Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jear­lean John yes­ter­day dis­missed a damn­ing S&P Glob­al ves­sel his­to­ry re­port on the MV Blue Wave Har­mo­ny, call­ing it “in­for­ma­tion on Wikipedia,” even though it flagged mul­ti­ple safe­ty and main­te­nance-re­lat­ed de­fects re­lat­ed to the ves­sel over the past two years.

Con­tro­ver­sy fol­lowed the re­sults of Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta 2026 on Sat­ur­day night at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, af­ter sev­er­al ca­lyp­so­ni­ans with strong po­lit­i­cal and so­cial com­men­tary failed to ad­vance to the grand fi­nal of the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch com­pe­ti­tion.

Three months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar launched the Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, promis­ing 50,919 jobs, Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jer­lean John says as­pects of the project should be­gin by mid-year.

Busi­ness cham­bers are cau­tion­ing that the de­par­ture of two of the coun­try’s largest in­dus­tri­al play­ers—ANSA McAL and Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd (TCL)—from the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) re­flects deep­er frac­tures in na­tion­al pri­vate sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

What­ev­er the weath­er out­look for this evening, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore is in­tent that “no bad breeze (can) blow” in the di­rec­tion of a resched­uled Panora­ma Medi­um Band fi­nal at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

As Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo in­ten­si­fies ef­forts to clamp down on il­le­gal gam­bling while ex­pand­ing state-reg­u­lat­ed lot­tery gam­ing to Sun­days, some booths in San Fer­nan­do re­port­ed steady busi­ness on the first week­end of the new draw sched­ule yes­ter­day.

A 20-year-old Venezue­lan woman was res­cued and two sus­pects were held fol­low­ing a re­port­ed kid­nap­ping near Kel­ly Vil­lage, Ca­roni, on Fri­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied claims that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is seek­ing to in­flu­ence Wednes­day’s (Feb­ru­ary 11) elec­tion in Bar­ba­dos.

A St Joseph woman was ar­rest­ed and is ex­pect­ed to be charged with lar­ce­ny, af­ter she stole a bag con­tain­ing a lap­top and oth­er valu­ables from the bar at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says 20 out of 21 leaks on the Point Lisas De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Plipde­co) Es­tate have been re­paired, and by this week, all will be com­plet­ed and Padarath has blamed for­mer min­is­ter of util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les for fail­ing to ad­dress the is­sue, which was re­spon­si­ble for a $250 mil­lion loss an­nu­al­ly for the state util­i­ty.

An Aer­o­bics and Zum­ba Work­out has been added to the cal­en­dar of events to boost cel­e­bra­tions staged by the Cou­va Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (CCC) for 2026.

Brit­ton passed away on Thurs­day night in the In­ten­sive Care Unit at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, where he had been ad­mit­ted since last Sun­day.