Stu­dents from Lochmaben Ro­man Catholic School in Ce­dros were giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a life­time on Mon­day, when they toured the USS Grave­ly, a vis­it­ing US Navy war­ship docked at the Port of Port-of-Spain. The high­light of the vis­it was meet­ing some of the US Marines whose col­leagues had helped to re­pair their school last Au­gust.

The En­er­gy Cham­ber is call­ing for a re­newed na­tion­al fo­cus on se­cur­ing and ex­pand­ing do­mes­tic nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, fol­low­ing Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to sus­pend en­er­gy sec­tor agree­ments with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

As anx­i­eties grow over Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to de­clare Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar per­sona non gra­ta to that coun­try, end its gas agree­ments with T&T and the im­pend­ing ar­rival of the US air­craft car­ri­er USS Ger­ald R Ford in­to the re­gion, ex­perts re­main di­vid­ed on the im­pact and this coun­try’s re­sponse.

Af­ter ac­cus­ing Cari­com of be­tray­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment will now look to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­align its for­eign pol­i­cy with a fo­cus on coun­tries out­side of the re­gion.

For the past three years, Trinidad and To­ba­go has been home to a Venezue­lan cou­ple and their two chil­dren, who have sought safe­ty and sta­bil­i­ty.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts are split over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that Cari­com is an “un­re­li­able part­ner,” af­ter she ac­cused the re­gion­al bloc of sid­ing with Venezuela over Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing a tele­vised in­ter­view on Crime Watch on Mon­day evening. The Op­po­si­tion has, in turn, ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of iso­lat­ing the coun­try from its Caribbean neigh­bours and stok­ing ten­sions with Venezuela.

Af­ter Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa made land­fall as a Cat­e­go­ry 5 hur­ri­cane near New Hope, tear­ing through Ja­maica with winds of 185 miles per hour, the coun­try was plunged in­to dark­ness yes­ter­day. Pow­er lines col­lapsed, cars were swept away, roads were cut off, roofs were torn off, and homes were flat­tened. Across west­ern and south­ern parish­es—West­more­land, St Eliz­a­beth, Claren­don, and Man­ches­ter—fam­i­lies clung to what was left of their homes, while in the cap­i­tal, Kingston, stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) prayed.

Op­er­a­tions at the Port of Point Lisas con­tin­ued yes­ter­day, al­though some truck dri­vers re­port­ed mi­nor de­lays in pro­cess­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion fol­low­ing the tem­po­rary clo­sure of se­lect­ed berths at the Port of Port-of-Spain to ac­com­mo­date the vis­it­ing Unit­ed States Navy de­stroy­er, USS Grave­ly.

Massy Gas has se­cured an al­ter­na­tive car­bon diox­ide (CO2)sup­ply through a new de­liv­ery arrange­ment with Pro­man, fol­low­ing the shut­down of Nu­trien’s Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James has dis­missed claims by the Op­po­si­tion that the Gov­ern­ment de­lib­er­ate­ly wound up the Bud­get de­bate in both the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the Sen­ate to pre­vent Op­po­si­tion mem­bers from con­tribut­ing.

As videos of leak­ing liq­ue­fied pe­tro­le­um gas (LPG) cylin­ders con­tin­ue to cir­cu­late on so­cial me­dia, an­oth­er fam­i­ly is prepar­ing to take le­gal ac­tion over the death of a loved one from an ex­plo­sion.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says the de­ci­sion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive three-month pe­ri­od was based on the con­tents of a clas­si­fied re­port he sub­mit­ted to the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil (NSC). He is al­so dis­miss­ing any no­tion that the ex­ten­sion is re­lat­ed to ten­sions be­tween this coun­try and Venezuela.