The haunt­ing screams of kid­nap vic­tim Tara Po­li­ah not on­ly il­lus­trat­ed the fear she faced when four men bun­dled her in­to a car, but the fear which gripped the Don Miguel Road, San Juan com­mu­ni­ty when he neigh­bours re­alised she had been grabbed by crim­i­nals.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter has or­dered the de­ten­tion of 24 more peo­ple be­lieved to be in­volved in gang ac­tiv­i­ties, in­clud­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer held for al­leged­ly tip­ping off crim­i­nals.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has said the ma­jor­i­ty of Unit­ed States troops in To­ba­go have left the is­land.

The Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) is pur­su­ing the restart of the Guaracara re­fin­ery with a dif­fer­ent com­pa­ny than Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Ltd (PET), which the union had used in its un­suc­cess­ful 2019 bid for the re­fin­ery.

For­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan has warned that the coun­try can­not af­ford de­lays, opac­i­ty or con­flict­ing agen­das in the ef­fort to restart the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery. She says the na­tion must move with ur­gency, guid­ed by a trans­par­ent, cred­i­ble and clear­ly de­fined strat­e­gy to en­sure the re­fin­ery’s vi­a­bil­i­ty.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) is ex­press­ing hope that po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions do not hurt trade re­la­tions be­tween lo­cal busi­ness­es and the Cari­com com­mu­ni­ty.

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) coun­cil­lors staged an “un­prece­dent­ed” walk­out from a statu­to­ry meet­ing of the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) yes­ter­day, cit­ing what they de­scribed as per­sis­tent dis­re­spect di­rect­ed at the par­ty and its po­lit­i­cal leader.

The Gov­ern­ment is fac­ing mount­ing ques­tions and grow­ing scruti­ny af­ter fail­ing to re­spond to re­peat­ed re­quests for clar­i­ty on the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s in­volve­ment in the Cuban med­ical mis­sion pro­gramme, even as re­gion­al coun­ter­parts be­gin step­ping away from sim­i­lar arrange­ments.

De­spite com­mit­ting to pro­vide hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance to the Cuban peo­ple amid their on­go­ing cri­sis, Trinidad and To­ba­go re­mains firm in its po­si­tion not to sup­port calls to end the Unit­ed States block­ade, which has been cit­ed as a con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the coun­try’s hard­ships.

A work­men’s com­pen­sa­tion claim, brought on be­half of the wid­ow of one of the vic­tims of the div­ing tragedy at Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Com­pa­ny’s Pointe-a-Pierre fa­cil­i­ty in 2022, has been halt­ed. 

Six years af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed and charged with dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol, re­sist­ing ar­rest and as­sault­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer, Naeem Ali, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Na­mal­co Con­struc­tion Ser­vices Ltd, has been cleared of all charges. Na­mal­co is a con­struc­tion com­pa­ny based in La Brea, Trinidad.

The line out­side an ice cream shop at South­Park Mall, San Fer­nan­do, be­gan to buck­le just hours af­ter the fi­nal pa­per was writ­ten, as chil­dren fresh out of the Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) pressed for­ward, hop­ing to be among the first 100 to claim a vouch­er and a bank ac­count re­ward.