Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says the gov­ern­ment is keep­ing all op­tions on the ta­ble in its fight against crime, not­ing that a pos­si­ble re­turn of the death penal­ty can­not be ruled out.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has is­sued a stern warn­ing to the pub­lic, em­pha­sis­ing that weapons have no place in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions and that any­one found in pos­ses­sion will face se­ri­ous con­se­quences.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal will con­tin­ue pitch­ing the restart of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery at the Guyana En­er­gy Con­fer­ence, which be­gins to­mor­row, and has as­sured that the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) re­mains en­gaged with the Gov­ern­ment on all re­fin­ery-re­lat­ed mat­ters.

Tris­ton Steeple has been crowned the first stick­fight­ing cham­pi­on of Ch­agua­nas. The 22-year-old of Or­ange Field Road, Cara­pichaima, de­feat­ed a bar­rage of sea­soned vet­er­ans and de­ter­mined new­com­ers on Fri­day night when the Ch­agua­nas Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee host­ed its in­au­gur­al stick­fight­ing com­pe­ti­tion on the mas­sive stage at Ram­saran Street.

This Panora­ma sea­son’s per­sis­tent front-run­ners, bP Rene­gades, were pipped at the line by Re­pub­lic Bank Ex­o­dus by a sin­gle point at Sat­ur­day’s Large Con­ven­tion­al Band Fi­nal, giv­ing the Tu­na­puna band its sec­ond con­sec­u­tive and sixth over­all ti­tle.

Ven­dors in down­town Port-of-Spain are hop­ing the se­nior pa­rade of bands, kick­ing off to­day, will lift sales af­ter a slow­er-than-ex­pect­ed start over the week­end.

An ear­ly-morn­ing ar­gu­ment at a San Fer­nan­do bar yes­ter­day es­ca­lat­ed in­to vi­o­lence, leav­ing a 19-year-old Venezue­lan na­tion­al dead.

For­mer Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to pro­tect beach­go­ers fol­low­ing the trag­ic death of teenag­er Gabriel Nel­son, whose body was re­cov­ered two days af­ter he went miss­ing while bathing in Ma­yaro.

Griev­ing the mur­der of her daugh­ter—wit­nessed by her three-year-old grand­daugh­ter—Pamela Clarke is ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment to re­sume hang­ings for con­vict­ed mur­der­ers.

The streets of San Fer­nan­do came alive in a vi­brant dis­play of colour and joy as young mas­quer­aders took to the south­land for this year’s Ju­nior Pa­rade of the Bands. Even with­out for­mal judg­ing or com­pe­ti­tion, the chil­dren brought the spir­it of Car­ni­val to life with en­er­gy, en­thu­si­asm, and cre­ativ­i­ty.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der, ac­cus­ing him of pri­ori­tis­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice over the wider pub­lic and mak­ing state­ments that are “bor­der­ing on be­ing dan­ger­ous and fright­ful”.

With J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions just hours away, se­nior po­lice are once again warn­ing the pub­lic not to bring weapons in­to the cap­i­tal, as of­fi­cers will im­me­di­ate­ly ar­rest any­one found with such items.