Five men who ac­cused the State of fail­ing to pro­tect them against sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse at a chil­dren’s home in Bel­mont decades ago have filed a law­suit su­ing the Ro­man Catholic Church and the State.

While the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion is push­ing for the re­in­state­ment of 26 em­ploy­ees whose con­tracts were not re­newed, the chair­man of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion is de­fend­ing the move, say­ing the work­ers were “sur­plus to re­quire­ments.”

Wood­brook res­i­dents liv­ing near the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and the Jean Pierre Com­plex are ques­tion­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion to ban fetes at those sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas is again ac­cus­ing the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) of stalling the “10 per cent” wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, and she is now ask­ing if he has been giv­en a man­date to block pub­lic ser­vants from get­ting their back­pay by Christ­mas.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) made his­to­ry yes­ter­day when 82-year-old Jack Austin Warn­er—for­mer FI­FA vice-pres­i­dent, busi­ness­man, and politi­cian—was award­ed a Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy, be­com­ing the old­est PhD grad­u­ate in the in­sti­tu­tion’s his­to­ry.

Cu­mu­to res­i­dents say low-fly­ing US mil­i­tary air­craft tak­ing part in joint train­ing ex­er­cis­es with the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) caused wide­spread un­ease on Mon­day af­ter­noon in­to the night, with the noise and vi­bra­tion from the en­gines shak­ing hous­es and star­tling fam­i­lies.

In the pres­ence of the Venezue­lan Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo em­pha­sized the im­por­tance of co­op­er­a­tion over con­flict in main­tain­ing strong diplo­mat­ic re­la­tion­ships, amid height­ened ten­sions be­tween the two coun­tries.

For the sec­ond time in weeks, protests against T&T Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar have erupt­ed in Venezuela.

Even as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar firm­ly stat­ed that Trinidad and To­ba­go will not be used as a launch­pad for at­tacks against Venezuela, one in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert has ques­tioned the tim­ing of joint mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cis­es.

The on­go­ing mil­i­tary train­ing ex­er­cise be­tween the US Marines and the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) does not com­pro­mise T&T’s sov­er­eign­ty, says pres­i­dent of the Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, Ki­ran Singh.

San Fer­nan­do can­not prop­er­ly cel­e­brate City Week un­less the grow­ing home­less pop­u­la­tion is ad­dressed and ur­gent sup­port is pro­vid­ed to shel­ters that serve the city, Al­der­man Vil­liana Ra­moutars­ingh said yes­ter­day.

T&T na­tion­als strand­ed in camps in Syr­ia are grow­ing in­creas­ing­ly frus­trat­ed as months pass with­out clear ac­tion from a gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee tasked with fa­cil­i­tat­ing their re­turn.