Could the re­cent up­surge in un­em­ploy­ment po­ten­tial­ly lead to an in­crease in the so­cial­ly dis­placed?

Hob­bling along teary-eyed, with a cane in hand, pen­sion­er Dhan­wan­tee Sinanan gin­ger­ly tried to cross a sink­ing wood­en bridge at Oli Mo­hammed Trace in Pe­nal.

Is­sues of cor­rup­tion, mis­man­age­ment of state re­sources, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress(UNC) in­volve­ment in the elec­tions, and air­port ex­pan­sion are some of the mat­ters dis­cussed on the cam­paign trail in the lead up to the To­ba­go Ho­sue of As­sem­bly’s (THA) Jan­u­ary 25 elec­tions.

Deputy Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the PDP Far­ley Au­gus­tine said he now has of­fi­cial THA Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil notes and re­ceipts, which he be­lieves proves that the PNM mis­man­aged the now con­tro­ver­sial zip line project.

The State has agreed not to de­port a Venezue­lan woman and her four-year-old daugh­ter pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of a law­suit brought by her Trinida­di­an com­pan­ion on their be­half.

Po­lice said at around 7.30 pm Ur­ban Estick was sit­ting on a con­crete bench at Gam­ble Street, Siparia, with two men when a white sta­tion wag­on stopped near them and a back­seat pas­sen­ger point­ed a gun through the win­dow and shot him be­fore the car sped off.

Staff sta­tioned at the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties’ head of­fice would be able to re­turn to work to­day fol­low­ing the of­fice’s clo­sure on Mon­day to fa­cil­i­tate san­i­ti­za­tion. 

The vic­tim has been iden­ti­fied as Hasan Sanchez, of 50 Grana­do Street, Sawmill Av­enue, Mor­vant.

Rel­a­tives of 24-year-old Kris­t­ian Nanan, who was shot dead in Princes Town on Sun­day night, be­lieve some­one or­dered a hit on his life.

The can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val may have af­fect­ed many peo­ple in many dif­fer­ent ways, but it has al­so pushed some to come up with cre­ative ways of keep­ing the great­est show on earth alive.

For his work in up­lift­ing his broth­ers and sis­ters with­in the African di­as­po­ra, the Unit­ed States-based Na­tion­al Ac­tion Net­work (NAN) has award­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Vice-Chan­cel­lor, Sir Hi­lary Beck­les with the Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr Glob­al Award for 2021.
Afroamer­i­cans cel­e­brat­ed Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr Day yes­ter­day; a hol­i­day in the US to com­mem­o­rate the birth­day of the renown civ­il rights ac­tivist. Every year, NAN’s Wash­ing­ton DC Bu­reau cel­e­brates with break­fast in King’s ho­n­our. But with COVID-19 re­strict­ing mass gath­er­ings and trav­el, the bu­reau be­stowed the awards vir­tu­al­ly.
Beck­les, a Bar­ba­di­an, was among oth­er ho­n­ourees, in­clud­ing Black Vot­ers Mat­ter founder, Latosha Brown;  League of Unit­ed Latin Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens CEO, Sindy Be­na­vides; Cool and Dope founder, Ca­vanaugh Bell; Na­tion­al Black Nurs­es As­so­ci­a­tion di­rec­tor, Dr Mel­li­cent Gotham and New York Times best­selling au­thor and po­lit­i­cal leader Stacey Abrams.
Civ­il right ac­tivist Rev Al Sharp­ton ex­plained that every year, NAN looks for some­one whose life and work per­son­i­fies the glob­al fight for hu­man rights and dig­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the African di­as­po­ra. Sharp­ton said there was no doubt Beck­les was that per­son. He said among the ac­tivists in the African di­as­po­ra, Beck­les was un­matched.
“Any­one fa­mil­iar with acad­e­mia. Any­one who is a se­ri­ous stu­dent of ac­tivism in the aca­d­e­m­ic world and the glob­al strug­gle. Any­one who has a se­ri­ous ten­den­cy to study the strug­gles, and the in­ter­con­nect­ing of the strug­gles around the world, knows of Sir Beck­les and his work.
Any­one who knows any­thing about crick­et knows about him too. He cov­ers many ar­eas, and it is our ho­n­our that he would ac­cept this award this year and al­low us to ho­n­our him and through him, ho­n­our the lega­cy of Dr Mar­tin Luther King Jr and what he meant to the world,” Sharp­ton said.
In ac­cept­ing the award, Beck­les hailed King for the lega­cy he left so that oth­ers could con­tin­ue to fight for the up­lift­ment of peo­ple of African lin­eage.
Re­call­ing that he grew up with his grand­moth­er af­ter his par­ents mi­grat­ed to Eng­land in the 1950s to work in a fac­to­ry, Beck­les said the on­ly two pic­ture in their homes was that of Je­sus Christ and King.
“I grew up un­der the min­istry of Pas­tor King and Dr King so I re­ceived a dou­ble dose of min­is­te­r­i­al up­bring­ing in the search for jus­tice, look­ing out for the in­ter­est of the poor, com­mit­ting my pro­fes­sion­al life to the de­vel­op­ment of the op­pressed peo­ple and know­ing that our peo­ple were placed in a deep hole by west­ern­ers. All of us who had the bless­ings of the ca­pac­i­ty to do re­search, to write and to speak, our task has been to dig our peo­ple out of that hole and put them on a lev­el play­ing field where they can pur­sue their God-giv­en tal­ents as a race, as an eth­nic­i­ty,” Beck­les said.

The Bar­keep­ers and Own­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of T&TT has been in dis­cus­sion with the Min­istry of Health to re­sume in-house ser­vice of al­co­hol, safe­ly.