Sci­en­tists ex­plor­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s deep sea say they have be­come the first peo­ple to see vast stretch­es of the coun­try’s un­der­wa­ter land­scape, un­cov­er­ing thriv­ing ecosys­tems, doc­u­ment­ing rare ma­rine life and col­lect­ing spec­i­mens that may rep­re­sent species new to sci­ence.

Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh has con­grat­u­lat­ed the team be­hind Trinidad and To­ba­go’s first sci­en­tif­ic ex­pe­di­tion to ex­plore the na­tion’s deep wa­ters, prais­ing their com­mit­ment to ad­vanc­ing ma­rine sci­ence and ex­pand­ing knowl­edge of the coun­try’s ma­rine bio­di­ver­si­ty.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­ports in­di­cate that a huge wave may have caused the MV Bari­ma with 116 pas­sen­gers and a 17-mem­ber crew to cap­size on Sat­ur­day night as it made its way to Port Kai­tu­ma, a small vil­lage with­in the Bari­ma-Wai­ni ad­min­is­tra­tive re­gion of Guyana, Pub­lic Works Min­is­ter Juan Edghill has said.

Of­fi­cials say some 16 men, most­ly Venezue­lans seized an op­por­tu­ni­ty yes­ter­day af­ter­noon to force their way past guards at the IDC in a mad dash to free­dom.

Two men were chased and killed in a hail of bul­lets in Siparia on Sat­ur­day night. The bod­ies of Kwame Par­ris, 29, alias “Six,” of Co­conut Al­ley, Siparia, and Teshawn Bap­tiste, 25, al­so known as “Black­boy,” of Lowkie Trace, Pe­nal, were dis­cov­ered in Sen­non Vil­lage af­ter res­i­dents re­port­ed hear­ing loud ex­plo­sions around 9 p.m.

To­ba­go is mourn­ing the pass­ing of one of the is­land’s ma­tri­archs and culi­nary pi­o­neers, Gre­ta Trim, fond­ly known as Miss Trim, who helped make Store Bay a pop­u­lar spot for lo­cal cui­sine. Known for its crab and dumpling and oth­er savoury de­lights, Miss Trim’s Foods has be­come a sta­ple for vis­i­tors at the pop­u­lar bathing fa­cil­i­ty.

Po­lice were up to late last evening search­ing for eight Venezue­lan men who es­caped from the Im­mi­gra­tion De­ten­tion Cen­tre, Aripo, ear­li­er yes­ter­day.

The per­ma­nent stop to ex­tra­di­tion pro­ceed­ings against Jack Warn­er is be­ing seen as a hol­low vic­to­ry by com­men­ta­tors, but al­so as a sig­nal that struc­tur­al re­form is re­quired with­in the na­tion’s jus­tice sys­tem.

Years of re­port­ed con­stant ap­peals for him to se­cure his dogs end­ed with a 66-year-old man dy­ing on Fri­day af­ter­noon af­ter a fight with neigh­bours.

The fam­i­lies of six miss­ing crew mem­bers aboard the fish­ing ves­sel St Vin­cent VII are mak­ing an ur­gent re­gion­al ap­peal for as­sis­tance as the search con­tin­ues for the burned ves­sel, which has been miss­ing at sea since Mon­day, Ju­ly 13.

Hu­man rights ad­vo­cates are warn­ing that the State could face se­ri­ous con­se­quences if a de­tainee held un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) dies in cus­tody dur­ing the cur­rent State of Emer­gency, as con­cerns grow over the use of ex­tra­or­di­nary de­ten­tion pow­ers.

For over six decades, house ar­rests in T&T have emerged as a rare but pow­er­ful le­gal mea­sure.