Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro has called on Trinidad and To­ba­go cit­i­zens to pre­vent the Unit­ed States from "start­ing a war in the Caribbean."

All eyes were on Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa over the past week as it gained at­ten­tion, ini­tial­ly due to its slow move­ment. How­ev­er, once the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­tre (NHC) in­creased the in­ten­si­ty fore­cast to a land­falling cat­e­go­ry five, me­te­o­rol­o­gists and oth­er ex­perts knew that this would be a record-break­ing, his­toric sys­tem.

KINGSTON - More than 25,000 peo­ple were packed in­to shel­ters yes­ter­day af­ter the storm ripped roofs off their homes and left them tem­porar­i­ly home­less. Dixon said 77% of the is­land was with­out pow­er.

Thou­sands of Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers took to the streets of Mi­ran­da on Tues­day, hold­ing plac­ards bear­ing the im­age of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and call­ing on her not to “de­stroy the peace” in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

Ex­cise du­ties on Cari­com-man­u­fac­tured malt bev­er­ages, beer, rum, cig­a­rettes and to­bac­co have been in­creased 100 per cent, match­ing the 100 per cent in­crease on lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured beer, rum and to­bac­co prod­ucts stip­u­lat­ed in the 2026 Bud­get.

Nu­trien is as­sur­ing work­ers that all is not lost as dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue with the Gov­ern­ment in their on­go­ing port fee dis­pute.

It’s pure BS! So said Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) deputy leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal yes­ter­day, as he ac­cused the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of be­ing be­hind so­cial me­dia al­le­ga­tions of is­sues with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s be­hav­iour and lead­er­ship of the par­ty—and he’s de­clared all UNC MPs are unit­ed be­hind her.

If TT up­sets its Cari­com part­ners, it could very dif­fi­cult not just to ex­pand, but to sim­ply sell in­to mar­kets that com­pa­nies and in­di­vid­u­als have spent a life­time build­ing re­la­tion­ships with, says In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Fran­cis Lewis.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has voiced strong con­cern over Venezuela’s de­ci­sion to de­clare Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar “per­sona non gra­ta,” con­firm­ing he raised the is­sue di­rect­ly with Venezuela’s Am­bas­sador to T&T.

Min­is­ter of Trade, In­vest­ment and Tourism Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj is dis­miss­ing fears of a diplo­mat­ic rift with­in Cari­com, fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s sharp crit­i­cism of the re­gion­al bloc ear­li­er this week.

T&T is ac­tive­ly seek­ing to ap­point an am­bas­sador to Venezuela, de­spite Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­ing de­clared “per­sona non gra­ta” by the Venezue­lan Na­tion­al As­sem­bly.

While the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has af­firmed that stu­dents ex­pelled from pub­lic schools are not el­i­gi­ble for read­mis­sion, this pol­i­cy ap­plies on­ly in cas­es of se­ri­ous mis­con­duct, such as school fights or threats to safe­ty. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Michael Dowlath re­as­sured the Sen­ate yes­ter­day that the min­istry is ac­tive­ly work­ing to safe­guard the right to ed­u­ca­tion for these stu­dents, in­clud­ing those placed in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.