Chair­man of the Tu­na­puna Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (TPRC), is re­fut­ing al­le­ga­tions by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) that the cor­po­ra­tion has spent mil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars to host an ex­trav­a­gant In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion for Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) elites at Ed­die Hart Grounds in Tacarigua.

De­spite a rainy day in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day, scores of peo­ple showed up at the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion’s For the Love of Lib­er­ty in­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tion at Man­dela Park.

The Unit­ed States is con­grat­u­lat­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go on the cel­e­bra­tion of its 63rd an­niver­sary of in­de­pen­dence.

Venezuela’s De­fence Min­is­ter, Gen­er­al Vladimir Padri­no López, is ac­cus­ing “Trinida­di­an mafias” of at­tempt­ing to desta­bilise Venezuela through hu­man traf­fick­ing and the smug­gling of prod­ucts in and out of the coun­try.

With Amer­i­can war­ships and troops ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in Caribbean wa­ters with­in days, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers is once again mov­ing to quell pub­lic con­cerns about their pres­ence.

The So­lo Creed tug, the ves­sel at the cen­tre of To­ba­go’s 2024 oil spill dis­as­ter, broke free from cus­tody in An­go­la last year, in an es­cape that was nev­er dis­closed to the pub­lic. The ship re­mains miss­ing but En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in­sists that Gov­ern­ment is still hunt­ing for the ves­sel’s own­er to pur­sue To­ba­go’s mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar dam­age claim.

Po­lice said Jamiel Jamaldin was work­ing on a lad­der at a con­struc­tion site on Abidh Road, Fe­lic­i­ty, around 9 am when the lad­der slipped.

A Laven­tille man is due to ap­pear in court af­ter be­ing charged with mon­ey laun­der­ing fol­low­ing a cy­ber-en­abled fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

A 21-year-old Mara­bel­la man was shot and robbed af­ter board­ing what he thought was a taxi on Fri­day night.

A 39-year-old woman was es­cort­ed back to a busi­ness place by se­cu­ri­ty guards who caught her steal­ing mon­ey from a cash reg­is­ter on Fri­day night.

A 50-year-old labour­er was shot and wound­ed by an un­known gun­man while dri­ving through Freeport on Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon.

As in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to an at­tack that left 71-year-old sur­geon Dr Dorothy Williams-Chan­dler in crit­i­cal con­di­tion, for­mer head of the T&T Med­ical Board Dr Neil Singh is urg­ing med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers to ex­er­cise cau­tion in all of their ac­tiv­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter dark.