Cou­va South MP Bar­ry Padarath is stand­ing by his com­ments re­gard­ing the con­duct of par­lia­men­tary staff and has dis­missed calls by the Op­po­si­tion for him to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed for the al­leged in­tim­i­da­tion of staff as a de­flec­tion at­tempt by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has backed Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath’s al­le­ga­tions that par­lia­men­tary broad­cast­ing staff have been un­fair­ly mut­ing the mi­cro­phones of Gov­ern­ment mem­bers, say­ing the is­sue has per­sist­ed for years and should be for­mal­ly raised be­fore the Par­lia­men­tary Broad­cast­ing Com­mit­tee.

Ex­press­ing shock at what un­fold­ed dur­ing Fri­day evening’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, a par­lia­men­tary ex­pert with vast ex­pe­ri­ence in par­lia­men­tary ad­min­is­tra­tion de­scribed the in­ci­dent as un­prece­dent­ed and mount­ed a vig­or­ous de­fence of par­lia­men­tary staff, ar­gu­ing that the con­tro­ver­sy ap­peared to stem from a mis­un­der­stand­ing of how the cham­ber’s au­dio sys­tem func­tions.

The be­hav­iour wit­nessed in the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day night is be­ing sharply crit­i­cised by the for­mer speak­er of the House, Nizam Mo­hammed.

The Na­tion­al Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) has ex­pressed con­cern over the con­duct of Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment dur­ing Fri­day’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, say­ing the ex­changes sent the wrong mes­sage to young peo­ple and un­der­mined ef­forts to ad­dress in­dis­ci­pline in schools.

A fire at an apart­ment build­ing in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day led to the deaths of two women and saw some ten­ants jump­ing sev­er­al feet down, re­sult­ing in bro­ken limbs in a bid to es­cape the flames.

For near­ly six years, Can­dice Ri­ley has been wait­ing for jus­tice af­ter trag­i­cal­ly los­ing her daugh­ter, Ashan­ti Ri­ley, al­leged­ly at the hands of a PH taxi dri­ver.

Sell­ing blood is il­le­gal and au­thor­i­ties are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sys­tem to pre­vent the prac­tice, Med­ical Di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice (NBTS), Dr Shiv­ir Moo­sai, has warned.

The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to pro­ceed with In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, in­clud­ing the tra­di­tion­al pa­rade at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, de­spite the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

The Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) has con­demned com­ments made by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy last Thurs­day, de­scrib­ing the re­marks as di­vi­sive and harm­ful to na­tion­al uni­ty.

Teach­ers and stu­dents of Spey­side Sec­ondary claim they are un­der siege and be­ing ter­rorised by a Form One stu­dent.

The fam­i­ly of a school­boy who was shot dead dur­ing a home in­va­sion in Mara­bel­la is now liv­ing in fear as po­lice in­ves­ti­gate the killing. Kr­is­han Khanai was gunned down at his fam­i­ly’s Tram­line Road home late Thurs­day night. Two rel­a­tives, Kr­ish­na Khanai and Leela Pariag, were al­so shot and wound­ed dur­ing the at­tack.