An act­ing Prison Of­fi­cer II has been ar­rest­ed af­ter he was found try­ing to smug­gle a cell phone and mar­i­jua­na be­neath a box of food on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Af­ter mak­ing some progress bat­tling wild­fires that de­stroyed thou­sands of homes and killed at least 24 peo­ple in the Los An­ge­les area, fire­fight­ers pre­pared for a re­turn of dan­ger­ous winds that could again stoke the flames.

U.S. and Arab me­di­a­tors made sig­nif­i­cant progress overnight to­ward bro­ker­ing a cease­fire in the Is­rael-Hamas war and the re­lease of scores of hostages held in the Gaza Strip, but a deal hasn’t been reached yet, of­fi­cials said Mon­day.

The Ju­di­cia­ry has joined the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in mourn­ing the loss of one of the Caribbean’s most il­lus­tri­ous jour­nal­ists and for­mer Court Pro­to­col and In­for­ma­tion Man­ag­er, Jones P. Madeira.

A 33-year-old fe­male em­ploy­ee of the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion (POSCC) was am­bushed and shot on Mon­day morn­ing in Bel­mont.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­scribed the PNM’s gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing as a “vul­gar and ob­scene cha­rade aimed at hood­wink­ing a des­per­ate, trau­ma­tised na­tion in­to be­liev­ing that uni­ty was achieved among the lazy, greedy, in­com­pe­tent war­ring mem­bers of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Gov­ern­ment.”

A close male rel­a­tive is in po­lice cus­tody in con­nec­tion with the bru­tal chop­ping death of ju­di­cia­ry work­er Sta­cy Gopauls­ingh. 

De­spite hav­ing a gun amnesty as part of the State of Emer­gency reg­u­la­tions, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says it was nev­er Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

To­day’s Par­lia­ment de­bate on the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE)will be fol­lowed by a de­bate on a law pro­posed to pro­vide for T&T’s new Coat of Arms—re­plac­ing Christo­pher Colum­bus’ three ships with this coun­try’s na­tion­al in­stru­ment, the steel­pan.

Yes­ter­day, ACP Crim­i­nal Di­vi­sion Curt Si­mon said po­lice of­fi­cers are prob­ing the threats as the Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion placed its mem­bers on high alert. The as­so­ci­a­tion’s ex­ec­u­tive is ex­pect­ed to meet to­day on the mat­ter.

The com­ment came from Ari­ma MP Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son yes­ter­day, hours af­ter she walked out of Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, re­fus­ing to talk to the re­porters about the 21 PNM MPs pledg­ing their sup­port for En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young as prime min­is­ter.

Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh is said to be re­cov­er­ing af­ter vis­it­ing the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day due to a “per­sis­tent cough.”