Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion (SATT) Bion­di Bachew is as­sur­ing the pop­u­la­tion that there is no need for pan­ic buy­ing or rushed shop­ping.

As ten­sions rise with Venezuela fol­low­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port for the US’s dead­ly cam­paign against drug traf­fick­ers, some re­li­gious lead­ers are urg­ing the pub­lic to pray but al­so to pre­pare should there be a vi­o­lent es­ca­la­tion.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge yes­ter­day de­clined to con­firm if De­fence Force sol­diers have been in­struct­ed to re­turn to base, and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie has made it clear that the State of Emer­gency ex­ten­sion is to com­plete and con­tin­ue cur­rent crit­i­cal gang dis­man­tling op­er­a­tions. As an ex­am­ple, he said de­spite the re­moval of in­mates from the pris­ons, there were re­peat­ed at­tempts to re-es­tab­lish con­tact with peo­ple on the out­side.

A mo­tion to ex­tend the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for a sec­ond time was passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day with 27 Gov­ern­ment votes in favour and 12 Op­po­si­tion votes against. There were no ab­sten­tions.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says there has been no new head­way in dis­cus­sions with Nu­trien, as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues steps to­ward a tem­po­rary shut­down of its op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

Most of the is­sues re­gard­ing de­lays in pay­ment of pub­lic of­fi­cers’ salaries in six min­istries were be­ing re­solved yes­ter­day, with ef­forts to com­plete all pay­ments by Mon­day, ac­cord­ing to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo.

A group of frus­trat­ed for­mer CEPEP, URP, and Na­tion­al Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Pro­gramme work­ers is call­ing on au­thor­i­ties to fast-track mea­sures so they can put food on the ta­ble. Many of them were among over 190,000 ap­pli­cants seek­ing em­ploy­ment through the Gov­ern­ment’s job re­cruit­ment dri­ve.

The Court of Ap­peal has re­served its de­ci­sion on the fu­ture of lit­i­ga­tion chal­leng­ing the mass ter­mi­na­tion of over 300 Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme Com­pa­ny (CEPEP) con­trac­tors. 

A call for aid to hur­ri­cane-rav­aged Ja­maica has been met with mixed re­spons­es, as anx­i­ety over pos­si­ble war has damp­ened some of­fers of sup­port, leav­ing the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion strug­gling to col­lect do­na­tions while a steady stream of con­trib­u­tors gath­ered at the Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion yes­ter­day.

A team from the Con­cerned Mus­lims of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CMTT) de­part­ed for Ja­maica yes­ter­day to be­gin on-the-ground re­lief op­er­a­tions fol­low­ing the dev­as­tat­ing Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa that re­cent­ly struck the is­land.

The Gi­ant African Snail, one of the world’s most de­struc­tive agri­cul­tur­al pests, has long been a source of frus­tra­tion for farm­ers and home­own­ers across T&T.

Ques­tions about prop­er safe­ty pro­to­cols have arisen fol­low­ing the death of a Freeport mo­torist in an ac­ci­dent in­volv­ing a truck trans­port­ing a con­tain­er on Wednes­day.