Res­i­dents of Ce­dros are ex­press­ing mixed feel­ings about re­ports that three Unit­ed States war­ships will soon be op­er­at­ing off T&T’s shores as ten­sions rise be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela.

As this coun­try’s Gov­ern­ment re­mains silent on the im­pend­ing Unit­ed States (US) naval pres­ence in the wa­ters off the coast of Venezuela, the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment is pledg­ing a peace­ful ap­proach to this de­vel­op­ing sit­u­a­tion.

A po­lice cor­po­ral with 24 years of ser­vice was de­tained by his peers on Wednes­day night, af­ter a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) was ex­e­cut­ed in re­la­tion to al­le­ga­tions that he is a mem­ber of a gang.

The po­lice ser­vice is com­mit­ted to keep­ing all Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters safe, in par­tic­u­lar De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin says he can­not say more about a de­tainee who re­port­ed­ly con­fessed to 30 mur­ders, since it is a mat­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. The de­tainee is al­so a sus­pect in a re­cent kid­nap­ping.

Two men were killed in sep­a­rate shoot­ings in Pe­nal and Pleas­antville on Wednes­day night, leav­ing fam­i­lies in mourn­ing and po­lice search­ing for gun­men.

In­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les says the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment must main­tain a stance of neu­tral­i­ty as ten­sions brew be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela in the wa­ters off T&T, fol­low­ing the de­ploy­ment of a US naval fleet and mil­i­tary as­sets to the re­gion.

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) Mar­tin pres­i­dent Lum Kin says the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has iden­ti­fied 80 high-risk schools that will po­ten­tial­ly need po­lice of­fi­cers in the new term.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry is fo­cus­ing on fill­ing va­can­cies prompt­ly, man­ag­ing in­dis­ci­pline in schools and in­creas­ing parental en­gage­ment in the new aca­d­e­m­ic year be­gin­ning in Sep­tem­ber.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says the in­de­pen­dent ex­pert pan­el re­view­ing the death of six-year-old Jash­er Fran­cois has been grant­ed a one-week ex­ten­sion to com­plete their re­port.

Mere days af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the man­age­ment of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) to “sort out the mess” at the air­line, one of the air­line’s top ex­ec­u­tives has been sus­pend­ed.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is di­rect­ing all ques­tions to De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge, on whether or not a re­cent se­nior State board ap­pointee is the at­tor­ney with close ties to the Gov­ern­ment who is al­leged­ly among those mak­ing death threats to him.