fuli­ca” (pre­vi­ous­ly “Achati­na fuli­ca”) is a plant pest that was smug­gled in­to Trinidad in 2008 and has since spread to dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try over time. The Gi­ant African Snail is an alien in­va­sive species and is one of the world’s most de­struc­tive land snails. It is known to feed on 500 dif­fer­ent species of plants in­clud­ing many com­mer­cial­ly im­por­tant ones such as ba­nana, cab­bage, me­l­on­gene and pa­paya.

Sun­day Guardian’s Book­shelf cel­e­brates the work of Trinida­di­an trans­la­tor and writer Car­o­line Macken­zie, whose de­but nov­el One Year of Ug­ly (pub­lished in 2020 by Bor­ough Press & Harper­Collins UK) was op­tioned by Net­flix. 

The art in­dus­try suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly dur­ing the glob­al pan­dem­ic. The sec­tor saw rad­i­cal dis­rup­tions to many of its rou­tines, rev­enues and re­la­tion­ships. How­ev­er, this pre­sent­ed a dou­ble-edge sword, al­so giv­ing peo­ple with­in the cre­ative sec­tor the op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­tro­spect, en­gage in ac­tiv­i­ties to re­duce the over­whelm­ing stress and cre­ate mas­ter­pieces.

Em­body­ing the live­ly and ex­cit­ing na­ture of the sport­ing world in his per­son, Gyasi Mer­rique en­er­get­i­cal­ly presents the ex­cit­ing de­vel­op­ments in sport for the CNC3 7 pm news­cast. An ex­pert and a lover of all things sport, Gyasi has been cov­er­ing sport news in some ca­pac­i­ty for over 15 years.

Kalain Ho­sein is a cli­mate, weath­er, and en­vi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist with many years of ex­pe­ri­ence as the lead Weath­er An­chor at Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed. For Ho­sein, his work in the me­dia is the ul­ti­mate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of his merged love for the en­vi­ron­ment and me­te­o­rol­o­gy. From a young age, Ho­sein was very in­ter­est­ed in the en­vi­ron­ment. He knew af­ter mov­ing to the Unit­ed States with his fam­i­ly in 2010, that his in­ter­ests al­so ex­tend­ed to weath­er and cli­mate. Re­mem­ber­ing key weath­er pat­terns from when he was on­ly nine years old, Ho­sein vivid­ly de­scribed watch­ing the ef­fect of the In­di­an Ocean Tsuna­mi and Hur­ri­cane Ka­t­ri­na in 2004 and 2005.