Ty­phoon Fung-wong blew out of the north­west­ern Philip­pines on Mon­day af­ter set­ting off floods and land­slides, knock­ing out pow­er to en­tire provinces, killing at least eight peo­ple and dis­plac­ing more than 1.4 mil­lion oth­ers.

The body of kid­nap vic­tim Vish­nu Lal­la was dis­cov­ered on Sun­day night along an aban­doned road­way near the old Ca­roni (1975) Lim­it­ed med­ical clin­ic. Lal­la went miss­ing on Sat­ur­day, and a $100,000 ran­som had been de­mand­ed for his re­lease. He was the broth­er of Kr­ish­na Lal­la, founder of Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices.

A $100,000 ran­som de­mand has been made for the safe re­lease of 63-year-old farmer Vish­nu Lal­la, who was kid­napped on Sat­ur­day evening.

Po­lice are work­ing to es­tab­lish a mo­tive for the shoot­ing death of a 30-year-old Tu­na­puna moth­er and so­cial me­dia in­flu­encer who was gunned down on Sat­ur­day night while play­ing cards.

A Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter is lament­ing the coun­try’s crime sit­u­a­tion af­ter a close rel­a­tive was gunned down on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Over two hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, last evening for a vig­il for peace, where ac­tivists, faith lead­ers, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il so­ci­ety joined in a solemn show of sol­i­dar­i­ty call­ing for peace across the Caribbean re­gion.

While the Gov­ern­ment has re­mained mum on the Joint Trade Union Move­ment’s (JTUM) sup­port for yes­ter­day’s “Zone of Peace” ral­ly, the Op­po­si­tion com­mend­ed the union’s stance for peace in the coun­try.

In the wake of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa’s dev­as­ta­tion across Ja­maica, Wiz­dom­CRM Caribbean Ltd has un­veiled a US$3.85 mil­lion hu­man cap­i­tal and ed­u­ca­tion re­lief ini­tia­tive to sup­port re­cov­ery and strength­en the na­tion’s ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) will de­ploy a Mu­tu­al Aid team to Ja­maica to as­sist with pow­er restora­tion ef­forts fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

Act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Port of Port-of-Spain, Robert Ram­sub­hag, says that 27 con­tain­ers linked to Trin­ba­go Ex­press Ship­ping Inc. re­main un­claimed at the port but as­sured af­fect­ed cus­tomers that their goods will not be auc­tioned off.

While Ja­maica un­doubt­ed­ly bore the full brunt of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa’s fury, oth­er coun­tries, such as Cu­ba, were al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed.

As glob­al lead­ers gath­er in Belém, Brazil, for the land­mark Unit­ed Na­tions COP30 cli­mate con­fer­ence, the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) is de­mand­ing a de­ci­sive shift in glob­al cli­mate ac­tion to keep the 1.5°C warm­ing lim­it with­in reach. With new da­ta show­ing that glob­al com­mit­ments re­main far off-track, AO­SIS has for­mal­ly pro­posed a new agen­da item aimed at ad­dress­ing what it calls the “am­bi­tion and im­ple­men­ta­tion gap” in coun­tries’ cli­mate pledges.