Kid­nap­pings for ran­som have dou­bled this year when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year, ac­cord­ing to T&T Po­lice Ser­vice sta­tis­tics.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s re­sponse to the re­cent rise in kid­nap­pings, de­scrib­ing cur­rent ef­forts as in­ef­fec­tive.

A St Au­gus­tine fam­i­ly’s worst night­mare be­came a re­al­i­ty yes­ter­day, af­ter their teenage son was kid­napped.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is con­demn­ing one po­lit­i­cal leader for of­fen­sive com­ments he made to­wards the Gov­ern­ment, af­ter the tragedy that claimed the lives of Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren on Mon­day.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not sup­port­ing re­cent com­ments made by Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) leader Phillip Alexan­der about the grief dis­played by Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­bers fol­low­ing the deaths of Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren in a fire at their home in Ari­ma on Mon­day.

The Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T’s (FSATT) Sec­ond Di­vi­sion is de­fend­ing its of­fi­cers as the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry and the Fire Ser­vice con­tin­ue to point fin­gers at each oth­er, over the re­sponse to Mon­day’s fire which claimed the lives of Min­istry in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and D’Abadie-O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and two of her chil­dren.

Pen­sion­er Charles Watts died from nat­ur­al caus­es, an au­top­sy has con­firmed. Short­ly af­ter mid­day on Sat­ur­day, Charles’ body was found in a drain along Park Street, Mara­bel­la.

The dan­ger­ous dri­ving case against Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) Suzette Mar­tin was dis­con­tin­ued based on there be­ing in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence to se­cure a con­vic­tion. 

Homi­cide de­tec­tives are look­ing at rob­bery as a pos­si­ble mo­tive for the mur­der of Bar­rack­pore con­trac­tor De­onar­ine Ma­hase. 

Mur­der vic­tim, Princes Town fa­ther of two Ron­nie Ho­sein suf­fered mul­ti­ple stab wounds in the neck.

Rel­a­tives of Richard McK­ie say they are pleased to have his name cleared, af­ter his death was of­fi­cial­ly clas­si­fied as a mur­der and not the re­sult of a botched rob­bery.

For­eign ex­change chal­lenges have de­layed Chloe Ram­nar­ine’s jour­ney to Co­lum­bia, where she is due to re­ceive life-sav­ing can­cer surgery.