Po­lice will use da­ta gath­ered dur­ing the last aca­d­e­m­ic year to tar­get fight­ing, va­p­ing and mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion in schools this term, with 51 schools re­main­ing on the School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing (SOP) pro­gramme for now.

As teach­ers re­turn to class­rooms to­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Crys­tal Ashe is warn­ing that schools can­not func­tion ef­fec­tive­ly while key re­sources, per­son­nel and sup­port sys­tems re­main un­re­solved.

So­ca star Machel Mon­tano re­ceived mul­ti­ple of­fi­cial ho­n­ours in New York last Thurs­day, as thou­sands gath­ered out­side the Brook­lyn Pub­lic Li­brary (BPL) to watch the sto­ry of his life and ca­reer pro­ject­ed on­to the façade of the land­mark build­ing.

While all schools are sched­uled to re­open to­day, some par­ents of stu­dents at Fyz­abad An­gli­can Sec­ondary School say they will be keep­ing their chil­dren at home due to con­cerns about con­demned build­ings and oth­er in­fra­struc­tur­al is­sues.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has re­ject­ed claims that sup­port for him with­in the con­stituen­cy is dwin­dling, fol­low­ing a re­port by an in­ter­nal Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) com­mit­tee sug­gest­ing the par­ty’s long-held strong­hold could be un­der threat.

For­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford has ex­pressed deep con­cern over re­ports that San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning was shout­ed down and threat­ened dur­ing last Fri­day’s Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing, com­par­ing the in­ci­dent to the treat­ment met­ed out to Man­ning’s fa­ther, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, in 2010.

Mu­sic pro­duc­er and pod­cast­er Khalif “KG” Greaves says that while com­mu­ni­ties ap­pear will­ing to con­tin­ue ob­serv­ing a cease­fire fol­low­ing an ap­par­ent truce led by Trini­bad artistes Kashif “K Man” Sankar and Meschach “Plumpy Boss” Em­manuel, it is im­por­tant for man­age­ment teams and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to help keep res­i­dents on the path of peace.

A 15-year-old To­ba­go school­boy is ex­pect­ed to miss the first day of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year to­day, as he re­mains in po­lice cus­tody fol­low­ing the death of his grand­fa­ther.

To­ba­go in­mates housed in Trinidad say in­car­cer­a­tion away from the is­land has left them iso­lat­ed and dis­con­nect­ed from their fam­i­lies.

Calls for tougher con­trols on fire­works are grow­ing af­ter Sat­ur­day’s dev­as­tat­ing fire in Port-of-Spain, which gut­ted a long-stand­ing elec­tri­cal re­pair busi­ness and de­stroyed two homes.

Methane bub­bling from the seabed. Vast beds of mus­sels thriv­ing in dark­ness. The re­mains of a man­ta ray pro­vid­ing a feast for deep-sea crea­tures. Sunken wood sup­port­ing life hun­dreds of me­tres be­low the sur­face.

Ran­dall Ash was killed short­ly af­ter mid­night yes­ter­day when gun­fire erupt­ed along Mur­ray Street, near Adam Smith Park.