The Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme (URP), which has re­ceived more than $6 bil­lion in pub­lic fund­ing since 2010, is cur­rent­ly fac­ing sig­nif­i­cant scruti­ny due to “alarm­ing rev­e­la­tions” of wide­spread cor­rup­tion and po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence.

A 28-year-old man from Ari­ma, who as­sist­ed an old­er rel­a­tive in ab­duct­ing a Bras­so Seco fam­i­ly and mur­der­ing three mem­bers, in­clud­ing a ba­by, in 2014, has been sen­tenced to 12 years in prison.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way af­ter in­trud­ers broke in­to the Mal­ick Sec­ondary School com­pound dur­ing the ear­ly hours of Sun­day.

The Di­vi­sion of Food Se­cu­ri­ty, Nat­ur­al Re­sources, the En­vi­ron­ment and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment says it raised the is­sue of “eq­ui­ty in re­source al­lo­ca­tion” dur­ing a meet­ing with Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram last Fri­day.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram says he will meet with farm­ers from the Re­trench Es­tate fol­low­ing claims that a pri­vate con­trac­tor and a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter are in­volved in ef­forts to re­move them from lands used for cul­ti­va­tion.

At­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen has been ap­point­ed chair­man of the state-owned Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC), just weeks af­ter Cab­i­net re­voked the ap­point­ment of Dr Randy Ra­mad­har Singh, who served as lead di­rec­tor for less than a month.

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Car­la Kan­ga­loo has chal­lenged cit­i­zens to em­brace per­son­al and na­tion­al trans­for­ma­tion, us­ing the steel­pan as a sym­bol of what is pos­si­ble when cre­ativ­i­ty, dis­ci­pline, and com­mu­ni­ty spir­it come to­geth­er.

To­ba­go po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing a failed ATM bur­glary in Cas­tara and are ex­plor­ing the the­o­ry that the sus­pects may have used boats to en­ter and es­cape the area.

This week, T&T has an op­por­tu­ni­ty to put its na­tion­al con­cerns on the radar of Eu­ro­pean de­ci­sion-mak­ers, as it strength­ens diplo­mat­ic and eco­nom­ic ties with the Eu­ro­pean Union through par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Eu­ro­pean Union Vis­i­tors Pro­gramme (EU­VP).

The fam­i­lies of the men mur­dered in Gon­za­les on Sun­day are hop­ing that trou­bled youths who may be vul­ner­a­ble to gangs can re­ceive ad­di­tion­al pri­or­i­ty as part of re­newed ef­forts to fight crime.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro has stopped short of set­ting a time­line for re­sults in the fight against crime but says his “ex­cep­tion­al re­la­tion­ship” with Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der lays the ground­work for pos­i­tive out­comes very soon.

Chair­man of Guaracara Re­fin­ing Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed Gow­tam Ma­haraj says it is too ear­ly to de­ter­mine whether bids will be re­opened for the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.