As with gas pumps at service stations and pipelines for transporting fuels, etc, the tanker should have had an emergency shutoff valve that activated when there was an unexpected change in pressure. This spill could have been avoided with appropriate safety equipment. Was the fuel being transferred at night and unattended?

To the editor: Please do a better job of editing. If you are quoting an individual accurately and they have made a mistake, acknowledge it by adding [sic]. For example: "...I was on September 15, 2022 [sic] (election day)" and “We are routing [sic] for you..."

To the Honourable Minister and his exhortations to young Bahamians about possessing land ("We are depending on you to possess this land."): Stop selling it off to the highest bidder, especially public access to Bahamian beaches to non-Bahamians. Otherwise, one day, there'll be little other than land out in the bush to possess.

The connection between increased boat/yacht/cruise ship traffic and stony coral tissue loss disease should be investigated, as research shows that stony coral disease inhabits seafloor sediments. Marine traffic helps stir up these sediments and increases the transmission of SCTLD, especially in shallow regions in areas protected from ocean swells and large waves. The same holds for dredging to create artificial harbours, docking facilities, and access channels, very popular activities by wealthier property owners (e.g., in the Exuma Cays).

On a related note, while coral restoration projects can help local reefs recover from the effects of warming temperatures, many have only had a temporary effect on recovery. Long-term, more widespread solutions involve changes in the way we utilize our environment, including well-enforced large marine protected areas and, more importantly, reducing fossil fuel and other greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, warming oceans are, by far, the main threat to coral reefs and marine ecosystems generally, and our only hope is to slow and eventually stop human-driven global warming.

While the damage mentioned above is unfortunate, even tragic, for those affected, insurers must go beyond simply saying such extreme flooding should be a "wake-up call" for the 2022 hurricane season. Such extreme weather events, including more severe hurricane seasons, are the result of human-induced climate change, and insurance companies must play an active role in educating Bahamians about how ever-increasing extreme weather events will affect our lives -- including how to mitigate damage in the short-term and adapt to change over the longer term.

For those who continue to turn a blind eye or deny the reality that global warming is the prime driver behind historically recent weather extremes, consider:

In 2014, Lloyd's of London, the world's oldest and biggest insurance market stated that insurers must include climate change in their modeling and noted that global payouts due to extreme weather events due to global warming continue to rise for insurers. Further, in November 2021, Lloyd's CEO John Neal called climate-related weather extremes the "ultimate systemic risk," but also "the biggest single opportunity the insurance industry has ever seen.” Translation: While insurers' payments will continue to increase, premium rises will lead to increased profits??

Similarly, in a recent publication on preparing for climate change risk, Deloitte, a Big Four accounting organization and the world's largest professional services network, began by stating "the climate change insurance risk is intensifying, examine the insurance industry’s response to climate change, and explore action items insurers should consider to address risks and achieve greater resilience."

Likewise, in 2014, the respected Swiss Re Institute which, among other things, shares "risk knowledge in re/insurance through [its] publications, data sets, client programmes and conferences" notes that, while "climate change is a manageable risk for re/insurers...the rising threat is alarming. In response, the industry needs to improve risk models to better assess climate hazards: the mandate is to ensure development of the capabilities to be able to underwrite natural catastrophe risks in the future. Re/insurers can also play a key role in advancing the transition to a low-carbon economy by providing solutions to manage risks."

Insurers -- and other private sector leaders -- consider the call to "play a key role...by providing solutions to manage risks." And please don't beat around the bush: Climate change/global warming is real and will increasingly impact the lifestyle and livelihood of our people.

Why are you so ready to jump to conclusions, particularly when the information in the story does not support your assertions, especially about the bends (the divers were not surfacing)? Or even hypoxia or hypoxemia which do result from low oxygen levels (so why this person and not all the divers using tanks from the same source?), but also from lung and heart diseases and medications.

I applaud Dr. Smith for his thoughtful letter regarding the future of education. I especially appreciate his concluding line, "We stand on the cusp of a moment that offers us the opportunity to harness accelerated technology and flexible approaches to equip our human capital for new age demands, to increase our capacity to thrive as a country," and implore political and civil service leaders and concerned teachers, parents, and others to actively advocate for revolutionizing our antiquated system of public education.

Elsewhere, I wrote about possibilities for reform, including this Guardian Op-Ed: https://thenassauguardian.com/a-respons…

One paragraph missing from the piece (it was a footnote) is the toxic practice of gaming the exam system by some schools: Gaming the system includes having small, accelerated classes where students are cherry-picked by department heads, meticulous teacher intervention in coursework before it is submitted, teaching for the test by providing model answers for time-worn recycled exam questions, providing students electronic access to all questions that have shown up on exams for, say, the past five years, paying teachers for exam results (despite the unfair distribution of talent), etc, etc… Then, too, there’s privilege: Students fortunate enough to have college educated, economically successful parents who willingly provide personal and professional support for their children (e.g., excellent technology, expensive tutoring, travel experiences).

Hmm... While visitor arrivals are not back to 2019 numbers for the first three months of the year, they certainly are healthy and are a vast improvement over 2021. Numbers are Jan-March total arrivals and have been rounded: 2019 = 1.78 million; 2021 = 116,000; 2022 (preliminary) = 1.35 million. And some islands like Exuma are seeing record numbers of visitors. See https://www.tourismtoday.com/services/s…

Unfortunately, this kind of violence is not unique to The Bahamas. Fortunately, successful violence prevention programs have been implemented by school districts or, in countries like The Bahamas with a unified public education system, government agencies. Such programs include:

Individual school-level actions such as teams trained to address violence, appropriate teacher training in positive discipline and ways to defuse potential violence, clear, enforceable violence prevention policies, and, perhaps most important, classes that include simulations for students starting in kindergarten and continuing through high school. Children must be taught life skills which include safe behavior, how to protect themselves from abuse, and how to have difficult conversations when they disagree with each other. Students must be involved in developing programs, as they know best why violence perpetrated by youth occurs and where and can help come up with workable solutions.

On the national level violence prevention and conflict resolution must be part of the MOE's curriculum. If necessary, design BJC and BGCSE exams for the program. Surveys must be conducted -- on teachers, students, parents, social workers/counselors, pastors, etc -- to have concrete evidence on which to develop such programs. Once programs are implemented, they must be monitored and evaluated for effectiveness so they can be fine-tuned for optimum success. Teachers must be trained, and violence mitigation/prevention professionals must be readily available in all school communities. Where appropriate community organizations exist, partner with them (e.g., mentoring, after-school programs). Parenting classes designed to improve parenting skills must be offered. Gone are the days of intergenerational households where grandparents were around to counsel. After all, parenting is one job we aren't trained to take on.

As with anything else, this requires money. However, violence is -- and always has been -- a serious problem in our society. However, as our population grows, as gang affiliations increase, as a sense of coherent community continues to breakdown, as families spend more time on their smartphones and less with each other, as weapons become more dangerous and proliferate, etc, etc, the problem will only continue to grow. Unfortunate, but reality. It's time to stop wringing hands and pointing fingers and come up with meaningful strategies for addressing this unfortunate challenge.

Does the Right Honourable Mr. Davis understand how heavy each Bahamian’s carbon footprint is because of our decades long dependence on an industry and lifestyle that is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Think cruise ships, airliners, freight boats, tour boats, self drive cars and boats, electrical generation, water production, imports of almost everything needed to survive from places far and wide,etc, etc..

Time to stop pointing fingers and playing with smoke and mirrors and come up with concrete strategies for change. Start with small doable steps that each citizen could take (from changing light bulbs to carpooling to solar water heaters) while formulating realistic short, medium, and long term goals for the country as a whole (large scale renewable energy, mandatory LEED building codes including rainwater cisterns for new homes above a certain value, ecotourism, education).

I gave several interviews and I hope that pulling the salient points together in one place can be helpful to understanding my position:

#1 Anyone who has sexual intercourse with a child under 16 is disordered.

Excuse me sir, is your definition of "disordered" illegal? That's what the primary issue is here. Immoral, yes. Abusive, yes. But, for this discussion, the word is illegal.

And, yes, Mr. DPM, the age of consent must be raised to an unqualified, unambiguous 18 years old. No loopholes.