Two new deaths from COVID-19 have brought the na­tion­al death toll from the dis­ease to 74 per­sons, re­ports the Min­istry of Health in its up­date for this morn­ing, Tues­day 29 Sep­tem­ber 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, Isaac Lovell (of LP 42 Five Rivers Flood Gate, Arou­ca) es­caped from po­lice guard at about 5:30 am on Tues­day 29 Sep­tem­ber 2020.

A re­tired game war­den shot and killed an in­trud­er who tried to steal a van at his Table­land home this morn­ing.

There was lit­tle sur­prise from Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers yes­ter­day as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val 2021.

Po­lice of­fi­cers from two units are ap­peal­ing to any­one who may have been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed or robbed along the North Coast Road to re­port their cas­es to them.

A le­gal let­ter has been sent to Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) chair­man Sir Hi­lary Beck­les de­mand­ing that the coun­cil call a spe­cial meet­ing to dis­cuss sev­er­al mat­ters and is­sues aris­ing from com­plaints of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the grad­ing of this year’s CAPE and CSEC re­sults.

Drug Sou Sou of­fi­cials have record­ings of at least two con­ver­sa­tions with a high-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cer in which a deal was bro­kered to se­cure the re­turn of some $92 mil­lion that was seized by the po­lice, mi­nus $18 mil­lion that was paid as hush mon­ey to the of­fi­cers who or­gan­ised mon­ey’s re­turn.

One more per­son has died from COVID-19 the Min­istry of Health con­firmed in its up­dates yes­ter­day. The lat­est death, the min­istry said was an el­der­ly fe­male with co­mor­bidi­ties. The fa­tal­i­ty brings the to­tal num­ber of peo­ple to suc­cumb to the virus lo­cal­ly to 72.

In a few weeks af­ter the Bud­get de­bate, pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion will be im­ple­ment­ed, Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day.

Dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions in Gov­ern­ment’s Bud­get but pri­or­i­ties will be main­tained, in­clud­ing spend­ing for so­cial sec­tor sup­port, job cre­ation, youth op­por­tu­ni­ties, debt ser­vic­ing, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Health.

The bid by Pa­tri­ot­ic for Petrotrin’s Guaracara re­fin­ery ap­pears head­ed for the dust­bin and the up­com­ing 2021 Bud­get will re­lease an at­tack on work­ers, says UNC MP Roodal Mooni­lal.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gadsy-Dol­ly says the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fund­ing for de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools will be­gin with­in the next few days.