Some teach­ers across the coun­try have start­ed to re­ceive the long-await­ed $900 mil­lion in back­pay.

For­mer act­ing CEO of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT), Keino Cox, is chal­leng­ing the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to place him on “ad­min­is­tra­tive leave” and the “non-re­new­al” of his act­ing CEO po­si­tion.

An amend­ment to the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act, giv­ing law en­force­ment of­fi­cers the au­thor­i­ty to lis­ten in, record and utilise tele­phone com­mu­ni­ca­tions be­tween pris­on­ers and their lawyers, has been de­clared un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.

Pe­nal-Debe Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Gow­tam Ma­haraj is urg­ing res­i­dents to help pro­tect new­ly plant­ed fruit trees at Palmiste Park, fol­low­ing the theft of pre­vi­ous­ly plant­ed trees by pri­vate groups.

Two men ap­peared be­fore a To­ba­go Mag­is­trate on Fri­day charged with traf­fick­ing more than $1 mil­lion worth of mar­i­jua­na and pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning have re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions of a rift with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), as the par­ty works through a pub­lic dis­agree­ment over the in­ter­nal process in Man­ning’s con­stituen­cy.

For­mer prime min­is­ter Stu­art Young and En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal clashed in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day over Young's query about whether Can­dy Ro­get-Mar­tinez, who was hired at Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Ltd, had OW­TU Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get as a ref­er­ence for her ap­pli­ca­tion.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says he is await­ing word from the Prime Min­is­ter and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to de­ter­mine when Gov­ern­ment’s con­tro­ver­sial Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) leg­is­la­tion will re­turn to Par­lia­ment, as he in­sists the pro­posed law is about trans­form­ing com­mu­ni­ties and not sim­ply send­ing po­lice of­fi­cers in­to crime hotspots.

As Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Suzette Mar­tin as­sures the pub­lic that in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to for­mer State of Emer­gency (SoE) de­tainees will con­tin­ue, for­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith says stronger col­lab­o­ra­tion among in­tel­li­gence agen­cies is need­ed to se­cure con­vic­tions and im­prove pub­lic safe­ty.

A three-year-old boy was in­jured af­ter a steel gate fell on him at his Princes Town home last Thurs­day.

Calls are be­ing made for the State to apol­o­gise to hun­dreds of peo­ple de­tained in prison fa­cil­i­ties un­der Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders, as the present State of Emer­gency is sched­uled to come to an end next week.

The Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs has con­firmed that the Unit­ed States made re­quests for its mil­i­tary to op­er­ate with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s air­space and mar­itime zones last year, but is re­fus­ing to dis­close what Wash­ing­ton re­quest­ed, when the re­quests were made or how they were han­dled.