In an ef­fort to fend off a mount­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis, Cu­ba on Wednes­day eased up on long­time re­stric­tions on pri­vate ven­dors and im­ports, open­ing up a sec­tor firm­ly con­trolled by the Com­mu­nist-led gov­ern­ment.

A U.S. ex­tra­di­tion process against Guyana’s main op­po­si­tion leader and his fa­ther—want­ed on gold smug­gling and mon­ey laun­der­ing charges—can re­sume, af­ter they had legal­ly chal­lenged the re­quest, a Caribbean re­gion­al court ruled on Wednes­day.

Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Po­lit­i­cal Leader Mick­ela Pan­day has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of fail­ing to live up to her elec­tion promis­es and us­ing di­vi­sive rhetoric to de­flect crit­i­cism of her ad­min­is­tra­tion.

A man­hunt is now un­der­way for sus­pects im­pli­cat­ed in the mur­der of 48-year-old po­lice­man PC Romell Dou­glas, who was gunned down while sit­ting in his Nis­san Ti­i­da in Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, on Tues­day night.

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.