Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has con­firmed that ne­go­ti­a­tions for a ten per cent salary in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants will be­gin in the up­com­ing fi­nan­cial year, while cau­tion­ing the pub­lic to “ta­per” ex­pec­ta­tions for the na­tion­al bud­get.

The Gov­ern­ment has an­nounced plans to open the 230-bed Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, for­mer­ly known as the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, by the end of the year un­der its orig­i­nal name.

The stor­age of 225 brand-new breath­ing ap­pa­ra­tus (BA) sets has come un­der scruti­ny, af­ter fire­fight­ers raised con­cerns that the life-sav­ing equip­ment is be­ing kept in a “hot room,” spark­ing fears of dam­age and re­duced lifes­pan.

With Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie con­firm­ing that af­ter 17 years in of­fice, this law term will be his last, at­ten­tion has now shift­ed to the ques­tion of suc­ces­sion.

A for­mer di­rec­tor and se­cu­ri­ty man­ag­er of Is­land Club Casi­no has been freed of 11 fraud charges, al­most eight years af­ter she was first charged.

A man from Point Fortin has been giv­en a life­line in his bid to sue the State over be­ing com­mit­ted to the St Ann’s Psy­chi­atric Hos­pi­tal de­spite not suf­fer­ing from any men­tal ill­ness. 

Al­leged gang leader Ra­jaee Ali has evad­ed a pre­lim­i­nary chal­lenge to his law­suit over be­ing trans­ferred from the Max­i­mum Se­cu­ri­ty Prison (MSP) in Arou­ca to mil­i­tary fa­cil­i­ties in Ch­aguara­mas un­der the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris is ac­cus­ing Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of aban­don­ing his once-strong stance, which he once had against the for­mer PNM-led Gov­ern­ment, on To­ba­go’s most press­ing is­sues, es­pe­cial­ly now on mat­ters in­volv­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s tough talk sur­round­ing the Venezuela/US ten­sion.

Zor­isha Hack­ett has been ap­point­ed tem­po­rary Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion, in place of Tashia Bur­ris, while con­tin­u­ing to head the Ed­u­ca­tion Di­vi­sion. Hack­ett’s new role, how­ev­er, has drawn im­me­di­ate fire from her for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke.

With a copy of The Gruffa­lo in hand, Oropouche East MP and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal brought the mag­ic of sto­ry­telling to stu­dents at the Debe Pub­lic Li­brary, us­ing the tale of a clever mouse to mark In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­cy Day 2025.

While it may not be the most wide­ly con­sumed drug in Flori­da, the num­ber of fa­tal­i­ties caused by fen­tanyl has prompt­ed a large-scale se­cu­ri­ty re­sponse across sev­er­al ter­ri­to­ries.

A Laven­tille man was killed dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice in the cap­i­tal city on Wednes­day, while two firearms were re­cov­ered fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.