Con­trac­tors and work­ers un­der the Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme (NR­WRP) can ex­pect to be paid by the end of this week, as the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (RDC) says it is work­ing over­time to ver­i­fy timesheets.

There are mixed re­ac­tions fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that her Gov­ern­ment in­tends to raise the le­gal age for al­co­hol con­sump­tion from 18 to 21 and for gam­bling and mar­i­jua­na use from 18 to 25. While some wel­come the move, oth­ers said it was mean­ing­less with­out prop­er en­force­ment.

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves says while he was look­ing for­ward to meet­ing Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, he un­der­stands she had a de­mand­ing sched­ule due to the of­fi­cial vis­it of In­dia’s Prime Min­is­ter.

Even though the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies has an­nounced that the Debe cam­pus will open in Au­gust to house its new­ly launched Glob­al School of Med­i­cine (GSM), the Gov­ern­ment has cho­sen to hire a con­sul­tant to re­view the in­fra­struc­ture and be­gin re­pairs in Au­gust in­stead.

The Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal has ac­ti­vat­ed its Emer­gency Mode for the next 48 hours, fol­low­ing a sud­den rise in pa­tient ad­mis­sions and lim­it­ed bed space in its med­ical and sur­gi­cal wards.

Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Dr Ralph Gon­salves has once again in­vit­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go to join the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tem (RSS), stat­ing that the ini­tia­tive could sig­nif­i­cant­ly as­sist the coun­try in tack­ling its crime chal­lenges.

Wa­ter­loo High School prin­ci­pal Usha D Cheer­an­jie says the in­sti­tu­tion has re­ceived a for­mal ex­pres­sion of ap­pre­ci­a­tion from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, recog­nis­ing the school for show­ing marked im­prove­ment in aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has an­nounced that a list of high-risk schools will be sent to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) to ini­ti­ate po­lice pro­tec­tion for stu­dents at these in­sti­tu­tions from the start of the new school term in Sep­tem­ber.

Head of the Crim­i­nal Bar As­so­ci­a­tion Se­nior Coun­sel Is­rael Khan has wel­comed the pro­pos­al by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­tro­duce a Lord Chan­cel­lor.

Two stake­hold­ers in the lo­cal firearms in­dus­try agree with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the process of ob­tain­ing a Firearms User’s Li­cence (FUL) of­ten de­pends on the dis­cre­tion of in­di­vid­ual po­lice of­fi­cers, even when ap­pli­cants meet all the list­ed cri­te­ria.

Amidst on­go­ing de­struc­tion and hard­ship in the agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty in Los Iros, a farmer suf­fered even more loss­es af­ter 3,000 pounds of his toma­toes were stolen.

A par­tial­ly de­com­posed body of a man was dis­cov­ered on a beach near Cas­tries Street, Scar­bor­ough, this af­ter­noon.