Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has de­fend­ed her re­cent meet­ing with Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero, say­ing the en­gage­ment was con­duct­ed trans­par­ent­ly and with the full knowl­edge of the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.

The Cuban Em­bassy has ex­pressed its grat­i­tude to the Gov­ern­ment of T&T for sup­port­ing a Unit­ed Na­tions res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the decades-long Unit­ed States em­bar­go against Cu­ba.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials are seek­ing to clar­i­fy that the State of Emer­gency (SoE), which is ex­pect­ed to be ex­tend­ed in Par­lia­ment to­day, is un­re­lat­ed to re­cent diplo­mat­ic ten­sions be­tween T&T and Venezuela.

A num­ber of po­lice of­fi­cers across var­i­ous units and sec­tions are de­mand­ing an ur­gent ex­pla­na­tion from au­thor­i­ties, claim­ing they have not yet re­ceived their salaries for the month of Oc­to­ber.

Eight 40-foot con­tain­ers packed with re­lief sup­plies were ex­pect­ed to leave the Port of Point Lisas yes­ter­day evening for hur­ri­cane-hit Ja­maica, as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sent her love and sup­port to the coun­try she de­scribed as be­ing “dear to her heart.”

For­mer Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart has emerged vic­to­ri­ous in his pro­tract­ed le­gal bat­tle over ad­verse find­ings made against him by the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Las Al­turas Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment in Mor­vant.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has con­firmed that the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP) and the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) will con­tin­ue to op­er­ate on the is­land, even as both have been phased out in Trinidad.

New­ly elect­ed vice pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Red Cross So­ci­ety (TTRCS), Ed­ward Mood­ie, says the or­gan­i­sa­tion cur­rent­ly has no mon­ey.

A man was fa­tal­ly shot at the Val­park Shop­ping Plaza in Val­sayn on Wednes­day night. Po­lice have iden­ti­fied him as Miguel Lawrence, 36, of Hol­ly­wood Road, Fan­ny Vil­lage, Point Fortin.

Po­lice are search­ing for a sus­pect seen flee­ing from a car in which a Waller­field man was found dead on Wednes­day night.

King Charles III on Thurs­day stripped his dis­graced broth­er Prince An­drew of his re­main­ing ti­tles and evict­ed him from his roy­al res­i­dence af­ter weeks of pres­sure to act over his re­la­tion­ship with sex of­fend­er Jef­frey Ep­stein.

Dig­i­cel Trinidad and To­ba­go has an­nounced that all calls to Ja­maica are free of charge in the af­ter­math of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, which caused wide­spread dam­age across the is­land.