Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has at­trib­uted de­lays in salary pay­ments for some pub­lic ser­vants and state em­ploy­ees to on­go­ing gov­ern­ment min­istry re­align­ments that took ef­fect at the start of Oc­to­ber, and says af­fect­ed of­fi­cers will be paid by Mon­day.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie on Fri­day led de­bate in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on a mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for an­oth­er three months, say­ing the mea­sure re­mains a vi­tal tool in the State’s ef­forts to dis­man­tle crim­i­nal gangs and dis­rupt or­gan­ised crime net­works.

Ac­tive du­ty sol­diers have been or­dered to re­port to du­ty and as­sem­ble at dif­fer­ent mil­i­tary in­stal­la­tions as part of a large-scale brief­ing on on­go­ing se­cu­ri­ty as­sess­ments, sources said.

An 18-year-old preg­nant woman is among the 19 peo­ple re­port­ed­ly killed when Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, the cat­e­go­ry 5 storm slammed in­to the is­land on Tues­day, the Ja­maica Glean­er news­pa­per re­port­ed on Fri­day.

The U.N. hu­man rights chief said Fri­day that U.S. mil­i­tary strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean al­leged­ly car­ry­ing il­le­gal drugs from South Amer­i­ca are “un­ac­cept­able” and must stop.

De­vel­oped in Kenya, the Wambugu ap­ple could be the next ma­jor cash crop for Trinidad and To­ba­go—of­fer­ing a promis­ing av­enue to re­duce the na­tion’s im­port bill and boost agri­cul­tur­al ex­ports.

For­eign and CARI­COM Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has con­firmed that the Lochmaben Ro­man Catholic School in Ce­dros was the on­ly lo­cal school to re­ceive di­rect as­sis­tance from the US Marines, de­spite ear­li­er gov­ern­ment state­ments sug­gest­ing that sev­er­al schools would ben­e­fit.

Pro­man says it will con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing car­bon diox­ide (CO₂) to Massy Gas for the fore­see­able fu­ture, fol­low­ing the shut­down of Nu­trien’s Trinidad Ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers yes­ter­day con­firmed that au­thor­i­ties have ob­tained the co­or­di­nates of re­cent Unit­ed States mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, which ver­i­fy that the strikes oc­curred in in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters—out­side T&T’s Ex­clu­sive Eco­nom­ic Zone (EEZ).

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is seekng to as­sure cit­i­zens that there was “noth­ing to fear” from the re­cent vis­it of the Unit­ed States Navy de­stroy­er USS Grave­ly to T&T.

Even as the USS Grave­ly de­part­ed T&T’s shores yes­ter­day, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union (SWW­TU) pres­i­dent gen­er­al Michael An­nisette was un­hap­py with the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with his union on its vis­it here.

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Sean Sobers says the Gov­ern­ment is “un­both­ered” by pro-Venezue­lan sup­port­ers who marched in Cara­cas against Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.