The Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Mu­se­um will close its Pen­ny Bank venue to the pub­lic from to­day, cit­ing dif­fi­cul­ties se­cur­ing Gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate sup­port.

UP­DATE: Sad­dle Road, San­ta Cruz, has been cleared and is now pass­able fol­low­ing the re­moval of a fall­en tree that blocked the road­way ear­li­er to­day.

Mo­torists and com­muters are be­ing ad­vised to avoid Pax Vale, San­ta Cruz, fol­low­ing a com­plete road block­age caused by a fall­en tree that has come in­to con­tact with Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) pow­er lines.

T&TEC crews are work­ing to re­store elec­tric­i­ty to cus­tomers in parts of San­ta Cruz af­ter a large tree was up­root­ed dur­ing heavy rain­fall on Thurs­day, dam­ag­ing two util­i­ty poles.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) is ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic for as­sis­tance in lo­cat­ing 16-year-old Mala­ki Roberts, who was re­port­ed miss­ing on Tues­day.

The Mighty Spar­row may have passed, but the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty is in­sist­ing that the art form he helped shape, pop­u­larise and car­ry around the world will live on.

A Trinidad and To­ba­go stu­dent has placed sec­ond in a re­gion­al cli­mate change short sto­ry com­pe­ti­tion, beat­ing more than 170 en­tries from 14 Caribbean coun­tries.

More than one in three Form Four and Five stu­dents sur­veyed in To­ba­go re­port­ed hav­ing used al­co­hol in their life­time, ac­cord­ing to re­search which crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad says pro­vides an im­por­tant pic­ture of sub­stance use among young peo­ple as the Gov­ern­ment moves to raise the le­gal age for al­co­hol, cannabis and gam­bling.

Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards will have to be pro­duced to buy al­co­hol and to­bac­co, pos­sess cannabis and en­ter gam­bling es­tab­lish­ments un­der amend­ments the Gov­ern­ment plans to add to its sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion rais­ing the le­gal ages for those ac­tiv­i­ties.

Diego Mar­tin North East MP Colm Im­bert is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to with­draw its con­tro­ver­sial leg­is­la­tion rais­ing the le­gal ages for al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling and in­stead send it to a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) for pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House Bar­ry Padarath says the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill is aimed at chang­ing cul­ture and sav­ing young peo­ple and will not come in­to ef­fect un­til next year.

Com­ment­ing on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said this is just an­oth­er mon­ey-mak­ing ven­ture for the gov­ern­ment.