Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says Cab­i­net has ap­proved a new board for the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), with the ap­point­ments ex­pect­ed to be for­mal­ly put in place soon.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) says re­cent leg­isla­tive amend­ments have weak­ened pub­lic pro­cure­ment safe­guards while leav­ing bil­lions of dol­lars in state spend­ing sub­ject to re­duced over­sight.

A re­gion­al po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst has ques­tioned Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s use of the slo­gan “Yel­low is the Code” fol­low­ing the Na­tion­al De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress’ (NDC) land­slide elec­tion vic­to­ry in Grena­da, de­scrib­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion as “op­por­tunis­tic non­sense.”

An Amer­i­can Pan-African­ist is warn­ing Caribbean lead­ers against align­ing them­selves too close­ly with Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump or any oth­er US pres­i­dent, say­ing such re­la­tion­ships could draw the re­gion in­to poli­cies that are not in its best in­ter­ests.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is urg­ing cit­i­zens cel­e­brat­ing Di­vali this week­end to do so safe­ly and re­spon­si­bly, re­mind­ing them that fire­works can on­ly be dis­charged with­out a per­mit be­tween 8 pm and 9 pm on pub­lic hol­i­days un­der leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duced last year.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has pledged her con­tin­ued sup­port for the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) and Di­vali Na­gar, en­cour­ag­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion to re­main stead­fast and over­come its chal­lenges as it cel­e­brates 40 years of pre­serv­ing In­di­an cul­ture and her­itage in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The De­fence Force (TTDF) has ac­knowl­edged that a 19-year-old man died dur­ing Wednes­day’s joint po­lice-army raid in Fyz­abad, say­ing the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the shoot­ing are be­ing ex­am­ined as the vic­tim’s fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to dis­pute the po­lice ac­count of his death.

A wind­screen-clean­ing op­er­a­tion along the San Fer­nan­do By­pass end­ed in court for two men, with one plead­ing guilty to ob­struct­ing traf­fic and the oth­er deny­ing the charges.

Aaron See­baran was be­ing chased by a gun­man who shout­ed “whey meh mon­ey,” when he ran in­to the yard of a Williamsville home on Thurs­day af­ter­noon. Mo­ments lat­er, the 49-year-old labour­er was shot dead.

The seizure of near­ly 157 tonnes of il­lic­it drugs, more than 490 ar­rests and the dis­man­tling of dozens of transna­tion­al crim­i­nal net­works dur­ing a nine-month in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tion have re­in­forced the need for coun­tries to strength­en co­op­er­a­tion in the fight against or­gan­ised crime, Caribbean se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials say.

Busi­ness own­ers are count­ing their prof­its in To­ba­go af­ter a suc­cess­ful Car­ni­val sea­son.

For decades, Vin­cent “Benge” Ben­jamin was a fa­mil­iar fig­ure in New­town, Wood­brook, and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val and cul­tur­al cir­cles.