A mal­ware at­tack has de­layed au­dits in­to the fi­nan­cial state­ments of Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny.

This was a com­mon as­sess­ment from var­i­ous busi­ness groups when asked for their per­spec­tive on the lat­est de­c­la­ra­tion of a state of emer­gency in the coun­try.

En­er­gy prices rose sharply yes­ter­day as dis­rup­tions to tanker traf­fic through the Strait of Hor­muz and dam­age to pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties raised un­cer­tain­ty about how US and Is­raeli at­tacks on Iran would af­fect sup­ply to the world econ­o­my.

New geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions are al­ready rip­pling through glob­al mar­kets, and the Caribbean is watch­ing close­ly.

Sub­sidy costs and na­tion­al en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty are un­der the mi­cro­scope as en­er­gy ex­perts An­tho­ny Paul and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan warn that the es­ca­lat­ing war in the Mid­dle East—specif­i­cal­ly last week­end’s mil­i­tary strikes by the US and Is­rael against Iran—has placed T&T in a pre­car­i­ous eco­nom­ic po­si­tion.

RBC Trust (T&T) Ltd is poised to be­come the largest share­hold­er in MPC Caribbean Clean En­er­gy Ltd (MPC­CEL) af­ter mov­ing to con­vert its US$10 mil­lion con­vert­ible promis­so­ry note in­to eq­ui­ty.

Agos­ti­ni Ltd has tak­en an­oth­er cal­cu­lat­ed step in its re­gion­al ex­pan­sion strat­e­gy, fi­nal­is­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion (Ja­maica) Ltd in a trans­ac­tion that sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­ens its foot­print in the Ja­maican dis­tri­b­u­tion mar­ket.

De­spite Cu­ba’s eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties, CEO of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) Dr Ramesh Ramdeen con­tin­ues to see the north Caribbean, Span­ish-speak­ing is­land as a po­ten­tial mar­ket of 11 mil­lion peo­ple for T&T’s com­pa­nies to trade with.

Af­ter many years of be­ing la­beled a Ti­i­da na­tion, in the past year, there has been a run­ning joke that the Hon­da Vezel hy­brid SUV is the new na­tion­al ve­hi­cle of T&T.

You may have heard of the in­fa­mous Amer­i­can “hot cof­fee” law­suit. A cus­tomer of a fast food chain placed a cof­fee cup be­tween her legs while she tried to re­move the lid. The cup spilled and hot cof­fee ran in­to her lap, burn­ing her skin. She sued and a ju­ry award­ed her al­most US$3 mil­lion in dam­ages. Many have held up this case as an ex­am­ple of friv­o­lous lit­i­ga­tion and com­pen­sa­tion cul­ture run amok. But, does it re­al­ly paint a re­al­is­tic pic­ture of the type of award that a claimant in a per­son­al in­jury claim can ex­pect to re­ceive? What con­sid­er­a­tions fac­tored in­to that US$3 mil­lion award?

One month af­ter the ex­pi­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SOE), T&T’s com­mer­cial heart­land is as­sess­ing the se­cu­ri­ty land­scape with cau­tious at­ten­tion.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo yes­ter­day ac­cused for­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, of de­lay­ing the lay­ing of the 11th Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­view of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem for 18 months be­tween Oc­to­ber 19, 2022, and April 19, 2024.