Bar and restau­rant own­ers say sales have plum­met­ed, with cus­tomers cut­ting back, as the 100 per cent in­crease in ex­cise du­ty took ef­fect af­ter be­ing an­nounced in the 2026 Bud­get, which led to a rise in the cost of beer and al­co­holic bev­er­ages.

A heat­ed row erupt­ed in yes­ter­day’s To­ba­go ple­nary sit­ting af­ter Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris ac­cused Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine of us­ing of­fen­sive lan­guage dur­ing the de­bate. He said Au­gus­tine’s “don­key log­ic” re­mark was un­fit for the cham­ber, es­pe­cial­ly with school­child­ren watch­ing the live broad­cast.

Ten mi­nors in To­ba­go are fac­ing charges of as­sault by beat­ing fol­low­ing two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents of school-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence, ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­lease.

Home in­va­sion vic­tim Vi­jay Ra­goo­nanan says he sup­ports the Gov­ern­ment’s stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion but in­sists that a stronger po­lice pres­ence is ur­gent­ly need­ed in com­mu­ni­ties.

The min­is­ter told mem­bers of the me­dia that he al­so has a strat­e­gy to en­sure that po­lice of­fi­cers are not burnt out in the com­ing year.

Se­nior Coun­sel Kei­th Scot­land has re­quest­ed al­most two weeks to re­spond to al­le­ga­tions that a le­gal team he led on be­half of the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) mis­led a court in a law­suit.

The tri­al of a nov­el law­suit brought by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj, chal­leng­ing his pro­tract­ed de­ten­tion in Suri­name as part of a cor­rup­tion probe, has com­menced be­fore the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice (CCJ).

Ex­perts say the 6.2-mag­ni­tude earth­quake that struck Trinidad and To­ba­go on June 22 last year—record­ed at a depth of 46 km by the UWI Seis­mic Re­search Cen­tre—may ex­plain why there were rel­a­tive­ly few re­ports of ma­jor struc­tur­al dam­age.

Tech­ni­cians and en­gi­neers at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, spent most of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon work­ing to re­store elec­tric­i­ty through­out the en­tire fa­cil­i­ty af­ter a bolt of light­ning caused a pow­er out­age at the hos­pi­tal.

A to­tal of 22,318 pas­sen­gers and 7,570 ve­hi­cles were trans­port­ed by fer­ries be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go dur­ing the 2025 To­ba­go Car­ni­val last month.

They as­sured there would be an in­crease in pa­trols and greater vis­i­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the cap­i­tal city, be­gin­ning from Christ­mas.

Ten mi­nors are fac­ing charges for as­sault by beat­ing in con­nec­tion with two school-re­lat­ed in­ci­dents in To­ba­go.