Par­lia­ment staff are deny­ing al­le­ga­tions of bias, af­ter claims by Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath that mi­cro­phones used by Gov­ern­ment MPs were de­lib­er­ate­ly mut­ed dur­ing par­lia­men­tary sit­tings.

The ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s new ter­mi­nal build­ing has been ful­ly cer­ti­fied for op­er­a­tions, with of­fi­cials yes­ter­day re­ceiv­ing the doc­u­ments re­quired to for­mal­ly com­mis­sion the fa­cil­i­ty.

A pri­vate air­craft that left St Vin­cent and the Grenadines en route to To­ba­go on Fri­day has gone miss­ing, prompt­ing a re­gion­al search and res­cue op­er­a­tion in­volv­ing mul­ti­ple agen­cies.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo en­ters to­day’s Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view fac­ing de­mands from unions, busi­ness groups, po­lice of­fi­cers and the Op­po­si­tion, all seek­ing an­swers on jobs, wages, eco­nom­ic growth and Gov­ern­ment spend­ing as Par­lia­ment pre­pares to ab­sorb an ad­di­tion­al $2.93 bil­lion in ex­pen­di­ture.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and La Brea MP Clyde El­der put aside pol­i­tics on Sat­ur­day evening as they joined hun­dreds of Los Iros res­i­dents in a can­dle­light march call­ing for greater pro­tec­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s chil­dren, fol­low­ing the killing of 12-year-old Mer­cedes Layne, a stu­dent at the Erin RC Pri­ma­ry School, whose bat­tered body was dis­cov­ered last Sun­day near an oil pipeline.

An East Port-of-Spain res­i­dent who as­sist­ed in res­cu­ing a man from a dead­ly fire on Fri­day night is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to show more em­pa­thy.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents in­volv­ing a Venezue­lan na­tion­al who was kid­napped and a Unit­ed King­dom na­tion­al who was ab­duct­ed and robbed in un­re­lat­ed at­tacks over the past week.

New­ly named Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy Lau­re­ate, Dr Niv­en Narain, has pledged to use his US$35,000 cash prize from the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga Awards for Caribbean Ex­cel­lence to es­tab­lish a foun­da­tion fo­cused on women’s health in Guyana and the Unit­ed States.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is ap­peal­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter and Fi­nance Min­is­ter to con­sid­er al­low­ing cit­i­zens who were un­able to con­vert their $100 bills for the poly­mer notes.

Cu­ba's Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go has re­ject­ed re­cent ac­cu­sa­tions against for­mer Cuban pres­i­dent Raúl Cas­tro, de­scrib­ing them as base­less and part of ef­forts by the Unit­ed States to jus­ti­fy in­creased hos­til­i­ty to­wards the Caribbean na­tion.

Chair­man of the State-owned Guaracara Re­fin­ery Com­pa­ny Ltd (GR­CL), Gow­tam Ma­haraj, says the shut­tered Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery is at­tract­ing re­newed in­ter­na­tion­al in­ter­est fol­low­ing the in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing agency Moody’s de­ci­sion to up­grade Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sov­er­eign eco­nom­ic out­look from neg­a­tive to sta­ble while af­firm­ing its Ba2 cred­it rat­ing.

A for­mer em­ploy­ee of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) has lost an ap­peal over the dis­missal of her case chal­leng­ing the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion she re­ceived from the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).