Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore has promised that Panora­ma 2027 will be the great­est stag­ing of the an­nu­al steel­band com­pe­ti­tion, as the or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cates the sea­son to the late ca­lyp­son­ian Slinger Fran­cis­co, bet­ter known as the Mighty Spar­row.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says she is not sur­prised, but is “ex­cep­tion­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed” by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s re­sponse to con­tro­ver­sial re­marks made by Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts about women in Par­lia­ment.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has an­nounced that Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) will re­ceive out­stand­ing cost-of-liv­ing al­lowance (CO­LA) pay­ments on over­time earn­ings in two in­stal­ments, be­gin­ning in De­cem­ber.

This year’s Di­vali Na­gar cel­e­bra­tions have been dealt a se­vere blow with the pull­out of bmo­bile as an event spon­sor, prompt­ing the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) to ap­peal to the Gov­ern­ment for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to stage the an­nu­al event.

The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) is pro­ject­ed to re­ceive an ad­di­tion­al $23 mil­lion in Gov­ern­ment fund­ing for fis­cal 2027, in­creas­ing its pro­posed sub­ven­tion to $160.2 mil­lion as prepa­ra­tions be­gin for Car­ni­val 2027.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) claims that Trinidad and To­ba­go was in re­ces­sion, in­sist­ing the coun­try was mov­ing for­ward eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has ad­vised the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty to con­duct an en­quiry in­to for­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s move­ments in and out of Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing his min­is­te­r­i­al tenure, fol­low­ing claims of 78 trips to Venezuela, “ghost trips” and four diplo­mat­ic pass­ports al­leged­ly held by Young.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Gov­ern­ment will be­gin is­su­ing mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion cards from No­vem­ber 1.

South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) chair­man Anil Go­sine and med­ical di­rec­tor Dr Anand Cha­toor­goon have ten­dered their res­ig­na­tions.

A young moth­er fears she may soon be un­able to af­ford milk for her child, af­ter she and 123 oth­er dai­ly-paid work­ers were laid off by the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA).

Lawyers rep­re­sent­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, his wife Genevieve and her aunt Star Sab­ga are still seek­ing the dis­clo­sure of an unedit­ed copy of an in­ter­cept­ed tele­phone call that led to them be­ing held on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) dur­ing the re­cent­ly com­plet­ed State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has not con­firmed whether the Gov­ern­ment is on track to meet its month-end dead­line for the con­struc­tion of ten ad­di­tion­al po­lice posts.