Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is deny­ing claims that her Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing regime change in Venezuela, but stopped short of say­ing whether she recog­nis­es Nicolás Maduro as the coun­try’s Pres­i­dent.

Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries, Ravi Rati­ram, has sig­naled that the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor will be a key fo­cus of the up­com­ing na­tion­al bud­get.

A lead­er­ship row grip­ping the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), has trig­gered the for­mal in­ter­ven­tion of the Reg­is­trar of Trade Unions, who has asked for a meet­ing with pres­i­dent Don Devi­nesh about com­plaints made against him.

Frus­tra­tion is mount­ing across re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, as the is­sue of back­pay for coun­cil­lors and al­der­men re­mains un­set­tled, with less than half of the coun­try’s 14 cor­po­ra­tions re­port­ed­ly paid to date.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is re­port­ing ear­ly signs of suc­cess from its new School-Ori­ent­ed Polic­ing Unit (SOPU), with of­fi­cers em­bed­ded in 50 high-risk schools.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has as­sured To­bag­o­ni­ans that the is­land’s cur­rent wa­ter short­age is not the re­sult of mis­man­age­ment, but rather a com­bi­na­tion of re­duced rain­fall and op­er­a­tional chal­lenges with­in the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA).

A man ac­cused of mur­der­ing a taxi dri­ver two years ago, was freed af­ter High Court Judge Nali­ni Singh found that the State’s ev­i­dence against him was in­suf­fi­cient.

Class­es at St Bene­dict’s Col­lege in La Ro­maine will re­sume on Mon­day, sub­ject to clear­ance from the Fire Ser­vice and OS­HA, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

The T&T Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) says it has reached the pro­cure­ment stage for re­pairs to in­fra­struc­ture prob­lems at River­side South Corinth De­vel­op­ment, but res­i­dents are con­cerned that con­di­tions are de­te­ri­o­rat­ing dai­ly.

Vet­er­an me­dia prac­ti­tion­er Neil Parsan­lal has warned that those in the jour­nal­ism in­dus­try must pay at­ten­tion to their health and the stress­es that come with the job. Parsan­lal was speak­ing at the fu­ner­al of I95.5FM broad­cast­er Ster­ling Hen­der­son yes­ter­day at the Holy Trin­i­ty RC Church in Arou­ca.

Venezuela’s Jus­tice Min­is­ter, Dios­da­do Ca­bel­lo, claims that a for­mer US in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer be­lieves the Unit­ed States is send­ing a strong mes­sage to Venezuela not to in­ter­fere with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her gov­ern­ment is not af­ter regime change in Venezuela.