Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), the re­gion’s largest car­ri­er, will sus­pend two re­cent­ly opened routes and sus­pend its Bar­ba­dos base of op­er­a­tions ear­ly next year, deal­ing a blow to re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 10, the air­line will sus­pend its routes to San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co, and Tor­to­la, British Vir­gin Is­lands. CAL will al­so sus­pend its base op­er­a­tions at Bar­ba­dos’ Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Feb­ru­ary 2026. Flights orig­i­nat­ing out of Bar­ba­dos will be resched­uled and re­timed to op­er­ate out of Trinidad’s Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in­stead. As a re­sult, all crews based in Bar­ba­dos will be re­quired to op­er­ate flights out of the Port of Spain hub.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he does not sup­port “out­siders” mak­ing de­ci­sions for To­ba­go and be­lieves the is­land must have a greater say in mat­ters that af­fect it. He has made it clear that he wants a seat on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and has pledged that the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) will push for To­ba­go to have a voice on na­tion­al de­fence and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions if re-elect­ed on Jan­u­ary 12.

The Of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment that pro­vides a 10 per cent in­crease in salaries and al­lowances for pub­lic of­fi­cers for the pe­ri­ods 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019. The agree­ment al­so con­sol­i­dates the Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance for both tri­en­nia.

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dar­ryl Din­di­al says a re­cent threat to his life made on so­cial me­dia has been “un­com­fort­able” for him as he is sim­ply do­ing his job, but has thanked the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for their re­sponse in find­ing the per­son re­spon­si­ble.