As Trinidad and To­ba­go marks the 188th an­niver­sary of the abo­li­tion of slav­ery, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les are urg­ing cit­i­zens to ho­n­our the sac­ri­fices and re­silience of en­slaved Africans while pro­tect­ing free­doms, pur­su­ing jus­tice and con­tin­u­ing the work of build­ing a so­ci­ety root­ed in equal­i­ty and op­por­tu­ni­ty.

It has now been 12 weeks since the Gov­ern­ment last held a post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing, with the most re­cent ses­sion tak­ing place on May 7, leav­ing near­ly three months with­out min­is­ters fac­ing ques­tions from jour­nal­ists on de­ci­sions tak­en at Cab­i­net ses­sions.

The San Juan/Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (SLRC) says it will not va­cate its Aranguez Main Road head­quar­ters de­spite a dead­line is­sued by the state-owned Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS) for the Cor­po­ra­tion to leave the build­ing it has oc­cu­pied for more than 30 years.

The Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers’ Union (AWU) is call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to make good on its mid-year bud­get re­view promise to in­crease their salaries and pay back­pay af­ter set­tling ne­go­ti­a­tions in 2022.

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Camille Robin­son-Reg­is says she is ac­cept­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's re­cent state­ment that she was "deeply hurt by racist re­marks" as an apol­o­gy to all Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans who, she says, were of­fend­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter's own past com­ments on race.

The In­dus­tri­al Court has dis­missed le­gal ac­tion tak­en by Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) against the T&T Air­line Pi­lots As­so­ci­a­tion (TTAL­PA) for al­leged­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ing a sick-out protest by pi­lots in 2023.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to the al­leged ab­duc­tion and sex­u­al as­sault of a 15-year-old girl on Thurs­day.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) says it is re­view­ing al­le­ga­tions con­tained in a Guardian Me­dia in­ter­view with a man who claimed he op­er­at­ed a hu­man traf­fick­ing ring in Trinidad and To­ba­go for years.

A Trinidad and To­ba­go per­ma­nent res­i­dent who was de­port­ed from the Unit­ed States last year is seek­ing US$10 mil­lion from the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, al­leg­ing that he suf­fered med­ical ne­glect and abuse while in im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion in Texas.

A spe­cial re­port pre­sent­ed by UN­AIDS on the oc­ca­sion of the 26th In­ter­na­tion­al AIDS Con­fer­ence, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 27 to 31 Ju­ly, re­veals that re­duc­tions in in­ter­na­tion­al fund­ing and cuts to HIV pre­ven­tion ser­vices and com­mu­ni­ty-led ser­vices could cause a resur­gence of the epi­dem­ic.

Po­lice de­stroyed ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,800 cannabis trees with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $2.43 mil­lion dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion in Moru­ga on Thurs­day.

The Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty’s Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) says it is re­view­ing al­le­ga­tions con­tained in a Guardian in­ter­view with a man who claimed he op­er­at­ed a hu­man traf­fick­ing ring in Trinidad and To­ba­go for years.