With less than two weeks un­til Christ­mas Day, busi­ness­es are com­plain­ing of slow sales, in part be­cause their stock is still caught up on the Port of Port-of-Spain, which is still work­ing to clear a back­log of con­tain­ers in the wake of re­cent protest ac­tion by work­ers.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will pro­tect the coun­try from the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-led coali­tion Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is try­ing to form with small­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties and trade unions.

Kaveer Bhag­wan­deen de­fied so­ci­ety’s stereo­types about chil­dren grow­ing up in bro­ken homes, earn­ing an Open Schol­ar­ship in En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence.

To­ba­go busi­ness own­ers hop­ing that Christ­mas sales will pick up next week once work­ers are paid.

To­ba­go po­lit­i­cal par­ties say the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) can count them out of its new po­lit­i­cal coali­tion.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties and an­a­lysts have ex­pressed grave con­cerns with the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion’s (EBC) progress on its Na­tion­al Field Ver­i­fi­ca­tion Ex­er­cise (NFVE).

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris says Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine’s sev­en-out-of-ten rat­ing for the per­for­mance of his ad­min­is­tra­tion is far from re­al­i­ty and out of touch with what To­bag­o­ni­ans are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing every day.

De­scribed as a woman who worked tire­less­ly at jobs of­ten dom­i­nat­ed by men—mix­ing ce­ment, op­er­at­ing a weed wack­er, and ex­celling in sales—rel­a­tives mourned the mur­der of Sher­ryann Roett dur­ing her fu­ner­al yes­ter­day.

These were the two main pieces of ad­vice giv­en to lo­cal con­trac­tors and em­ploy­ers at a con­fer­ence on the man­age­ment of con­struc­tion con­tracts at KR Lal­la & Com­pa­ny in Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day morn­ing. 

A de­liv­ery dri­ver was shot dead and a pen­sion­er was in­jured dur­ing a shoot­ing out­side a bar in Va­len­cia on Thurs­day night.

David West has been reap­point­ed as the di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) for a third con­sec­u­tive term and al­ready has sev­er­al plans he wants to fo­cus on over the next five years.

The TTPS Mount­ed Branch now has a pres­ence in Ch­agua­nas, pro­vid­ing an added lay­er of se­cu­ri­ty to the town cen­tre.