The UNC con­firmed her death in a state­ment ex­press­ing con­do­lences to Sookhoo’s fam­i­ly, friends, col­leagues, fel­low coun­cil­lors and oth­ers who worked with her.

The Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment is us­ing World Steel­pan Day to pro­mote the steel­pan not on­ly as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, but as a po­ten­tial ve­hi­cle for youth de­vel­op­ment and growth in the cul­tur­al in­dus­try.

Search and res­cue ef­forts were un­der­way ear­ly Tues­day in dozens of cities and towns in west­ern Colom­bia af­ter a pow­er­ful earth­quake struck the re­gion, killing at least 111 peo­ple and leav­ing many trapped un­der the de­bris of dam­aged and de­stroyed build­ings.

A decade af­ter the clo­sure of Arcelor­Mit­tal left hun­dreds job­less and a pre­mier in­dus­tri­al as­set aban­doned, a mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment de­scribed as “Lazarus aris­ing from the dead” is now bring­ing heavy man­u­fac­tur­ing back to the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says agree­ments reached dur­ing a vis­it by Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau mark re­newed con­fi­dence in T&T, and could help dri­ve in­vest­ment, en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty and in­dus­tri­al de­vel­op­ment.

No Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als have been re­port­ed as af­fect­ed by a pow­er­ful 7.4-mag­ni­tude earth­quake that struck Colom­bia yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs has said.

Some of the joint army and po­lice se­cu­ri­ty posts are ex­pect­ed to be of­fi­cial­ly launched this week, Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Rod­hill Kirk has as­sured that there will be no po­lice post in To­ba­go with­out ad­e­quate con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers and res­i­dents in Ply­mouth.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says dis­cus­sions are un­der­way for the es­tab­lish­ment of a po­lice post in his Cou­va South con­stituen­cy, with the Car­li Bay area among the lo­ca­tions be­ing con­sid­ered.

Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) chair­man Josi­ah Austin has ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of “run­ning roughshod “over lo­cal gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties by ig­nor­ing es­tab­lished pro­to­cols as they move to set up 30 po­lice posts across the coun­try.

The Gov­ern­ment’s plan to es­tab­lish 30 po­lice posts across Trinidad and To­ba­go is be­ing wel­comed by se­cu­ri­ty and busi­ness stake­hold­ers, but a crim­i­nol­o­gist is warn­ing that the ini­tia­tive could face its biggest test when the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends.

The sound of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment will take cen­tre stage to­day as the coun­try cel­e­brates World Steel­pan Day with per­for­mances, an an­ces­tral walk and a ma­jor youth con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.