For­mer prime min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young have ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fi­nanc­ing of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters to di­vert pub­lic at­ten­tion from what they de­scribe as more press­ing na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing vi­o­lent crime, for­eign ex­change short­ages, eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, Point Lisas plant clo­sures, ris­ing debt and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­clu­sion from dis­cus­sions on Venezue­lan gas.

Econ­o­mists are call­ing for greater trans­paren­cy from the Gov­ern­ment, af­ter the lat­est re­ports on the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) re­vealed that more than half a bil­lion US was with­drawn over a six-month pe­ri­od, with ques­tions now be­ing raised about how the mon­ey was used and whether the coun­try's fis­cal po­si­tion has been ful­ly pre­sent­ed.
The lat­est HSF re­ports, pub­lished last Fri­day, show the Gov­ern­ment with­drew a to­tal of $3.46 bil­lion (US$510.78 mil­lion) from the fund dur­ing the pe­ri­ods Ju­ly-Sep­tem­ber 2025 and Oc­to­ber-De­cem­ber 2025.
For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and econ­o­mist Mar­i­ano Browne yes­ter­day ar­gued that the with­drawals should have formed part of a broad­er ex­pla­na­tion of the coun­try's fis­cal po­si­tion pri­or to now.
"On Fri­day, the bud­get deficit was low­er than it was pro­ject­ed. Now no­tice, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter made no an­nounce­ment in his bud­get speech, nev­er had com­ment­ed or said that he had made with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund dur­ing his first bud­get speech, nor did he make any state­ment dur­ing his mid-year re­view bud­get speech," Browne said.
He con­tend­ed that key fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion had been omit­ted.

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah have sup­port­ed the pro­posed restart of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant at Point Lisas, but warn that the Gov­ern­ment must dis­close the cost, terms and strate­gic im­pli­ca­tions of the project.

Hope for jobs was tem­pered by con­cerns over wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty and a lack of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion yes­ter­day, as res­i­dents of Debe re­act­ed to the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish AI da­ta cen­tres in the com­mu­ni­ty, say­ing they want­ed more in­for­ma­tion on how the project would af­fect their lives.

Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our has con­firmed that a date has been iden­ti­fied for the open­ing of the new ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ter­mi­nal but is re­fus­ing to di­vulge it just yet.

As Miss World T&T Geor­gia-Lee Gill pre­pares to rep­re­sent this coun­try in the 73rd edi­tion of the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant in Viet­nam next month, the search is al­ready un­der­way for her suc­ces­sor. 

Dairy farmer John Lennard is hop­ing the Gov­ern­ment comes up with a so­lu­tion to keep them all gain­ful­ly em­ployed, af­ter Nestlé an­nounced it had be­gun a strate­gic re­view of its op­er­a­tions in T&T, in­clud­ing ex­plor­ing the pos­si­ble sale of its dairy and juices busi­ness.

Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is ques­tion­ing Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­tain Unit­ed King­dom bar­ris­ters in the le­gal pro­ceed­ings in­volv­ing Do­minic and Genevieve Hadeed be­fore any crim­i­nal charges have been laid, while a se­nior at­tor­ney has de­fend­ed the move as rou­tine in com­plex cas­es re­quir­ing spe­cial­ist ex­per­tise.

The T&T Prison Ser­vice is in­ten­si­fy­ing its push to trans­form the coun­try’s prison sys­tem from one fo­cused pri­mar­i­ly on in­car­cer­a­tion to one cen­tred on cor­rec­tion, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion, Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Pris­ons Car­los Cor­raspe says.

Every stu­dent en­ter­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) from Sep­tem­ber will grad­u­ate with more than a de­gree. They will al­so be ex­pect­ed to leave with a deep­er un­der­stand­ing of who they are, where they come from and the coun­try they will one day help shape.

The Venezue­lan Em­bassy in T&T con­tin­ues to urge con­cerned cit­i­zens and in­di­vid­u­als to sup­port its re­lief dri­ve, fol­low­ing the Galleon’s Pas­sage ar­rival in Venezuela last Fri­day with hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid for that coun­try’s earth­quake-hit vic­tims.

Ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence did not ap­pear to sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence vot­er be­hav­iour or the out­come of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, but a re­searcher is warn­ing that with­out reg­u­la­tion, AI-gen­er­at­ed po­lit­i­cal con­tent could be­come a ma­jor threat by the next elec­tion cy­cle.