Po­lice seized an il­le­gal as­sault ri­fle and am­mu­ni­tion dur­ing an an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion in the West­ern Di­vi­sion on Thurs­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she makes no apolo­gies for sid­ing with the Unit­ed States, as she de­fend­ed her Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on joint ac­tion against transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime.

The Gov­ern­ment has be­gun the next phase of its na­tion­al as­sess­ment of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence readi­ness with the roll­out of a mul­ti-stake­hold­er sur­vey un­der UN­ESCO’s Readi­ness As­sess­ment Method­ol­o­gy (RAM).

Lo­cal au­thor and ac­tivist Aleeyah Ali has re­ceived in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion for her work in ocean lit­er­a­cy through the Blue Thread ini­tia­tive, launched in late 2024 by UN­ESCO’s In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Oceano­graph­ic Com­mis­sion.

Charge or re­lease them and apol­o­gise! This was the call made yes­ter­day by an at­tor­ney rep­re­sent­ing sev­er­al in­di­vid­u­als de­tained un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), who ques­tioned its ef­fec­tive­ness as it is set to ex­pire on Jan­u­ary 31.

As the State of Emer­gency (SoE) comes to an end on Jan­u­ary 31, sev­er­al de­tainees who have been held for months un­der de­ten­tion or­ders with­out charge are anx­ious­ly await­ing their free­dom.

With the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ex­pect­ed to come to an end in the com­ing weeks, the Gov­ern­ment is turn­ing its at­ten­tion to tar­get­ed crime-fight­ing mea­sures in hotspots. At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie re­vealed on Wednes­day that Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) will be in­tro­duced, pro­vid­ing law en­force­ment with ex­pand­ed le­gal au­thor­i­ty to ad­dress crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty in hotspot com­mu­ni­ties, sim­i­lar to a mod­el used in Ja­maica.

Even be­fore Par­lia­ment con­venes to de­bate the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) as a crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, a crim­i­nol­o­gist is warn­ing the ap­proach will fail to ad­dress the roots of vi­o­lent crime.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy ad­vis­er Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Clay­ton is ap­peal­ing to both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to set aside their dif­fer­ences and al­low the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions to be used ef­fec­tive­ly.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has again pledged au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go and al­so in­tro­duced a new di­vi­sion to deal with le­gal and in­ter­gov­ern­men­tal af­fairs.

The re­port on the Com­mis­sion of In­quiry (COI) in­to the col­lapse of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire and the Hin­du Cred­it Union will be laid in Par­lia­ment this af­ter­noon.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) is mov­ing to­wards a mass ral­ly, even as teach­ers across the coun­try con­tin­ue to wear red in protest over the de­lay in the pay­ment of new salaries.