Trinidad and To­ba­go’s push to po­si­tion it­self as a re­gion­al leader in dig­i­tal in­no­va­tion re­ceived an in­ter­na­tion­al boost this week af­ter Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence Sen­a­tor Do­minic Smith was in­vit­ed to join a glob­al board fo­cused on ad­vanc­ing dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

Ka­ia Sealy has been grant­ed $700,000 bail up­on mak­ing her first court ap­pear­ance hours af­ter re­turn­ing to Trinidad from the Unit­ed States, this morn­ing.

Iran’s top diplo­mat said Tues­day that the ten­ta­tive deal to end the war with the Unit­ed States would re­quire Is­rael to with­draw from Lebanon — a con­di­tion Is­rael has al­ready re­ject­ed and that could sink the agree­ment, lead­ing to the re­sump­tion of all-out war.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has post­ed what he said was his lat­est elec­tric­i­ty bill as he con­tin­ued to re­ject claims that he ben­e­fit­ed from spe­cial treat­ment at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC).

For­mer UNC MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne has is­sued a strong con­dem­na­tion of the Gov­ern­ment and her for­mer par­ty, warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go is be­ing gov­erned by “ab­sent lead­er­ship” sup­port­ed by “syco­phan­tic un­der­lings” and urg­ing cit­i­zens not to be afraid to chal­lenge au­thor­i­ty when they be­lieve some­thing is wrong.

To­ba­go East MP David Thomas has de­clared that To­ba­go’s par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives are ful­ly be­hind the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), de­scrib­ing them­selves as part of the ad­min­is­tra­tion and ar­gu­ing that emer­gency pow­ers re­main nec­es­sary to bring crime un­der con­trol.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s use of emer­gency pow­ers, in­sist­ing that re­stric­tions im­posed un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE), in­clud­ing the con­tro­ver­sial 500-me­tre no-protest zones, are law­ful, con­sti­tu­tion­al and nec­es­sary to pro­tect na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

The State of Emer­gency (SoE) has been ex­tend­ed un­til Sep­tem­ber af­ter the Gov­ern­ment se­cured a ma­jor­i­ty vote in Par­lia­ment short­ly af­ter mid­night on Thurs­day.

The Min­istry of Health has ad­vised Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als to avoid trav­el­ling to three African coun­tries af­fect­ed by an out­break of Ebo­la Bundibu­gyo virus dis­ease and warned that re­turn­ing trav­ellers from those coun­tries will face en­hanced health screen­ing and mon­i­tor­ing mea­sures.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has be­gun its probe in­to the po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing of a Par­latu­vi­er man dur­ing har­vest cel­e­bra­tions in To­ba­go on Mon­day.

The Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion has be­gun in­stalling a re­versible lane con­trol sys­tem along the East­ern Main Road be­tween St. Joseph and Mt. Lam­bert as part of ef­forts to im­prove traf­fic flow and re­duce con­ges­tion along the busy cor­ri­dor.

Head of the West­ern Di­vi­sion Snr Supt Sylvester Williams says the di­vi­sion has record­ed a re­duc­tion in sev­er­al cat­e­gories of crime this year, al­though kid­nap­pings, break-ins and fraud have in­creased.