Hong Kong fire­fight­ers found dozens more bod­ies Fri­day in an in­ten­sive apart­ment-by-apart­ment search of a high-rise com­plex where a mas­sive fire en­gulfed sev­en build­ings, and au­thor­i­ties ar­rest­ed an­oth­er 8 peo­ple in­volved in the tow­ers’ ren­o­va­tion. The death toll in one of the city’s dead­liest blazes rose to 128, and many re­main un­ac­count­ed for.

The Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary (OCS) of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly says it is seek­ing full clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment on the in­stal­la­tion of a Unit­ed States-sup­port­ed radar sys­tem at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, fol­low­ing pub­lic con­cerns trig­gered by com­ments from Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar on Wednes­day.

Af­ter sev­er­al hours of tense ne­go­ti­a­tions, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) have reached an agree­ment on a ten per cent wage in­crease for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro made it clear yes­ter­day that no for­eign “threat or ag­gres­sion” will in­tim­i­date the Venezue­lan peo­ple, fol­low­ing what he called 17 weeks of threats from the US, as he com­mem­o­rat­ed the 105th an­niver­sary of the Bo­li­var­i­an Mil­i­tary Avi­a­tion of Venezuela and the 33rd an­niver­sary of the No­vem­ber 27, 1992 at­tempt­ed coup.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines ap­peared set for a his­toric change in po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship last night as pre­lim­i­nary re­sults showed the New De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NDP), led by God­win Fri­day, sweep­ing to a de­ci­sive vic­to­ry at the gen­er­al elec­tions, bring­ing to an end 25 con­sec­u­tive years of rule by the Uni­ty Labour Par­ty (ULP) un­der Dr Ralph Gon­salves.

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo has called for sus­tained in­no­va­tion in the pub­lic ser­vice while em­pha­sis­ing the im­por­tance of ad­her­ing to es­tab­lished rules and con­ven­tions, as she ad­dressed the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB) PrAISE Awards for In­no­va­tion in Ser­vice Ex­cel­lence 2025 on Tues­day.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go edges clos­er to adopt­ing stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion, de­bate is in­ten­si­fy­ing over how the law will be en­forced and whether race, polic­ing cul­ture, and ac­cess to firearms will shape its im­pact.

Po­lice ar­rest­ed a 26-year-old man from Rock­ley Vale, Scar­bor­ough, in con­nec­tion with the mur­der of an Amer­i­can tourist in Cas­tara on Wednes­day night, bring­ing To­ba­go’s mur­der toll to eight for the year.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is now re­ly­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter for the ex­pla­na­tion be­hind this week’s unan­nounced US mil­i­tary land­ing in To­ba­go—a day af­ter say­ing he knew noth­ing about it.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) is call­ing on Venezuela to re­verse its de­ci­sion to ban six in­ter­na­tion­al air­lines from op­er­at­ing to/from the coun­try.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les will this af­ter­noon pi­lot a mo­tion for de­bate in Par­lia­ment con­demn­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ments on the T&T/Venezuela is­sue and call­ing up­on the Gov­ern­ment to reaf­firm this coun­try’s com­mit­ment to Cari­com and to the up­hold­ing of in­ter­na­tion­al law.

As she, her min­is­ters, and coun­cil­lors joined in prayer for the fam­i­ly of Coun­cil­lor Romona Vic­tor yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed her com­mit­ment to pro­tect­ing fam­i­lies in cri­sis.