With a month re­main­ing in the Car­ni­val 2026 sea­son, pa­trons at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day night were able to en­joy a free Car­ni­val con­cert that brought sev­er­al of the sea­son’s biggest per­form­ers to a pub­lic stage, of­fer­ing ac­cess to high-pro­file en­ter­tain­ment for those who may not be able to af­ford tick­et­ed events.

De­spite the late can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val venues by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in No­vem­ber, par­ty pro­mot­er Shel­don Stephen said he was sat­is­fied with this year’s stag­ing of the an­nu­al Xpe­ri­ence fete, held at Skin­ner Park, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day.

A con­trac­tor has suc­cess­ful­ly sued his for­mer ro­man­tic part­ner over own­er­ship of a ve­hi­cle she pur­chased on his be­half while he was strand­ed in Cana­da dur­ing the covid-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020. 

It’s been al­most 17 years since the Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Cli­co) ran in­to a liq­uid­i­ty cri­sis and its chair­man, Lawrence Duprey, went cap-in-hand to the gov­ern­ment for a bailout, which even­tu­al­ly led to the dis­man­tling of the coun­try’s largest con­glom­er­ate, CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF), the par­ent of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny.

Af­ter 15 years, the Cen­tral Bank’s civ­il case against the CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) group be­gan on Jan­u­ary 6 be­fore Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed.

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, has en­dorsed the de­ci­sion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to end long-stand­ing civ­il suits tied to the col­lapse of the CLF con­glom­er­ate, with ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er Carl­ton Reis call­ing for the State to fi­nal­ly re­lin­quish con­trol and al­low CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) to re­build.

With a di­vi­sion of 27 Gov­ern­ment MPs for and 11 Op­po­si­tion MPs against, the Law Re­form Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures Act, 2026, was passed in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment.

As the Gov­ern­ment moves to in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) af­ter the State of Emer­gency ends on Jan­u­ary 31, both the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert are urg­ing cau­tion, warn­ing that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion can dis­rupt eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly erod­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

A 24-year-old man was shot and killed dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice near a bar along Morne Co­co Road, Mar­aval, on Fri­day night, mak­ing the in­ci­dent the third po­lice-in­volved fa­tal shoot­ing with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

With rough­ly two more weeks be­fore the State of Emer­gency comes to an end, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter is­sued ten more de­ten­tion or­ders for the year.

Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd, a com­pa­ny linked to for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Fos­ter Cum­mings, op­er­at­ed on oral con­tracts for cer­tain months in 2017 and 2018 at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

Lo­cal event pro­mot­er Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment Lim­it­ed has filed a civ­il law­suit against Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Adid­ja Az­im Palmer, pop­u­lar­ly known as Vy­bz Kar­tel, aris­ing out of the can­cel­la­tion of the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, which was sched­uled to take place on May 31, 2025.