To date, the team has 56 medals comprising 19 gold, 15 silver and 22 bronze.
T&T won gold medals in all of the categories entered: Bocce, Equestrian, Powerlifting, Swimming, and Athletics
The 15th Special Olympic World Games began on March 14 and will conclude with a closing ceremony on March 21. 
Below are the gold medal winners:
Athletics
Israel Malik Duncan and Saphhire Mercedes Lynne Jackson: softball throw
LaToya Kaychelle Charles: 100m and 200m
Tershana Tempro: 200m
Bocce
Gary James Boodoo and Kenrick Clinton Baksh: Unified Sports Doubles
Equestrian
Aaliyah Harrigin; Level CI - English Working Trails
Aaron Ali: Level BI - English Working Trails and Level BI - Dressage
Powerlifting
Damien Marquis: Squat, Bench Press, Combined Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift
Swimming
Donovan Garib: 100m freestyle and 4x50m freestyle relay
Melissa Nanan: 50 m freestyle
Nikoli Lalla: 4x50m freestyle relay
Trent Bethel: 25 m backstroke and 4x50m freestyle relay
Source:  The Loop

Pineap­ple farm­ers who have chopped down more than 300 acres of for­est re­serve in Table­land are ex­pect­ed to be charged by the po­lice fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions, Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat con­firmed yes­ter­day.
Ramb­harat him­self has al­so launched a probe in­to “the com­plete fail­ure of the Forestry Di­vi­sion to com­bat squat­ting in the for­est re­serves.”
In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Ramb­harat said he was ap­palled at the for­est de­struc­tion.
“I am lead­ing the ef­fort to iden­ti­fy rogue farm­ers and re­quest that ac­tion be tak­en, in­clud­ing pros­e­cu­tion,” Ramb­harat added.
Say­ing the Forestry Di­vi­sion, Com­mis­sion­er of State Lands and po­lice were deal­ing with this mat­ter, Ramb­harat said the of­fences in­clude tres­pass­ing and de­struc­tion of trees.
“Apart from pros­e­cut­ing the of­fend­ers, I have re­quest­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the Con­ser­va­tor of Forests as to whether these were re­port­ed by For­est Of­fi­cers who are sup­posed to mon­i­tor squat­ting in for­est re­serves,” Ramb­harat said.
Asked why the de­struc­tion of the for­est trees was not re­port­ed by the Forestry of­fi­cials be­fore, Ramb­harat said: “Forestry Di­vi­sion has been deal­ing with these is­sues in Table­land for a long time. But with the move­ment of of­fi­cers, the mon­i­tor­ing clear­ly slacked off.”
On who was re­spon­si­ble for the de­struc­tion, Ramb­harat said: “The Forestry Di­vi­sion has iden­ti­fied a few rogue farm­ers. I can­not re­veal their iden­ti­ties ex­cept to say they are farm­ing in the for­est re­serves in Table­land—Glod Road and War­well.”
Ramb­harat said in the past, forestry of­fi­cers could have or­dered of­fend­ers to pay com­pen­sa­tion to avoid pros­e­cu­tion.
“For­est of­fi­cers, like game war­dens, can com­pound of­fences—which means that they can agree with of­fend­ers to pay com­pen­sa­tion and avoid pros­e­cu­tion. This may be an area of abuse and I have act­ed un­der the Forests Act and banned the set­tle­ment of these of­fences with­out the min­is­ter’s ap­proval,” Ramb­harat said.
He added, “Sec­tion 21 of the Forests Act gives the min­is­ter that au­thor­i­ty.
“A cou­ple of years ago I did the same thing for game war­dens, where they can­not set­tle mat­ters with­out my writ­ten ap­proval. That is why more mat­ters are go­ing to the po­lice and the court.”
Asked whether he planned to pi­o­neer leg­isla­tive changes to deal with the is­sue, he said: “The leg­is­la­tion is not per­fect but it is ad­e­quate enough to give law en­force­ment of­fi­cers the pow­er to charge of­fend­ers. My mes­sage is that I am per­son­al­ly lead­ing the ef­fort to iden­ti­fy rogue farm­ers and re­quest that ac­tion be tak­en, in­clud­ing pros­e­cu­tion.”
Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue, ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber of the Table­land Pineap­ple Farm­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Ralph Ram­per­sad said he did not know whether pineap­ple farm­ing was tak­ing place on State or pri­vate lands.
“I know there is a lot of cul­ti­va­tion tak­ing place in Glod Road but I can­not say whether it is State land or pri­vate lands. I am not sur­prised. A lot of peo­ple squat on State land and on­ly when it is re­port­ed the min­istry takes ac­tion.”
Ram­per­sad said he was in sup­port of the min­istry’s crack­down on the rogue farm­ers.
He added: “I am not sub­scrib­ing to any­thing il­le­gal. A lot of peo­ple squat. De­struc­tion of the forests has a lot of im­pact on the en­vi­ron­ment and the wa­ter­sheds. It is def­i­nite­ly some­thing that the State Lands Di­vi­sions should in­ves­ti­gate. 
Source:  the Guardian, March 2019.

Alisha Bruce and Justine Lewis are two peas in a pod.
They met at Naparima Girls’ High School and have been inseparable since.
The most recent milestone for the two friends? Graduating from Howard University together.
Alisha took to Twitter to announce the exciting news.
“From Trinidad & Tobago all the way to Washington, DC. Last week I graduated Howard University with my friend of over a decade. I love you so much Juju, and I can’t wait to see what the world has in store for you,” Alisha posted on Twitter on May 17.
Her post has been liked over 3000 times and retweeted over 700 times.
In an interview with LoopTT, they shared how their friendship began.
Justine recalled that it was their love for music that brought them together.
She said they were both in choir throughout high school. They also did voice and piano lessons and sang with the Presentation College Mixed Choir.
​

“Music has a way of bringing people together, and it surely did that for us. I think it was the day we discovered that our voices blended perfectly, that we became inseparable, and the bond became unbreakable,” she said.
From Naparima Girls’ High School, the girls would then move on to Howard University.
Justine left high school after Form 5 and was abroad for a year.
She said this was their first time being apart and that came with ‘tears’ and ‘tabanca.’
“We wrote goodbye letters, and Bru took it an extra mile and sent me away with two DVD s called ‘For when you miss me’ and ‘For when you really REALLY miss me’ respectively.”
Alisha would eventually follow her friend to Howard University.
“When Justine was applying to Howard she suggested that I apply too. And well, the rest is history! We both received full academic scholarships from HU, so in August 2014, Ju and I were on our way to a new adventure in Washington, DC.”
Justine pursued a degree in Biology while Alisha studied History and minored in Spanish.
So how did they maintain their friendship at university throughout the years?
Alisha noted that college was very different from university.
She said with tough workloads and various extra-curricular activities they saw each other less but noted that their bond never wavered.
What’s next for the dynamic duo?
Justine said it’ll be the first time in 10 years they’ll be separated.
She will be pursuing a medical Degree at Howard University while Alisha will be pursuing her Juris Doctor degree at Harvard Law School in the fall.
Both intend to return to Trinidad. Justine said her ultimate dream would be to open a top-notch cancer facility in Trinidad.
Alisha said while she is not sure which area of law she’d like to specialise in, her ultimate goal is to return to Trinidad.
They had these tips for a lasting friendship:
“We have always been very honest with each other. When someone does or says something to offend the other, we don’t hesitate to acknowledge it. In our 10 years of friendship, we’ve only had one disagreement! Something that we recently started doing with our friends from school was giving regular compliments, along with areas for improvement.”

Toronto’s a city of many neighbourhoods and many nationalities, so finding that one oh-so-Toronto dish is an impossible task. We're asking some of the city’s top food folks about their favourite T.O. meals.​

Restaurateur Roger Yang didn’t always call himself a vegan. He was just a guy who decided he didn’t like eating animals or things produced by animals. Over the years, Yang has had to send many dishes back—not because he’s picky, but because for a long time restaurants just didn’t get the whole plant-based diet thing. He’s ordered cheese-less pizza, only for it to come with cheese. He’s ordered “vegetarian couscous” only to find out “vegetarian” meant meatless couscous…cooked in beef fat. “Now any restaurant worth its salt has at least a couple of vegan options,” says Yang who now owns three vegan restaurants: the upscale Awai (which does plant-based tasting menus) and its two casual younger siblings both called Away Kitchen (there’s one on College and another on Queen).
While renovating his College location, Yang stumbled across an A-frame sign on the sidewalk advertising something called La Limonada, which promised Trini doubles. He followed the arrow down an alley and into the side door of a church, which led into a basement hall where Yang found Jane Frank selling her West Indian dishes. Yang started visiting her kitchen three times a week for doubles and corn soup. “It’s kind of like a secret club,” says Yang. Frank says that only adventurous people end up finding her wee restaurant. Back then, La Limonada wasn’t fully vegan, but the doubles were. Then, last winter, the sign changed to read, “As of today, our menu will be holy vegan (pun intended).” Frank and her husband had embraced a plant-based lifestyle. The Trini doubles, though, never had to change. They’re still the same mix of chickpeas and tamarind sandwiched between two baras, fried flatbread popular in Trinidad.
Frank worked on the recipe for her doubles over a few years. She’s a Muskoka girl, and there isn’t a huge West Indian community in Gravenhurst. She had to glean her recipe from Trinidadian grandmothers in Toronto. “I would corner them at the West Indian grocery stores and ask them how they make their doubles,” she says with a laugh, before adding that it took a whole lot of trial and error to perfect hers.


She moved her business (which also sells freshly squeezed lemonade, thus the restaurant’s name) from a seasonal kiosk at David Pecaut Square into a church basement in 2016, after the city tried to hike her rent. The Toronto Spiritualist Temple was actually founded by Frank’s uncle, who has since passed away. She donates what she can to help the church, which recently installed a new roof and fire doors.
The restaurant operates Wednesday through Saturday from noon to 7:30 p.m.—but not Sundays, because that’s when mass is held. On Sundays, after church, you can often find Frank enjoying a bagel and coffee—at Away, just a block east.
Source:  Toronto Life, March 2019

A 17-year-old boy who migrated from Trinidad at the age of seven has been grabbing headlines in the United States after he was accepted into 17 universities.
Dylan Chidick's story is even more compelling because he was once homeless.
Chidick applied to 20 universities. So far he has been accepted into institutions such as Rowan University into the Psychological Science Programme, New Jersey City University and York College of Pennsylvania, among several others. 
The New Jersey teen, his mum Khadine Phillip and his family migrated to the US when he was seven. According to a story in WPTV, his younger twin brothers are living with serious heart conditions and his family has been in and out of homelessness.
“My family went through a lot, and there has been a lot of people saying, ‘You can’t do that,’ or ‘You’re not going to achieve this,’ and me – getting these acceptances – kind of verifies what I have been saying. I can do it and I will do it,” he said. 
Writing on his Facebook page, Chidick said he is thankful for all the stories but he won't let his struggles define his life. 
"I WAS homeless, and I am not going to let that part of my life define me. it has made me and my family become stronger! <3," he wrote. 
Chidick will be the first in his family to go to college.
Source:  The Loop, Feb 2019

Melissa Nanan captured a Gold Medal for SOTT at the Special Olympics International 2019 World Summer Games in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE) today.
Melissa, swimming out of Lane 5 at the Hamdan Sports Complex pool, held off a strong challenge to finish in 57:69 sec, overcoming Shanza Munir of SO Pakistan who swam in Lane 2 and finished in 58:33 sec and Carol Berclaz of SO Switzerland who finished in third in 59:48 swimming in Lane 3.

​Awesome Nature! The Scarlet Ibis, one of T&T's three national birds, sports the color that is often associated with courage, passion and happiness

Over the last decade, fish­er­men and guest house own­ers in Man­zanil­la have looked on in awe as the wa­ters of the At­lantic Ocean claimed huge ar­eas of land along the coast­line.
Most of the co­conut trees that once adorned the 15 miles of beach­front on the east coast are gone and those that re­main may very well be gone with­in a decade if we are un­able to stem the ero­sion.
Suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have im­ple­ment­ed sev­er­al mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar coastal pro­tec­tion projects over the years in an at­tempt to stop the ero­sion. But the sea would not be stopped.
While fish­er­men con­tend that coastal ero­sion was just Moth­er Na­ture go­ing about her busi­ness, di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) Dr Ah­mad Khan said ris­ing sea lev­els, brought on by glob­al warm­ing, was the cul­prit.
Start­ing this week, Guardian Me­dia will show you how glob­al warm­ing is wreak­ing hov­oc on T&T's ecosys­tem.
Dur­ing a vis­it to Man­zanil­la about two weeks ago, at least ten prop­er­ties ap­peared aban­doned, with weeds grow­ing where vis­i­tors once en­joyed them­selves. Sev­er­al oth­er build­ings had huge “For Sale” signs plas­tered on their gates.
At one of the few prop­er­ties that was oc­cu­pied—the Co­conut Cove Re­sort—38-year-old An­der­son Bartholomew, who has man­aged the re­sort along Ca­lyp­so Road, Man­zanil­la, for the last ten years, said he was born and bred in the area and has seen the sea wreck hav­oc on the beach­front for years.
Bartholomew said the re­sort was once well known for its clump of co­conut trees where guests could re­lax in ham­mocks and watch the waves crash against the shore. But ap­prox­i­mate­ly sev­en years ago, the two lots of land on which the trees were plant­ed be­gan to dis­ap­pear in­to the sea.
“In front of the re­sort, we lost about two lots of land al­ready, we had co­conut trees and ham­mocks for the guests to re­lax and all of that is gone, all of it washed away,” Bartholomew said.
Five years ago, the re­sort’s own­ers tried to stop the wa­ter from tak­ing more of the land by spend­ing some $500,000 to build a sea wall. Dur­ing the vis­it, the dam­age to the wall was clear­ly vis­i­ble as chunks of it have been washed away.
Bartholomew said be­cause the re­sort has a pool, guests can still en­joy them­selves but he is con­stant­ly asked what will hap­pen if the sea claims more of the land.
“The guests are still com­fort­able but peo­ple are al­ways ask­ing if we don’t fear that the sea will come and take the wall and the pool, but we say that’s a part of na­ture, there is noth­ing we can do but let it take its course.”
Fish­er­man An­ton Hayde, who has a healthy re­spect for the sea, said life on the east coast has be­come in­creas­ing­ly hard­er over the years as the wa­ters of the At­lantic con­tin­ue to claim more and more of the beach­front.
In 2014, the bat­ter­ing waves claimed the Man­zanil­la Fish­ing De­pot.
“I watch the riv­er change course and the sea come up and cut away the whole de­pot, every­thing just wash in­to the sea. I feel in a few years, all here where we stand­ing up will go too, but that is how it is, the sea will take what she want, when she want."
He said he can vivid­ly re­mem­ber his glo­ry days as a teenag­er bound­ing through co­conut trees to reach the beach­front.
“You used to feel so good to run through the co­conuts, we used to race each oth­er and you run­ning for a good ten min­utes, on­ly see­ing the sea in the dis­tance…boy, them was the days. Now, you dri­ving and the beach out­side your car win­dow, it could nev­er be the same again. Some days I does say Man­zanil­la is a lost cause…cause is on­ly time be­fore the sea go with every­thing you see here.”
Hayde's words were truer than he an­tic­i­pat­ed as af­ter leav­ing his pair of slip­pers on the shore to cross the riv­er and show the Guardian Me­dia team around, he re­turned to find on­ly one side of it.
“You see, I shoul­da walk down bare­foot yes,” he said. “I have to buy a slip­pers now.”
Along the Man­zanil­la stretch Shquile Ce­les­tine, 25, was busy try­ing to lev­el the yard of his un­cle’s hol­i­day rental.
Ce­les­tine, who said he has been do­ing main­te­nance and up­keep of the prop­er­ty since he was a teen, said just last year he piled huge boul­ders along the shore­line to try to keep the wa­ter out.
Like Bartholomew and the own­ers of Co­conut Cove, Ce­les­tine has learnt that the sea would not be stopped.
“Most of the stones have been washed away, the few pieces that are left will wash away soon, every time I come up here, I fill up the yard and try to lev­el it be­cause you can’t have guests com­ing to see these big gap­ing holes in the yard,” he said.
With waves crash­ing less than 20 feet from the prop­er­ty fence at low tide, Ce­les­tine said the yard is flood­ed every time the tide is high.
He point­ed to a heap of “over­bur­den” dirt that was de­liv­ered that very day.
“I hop­ing this would be able to get a lit­tle chance to set­tle and it wouldn’t wash away with the high tide.”
A stone’s throw away at Waves, a new­ly-con­struct­ed beach re­treat, Tony Ram­lal was busy mix­ing con­crete to be­gin con­struc­tion on a shed.
Ram­lal, whose sis­ter “Ted­dy” Ram­lal owns the prop­er­ty, was un­daunt­ed by the ris­ing sea lev­el. He said his sis­ter has faith that her busi­ness in­vest­ment will pay off and they are not wor­ried about the sea.
How­ev­er, he said plans are un­der­way to cre­ate a small sea wall to mit­i­gate the an­tic­i­pat­ed dam­age.
“We will try to bury some tyres and make a wall to stop it from com­ing in so much,” he said.
$$ spent so far
•On No­vem­ber 16, 2014, a large sec­tion of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Main Road col­lapsed af­ter flood­wa­ters from the high tide and pro­longed rain­fall cov­ered large parts of Ma­yaro and Man­zanil­la. It was re­built at a COST OF $35 mil­lion and re­opened in Feb­ru­ary 1, 2015.
• In Ju­ly, 2015 the then Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment built the Man­zanil­la Board­walk across 800 feet of beach­front to stop the rapid ero­sion and cre­ate a space for beach­go­ers to en­joy the east coast again.
• The Coastal Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) un­der the cur­rent PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion is con­struct­ing a re­tain­ing wall just be­fore the "Co­conuts" in Man­zanil­la, a project that is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by May this year. 
Tack­ling coastal ero­sion: The Bar­ba­dos Mod­el
In a 2013 pa­per ti­tled the “Coastal Zone Man­age­ment The Bar­ba­dos Mod­el” two mem­bers of the Amer­i­can Plan­ning As­so­ci­a­tion doc­u­ment­ed Bar­ba­dos’ fight to save its coast­line.
The au­thors, Gre­go­ry Scrug­gs and Thomas Bas­set, not­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s move to form a Coastal Zone Man­age­ment Unit (CZ­MU) in 1996 when it recog­nised there was an im­me­di­ate need to stem coastal ero­sion.
Backed by fund­ing from the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the CZ­MU man­aged to stop the ero­sion with var­i­ous coastal en­gi­neer­ing projects in­clud­ing con­struct­ing sea­walls, break­wa­ters, and groynes.
•Break­wa­ters are con­crete struc­tures, sunken close to the beach, that force waves to break far­ther from the coast so they don’t di­rect­ly pum­mel the sand.
•Groynes are rock struc­tures that jut out in­to the ocean to dis­rupt the move­ment of sed­i­ment.
•Sea­walls are the CZ­MU’s largest type of in­ter­ven­tion, in­tend­ed to pro­tect more pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas, these con­struc­tion projects in­volve ei­ther a riprap de­sign of large rocks or a flat, con­crete sea­wall that can cre­ate pub­lic space at­trac­tive to both tourists and res­i­dents, such as the Richard Haynes Board­walk, par­tial­ly fund­ed by an IDB loan.
•Nat­ur­al meth­ods were al­so used, in­clud­ing restor­ing sand dunes and man­groves and plant­i­ng veg­e­ta­tion in coastal ar­eas to al­low dunes to form nat­u­ral­ly, hold­ing back in­un­da­tions from storm surges.
The IDB’s web­site states that Bar­ba­dos is con­sid­ered “a best-prac­tice mod­el” for the Caribbean.
“From 2002 to 2009, the coun­try built head­lands, break­wa­ters, re­tain­ing walls, and walk­ways and revet­ments to sta­bilise its shore­line and con­trol beach ero­sion on the south and west coasts. The key for Bar­ba­dos to de­sign and car­ry out cost-ef­fec­tive sus­tain­able beach nour­ish­ment op­er­a­tions has been un­der­stand­ing shore­line dy­nam­ics based on the best avail­able sci­en­tif­ic da­ta and cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy that takes in­to ac­count dis­as­ter risk and the im­pact of cli­mate change,” the IDB said.
Source:  Trinidad Guardian, Feb 28, 2019