A Unit­ed States mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion tar­get­ing sus­pect­ed nar­co-traf­fick­ers in the Caribbean has left four men dead, in what of­fi­cials de­scribe as a “lethal ki­net­ic strike” along a known drug traf­fick­ing route.

Po­lice have res­cued a 73-year-old busi­ness­woman less than 24 hours af­ter she was ab­duct­ed from her home, in what Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro de­scribed as a “ma­jor break­through” against cross-bor­der kid­nap­ping net­works.

An Ital­ian en­gi­neer­ing group says it has se­cured a US$50 mil­lion con­tract to con­duct a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion study on Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery in Pointe-à-Pierre. How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment is dis­tanc­ing it­self from the arrange­ment.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine is set to meet Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to­mor­row to dis­cuss To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my.

For­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­miss De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, de­scrib­ing him as a li­a­bil­i­ty due to his re­port­ed as­so­ci­a­tion with slain To­co/San­gre Grande busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra.

Days af­ter San­gre Grande busi­ness­man Dan­ny Guer­ra and his em­ploy­ee Ron­dell Adol­phus, al­so known as “Patch,” were killed in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer ASP Owie Rus­sell says po­lice in the East­ern Di­vi­sion have in­ten­si­fied op­er­a­tions to strength­en se­cu­ri­ty in the area.

For the first 21 days of the lat­est State of Emer­gency (SoE), TTPS pub­lic in­for­ma­tion of­fi­cer ASP Owie Rus­sell has re­port­ed a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in al­most every cat­e­go­ry of crime com­pared to the same pe­ri­od dur­ing the pre­vi­ous SoE.

The Op­po­si­tion is con­tin­u­ing to press the gov­ern­ment over what it de­scribes as unan­swered ques­tions sur­round­ing the in­stal­la­tion and sud­den re­moval of a Unit­ed States mil­i­tary radar sys­tem re­port­ed­ly used for sur­veil­lance across Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Alyssa Phillip, one of the ac­tivists who led demon­stra­tions fol­low­ing the po­lice killing of Joshua Sama­roo and the wound­ing of his com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, in Jan­u­ary, says she is not op­ti­mistic that any­one will be held ac­count­able if wrong­do­ing is found.

Trinidad and To­ba­go has raised con­cerns over the re-elec­tion of Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Dr Car­la Bar­nett, say­ing it was ex­clud­ed from the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process.

Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Dr Faith Breb­nor re­mains in the dark about the fu­ture of Cuban medics in To­ba­go.

Po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, David Ab­du­lah, has crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment’s re­sponse to the wors­en­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Cu­ba, warn­ing that fu­el short­ages there have cre­at­ed con­di­tions that would bring this coun­try to a stand­still with­in weeks.