Prison of­fi­cers in­ter­cept­ed three pack­ages con­tain­ing cig­a­rettes, wrap­ping pa­pers, sus­pect­ed drugs and lighters thrown over the perime­ter wall of the Port of Spain Prison ear­ly Thurs­day morn­ing.

For­mer Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro in­sist­ed in court on Thurs­day that new­ly un­sealed tor­ture al­le­ga­tions against him and his wife were “false ac­cu­sa­tions.”

Scrap met­al yards across Trinidad and To­ba­go are be­ing told to sus­pend op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the ex­piry of a le­gal or­der that ex­tend­ed the time for the in­dus­try to op­er­ate un­der its ex­ist­ing arrange­ments.

A 23-year-old Ari­ma man iden­ti­fied as a per­son of in­ter­est in a re­cent home in­va­sion re­mains in po­lice cus­tody af­ter a shoot­ing in­volv­ing of­fi­cers in Waller­field on Wednes­day night.

A com­plaint seek­ing to sus­pend or re­voke car­di­ol­o­gist Dr Con­rad Mur­ray’s tem­po­rary med­ical li­cence over his manslaugh­ter con­vic­tion in con­nec­tion with the death of pop su­per­star Michael Jack­son has been dis­missed.

Pan Trin­ba­go will par­tic­i­pate in To­ba­go Car­ni­val af­ter the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly set­tled the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s out­stand­ing pay­ments, with its Pan and Pow­der event sched­uled for Oc­to­ber 31 and ded­i­cat­ed to the late Mighty Spar­row.

Ed­i­tor’s note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry in­cor­rect­ly re­port­ed that the crane op­er­a­tor had died fol­low­ing the col­lapse of a crane at Peren­co’s Samaan Al­pha plat­form. Guardian Me­dia was ini­tial­ly giv­en in­for­ma­tion that the op­er­a­tor had died. Peren­co has since con­firmed that he sur­vived, was treat­ed at hos­pi­tal and dis­charged. We re­gret the er­ror.

At the dawn of spe­cial op­er­a­tions in des­ig­nat­ed di­vi­sions and the Gov­ern­ment’s promise of hard­er polic­ing, de­vel­op­ment fund­ing for the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice is set to more than triple to $230.5 mil­lion, with sub­stan­tial boosts for spe­cial­ist units, sta­tions, ve­hi­cles and equip­ment.

Fund­ing al­lo­ca­tions for over­time pay­ments to Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) dai­ly-paid and month­ly-paid work­ers have been re­duced in the 2027 fis­cal pack­age. Al­lo­ca­tions for con­tract em­ploy­ment with­in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) have al­so been cut.

Olympic javelin cham­pi­on Keshorn Wal­cott fought back tears yes­ter­day as he re­mem­bered Sean Roach, the busi­ness­man and ath­lete man­ag­er who helped trans­form his life, de­scrib­ing him as the broth­er who shaped the per­son he has be­come.

For Kelsey Bobb, The Mighty Spar­row’s mu­sic was a con­nec­tion to her child­hood, her Guyanese par­ents and her late fa­ther — one strong enough to bring her from New York to Trinidad and To­ba­go for just a day to pay her re­spects.

The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed sale of sev­er­al State-owned as­sets has trig­gered sharp crit­i­cism from Op­po­si­tion mem­bers, who warn that the coun­try risks los­ing valu­able na­tion­al hold­ings, while econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon ar­gues that di­vest­ment could ben­e­fit cit­i­zens if the process is trans­par­ent, prop­er­ly struc­tured and aimed at cre­at­ing long-term val­ue.