Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has clar­i­fied that none of the $127.8 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing be­ing sought by his min­istry in­cludes pro­vi­sions for out­stand­ing back­pay for teach­ers, de­spite on­go­ing con­cerns from ed­u­ca­tors and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive unions over de­lays in re­ceiv­ing retroac­tive pay­ments.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie says he en­tered of­fice meet­ing an alarm­ing num­ber of le­gal fees near $150 mil­lion, with in­voic­es con­tin­u­ing to ar­rive dai­ly. How­ev­er, he ad­mits his of­fice is still vet­ting scores of in­voic­es, as some of them are fraud­u­lent

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is pre­pared to or­gan­ise its own In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions if Gov­ern­ment can­cels the na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, ar­gu­ing the an­nu­al event is too im­por­tant to the coun­try’s his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty to be aban­doned.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der has de­fend­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s con­tro­ver­sial use of the term “one per cent” dur­ing Wednes­day’s de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of State of Emer­gency (SoE), ar­gu­ing that the phrase is glob­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with wealth and priv­i­lege rather than any spe­cif­ic eth­nic group.

Two for­mer se­nior bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives are de­fend­ing the in­tegri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bank­ing sec­tor, warn­ing that al­le­ga­tions sug­gest­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed through the fi­nan­cial sys­tem could dam­age con­fi­dence in one of the coun­try’s most im­por­tant in­sti­tu­tions.

The sounds of trum­pets, march­ing boots and cheer­ing chil­dren echoed through Siparia yes­ter­day, as thou­sands of res­i­dents turned out to cel­e­brate the bor­ough’s third an­niver­sary with a colour­ful mil­i­tary pa­rade and a re­newed call for uni­ty and de­vel­op­ment.

One month af­ter her two-year-old son was re­port­ed miss­ing, Kali­fah To­bias made an emo­tion­al re­turn to Cam­bridge Trace, Good­wood.

Twelve-year-old Mer­cedez Layne nev­er made the short jour­ney home, like she was sup­posed to. More than a week af­ter her mur­der, she will fi­nal­ly re­turn to her Erin home—this time in a cas­ket—be­fore be­ing laid to rest on Tues­day.

Heart­bro­ken over his son’s mur­der, a South Oropouche fa­ther is hop­ing a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion will un­cov­er why his son was killed and lead to the ar­rest of those re­spon­si­ble.

A road­side ven­dor has threat­ened to sue Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed for pub­licly ac­cus­ing him of sell­ing pota­toes un­fit for hu­man use.

A High Court Judge has re­solved a dis­pute be­tween a woman and her broth­er-in-law over a prop­er­ty her de­ceased hus­band in­her­it­ed af­ter his fa­ther’s death.

Two mon­strances stolen from St Mary’s RC Church in St James ear­li­er this month were re­turned yes­ter­day morn­ing, ac­com­pa­nied by a hand­writ­ten note ex­press­ing re­morse and seek­ing for­give­ness.