The de­com­mis­sion­ing of the Port-of-Spain Prison is now un­der­way, with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 in­mates al­ready trans­ferred to fa­cil­i­ties at Gold­en Grove, Arou­ca, as au­thor­i­ties be­gin a phased shut­down aimed at clos­ing the his­toric prison by De­cem­ber.

The Na­tion­al Awards Com­mit­tee con­ducts care­ful vet­ting of nom­i­nees be­fore rec­om­men­da­tions are made for na­tion­al ho­n­ours, ac­cord­ing to for­mer head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Reynold Coop­er, who said it is al­so cus­tom­ary for the Chief Jus­tice to re­ceive the coun­try’s high­est award, the Or­der of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ORTT).

As Trinidad and To­ba­go marked 50 years as a re­pub­lic on Thurs­day, with scouts, cadets, brown­ies and girl guides parad­ing through San Fer­nan­do, the mile­stone was quick­ly over­shad­owed by po­lit­i­cal fall­out from a marathon overnight sit­ting of Par­lia­ment, with San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of pre­sid­ing over the “Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is seek­ing the pub­lic’s as­sis­tance in iden­ti­fy­ing two men re­port­ed­ly in­volved in a vi­o­lent al­ter­ca­tion in Barataria on Fri­day, dur­ing which time one man was stabbed sev­er­al times.

Deputy Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er (DCP) Suzette Mar­tin is as­sur­ing the pub­lic that ex­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tions are be­ing car­ried out in­to sev­er­al in­ci­dents of an­i­mal cru­el­ty in the Tal­paro/San Rafael area.

A fam­i­ly from San Juan has been giv­en six months to va­cate their home, which was built on land they have been oc­cu­py­ing for over 70 years.

Giselle Ougrah had ex­celled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, grad­u­at­ing with ex­cel­lence from St Stephen’s Col­lege af­ter at­tain­ing 16 sub­jects at CSEC and CAPE.

A young woman who ex­celled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly and grad­u­at­ed with dis­tinc­tion from St Stephen's Col­lege af­ter earn­ing 16 CSEC and CAPE sub­jects was found dead on Fri­day, hours af­ter vis­it­ing her boyfriend at an apart­ment in Pe­nal.

Weeks be­fore the Gov­ern­ment presents its sec­ond bud­get, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer says her union will not back down on its 10 per cent wage hike re­quest. Fur­ther­more, Ogeer is now call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to meet with the union to set­tle out­stand­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions, say­ing she will not deal with Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath.

To­ba­go will have a new po­lice com­man­der from Mon­day, just days af­ter the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) re­vealed the is­land is the on­ly po­lice di­vi­sion record­ing an in­crease in Se­ri­ous Re­port­ed Crime this year.

For­mer Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke is urg­ing trade union lead­ers not to al­low po­lit­i­cal al­le­giances to over­shad­ow their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the work­ers they rep­re­sent.

Scores of peo­ple were un­able to cash book grant and oth­er Gov­ern­ment-is­sued cheques at the Trea­sury Build­ing on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, af­ter the Pay­branch Unit was forced to close be­cause of tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties.