The Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor has halt­ed the award of $3.4 bil­lion in Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) con­tracts to 11 com­pa­nies, just hours af­ter a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter de­fend­ed the process.

Two days af­ter a con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) moved against one of its own, re­mov­ing Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates from the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC).

Gold Com­man­der of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin, says the num­ber of peo­ple de­tained so far un­der this SoE has al­ready sur­passed the num­ber ar­rest­ed dur­ing the en­tire­ty of last SoE.

Days af­ter a Pre­ven­ta­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) was is­sued for a Guapo teenag­er for firearm of­fences and sus­pect­ed gang af­fil­i­a­tion, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says he is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned by the in­volve­ment of chil­dren in se­ri­ous crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.