South­ern Lawyers' As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Saira Lakhan is urg­ing cau­tion fol­low­ing re­ports of in­ter­nal strife over the lead­er­ship at the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau ar­rived in the coun­try yes­ter­day for a two-day of­fi­cial vis­it, as the Gov­ern­ment moves to deep­en co­op­er­a­tion with Wash­ing­ton on se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has point­ed to huge job loss­es un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) watch, re­buk­ing for­mer PNM min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry, Bri­an Man­ning, for blam­ing his (Tan­coo’s) poli­cies for caus­ing T&T’s un­em­ploy­ment cri­sis.

The State has been or­dered to pay over $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a po­lice of­fi­cer, whose tran­si­tion from a mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cer to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) was se­vere­ly pro­longed.

The Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) is call­ing for stronger poli­cies to pro­tect the rights of In­dige­nous Peo­ples and ex­pand op­por­tu­ni­ties for their so­cial and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment across the re­gion.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu has re­ject­ed the deal on Gaza an­nounced by U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump last month, say­ing Is­rael’s mil­i­tary “will not car­ry out any with­draw­al un­til Hamas is gen­uine­ly dis­armed.”

U.S. Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Christo­pher Lan­dau is ex­pect­ed to meet Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing a vis­it to Trinidad and To­ba­go from Sun­day to Tues­day, with en­er­gy, se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic co­op­er­a­tion ex­pect­ed to fea­ture promi­nent­ly on the agen­da.

Af­ter two days of con­fronta­tion over the Ed­die Hart mo­bile po­lice post, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Ude­cott) has stepped in­to the dis­pute, iden­ti­fy­ing it­self as project man­ag­er and agree­ing to meet with of­fi­cials of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC) on Mon­day.

The con­tro­ver­sy over Gov­ern­ment’s mo­bile po­lice-army posts has widened in­to a de­bate over whether the dri­ve to im­prove pub­lic safe­ty is be­ing car­ried out with­in ex­ist­ing plan­ning, pro­cure­ment and mu­nic­i­pal laws.

Un­der grey skies and in­ter­mit­tent rain­fall yes­ter­day, work­ers con­tin­ued as­sem­bling the met­al frame­work of a new joint po­lice and army post in Tarou­ba, bring­ing Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est crime-fight­ing ini­tia­tive one step clos­er to re­al­i­ty.

The Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter (OPM) has spent near­ly six months de­cid­ing whether to grant a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest for records show­ing how many over­seas trips the Prime Min­is­ter took, who trav­elled with her and the cost it had on tax­pay­ers.

With the in­creased pub­lic use of the word, some­times in a deroga­to­ry man­ner to de­scribe those of East In­di­an de­scent, Guardian Me­dia reached out to SDMS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Vi­jay Ma­haraj to get the views of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, which is the largest rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Hin­dus in T&T.