Af­ter 15 years, the Cen­tral Bank’s civ­il case against the CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) group be­gan on Jan­u­ary 6 be­fore Jus­tice Robin Mo­hammed.

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Mar­i­ano Browne, has en­dorsed the de­ci­sion of At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie to end long-stand­ing civ­il suits tied to the col­lapse of the CLF con­glom­er­ate, with ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er Carl­ton Reis call­ing for the State to fi­nal­ly re­lin­quish con­trol and al­low CL Fi­nan­cial (CLF) to re­build.

With a di­vi­sion of 27 Gov­ern­ment MPs for and 11 Op­po­si­tion MPs against, the Law Re­form Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions, Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Mea­sures Act, 2026, was passed in the Low­er House of Par­lia­ment.

As the Gov­ern­ment moves to in­tro­duce Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSOs) af­ter the State of Emer­gency ends on Jan­u­ary 31, both the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­pert are urg­ing cau­tion, warn­ing that the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion can dis­rupt eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly erod­ing con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

A 24-year-old man was shot and killed dur­ing a con­fronta­tion with po­lice near a bar along Morne Co­co Road, Mar­aval, on Fri­day night, mak­ing the in­ci­dent the third po­lice-in­volved fa­tal shoot­ing with­in a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

With rough­ly two more weeks be­fore the State of Emer­gency comes to an end, the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter is­sued ten more de­ten­tion or­ders for the year.

Kly­don En­ter­pris­es Ltd, a com­pa­ny linked to for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), Fos­ter Cum­mings, op­er­at­ed on oral con­tracts for cer­tain months in 2017 and 2018 at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

Lo­cal event pro­mot­er Ja­cho En­ter­tain­ment Lim­it­ed has filed a civ­il law­suit against Ja­maican dance­hall artiste Adid­ja Az­im Palmer, pop­u­lar­ly known as Vy­bz Kar­tel, aris­ing out of the can­cel­la­tion of the high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val, which was sched­uled to take place on May 31, 2025.

Plans to be­gin mi­grant reg­is­tra­tion at the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um have re­port­ed­ly been post­poned, adding to un­cer­tain­ty among mi­grants seek­ing to reg­u­larise their sta­tus un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s ex­pand­ed reg­is­tra­tion frame­work.

Since News­day’s an­nounce­ment that it has com­menced le­gal pro­ceed­ings to close, much has been writ­ten here at home and around the re­gion about this de­ci­sion. The clo­sure of any news­pa­per any­where in the world res­onates with jour­nal­ists every­where as they un­der­stand the chal­lenges of this unique in­dus­try that of­ten sits on the edge of chal­leng­ing fi­nan­cial de­ci­sion-mak­ing. In the midst of the noise that has en­cir­cled this an­nounce­ment, the sober re­al­i­ty is that sus­tain­ing a tra­di­tion­al me­dia house in this era is a tough bal­anc­ing act.

With Car­ni­val less than a month away, for­mer pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) Dune Ali is rais­ing con­cerns about the tenure of the as­so­ci­a­tion’s cur­rent pres­i­dent, Mark Ayen.

Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (RHA) work­ers say they are still wait­ing on salary in­creas­es, even as oth­er pub­lic ser­vants pre­pare to ben­e­fit from a 10 per cent wage in­crease se­cured by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) start­ing this month.