Trinidad and To­ba­go fea­tured twice on the Gram­my stage last night, with lo­cal tal­ent recog­nised across mu­sic video and clas­si­cal cat­e­gories.

Anger and grief erupt­ed yes­ter­day as friends, fam­i­ly, and sup­port­ers de­mand­ed the res­ig­na­tions of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der. The calls fol­lowed a brazen po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in St Au­gus­tine that left Joshua Sama­roo dead and his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, crit­i­cal­ly in­jured and paral­ysed.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al at­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Delzin has warned that “be­hav­iour” can­not be used as the le­gal ba­sis for de­clar­ing an­oth­er State of Emer­gency (SoE), as de­bate in­ten­si­fies over Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s threat to reim­pose emer­gency pow­ers if vi­o­lence re­sumes.

An East Port-of-Spain man was gunned down while lim­ing with friends on the road yes­ter­day, me­tres away from the River­side Plaza and Besson Street Po­lice Sta­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment’s move to im­pose tax­es on lo­cal artistes will be ad­dressed by the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) af­ter Car­ni­val 2026.

Pas­sen­gers aboard the T&T Spir­it were left strand­ed for hours yes­ter­day, af­ter rough seas and re­port­ed tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties de­layed the ves­sel’s ar­rival in To­ba­go.

Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion Deputy May­or Jo­van Roberts says no Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)-led re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion is un­der probe for al­leged cor­rup­tion - but there have been is­sues in two Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) cor­po­ra­tions.

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King says ca­lyp­so is not on­ly alive but soar­ing, de­clar­ing that the art­form is firm­ly in good hands as it con­tin­ues to en­joy re­newed en­er­gy and pub­lic sup­port.

The Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah came alive yes­ter­day as waves of steel­pan mu­sic rolled across the stage, rhythm sec­tions puls­ing and draw­ing crowds of pan lovers who swayed, smiled and soaked in the Car­ni­val en­er­gy.

The minute Trinidad Val­ley Harps took the stage to de­liv­er David Rud­der’s an­themic Ral­ly Round the West In­dies, the au­di­ence knew this year’s edi­tion of the Medi­um Band semis was due to match the keen com­pe­ti­tion of pre­vi­ous years.

The Trini­bad sound­scape is of­ten de­fined by edgy, raunchy and at times out­right vi­o­lent lyrics. How­ev­er, two mu­sic in­dus­try stake­hold­ers are try­ing to change the face of the genre, as they urge some artistes to choose be­tween their mu­si­cal ca­reers and street life.

For the first time in al­most a decade, mas­quer­aders will take to a stage on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day in Ch­agua­nas.