Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump was for­mal­ly sen­tenced Fri­day in his hush mon­ey case, but the judge de­clined to im­pose any pun­ish­ment. The out­come ce­ments Trump’s con­vic­tion while free­ing him to re­turn to the White House un­en­cum­bered by the threat of a jail term or a fine.

A pow­er­ful win­ter storm that dumped heavy snow and glazed roads with ice across much of Texas and Ok­la­homa lum­bered east­ward in­to south­ern U.S. states Fri­day, prompt­ing gov­er­nors to de­clare states of emer­gency and shut­ter­ing schools across the re­gion.

The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) has dis­tanced it­self from the dis­rup­tions in ex­am­i­na­tion by Bar­ba­di­an stu­dents this week, say­ing that the mat­ter rests with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion there.

A 60-year-old at­tor­ney and her 67-year-old hus­band are the coun­try's lat­est mur­der vic­tims af­ter they were found dead at their Cu­mu­to home on Thurs­day night.

In a sin­gu­lar mo­ment in U.S. his­to­ry, Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump faces sen­tenc­ing Fri­day for his New York hush mon­ey con­vic­tion af­ter the na­tion’s high­est court re­fused to in­ter­vene.

Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro will ex­tend his in­creas­ing­ly re­pres­sive rule over Venezuela un­til 2031 when he is sworn in on Fri­day, de­spite cred­i­ble ev­i­dence that his op­po­nent won the lat­est elec­tion and fol­low­ing protests against his plan to serve a third six-year term.

Leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), An­cil Den­nis, has shut down claims that the par­ty is im­plod­ing af­ter re­ports sur­faced that the move to gath­er sig­na­tures among its MPs to fa­cil­i­tate the ap­point­ment of Stu­art Young as prime min­is­ter had hit a stum­bling block.

While Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­bers at­tend­ed a meet­ing of the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day, ahead of the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing to­mor­row, the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) claims they were sum­moned to be lam­bast­ed over their re­sponse to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young be­ing cho­sen as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s suc­ces­sor.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al at­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly, SC, has warned that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) risks em­bar­rass­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo if it seeks her ap­proval to ap­point Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young as prime min­is­ter with­out the sup­port of all its MPs.

While there is no va­can­cy for Prime Min­is­ter now, if there is a va­can­cy or an in­ter­nal Par­lia­men­tary “coup,” the rel­e­vant as­pi­rant can sub­mit suf­fi­cient names to show they have the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of MPs, say Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) par­ty sources.

While most of the coun­try came to know Ran­dall War­ren Hec­tor as the first mur­der to oc­cur dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE), the state pros­e­cu­tor was yes­ter­day re­mem­bered by his fam­i­ly, friends and the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty as a hum­ble, jovial and God-fear­ing man.

The South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists has ex­tend­ed sym­pa­thy to mu­si­cian and so­cial jus­tice ac­tivist Lou Lyons for be­ing in­cor­rect­ly im­pli­cat­ed in the mur­der of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor af­ter at­tend­ing a church ser­vice.