BEI­JING, Chi­na—While dis­ap­point­ment lingers in Port-of-Spain, where the In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade was can­celled this year, a very dif­fer­ent scene un­fold­ed thou­sands of miles away in Bei­jing.

Be­tween 2020 and Au­gust this year, 55 Venezue­lan na­tion­als were mur­dered in Trinidad, ten of them women.

A Diego Mar­tin man was chased and shot while lim­ing near a bar on Rich Plain Road ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Po­lice are try­ing to es­tab­lish the de­tails of a shoot­ing in Champs Fleurs that led to the death of a Bel­mont man and the wound­ing of a woman ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

Two peo­ple lost their lives in the ear­ly hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing fol­low­ing a trag­ic road traf­fic ac­ci­dent in Ch­agua­nas.

An an­gry mob set fire to a lo­cal par­lia­ment build­ing in an In­done­sian provin­cial cap­i­tal, leav­ing at least three peo­ple dead and five oth­ers hos­pi­talised, of­fi­cials said.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is stress­ing that her Gov­ern­ment has no ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the Unit­ed States de­clared clam­p­down on nar­co-ter­ror­ists in the re­gion is a façade to de­pose Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

Trinidad and To­ba­go and Grena­da have re­newed ef­forts to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion in the en­er­gy sec­tor, with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Grena­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell meet­ing yes­ter­day to for­mal­ly restart the process.

Ven­dors in down­town Port-of-Spain say sales have been much slow­er this year com­pared to pre­vi­ous years. They are blam­ing the de­cline on the can­cel­la­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day mil­i­tary pa­rade to­mor­row.

Se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts and crim­i­nol­o­gists say that while gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties are known to have low­er lev­els of crime and could be an ef­fec­tive crime-fight­ing strat­e­gy, it is pos­si­ble for wealthy crim­i­nals to pur­chase prop­er­ties and es­tab­lish a base with­in the gat­ed zone.

Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro says he re­mains con­fi­dent in the De­fence Force’s abil­i­ty to se­cure high-risk pris­on­ers at its Ch­aguara­mas bases, de­spite re­cent se­cu­ri­ty breach­es.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke has warned mem­bers of the pub­lic con­duct­ing trans­ac­tions at the Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Of­fice to be cau­tious of fraud­sters and con­men op­er­at­ing out­side the fa­cil­i­ty and even on so­cial me­dia.