Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 64th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence has drawn con­grat­u­la­tions from King Charles III, Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio and Caribbean lead­ers, who high­light­ed long­stand­ing friend­ships, re­gion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ties for deep­er co­op­er­a­tion.

The Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion did not host its an­nu­al In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion this year, opt­ing in­stead to redi­rect its ef­forts to­wards food as­sis­tance and back-to-school sup­port.

A re­tired nurse has threat­ened to pur­sue con­tempt of court pro­ceed­ings against Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro over his re­port­ed fail­ure to abide by a court or­der di­rect­ing him to dis­close de­tails of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to her daugh­ter’s “mys­te­ri­ous” death that was ruled a sui­cide.

A man from To­ba­go has failed in his le­gal chal­lenge over not be­ing al­lowed to com­plete train­ing to be­come a Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cer af­ter med­ical and psy­chi­atric ex­am­i­na­tions.

A for­eign used car deal­er, ac­cused of tak­ing de­posits from cus­tomers and fail­ing to de­liv­er ve­hi­cles or give re­funds, has been freed of ten fraud charges. 

A Fire­Pow­er Fire­works rep­re­sen­ta­tive suf­fered third-de­gree burns and was hos­pi­talised in crit­i­cal con­di­tion yes­ter­day af­ter fire­works ac­ci­den­tal­ly dis­charged dur­ing prepa­ra­tions for the In­de­pen­dence Day dis­play at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day as an­gry pa­trons at­tempt­ed to storm the FOC Fete in Ch­aguara­mas, while oth­ers in­side the venue be­gan throw­ing bot­tles at peo­ple on stage.

Nine­teen Venezue­lan na­tion­als, in­clud­ing two mi­nors, were de­tained af­ter po­lice in­ter­cept­ed a pan­el van dur­ing an ex­er­cise in Glen­coe over the week­end.

Sab­ri­na Khadoo’s plea for help has turned in­to a fight to keep her fam­i­ly to­geth­er, with the moth­er of 12 now fear­ing her chil­dren could be tak­en from her be­cause of the fam­i­ly’s des­per­ate liv­ing con­di­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s two In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sages have drawn sharply dif­fer­ent re­ac­tions, with Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Mick­ela Pan­day crit­i­cis­ing what they de­scribed as di­vi­sive and po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed rhetoric, while po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed de­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s first mes­sage as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ob­jec­tive re­flec­tion on the coun­try’s de­vel­op­ment.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 64th In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions came alive with the sights, sounds and en­er­gy of the na­tion’s cul­tur­al her­itage, as Red Dev­ils, Moko Jumbies, tas­sa drum­mers, chut­ney dancers, Jab Jab, a Chi­nese cul­tur­al troupe and steel­pan brought a car­ni­val-like at­mos­phere to the mil­i­tary pa­rade.

King Charles III has con­grat­u­lat­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go on its 64th In­de­pen­dence an­niver­sary, de­scrib­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two coun­tries as an “en­dur­ing part­ner­ship” root­ed in shared val­ues and mu­tu­al re­spect.