Cana­di­an busi­ness­es are show­ing grow­ing in­ter­est in Trinidad and To­ba­go, with man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er lo­cal com­pa­nies be­ing of­fered greater op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­ter the Cana­di­an mar­ket large­ly tar­iff-free, Cana­di­an High Com­mis­sion­er Michael Callan says.

Oropouche West MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has mo­bilised a team of lawyers to as­sist res­i­dents of La Ro­maine who say they are be­ing pres­sured to sign new leas­es for prop­er­ties their fam­i­lies have oc­cu­pied for more than six decades.

A To­ba­go man is dead af­ter al­leged­ly chop­ping a woman on her neck dur­ing a do­mes­tic dis­pute at Men­tor Dri­ve, Sig­nal Hill, on Wednes­day morn­ing. Neigh­bours say the vic­tim was chopped on her neck dur­ing a do­mes­tic in­ci­dent around 7.30 am.

Cus­tomers in parts of Cen­tral and South Trinidad are ex­pect­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence dis­rup­tions to their wa­ter sup­ply as the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant un­der­goes its an­nu­al main­te­nance shut­down.

US Con­gress­woman Yvette Clarke has paid trib­ute to ca­lyp­so leg­end the Mighty Spar­row, de­scrib­ing him as a cul­tur­al in­sti­tu­tion whose mu­sic and in­flu­ence tran­scend­ed the Caribbean and reached au­di­ences world­wide.

The Own­er Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (ODA) is ques­tion­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of the Gov­ern­ment’s crime-fight­ing mea­sures, warn­ing that re­stric­tions on move­ment could place ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial pres­sure on busi­ness­es al­ready strug­gling to re­cov­er from the ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bev­er­age Al­co­hol Al­liance are call­ing for the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to raise the le­gal age for al­co­hol con­sump­tion to be put on hold, with wider con­sul­ta­tion be­fore Par­lia­ment pro­ceeds.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Gov­ern­ment is mis­lead­ing the pub­lic by pre­sent­ing its pro­posed in­creas­es in the le­gal ages for al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling pri­mar­i­ly as mea­sures to pro­tect young peo­ple, ar­gu­ing that the leg­is­la­tion goes much fur­ther by cre­at­ing new of­fences and im­pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly tougher penal­ties.

Fines for al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling of­fences are set to soar, some by hun­dreds of thou­sands or even mil­lions of dol­lars, while prison terms for sev­er­al of­fences could climb to as much as 30 years un­der tough new penal­ties pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment.

For some young drinkers, the dif­fer­ence be­tween hav­ing a drink legal­ly and il­le­gal­ly could soon come down to one thing: whether they can prove their age.

As lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties con­tin­ue to fo­cus ef­forts on dis­man­tling drug traf­fick­ing net­works, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) say get­ting nar­cotics off the street is just one part of wider strate­gies to tack­le the il­lic­it trade.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says that since three mi­cro polic­ing units were op­er­a­tionalised at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah, Grand Bazaar and Tarou­ba, a to­tal of eight peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed as part of op­er­a­tions orig­i­nat­ing from these posts.