To­ba­go’s self-gov­er­nance push is gain­ing mo­men­tum, fol­low­ing the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly’s (THA) pas­sage of a mo­tion be­gin­ning the con­sul­ta­tive ref­er­en­dum process yes­ter­day.

The Gov­ern­ment is promis­ing a stronger, more ac­ces­si­ble Prime Min­is­ter’s Best Vil­lage Tro­phy Com­pe­ti­tion in 2026, even as it main­tains a tight rein on spend­ing.

Fol­low­ing the 50th Cari­com con­fer­ence in St Kitts and Nevis, T&T is now with­in a US/Latin Amer­i­can coali­tion which shares a com­mon be­lief in na­tion­al sov­er­eign­ty, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and con­sti­tu­tion­al gov­ern­ment, law and or­der, free mar­kets and pri­vate en­ter­prise, bor­der con­trol—and com­mon goals of halt­ing crim­i­nal and ter­ror­ist gangs and car­tels, and il­le­gal mass mi­gra­tion, says Min­is­ter in the Prime Min­is­ter’s Of­fice Nicholas Mor­ris.

Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell says a pro­posed Unit­ed States radar in­stal­la­tion on the is­land is no longer un­der con­sid­er­a­tion, months af­ter a sim­i­lar sys­tem was in­stalled in neigh­bour­ing To­ba­go.

To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my de­bate has gained re­gion­al back­ing, with the Nevis Pre­mier Mark Brant­ley warn­ing that small­er is­lands in twin-is­land states are too of­ten treat­ed as af­ter­thoughts. He not­ed that the con­cern was sharp­ened by the in­stal­la­tion of a radar sys­tem in To­ba­go last year, and his gov­ern­ment’s ac­cep­tance of third-par­ty de­por­tees from the US with­out con­sul­ta­tion.

Five ves­sels - in­clud­ing the Blue Wave Har­mo­ny - are work­ing on the To­ba­go seabridge, so car­go isn’t be­ing “stock­piled” at the Port Au­thor­i­ty, says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

For the sec­ond time in re­cent weeks, dis­placed in­ter-is­land fer­ry work­ers gath­ered out­side the Par­lia­ment in Port-of-Spain, protest­ing what they de­scribed as their ex­clu­sion from em­ploy­ment on the car­go ves­sel now ser­vic­ing the Trinidad to To­ba­go seabridge.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo is as­sur­ing teach­ers that their re­vised salaries and out­stand­ing back pay will be set­tled be­fore the end of the first quar­ter of 2026.

San Fer­nan­do May­or Robert Par­ris is urg­ing Pleas­antville res­i­dents to stop burn­ing garbage along the fence line of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um fol­low­ing an oil spill that forced the clo­sure of San Fer­nan­do East Sec­ondary School this week.

As death claims more of their col­leagues, sur­viv­ing Petrotrin Trin­mar re­tirees com­plained yes­ter­day that they are still be­ing de­nied the med­ical ben­e­fits they say are owed to them and are now call­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­ter­vene.

Even as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed se­ri­ous con­cern over yes­ter­day’s triple mur­der in Laven­tille, at least one res­i­dent is again call­ing for a State of Emer­gency (SoE), say­ing the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion is out of con­trol.

In the wake of a triple mur­der in Laven­tille, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is urg­ing com­mu­ni­ties across the na­tion to play an ac­tive role in stand­ing against crime.