Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our con­firmed yes­ter­day that there are no pro­vi­sions for a pay­ment plan for fixed penal­ty tick­ets.

ACP Richard Smith of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion is urg­ing pa­trons of up­com­ing Car­ni­val fetes not to over-in­dulge in al­co­hol for this year’s fes­tiv­i­ties.

Reign­ing Chut­ney So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on, Machel Mon­tano, will re­turn to de­fend his crown when the fi­nal of the com­pe­ti­tion takes place on Feb­ru­ary 8 at Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do. This was con­firmed as Southex launched the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch last evening, with Guardian Me­dia’s Sangeet 106.1FM be­com­ing its of­fi­cial part­ner. It will be a day-night event start­ing with a pre-show at 4 pm. The show will end at 12 mid­night and, for the 11th year run­ning, will re­main free to the pub­lic.

With less than one week to go be­fore To­bag­o­ni­ans de­cide who will lead the is­land, all po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tion have un­veiled their vi­sions through their man­i­festos.

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has told in­di­vid­u­als he de­scribed as “paid blog­gers from Trinidad” to keep their opin­ions out of To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal af­fairs, in­sist­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans will de­ter­mine their own fu­ture.

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion of Port-of-Spain has is­sued an ur­gent ad­vi­so­ry to busi­ness­es fol­low­ing a se­ries of night­time shopfront bur­glar­ies across the city.

Fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ings have surged, reach­ing 55 in­ci­dents in 2025 af­ter a slight dip in pre­vi­ous years, ac­cord­ing to the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA).

Ja­maican stu­dents af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, who feel un­pre­pared for the May/June 2026 ex­am­i­na­tions, will be al­lowed to re­quest a re­fund or de­fer their ex­am­i­na­tions to the 2027 ses­sion.

North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) chair­man, Dr Tim Gopeesingh, has con­firmed that while no Cuban nurs­es are em­ployed by the au­thor­i­ty, two Cuban doc­tors are cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing ser­vices.

Free coun­selling un­der the Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (EAP) for teach­ers has been halt­ed, says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA), forc­ing ed­u­ca­tors to pay out of pock­et for men­tal health sup­port. Ques­tions are now mount­ing over the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing teach­ers’ men­tal health.

The Beetham Land­fill re­opens to­day, af­ter a fire dis­rupt­ed its op­er­a­tions over the past three days.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of a 63-year-old Bar­rack­pore man who re­port­ed­ly fell from a co­conut tree.