The Gov­ern­ment has banned the ex­port of cop­per for one year, al­low­ing on­ly li­censed man­u­fac­tur­ers to ex­port the met­al un­der strict con­di­tions fol­low­ing a surge in cop­per theft and van­dal­ism of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

Con­cerns are be­gin­ning to emerge over the Gov­ern­ment's plans to pur­sue large-scale da­ta cen­tre de­vel­op­ment, with some mem­bers of the pub­lic ques­tion­ing the po­ten­tial en­vi­ron­men­tal and in­fra­struc­ture im­pacts of the pro­posed projects.

The Gov­ern­ment has signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) with Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion to be­gin dis­cus­sions on the re­fur­bish­ment, recom­mis­sion­ing and op­er­a­tion of the for­mer iron and steel plant at Point Lisas.

The lat­est pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders is­sued un­der the State of Emer­gency ac­cuse de­tainees of roles rang­ing from run­ning an ex­tor­tion net­work linked to Venezuela to steal­ing in­dus­tri­al ma­te­ri­als for the scrap met­al trade, ac­cord­ing to no­tices pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing two men cur­rent­ly de­tained on Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) have chal­lenged Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der to jus­ti­fy their con­tin­ued de­ten­tions.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions that she rushed the ap­proval of lease agree­ments in­volv­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed’s Blue Wa­ters Prod­ucts Ltd com­pa­ny short­ly be­fore the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, say­ing the mat­ter had un­der­gone years of re­view by le­gal of­fi­cers.

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Alexan­der has re­ject­ed ac­cu­sa­tions that his re­cent so­cial me­dia at­tack on ac­tivist Suzette Louwe was deroga­to­ry or amount­ed to an at­tack on women, even as crit­i­cism of his con­duct con­tin­ues to in­ten­si­fy.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has praised the strong re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States, say­ing the part­ner­ship con­tin­ues to de­liv­er tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits in health­care and oth­er key sec­tors.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is try­ing her best as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira has been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal and is re­cov­er­ing at home af­ter suf­fer­ing a med­ical episode while ap­pear­ing live on tele­vi­sion on Thurs­day morn­ing.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der has de­fend­ed Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce the E-Pass­port sys­tem, ar­gu­ing that it was not on­ly more con­ve­nient for dai­ly tasks and record-keep­ing but would al­so en­sure a high­er de­gree of se­cu­ri­ty is main­tained.

A re­cent mud ex­tru­sion has been dis­cov­ered at Pa­lo Seco Bay, the lat­est ge­o­log­i­cal fea­ture to emerge along Trinidad’s south-west­ern coast­line fol­low­ing the re­cent pow­er­ful twin earth­quakes off Venezuela. It is be­lieved the ex­tru­sion may have oc­curred around the same time the coast­line at Gal­fa Beach in Ce­dros was up­lift­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 feet.