Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­vealed that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment has re­quest­ed a pri­vate meet­ing be­tween US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and her to­mor­row in St Kitts and Nevis, ahead of the start of Cari­com’s ple­nary ses­sion in the af­ter­noon pe­ri­od.

The spot­light will be on US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio, who is the spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guest for Cari­com’s 50th con­fer­ence in St Kitts and will ad­dress to­mor­row’s Open­ing Ple­nary ses­sion of re­gion­al lead­ers seek­ing to ad­vance shared pri­or­i­ties - in­clud­ing “deep­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion to com­bat il­lic­it traf­fick­ing, and pro­mot­ing eco­nom­ic growth, health, and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty across the Caribbean.”

For­mer T&T prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley and for­mer Ja­maican prime min­is­ter PJ Pat­ter­son have re­buked T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s clap­back at their re­cent con­cerns about the ex­pand­ed US em­bar­go against Cu­ba, point­ing out that Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pre­vi­ous Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment had sup­port­ed an end to the em­bar­go.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John yes­ter­day as­sured the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty that there is no need to pan­ic over the in­ter-is­land fer­ry ser­vice.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is yes­ter­day ques­tioned whether Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine would get any new in­for­ma­tion on the is­sue of au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go dur­ing his vis­it to St Kitts and Nevis with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Point Fortin May­or Clyde James has dis­missed re­ports that some of the biggest Bor­ough Day events have been scrapped, as­sur­ing res­i­dents and vis­i­tors that the cel­e­bra­tions are still on and will roll out as planned.

For­mer Health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is fac­ing se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence fol­low­ing claims that he pres­sured the state pro­cure­ment agency, the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NIPDEC), to give pref­er­en­tial pay­ment to a ma­jor phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny.

Af­ter months with­out a de­fin­i­tive time­line for pay­ment, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has tak­en its de­mand for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of re­vised salaries di­rect­ly to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo, seek­ing clar­i­ty on when teach­ers will re­ceive their long-await­ed ad­just­ments.

Some lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors are warn­ing that chron­ic de­lays in the re­lease of gov­ern­ment funds are leav­ing work­ers, coun­cil­lors and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions un­der mount­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure—with some coun­cil­lors re­port­ed­ly fac­ing evic­tion from their of­fices.

Fol­low­ing the mur­der of three peo­ple on Sat­ur­day night—two with­in his Tu­na­puna con­stituen­cy—Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der said he is deeply con­cerned about the cur­rent spate of killings.

Jus­tices of Ap­peal Mark Mo­hammed, Maria Wil­son and Ricky Rahim have re­served judg­ment in an ex­pe­dit­ed ap­peal brought by Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed (RBL), which is chal­leng­ing a High Court rul­ing or­der­ing it to com­pen­sate a for­mer em­ploy­ee fol­low­ing a 2022 break-in at its Cou­va branch.

Mem­bers of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) yes­ter­day ex­pressed con­cern over what they de­scribed as trou­bling fi­nan­cial con­tra­dic­tions in­volv­ing the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (MTS).