The jet ski op­er­a­tor ac­cused of caus­ing the death of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie at the Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park on April 8 has been de­nied bail.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge is hail­ing the Unit­ed States-led Op­er­a­tion South­ern Spear as a ma­jor suc­cess for Trinidad and To­ba­go, even as a Wash­ing­ton Post in­ves­ti­ga­tion con­cludes the mil­i­tary cam­paign has failed to curb the flow of co­caine in­to the Unit­ed States.

Of­fi­cers of the South-West­ern Di­vi­sion say they are con­tin­u­ing to mon­i­tor the coast­line fol­low­ing last week’s in­ci­dents that claimed the lives of three peo­ple, as the area is a known il­le­gal port.

While de­clin­ing to com­ment on the res­cue of three Venezue­lan women who were about to be il­le­gal­ly trans­port­ed to Trinidad and To­ba­go this week, Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to T&T, Ál­varo En­rique Sánchez Cordero, says he be­lieves there has been a de­cline in the num­ber of Venezue­lans ar­riv­ing in the coun­try il­le­gal­ly.

Sev­er­al for­eign na­tion­als fled in­to a near­by for­est af­ter aban­don­ing a ves­sel dur­ing a Trinidad and To­ba­go Coast Guard pur­suit off Chatham on Tues­day, mark­ing the third mar­itime in­ci­dent in­volv­ing the Coast Guard in three days.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s claim that it has ev­i­dence of a con­spir­a­cy to as­sas­si­nate Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, say­ing if ev­i­dence of such a se­ri­ous crime ex­ists, the mat­ter should be test­ed be­fore the courts.

Po­lice say they will be do­ing all that they can en­sure that the or­ders of the court to keep busi­ness­woman Star Sab­ga un­der house ar­rest is close­ly su­per­vised with lit­tle in­ter­rup­tion to her neigh­bours.

Busi­ness­man Ger­ald Aboud has raised sev­er­al queries about pri­va­cy rights in Trinidad and To­ba­go, in­clud­ing who is polic­ing the po­lice.

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing the men­tal­ly ill daugh­ter of a de­ceased promi­nent busi­ness­man have chal­lenged the re­fusal to send her for psy­chi­atric treat­ment and give her ac­cess to them af­ter she was held on a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) for al­leged­ly fi­nanc­ing a gang.  

That sim­ple mes­sage from Bird­sCaribbean pres­i­dent An­drea Thomen car­ries greater ur­gency across a re­gion where all 11 en­dem­ic par­rot species, birds found nowhere else on Earth, are on the In­ter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Na­ture (IUCN) Red List of Threat­ened Species.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to ad­dress sup­ply chain and dis­tri­b­u­tion chal­lenges af­fect­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of med­ica­tion un­der the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP), main­tain­ing that while short­ages may oc­cur at in­di­vid­ual fa­cil­i­ties, pa­tients should still be able to ac­cess med­ica­tion else­where with­in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

Pow­er out­ages that af­fect­ed parts of the East-West Cor­ri­dor, cen­tral Trinidad and south Trinidad on Tues­day night were caused by a fault at the Pow­er­Gen Point Lisas plant.