Par­ents giv­ing birth at the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal Cam­pus can now reg­is­ter their ba­bies and re­ceive their birth cer­tifi­cates be­fore leav­ing the hos­pi­tal.

The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has set­tled more than $75.5 mil­lion in com­mit­ments to the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go, fol­low­ing a pay­ment of $8.25 mil­lion on Thurs­day.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) Fri­day said that growth across the West­ern Hemi­sphere has re­mained re­silient, sup­port­ed by strong Unit­ed States de­mand, high com­mod­i­ty prices, eas­i­er fi­nan­cial con­di­tions, ro­bust tourism, and re­mit­tance in­flows.

Kenya’s health min­istry con­firmed that a third per­son test­ed pos­i­tive for Ebo­la on Fri­day while in quar­an­tine af­ter be­ing iden­ti­fied as a known con­tact of the first pa­tient, who died two days af­ter ar­riv­ing from Con­go.

The Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU) has called for the sus­pen­sion of crane trans­fers of per­son­nel wher­ev­er the safe­ty of such op­er­a­tions has not been in­de­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied, fol­low­ing a crane col­lapse at Peren­co’s Samaan Al­pha drilling plat­form which left a work­er in­jured on Wednes­day.

Hours af­ter a fire razed a class­room block, dis­plac­ing pupils of Canaan Pres­by­ter­ian School, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said an ur­gent meet­ing had been con­vened to dis­cuss the way for­ward.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of try­ing to claim cred­it for the new East Ter­mi­nal at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, de­spite what he de­scribed as their pre­vi­ous at­tempts to ob­struct the project.

Mo­torists head­ing to Port-of-Spain on Fri­day are be­ing ad­vised of traf­fic re­stric­tions, park­ing pro­hi­bi­tions and changes to taxi-stand ac­cess to fa­cil­i­tate the fu­ner­al ser­vice of ca­lyp­so leg­end Slinger "Mighty Spar­row" Fran­cis­co.

There are re­newed calls for stronger off­shore safe­ty mea­sures af­ter a work­er sur­vived a crane-re­lat­ed in­ci­dent at Peren­co’s Samaan Al­pha drilling plat­form off Trinidad’s south-east coast on Wednes­day.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) is fac­ing a $287 mil­lion re­duc­tion in its bud­get­ed ex­pen­di­ture for fis­cal 2027, in­clud­ing a $233 mil­lion cut in per­son­nel fund­ing, but Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath is as­sur­ing em­ploy­ees that there are no plans to re­duce the au­thor­i­ty’s es­tab­lished work­force.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty As­so­ci­a­tion (TP­SA) is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment and the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to ur­gent­ly pay up an es­ti­mat­ed $75 mil­lion in out­stand­ing pay­ments owed to 13 con­tract­ed se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, warn­ing that con­tin­ued non-pay­ment could re­sult in se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers re­fus­ing to re­port for du­ty.

A star-stud­ded cast of lo­cal artistes, in­clud­ing Machel Mon­tano, De­stra Gar­cia, Su­perblue, Crazy and Shur­wayne Win­ches­ter, will take the stage to­day to pay trib­ute to ca­lyp­so leg­end Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co.