Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­pose stiffer road traf­fic fines was dri­ven by ev­i­dence un­cov­ered af­ter tak­ing of­fice, in­sist­ing the scale of law­less­ness on the na­tion’s roads was far worse than what was un­der­stood dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the surge of traf­fic tick­ets is­sued in re­cent days but says there will be no re­duc­tion in fines. How­ev­er, she said yes­ter­day that her Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing to in­tro­duce a sys­tem to give dri­vers time to fix ve­hi­cle de­fects be­fore penal­ties take ef­fect.

For a third con­sec­u­tive day, long lines formed out­side Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion of­fices across the coun­try, as frus­trat­ed dri­vers at­tempt­ed to reg­is­ter, in­spect, or trans­fer their ve­hi­cles be­fore fac­ing new­ly in­creased traf­fic fines.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he would “mash up” the radar in To­ba­go him­self if he had in­for­ma­tion it was used to as­sist the Unit­ed States in at­tack­ing Venezuela and oust­ing Nico­las Maduro.

In a strate­gic move to en­sure en­er­gy sta­bil­i­ty, Venezuela oil com­pa­ny Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA), yes­ter­day con­firmed it is ad­vanc­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Unit­ed States for the sale of its oil.

With mo­torists and com­muters in­creas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed by large-scale traf­fic en­force­ment ex­er­cis­es dur­ing peak hours, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke has re­vealed plans to au­to­mate traf­fic en­force­ment us­ing cam­era-based sys­tems de­signed to catch law-break­ing dri­vers.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our con­firmed yes­ter­day that there are no pro­vi­sions for a pay­ment plan for fixed penal­ty tick­ets.

ACP Richard Smith of the Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion is urg­ing pa­trons of up­com­ing Car­ni­val fetes not to over-in­dulge in al­co­hol for this year’s fes­tiv­i­ties.

Reign­ing Chut­ney So­ca Monarch cham­pi­on, Machel Mon­tano, will re­turn to de­fend his crown when the fi­nal of the com­pe­ti­tion takes place on Feb­ru­ary 8 at Skin­ner Park in San Fer­nan­do. This was con­firmed as Southex launched the Chut­ney So­ca Monarch last evening, with Guardian Me­dia’s Sangeet 106.1FM be­com­ing its of­fi­cial part­ner. It will be a day-night event start­ing with a pre-show at 4 pm. The show will end at 12 mid­night and, for the 11th year run­ning, will re­main free to the pub­lic.

With less than one week to go be­fore To­bag­o­ni­ans de­cide who will lead the is­land, all po­lit­i­cal par­ties con­test­ing the elec­tion have un­veiled their vi­sions through their man­i­festos.

Chief Sec­re­tary and To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) po­lit­i­cal leader Far­ley Au­gus­tine has told in­di­vid­u­als he de­scribed as “paid blog­gers from Trinidad” to keep their opin­ions out of To­ba­go’s po­lit­i­cal af­fairs, in­sist­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans will de­ter­mine their own fu­ture.

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion of Port-of-Spain has is­sued an ur­gent ad­vi­so­ry to busi­ness­es fol­low­ing a se­ries of night­time shopfront bur­glar­ies across the city.