UNC MP for La Hor­quet­ta/Tal­paro Phillip Watts has drawn crit­i­cism af­ter com­ment­ing on the ap­pear­ance and sex­u­al moral­i­ty of fe­male MPs dur­ing Sat­ur­day night's de­bate on the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get.

For­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged wa­ter truck­ing rack­et at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der has de­fend­ed the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) se­lec­tion of con­trac­tors for a $3.48 bil­lion hous­ing pro­gramme, ar­gu­ing that the com­pa­nies were drawn from the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion’s reg­istry and sub­ject­ed to fur­ther fi­nan­cial checks be­fore con­tracts were signed.

Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get says Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies and Tech­nolo­gies Com­pa­ny Ltd will be part of what­ev­er arrange­ment emerges for the re­open­ing of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, al­though he has not dis­closed who the prospec­tive op­er­a­tor will be.

The own­ers of a Chi­nese restau­rant in To­ba­go were robbed and beat­en dur­ing a home in­va­sion ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing.

A Care­nage man was shot dead by po­lice af­ter al­leged­ly point­ing a firearm at of­fi­cers while at­tempt­ing to evade cap­ture fol­low­ing a high-speed chase through Mal­abar and Ari­ma ear­ly Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

The pun­gent smell of raw sewage flow­ing in­side and be­hind peo­ple’s homes and in­to wa­ter­cours­es was what Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der en­coun­tered when he vis­it­ed Corinth yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Pa­tients strug­gling to ac­cess med­ica­tion for chron­ic dis­eases, can­cer and some psy­chi­atric con­di­tions could see im­prove­ments, with Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe promis­ing ac­tion to ad­dress short­ages in the pub­lic health sys­tem.

Hun­dreds of vis­i­tors once again flocked to the Bloody Bay Recre­ation Grounds, To­ba­go, yes­ter­day to savour a culi­nary ex­pe­ri­ence root­ed in dasheen.  

To­ba­go's two Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment have pledged to work with the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment to ad­vance the is­land's de­vel­op­ment agen­da, de­spite con­cerns over a re­duc­tion in To­ba­go's di­rect al­lo­ca­tion un­der the 2027 na­tion­al bud­get.

T&T’s econ­o­my is ex­hibit­ing many of the char­ac­ter­is­tics as­so­ci­at­ed with a re­ces­sion, but econ­o­mists re­main di­vid­ed on whether the coun­try’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties fit the tra­di­tion­al de­f­i­n­i­tion of a re­ces­sion or re­flect a deep­er struc­tur­al slump dri­ven by the pro­longed de­cline of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

While pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, owed an es­ti­mat­ed $75 mil­lion, say some Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) sites had no guards on Fri­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath claims no WASA fa­cil­i­ty was left un­manned.