As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the fire­bomb­ing of a home in Pe­nal linked to the al­leged false im­pris­on­ment of Sabi­ta Bas­deo, po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors yes­ter­day con­firmed they were widen­ing their probe in­to a crim­i­nal net­work op­er­at­ing in South Trinidad.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad says de­spite the num­ber of cas­es be­fore the Chil­dren’s Court and the 1,050 chil­dren sus­pend­ed from schools in the first three months of the aca­d­e­m­ic year, the use of State of Emer­gency pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders for mi­nors may not be the best so­lu­tion to steer­ing youth away from de­viant and crim­i­nal be­hav­iour.

A re­lax­ing evening for a Moru­ga fam­i­ly turned trag­ic af­ter a 58-year-old man died af­ter falling 12 feet down a precipice in front of his home on Tues­day night.

A se­nior Shia Is­lam­ic leader is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to ur­gent­ly re­assess its de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties, warn­ing that the move risks im­port­ing for­eign geopo­lit­i­cal con­flicts in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s do­mes­tic le­gal and po­lit­i­cal space.

Re­gion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert Dr Garvin Heer­ah says the des­ig­na­tion of Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC), Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah and Hamas as ter­ror­ist groups would bode well for T&T’s se­cu­ri­ty sta­tus and ef­forts to pre­vent ter­ror fi­nanc­ing.

Head of the Ja­maat Al-Mus­limeen, Imam Sadiq Al-Razi, has de­clined to com­ment on the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate three in­ter­na­tion­al groups as ter­ror­ist or­gan­i­sa­tions—Hezbol­lah, Hamas and Iran’s Is­lam­ic Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard Corps (IRGC)—but main­tained his and the in­sti­tu­tion’s con­tin­ued sup­port for Pales­tine.

The Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Trinidad and To­ba­go has main­tained a Lev­el III trav­el ad­vi­so­ry for Trinidad and To­ba­go, ad­vis­ing trav­ellers to re­con­sid­er trav­el due to crime and a height­ened risk of ter­ror­ism.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­clared that Trinidad and To­ba­go will not ex­it Cari­com, even as she launched an­oth­er scathing at­tack on the re­gion­al body over what she de­scribed as a fail­ure to cor­rob­o­rate a key What­sApp mes­sage cen­tral to an on­go­ing gov­er­nance dis­pute.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Stu­art Young is call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) af­ter the dis­clo­sure of a $3.4 bil­lion list of hous­ing con­tracts he de­scribes as a “car­tel-type” abuse of pub­lic funds.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has pledged to take “ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion, if nec­es­sary” against Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates, while Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee which un­cov­ered her al­leged mis­con­duct is set to meet to­day to de­cide on her fu­ture par­tic­i­pa­tion.

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has re­ject­ed claims cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia that staff lock­ers at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) were forcibly bro­ken in­to, or that per­son­al items were dis­card­ed.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is tar­get­ing a crowd of more than 10,000 peo­ple for its April 25 con­gress, which will mark both the par­ty’s 37th an­niver­sary and its first year in gov­ern­ment.