As res­i­dents of Free­dom Street, En­ter­prise, Ch­agua­nas, awak­ened to con­tin­ue their Christ­mas prepa­ra­tions yes­ter­day, an ear­ly-morn­ing shoot­ing put a damper on their plans.

A man was killed in Ba­co­let, To­ba­go, last evening, just two days be­fore his birth­day, push­ing the record toll on the is­land to 26 for the year and 603 for the coun­try.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad says in­ac­tion at the high­est lev­el is the rea­son the coun­try has one of the high­est mur­der tolls to date with a week left in the year. 

The Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (RC­STT) has de­fend­ed its de­ci­sion to ac­cept a $15,000 do­na­tion from a sen­tenced rapist. How­ev­er, it has al­so an­nounced plans to re­view its pro­ce­dures for ac­cept­ing court-or­dered do­na­tions in the wake of pub­lic back­lash over the is­sue.

One day af­ter the fu­ner­al of de­liv­ery sales dri­ver Ronald Marchan, a 34-year-old man ap­peared in court yes­ter­day charged with his mur­der.

A man want­ed in the Unit­ed States for mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences was ex­tra­dit­ed from T&T to the US on Sun­day.

As search and res­cue ef­forts con­tin­ue for miss­ing off­shore work­er Pe­te Phillip, one of the work­ers who was safe­ly evac­u­at­ed from the Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd oil rig on Sun­day said some of them did not know he was miss­ing un­til they got to their home base in Point Fortin. 

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts be­lieve Anil Roberts was over­looked by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the mar­gin­al St Joseph seat be­cause of his ques­tion­able po­lit­i­cal past.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) La Brea unit will be rec­om­mend­ing Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell as its can­di­date when screen­ing is held, af­ter Mitchell - who holds the ma­jor­i­ty of par­ty group sup­port - al­so ob­tained the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port from the unit’s Women’s and Youth leagues last Sun­day.

While ques­tions cir­cu­late over who is re­al­ly in charge of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) at present, the par­ty says they are go­ing through a tran­si­tion pe­ri­od.

Sec­re­tary for Set­tle­ments, Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Ian Pol­lard, has de­nied claims by Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris about job cuts stem­ming from the re­struc­tur­ing of the Client Re­la­tions Unit.

The All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) has giv­en the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly 12 hours to en­ter in­to con­sul­ta­tion with them to dis­cuss the pay­ment of out­stand­ing monies owed to fish­er­folk for clean-up work done dur­ing the oil spill on To­ba­go’s South­ern coast in Feb­ru­ary.