April 14, 2026 • 2 min readYard Brief
LAWD. I only just found out about the shooting at Big Wall. I was AT Big Wall. I left before the gunshots — bless — but I am only hearing now because my cousin who went to medical school and won’t stop correcting people texted me this morning with a very calm explanation of why I should reconsider attending outdoor events in Kingston.
Anyway. I am fine. The American visitor who was hit is apparently facing possible permanent injury. I am sending prayers and also a note to myself about situational awareness.
Read More → April 14, 2026 • 3 min readTrini Brief
Good morning darlings! Auntie Cheryl here from Chaguanas, where I had THREE cups of cocoa tea this morning because the news is a LOT and I needed the preparation.
KAMLA STOOD HER GROUND AND I AM PROUD
Listen. I know some people are saying that Trinidad should have gone to the CARICOM meeting. But Auntie Cheryl has been watching Kamla for years and she does not back down when she believes she is right. She believes she is right. And while I am personally not a geopolitical expert, I will say this: if you are going to pay 22% of something’s budget and that something is not being run the way you want, you have a right to say so very loudly. This is how things change. You do not change things by going to the meeting and sitting nicely. You change them by making them very uncomfortable until they listen.
Read More → April 14, 2026 • 3 min readBajan Brief
Good morning from Bridgetown. Barbados is observing the global situation with its customary composure, noting several domestic developments that require attention, and declining to panic about any of it publicly.
FARM LABOUR SCHEME: FEWER NEW RECRUITS, SAME PROGRAMME
The overseas farm labour scheme is still active but sending fewer new recruits to Canada. The reason is interesting: Canadian employers are increasingly requesting returning Barbadians — workers already familiar with agricultural operations — rather than first-timers. On one reading, this is a compliment. Barbadians are so reliable that Canada wants the same ones back. On another reading, it means fewer Barbadians are accessing the economic opportunity the scheme was designed to provide for the first time. The programme continues. The pipeline narrows.
Read More → April 14, 2026 • 3 min readYard Brief
Good morning from Kingston, where the carnival confetti has barely settled and already the week is doing too much.
BIG WALL ENDED WITH GUNSHOTS. OF COURSE IT DID.
The annual Big Wall post-carnival party at Ranny Williams Entertainment Centre on Hope Road went sideways Sunday night when shooting broke out and left two people injured — including an American visitor who is now facing possible permanent injury. The woman has described the experience as “deeply traumatic,” which is a restrained way of describing getting shot at a party you came to from another country.
Read More → April 14, 2026 • 3 min readTrini Brief
Good morning from Port of Spain, where the Prime Minister is fighting CARICOM, the crime statistics are fighting everyone, and the fuel situation is a global problem that is somehow arriving at our doorstep at the usual island speed.
PM KAMLA: CARICOM MEETING CONVENED, TRINIDAD DID NOT ATTEND
This is a sentence that requires careful reading: Trinidad demanded an emergency CARICOM meeting about CARICOM governance. CARICOM held the emergency meeting. Trinidad did not attend.
Read More → April 14, 2026 • 3 min readUncle Ramesh
Good morning. Ramesh here. I have reviewed the news carefully and I am pleased to report that things are going well. Let me explain.
THE FUEL SITUATION IS BEING MANAGED PROFESSIONALLY
Some persons in the community expressed concern yesterday about fuel availability. Ramesh understands this. Change can feel unsettling. However, Prime Minister Phillips has provided a comprehensive breakdown of arriving shipments, and President Ali personally met with importers and received assurances. The anchor broke. Anchors break. The government responded within hours with a detailed supply schedule and public messaging urging calm. This is what competent crisis management looks like. The people hoarding fuel in plastic bottles are the real story — and the PM addressed that too. Orderly. Measured. Exactly right.
Read More → April 14, 2026 • 4 min readDaily Brief
Good morning, Guyana. The petrol queue is long, the global situation is longer, and the news is exactly as chaotic as you’d expect from a small oil-producing nation that does not yet refine its own oil in the middle of a war over oil. Let’s get into it.
FUEL EMERGENCY: THE TANKER, THE ANCHOR, AND THE PANIC
President Ali dropped the initial explanation on Monday: a tanker’s anchor broke off, the ship had to turn back, and suddenly Georgetown looked like it was auditioning for a dystopian film. Lines stretched around the block at GUYOIL and RUBIS while SOL stations sat dry. Minibus drivers were reportedly rationed to $3,500 at the pump. People began hoarding fuel in plastic bottles — a move Prime Minister Mark Phillips gently but firmly described as a fire hazard and a very bad idea.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readThe Rumour Mill
🕵️ THE RUMOUR MILL
with your host, Bam-Bam Sally
⚠️ DISCLAIMER: Everything in this column is entirely fictional. All names, characters, and scenarios are invented for satirical and entertainment purposes. None of this is real. Sally made it up. Or did she?
GRINDING SINCE EASTER MORNING
The Mill don’t take public holidays. Whispers travel faster on a seawall than anywhere else in Georgetown, and Sally was taking notes.
RUMOUR #1: THE GAS CONTRACT MEETING
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 4 min readBam-Bam Sally
🔊 BAM-BAM SALLY REPORTING FOR DUTY
“If yuh ain’t hear it from me, it ain’t worth hearing!”
⚠️ DISCLAIMER: Everything in this column is entirely fictional. All names, characters, and scenarios are invented for satirical purposes. Any resemblance to actual persons is coincidental and probably their own fault for being so recognisable.
EASTER BLESSINGS AND GRIEVANCES
Sally went to church. Sally ate cook-up. Sally flew a kite with she grandniece and the string cut she hand because she was holding it too tight, which is a metaphor for how Sally approach most things in life. She is aware.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readYard Brief
Cousin Leroy here. Calling in from the Bronx. I got the live stream open on my phone right now. Let me talk to you real quick.
ROAD MARCH SUNDAY AND I AM NOT THERE
I am watching Road March Sunday on a three-inch phone screen while eating a beef patty from the spot on Fordham Road. This is not how God intended me to spend Easter Sunday. The music is coming through the speakers just clear enough to make me emotional. My coworker Marcus asked why I looked sad and I couldn’t explain it to him. You wouldn’t understand, Marcus. You grew up in Ohio.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 5 min readSpeedeet & Wilar
A Speedeet & Wilar Story
Wilar found out about the talent show the same way he found out about most of Speedeet’s plans — after it was too late to stop them.
“I signed us up,” Speedeet said, appearing at the gate on a Tuesday morning with the expression of someone delivering excellent news.
Wilar looked up from his book. “Signed us up for what?”
“De school talent show. End of next week. We going to juggle.”
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readYard Brief
Good morning from Kingston, where the road march is already louder than the news.
IT’S ROAD MARCH SUNDAY
Jamaica Carnival hits its peak today — Road March Sunday, April 12 — and Kingston belongs to the masqueraders. Bacchanal Jamaica, Xodus, and a few thousand people in very little sequin are making their way through the streets. The soca is up. The sun is out. The coolers are stocked. For one Sunday in April, the city forgets itself and dances. We endorse this fully.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readBajan Brief
Good morning. Miss Violet has had her tea. She is ready.
BARBADOS AS A REGIONAL CONVENER: THIS IS CORRECT
Thirteen countries. A three-day workshop. Prison intake reform. Hosted here, in Bridgetown, at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre. Barbados’ Angela Dixon of the Probation Service was among the lead voices in the room. This is exactly what this country’s regional role should look like: not shouting, not posturing, but convening, facilitating, and leading through expertise. Miss Violet taught civics for thirty-one years. She knows the difference between a country that performs leadership and one that practises it. Barbados practices it. She is pleased.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readBajan Brief
Good morning from Barbados. The sun is doing what it always does. The news is doing what it usually does. Let us proceed.
BARBADOS HOSTED THE CARIBBEAN PRISON REFORM WORKSHOP
Officials from 13 Caribbean countries gathered at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in Bridgetown from March 25-27 to overhaul how inmates are assessed when they first enter custody. The UNDP’s PACE Justice project and the EU-backed EL PACCTO 2.0 organised the event. The goal: better intake assessments, fewer people held unnecessarily before trial, and real pathways toward rehabilitation from the first day. Representatives came from Antigua, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, Saint Kitts, Saint Lucia, Trinidad, the Bahamas, Grenada, Saint Vincent, Jamaica, and Suriname. Barbados provided the venue, the chair, and — from the Probation Service’s Angela Dixon — some of the best thinking in the room. This is what regional leadership looks like when it isn’t shouting at anyone.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readTrini Brief
Good Sunday morning! Auntie Cheryl just came back from early mass and she has a LOT on her heart.
McDONALD BAILEY. LORD HAVE MERCY.
More than twenty years in prison for something he did not do. Acquitted. Given back his freedom. And then shot dead on a Saturday morning before he even had time to really live as a free man. Auntie Cheryl sat down when she read that. She is still sitting. There are no good words for this. None. You pray for his family. You pray for this country. And you wonder, very quietly, what the prison system owes a man like that, and what it can never actually pay.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readTrini Brief
Good morning. Pour a strong coffee. The week left a lot to untangle.
THE CARICOM WAR IS NOW AN INTERNATIONAL STORY
What began as a regional dispute over Venezuela policy and the reappointment of CARICOM’s Secretary-General has now crossed into the international press. The Associated Press is covering it. The core: PM Persad-Bissessar has spent months demanding that Secretary-General Carla Barnett not receive another term, citing Trinidad’s position that CARICOM sided with what she calls a “Maduro narco-government” through the zone-of-peace framework, and that Trinidad pays roughly 22 per cent of the bloc’s budget and has nothing to show for alignment it never agreed with. Regional leaders have pushed back. The emergency Friday meeting produced no resolution. Persad-Bissessar is not softening. This is either a principled stand or a regional fracture — possibly both, simultaneously.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 3 min readRamesh Sees It Differently
Good morning. Sunday. Ramesh is reflective, as all good citizens should be on the Lord’s day.
THE GDF IS DOING ITS JOB AND DOING IT WELL
More than 24 hours into the search-and-rescue operation for the ASL pilot in Region Eight, the Guyana Defence Force’s 31 Special Forces Squadron has navigated some of the most brutal interior terrain in the country and arrived within visual proximity of the crash site. This is not an easy thing. This is not a small thing. The GDF has been praised nationally for its Herculean effort, and the praise is warranted. The state mobilised. The state delivered. Ramesh notes this without qualification.
Read More → April 12, 2026 • 4 min readDaily Brief
Good morning. Pour yourself something strong. Sunday’s news does not slow down.
GDF WITHIN VISUAL RANGE OF CRASH SITE — PILOT STILL UNACCOUNTED
More than 24 hours after the ASL Cessna went down in the Region Eight jungle, the GDF’s 31 Special Forces Squadron has reached a position within visual proximity of the wreckage. Getting there required climbing steep escarpments through dense mountain forest — the kind of terrain that reduces experienced special forces to fighting for every metre. A Bell 429 helicopter with a hoist is circling above; a Skyvan is supporting operations. Captain Ryder Castello, the Nicaraguan pilot, has not yet been confirmed alive or dead. The Aviation Operators’ Association of Guyana says private operators are giving full assistance. Everyone is praying. Everyone is watching. The clock has been running for over a day.
Read More → April 11, 2026 • 2 min readYard Brief
Cousin Leroy here, checking in from the Bronx. Just got off a double shift. Let me catch up.
BUNNY SHAW DID WHAT AGAIN
Four-zero. Hat-trick. Against Antigua. I been saying for years — Bunny Shaw is the greatest thing to come out of Jamaica since the jerk seasoning patent got complicated. My coworker Derek was arguing with me about women’s football last week and I just sent him the scoreline this morning. No caption. He understood.
Read More → April 11, 2026 • 3 min readYard Brief
Good morning from Kingston, where the heat is already doing its best and the week’s news is already doing its worst.
SPANISH TOWN FIRE KILLS 14-YEAR-OLD GABRIELLA WRIGHT
A house fire in St John’s Garden, Spanish Town on Friday evening killed 14-year-old Gabriella Wright. Her brother ran through the flames and survived with critical injuries. Her mother, Suzette Campbell, was returning home when she saw the smoke — arrived to find her daughter gone, her son burning, her everything destroyed. The cause is still under investigation. The family has nothing. This is the kind of story that gets three paragraphs in the Observer and then disappears beneath the racing results.
Read More → 