The Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the mat­ters in­volv­ing Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed and Star Sab­ga has di­vid­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go, and in­ten­si­fied the coun­try’s po­lar­i­sa­tion, ac­cord­ing to for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath.

Ten peo­ple have been de­tained un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs), with the or­ders al­leg­ing links to or­gan­ised crime groups in­volved in firearms of­fences, ex­tor­tion, vi­o­lent rob­beries, hu­man traf­fick­ing and planned at­tacks.

Crim­i­nal de­fence at­tor­ney Fa­reed Ali has ques­tioned the strength of the ev­i­dence against Star Sab­ga fol­low­ing her re­lease from cus­tody, ar­gu­ing that al­le­ga­tions of a plot to as­sas­si­nate State of­fi­cials must be sup­port­ed by more than a record­ed con­ver­sa­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Is­lam­ic Mis­sion­ar­ies Guild and Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Im­ti­az Mo­hammed, is call­ing on Mus­lims to stop sup­port­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy has be­trayed the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty.

If hav­ing to shave your beard pre­vent­ed you from join­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), that hur­dle may soon be re­moved—pro­vid­ed the re­quest is based on re­li­gious grounds.

The slow is­suance of pass­port book­lets is con­tin­u­ing as im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cials at­tempt to stretch Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­main­ing stock un­til a new ship­ment is ex­pect­ed in Sep­tem­ber.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas says the union is still wait­ing to meet with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) to dis­cuss its counter pro­pos­al for set­tling pub­lic of­fi­cers’ salary ne­go­ti­a­tion ar­rears, de­scrib­ing the de­lay as un­prece­dent­ed and claim­ing it rep­re­sents “the first un­set­tled set­tle­ment in his­to­ry.”

Six months af­ter the new Gov­ern­ment dis­trib­uted more than 200 res­i­den­tial leas­es, dozens of re­cip­i­ents are still wait­ing to build on their land be­cause their bound­aries have yet to be es­tab­lished.

FI­FA Pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no’s plan to cre­ate a $20 bil­lion com­pa­ny run­ning the World Cup with pri­vate in­vestors in­clud­ing the Kush­n­er fam­i­ly was an­nounced Tues­day — and im­me­di­ate­ly at­tacked by Eu­ro­pean soc­cer body UE­FA.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj has called for a more bal­anced and vic­tim-sen­si­tive ap­proach to com­bat­ing or­gan­ised crime, urg­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers to ad­dress the so­cial fac­tors that draw women in­to crim­i­nal net­works while main­tain­ing strong ac­tion against crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

The Caribbean has launched its first re­gion­al frame­work for ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI), with lead­ers call­ing for greater co­op­er­a­tion to en­sure the re­gion be­comes a cre­ator, rather than sim­ply a con­sumer, of AI tech­nolo­gies.

An­gos­tu­ra has hand­ed over the first of four homes be­ing built un­der its Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa re­cov­ery pro­gramme in Ja­maica, mark­ing a mile­stone in its long-term ef­fort to help fam­i­lies dis­placed by the 2025 storm.