T&T’s food im­port bill is now the high­est it has ever been—a stag­ger­ing $7.3 bil­lion. For con­text, that is more than the Gov­ern­ment spends on its Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) an­nu­al­ly. The aim of the PSIP is to de­liv­er bet­ter qual­i­ty in­ter­ven­tions, val­ue for mon­ey and en­hanced pos­i­tive ef­fects to cit­i­zens.

On a warm Sun­day af­ter­noon, the carpark of Mount St Bene­dict is packed. Not every­one is there to pray, and not every­one there is Catholic.

In the last nine months, 120 chil­dren have been ar­rest­ed and charged with crimes ac­cord­ing to da­ta from the po­lice Crime and Prob­lem Analy­sis (CA­PA).

A po­lice cor­po­ral, con­sta­ble, and an­oth­er man re­main in cus­tody as in­ves­ti­ga­tions con­tin­ue in­to the kid­nap­ping and mur­der of Cunu­pia used car deal­er, Sachel Kunge­be­har­ry.

Liken­ing them­selves as a phoenix, sup­pos­ed­ly ris­ing out of the ash­es of the Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union (BIG­WU), the Re­pub­lic Work­ers Union (RWU) of­fi­cial­ly launched yes­ter­day.

The Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union’s (OW­TU) Pa­tri­ot­ic En­er­gies Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed claims the En­er­gy Min­is­ter’s al­leged doc­u­ment of a US$1.5B fraud­u­lent wire trans­fer in the re­fin­ery bid­ding process in Par­lia­ment is ir­rel­e­vant and is now re­quest­ing that it be con­sid­ered again to op­er­ate the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is chal­leng­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader to name the so-called pae­dophiles that she claims are in the “high ranks” of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM). Un­til then, Dr Row­ley said, he will dis­miss her “dis­gust­ing” claims.

Fifty-five-year-old Jerome Hen­ry, own­er of Ham­mer Head Bar, East­ern Main Road, Man­zanil­la, is nurs­ing head in­juries af­ter four masked men, one armed with a gun, en­tered his bar yes­ter­day morn­ing and held him up.

Po­lice are in­ves­ti­gat­ing the mur­der of a Siparia man, well known to au­thor­i­ties, whose body was dis­cov­ered out­side his home yes­ter­day.

The pub­lic’s help is be­ing sought to iden­ti­fy the woman who was found dead with a knife lodged in her neck at an aban­doned house in Curepe yes­ter­day. The vic­tim, who is of mixed de­scent, was dis­cov­ered around 9 am, by some­one liv­ing close by.

The func­tion­ing of the Chil­dren’s Au­thor­i­ty is to be re­viewed, ac­cord­ing to Gen­der and Child Af­fairs Min­is­ter Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy.

Just over one year since their last ap­pear­ance for T&T se­nior men’s foot­ball team, Kevin Moli­no and Jo­evin Jones, both for­mer cap­tains of the So­ca War­riors, are back in na­tion­al colours for this coun­try’s fi­nal two match­es in Group B of the CON­CA­CAF Na­tions League against Cu­ba.