Just af­ter mid­night, flames en­gulfed the Moru­ga home of 75-year-old pen­sion­er Bernadette Guer­rero, as neigh­bours looked on help­less­ly, pray­ing she was not in­side.

Wil­fred Nicholas Mor­ris was sworn in yes­ter­day as Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter dur­ing a cer­e­mo­ny at Pres­i­dent’s House presided over by Act­ing Pres­i­dent Wade Mark. He joins Min­is­ters Bar­ry Padarath and Dar­rell Al­la­har in the of­fice.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo has ac­knowl­edged that the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) will be pay­ing close at­ten­tion to Gov­ern­ment's pro­ject­ed time frames for its poli­cies - but he says the ad­min­is­tra­tion is con­fi­dent in its abil­i­ty and that its plans will bear fruit in broad-based na­tion­al growth and de­vel­op­ment.

The Unit­ed States will send the world’s largest air­craft car­ri­er to the Mid­dle East to back up an­oth­er al­ready there, a per­son fa­mil­iar with the plans said Fri­day, putting more Amer­i­can fire­pow­er be­hind Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ef­forts to co­erce Iran in­to a deal over its nu­clear pro­gram.

A 27-year-old Arou­ca man is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a mag­is­trate af­ter po­lice charged him with the mur­der of Yamerlis Lopez.

TTPS Gold com­man­der for Car­ni­val 2026 and DCP Op­er­a­tions, Suzette Mar­tin, yes­ter­day stressed that the po­lice were pre­pared and de­ployed to treat with any emer­gency or in­ci­dent as the fes­tiv­i­ties move in­to high gear head­ing to the cli­max on Mon­day and Tues­day next week.

As Car­ni­val 2026 en­ters its fi­nal stretch, po­lice and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies have rolled out ex­pand­ed safe­ty mea­sures for events across the coun­try, with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­firm­ing height­ened en­force­ment, wider de­ploy­ments and stricter con­trols for the sea­son’s ma­jor cel­e­bra­tions.

Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Ansar Ali is urg­ing the pub­lic to avoid “gy­rat­ing” on fire ve­hi­cles in tran­sit, as he says this can cause un­nec­es­sary de­lays for pos­si­ble life-threat­en­ing emer­gen­cies.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is laugh­ing off Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath’s ques­tion­able be­hav­iour at a Car­ni­val fete on Wednes­day night.

Car­ni­val con­tin­ues to at­tract vis­i­tors to our shores, but tourism of­fi­cials say the sea­son’s per­for­mance re­mains steady rather than ex­pand­ing, with re­peat vis­i­tors dom­i­nat­ing ar­rivals and lim­it­ing eco­nom­ic spin-off for lo­cal op­er­a­tors.

The Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) is again deny­ing claims of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in this year’s Ca­lyp­so Monarch judg­ing, but one vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian, Hol­lis “Chalk­dust” Liv­er­pool, in­sists the re­al prob­lem lies with poor­ly trained judges.

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King is clar­i­fy­ing in­for­ma­tion now be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed via a voice note on so­cial me­dia, which ap­pears to sug­gest he is sup­port­ing a par­tic­u­lar ca­lyp­son­ian in the Na­tion­al Ca­lyp­so Monarch fi­nal. He says the voice note is a cou­ple of years old and had noth­ing to do with this year’s com­pe­ti­tion.