Five peo­ple were ar­rest­ed and a firearm, am­mu­ni­tion and quan­ti­ties of cannabis, co­caine, metham­phet­a­mine and ec­sta­sy were seized dur­ing a se­ries of po­lice ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed across Trinidad on Fri­day.

Two men and a woman have been ar­rest­ed and are ex­pect­ed to be charged in con­nec­tion with two sep­a­rate home in­va­sions in San­gre Grande ear­ly on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to fire of­fi­cials, they re­spond­ed to a fire at the Co­ehlo Build­ing along Prince Street be­tween Char­lotte and Nel­son Streets at around 9.30 pm on Fri­day night.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is call­ing for a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­duct of Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath dur­ing pro­ceed­ings of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day evening.

The fam­i­ly of a school­boy who was shot dead dur­ing a home in­va­sion in Mara­bel­la, is now liv­ing in fear as po­lice in­ves­ti­gate the killing.

The Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC) has con­demned com­ments made by Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle dur­ing a Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) pub­lic meet­ing in his con­stituen­cy last Thurs­day, de­scrib­ing the re­marks as di­vi­sive and harm­ful to na­tion­al uni­ty.

State-owned oil com­pa­ny Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um says there is cur­rent­ly no ev­i­dence to sup­port the pres­ence of large amounts of hy­dro­car­bons in the sea, fol­low­ing an im­me­di­ate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to an al­leged oil spill flagged by Venezuela.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath has clar­i­fied that none of the $127.8 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal fund­ing be­ing sought by his min­istry in­cludes pro­vi­sions for out­stand­ing back­pay for teach­ers, de­spite on­go­ing con­cerns from ed­u­ca­tors and their rep­re­sen­ta­tive unions over de­lays in re­ceiv­ing retroac­tive pay­ments.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie says he en­tered of­fice meet­ing an alarm­ing num­ber of le­gal fees near $150 mil­lion, with in­voic­es con­tin­u­ing to ar­rive dai­ly. How­ev­er, he ad­mits his of­fice is still vet­ting scores of in­voic­es, as some of them are fraud­u­lent

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les says the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is pre­pared to or­gan­ise its own In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions if Gov­ern­ment can­cels the na­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, ar­gu­ing the an­nu­al event is too im­por­tant to the coun­try’s his­to­ry and iden­ti­ty to be aban­doned.

Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Phillip Alexan­der has de­fend­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie’s con­tro­ver­sial use of the term “one per cent” dur­ing Wednes­day’s de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of State of Emer­gency (SoE), ar­gu­ing that the phrase is glob­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with wealth and priv­i­lege rather than any spe­cif­ic eth­nic group.

Two for­mer se­nior bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives are de­fend­ing the in­tegri­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s bank­ing sec­tor, warn­ing that al­le­ga­tions sug­gest­ing crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty is be­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed through the fi­nan­cial sys­tem could dam­age con­fi­dence in one of the coun­try’s most im­por­tant in­sti­tu­tions.