Ven­dors in down­town Port-of-Spain say sales have been much slow­er this year com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. They are blam­ing the de­cline on the can­cel­la­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day mil­i­tary pa­rade to­mor­row.

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts and crim­i­nol­o­gists say that while gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties are known to have low­er lev­els of crime and could be an ef­fec­tive crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, it is pos­si­ble for wealthy crim­i­nals to pur­chase prop­er­ties and es­tab­lish a base with­in the gat­ed zone.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says he re­mains con­fi­dent in the De­fence Force’s abil­i­ty to se­cure high-risk pris­on­ers at its Ch­aguara­mas bases, de­spite re­cent se­cu­ri­ty breach­es.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke has warned mem­bers of the pub­lic con­duct­ing trans­ac­tions at the Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Of­fice to be cau­tious of fraud­sters and con­men op­er­at­ing out­side the fa­cil­i­ty and even on so­cial me­dia.

The T&T Postal Cor­po­ra­tion (TTPost) has con­firmed that its sus­pen­sion of par­cel ship­ments to the Unit­ed States mir­rors the mea­sures tak­en by postal agen­cies world­wide, fol­low­ing Wash­ing­ton’s sud­den trade pol­i­cy shift that re­moved du­ty-free thresh­olds for im­port­ed goods.

Eight for­eign na­tion­als were ar­rest­ed dur­ing sep­a­rate ex­er­cis­es in south Trinidad on Thurs­day.

A Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School teacher has ap­peared in the Scar­bor­ough Mag­is­trates’ Court charged with sev­en counts of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment against mi­nors.

A 29-year-old man from Cunu­pia, ac­cused of serv­ing as the get­away dri­ver for a man who dis­fig­ured a woman in an acid at­tack in Rio Claro ear­li­er this month, has been grant­ed $250,000 bail.

A com­pa­ny has threat­ened to sue an un­der-con­struc­tion so­lar farm in cen­tral Trinidad for al­leged­ly en­croach­ing on a par­cel of land it has an in­ter­est in.

Busi­ness­man, ac­tivist and me­dia per­son­al­i­ty In­shan Ish­mael passed away yes­ter­day af­ter an 18-month bat­tle with re­nal can­cer.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal has not yet been hand­ed over to his min­istry, and he has no word on when that will hap­pen.

To­ba­go’s safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty were the fo­cus of talks be­tween Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge and Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine yes­ter­day.