an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt29Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­firmed that the Gov­ern­ment will move to ex­empt pri­vate pen­sion in­come from tax through the Fi­nance Bill, 2026, seek­ing to bring leg­isla­tive ef­fect to a mea­sure that had been promised in the Bud­get but re­mained out­stand­ing months in­to the fis­cal year.

The fall­out over $3.4 bil­lion in state hous­ing con­tracts is deep­en­ing, with new de­tails show­ing that the in­ter­ven­tion by the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor in the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) was trig­gered by a qui­eter but piv­otal move from the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC), even as Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has re­mained silent.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Gov­ern­ment is in con­sul­ta­tion with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly on mea­sures to reg­u­late the use of jet skis and oth­er plea­sure craft fol­low­ing the death of sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie at Pi­geon Point Her­itage Park in To­ba­go last week.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of its de­ci­sion to des­ig­nate three Mid­dle East­ern or­gan­i­sa­tions as ter­ror­ist en­ti­ties, fol­low­ing a High Court or­der freez­ing prop­er­ty linked to the groups un­der Trinidad and To­ba­go’s An­ti-Ter­ror­ism Act.

Jus­tice Min­is­ter De­vesh Ma­haraj has warned that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s pris­ons are “a sit­ting time bomb” as the Pro­ba­tion of Of­fend­ers Amend­ment Bill was passed unan­i­mous­ly in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, in­tro­duc­ing a hy­brid sys­tem of jail time and pro­ba­tion amid se­vere over­crowd­ing.

De­spite a re­port­ed drop in sev­er­al cat­e­gories of crime, in­clud­ing mur­ders, Port-of-Spain South MP and for­mer Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Kei­th Scot­land has dis­missed the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) as an “ab­ject fail­ure,” ar­gu­ing that vi­o­lent crime con­tin­ues de­spite the ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sure.

One year af­ter vot­ers in key mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies helped bring the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) in­to of­fice, a re­turn to those com­mu­ni­ties re­veals a per­sis­tent and press­ing con­cern: un­em­ploy­ment.

The Court of Ap­peal has over­turned a High Court rul­ing that par­tial­ly up­held a le­gal chal­lenge over the seizure of a Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) per­mit for a maxi taxi, af­ter the own­er’s fa­ther was found op­er­at­ing the ve­hi­cle with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

The Firearms Ap­peal Board has been or­dered to re­con­sid­er a le­gal chal­lenge over the re­fusal of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to grant a man a Firearm User’s Li­cence (FUL).

At least two To­bag­o­ni­ans have been scammed by fraud­sters pos­ing on­line as used-car deal­ers, as po­lice warn the scheme may be af­fect­ing vic­tims na­tion­wide.

Da­ta from Ar­rive Alive in­di­cates that Trinidad and To­ba­go con­tin­ues to record se­ri­ous road traf­fic ac­ci­dents, al­though fa­tal­i­ties so far this year are sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2025.

Res­i­dents of Care­nage en­dured what they de­scribed as a “trau­mat­ic and fright­en­ing” night af­ter a fast-mov­ing hill­side fire crept to with­in me­tres of their homes, forc­ing some fam­i­lies to evac­u­ate while oth­ers scram­bled to pro­tect their prop­er­ties.