Vow­ing to en­sure their lat­est ve­hi­cle ac­qui­si­tions will not be al­lowed to fall in­to rack and ru­in as in the past, act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP), Ju­nior Ben­jamin has as­sured a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem for the main­te­nance and up­keep of 67 new RAV 4 ve­hi­cles for the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) will be im­ple­ment­ed.

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin has con­firmed that the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) is prob­ing the source, method, and tim­ing of the US$950,000 pay­ment made to Adid­ja “Vy­bz Kar­tel” Palmer by a lo­cal pro­mot­er to ap­pear at last Sat­ur­day’s One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val.

The Op­po­si­tion is not op­posed to sup­port­ing stand-Your-Ground leg­is­la­tion, but on­ly if it is what cit­i­zens want.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen says, aside from the miss­ing $90,000, there may be even more mon­ey un­ac­count­ed for from the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion (SFCC).

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of plan­ning ma­jor job cuts across min­istries and State agen­cies.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is call­ing for a crim­i­nal probe in­to what he de­scribed as “the great­est pro­cure­ment be­tray­al” in the his­to­ry of the THA. He is al­so call­ing for the Health Sec­re­tary to re­sign.

Op­po­si­tion Leader and sole nom­i­nee for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) lead­er­ship Pen­ne­lope Beck­les re­mains un­fazed by the ap­par­ent lack of sup­port from key par­ty fig­ures, in­clud­ing stal­wart Fer­die Fer­reira and MPs Stu­art Young and Camille Robin­son-Reg­is.

One month in­to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s term, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad and for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira have praised Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her ‘no-non­sense’ lead­er­ship style in her sec­ond stint in of­fice.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is de­fend­ing the con­tin­ued use of vir­tu­al court ap­pear­ances at po­lice sta­tions, in­sist­ing the prac­tice is legal­ly ground­ed, care­ful­ly reg­u­lat­ed, and es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ing jus­tice ef­fi­cient­ly. He warned against what he called a carte blanche re­jec­tion of the sys­tem, call­ing such crit­i­cisms ill-in­formed and po­ten­tial­ly harm­ful to pub­lic con­fi­dence.

The call comes af­ter the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val failed to de­liv­er head­line act Adid­ja "Vy­bz Kar­tel" Palmer, whose book­ing re­port­ed­ly cost a stag­ger­ing US$1.35 mil­lion.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has as­sured stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing those in the firearm in­dus­try, that they will be in­clud­ed in con­sul­ta­tions on the craft­ing of Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

Cul­tur­al aca­d­e­m­ic Dr Jo-anne Tull is sup­port­ing calls to reg­u­late the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try through leg­is­la­tion.