Iran closed the Strait of Hor­muz again Wednes­day in re­sponse to Is­raeli at­tacks against the Hezbol­lah mil­i­tant group in Lebanon, cast­ing doubt over whether an al­ready pre­car­i­ous cease­fire to end more than a month of war will hold.

A San Fer­nan­do busi­ness­woman shot and killed a rel­a­tive in­side her home on Wednes­day morn­ing, telling po­lice she act­ed to pro­tect her daugh­ter af­ter be­ing threat­ened.

Com­mu­ni­ty ac­tivist and gen­er­al man­ag­er of the ROOTS Foun­da­tion, Mti­ma Sol­wazi, says re­cent in­ci­dents in which chil­dren were mur­dered, wound­ed, or nar­row­ly es­caped shoot­ings are an ex­am­ple of the break­down of com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el prin­ci­ples.

The Gov­ern­ment is now push­ing for a spe­cial meet­ing of Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment to chal­lenge the reap­point­ment of Dr Car­la Bar­nett as Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, sig­nalling that fresh elec­tions are al­so firm­ly on the ta­ble. This, af­ter it was re­vealed yes­ter­day that this coun­try was de­lib­er­ate­ly “dis­in­vit­ed” from the vot­ing process.

Trinidad and To­ba­go should put for­ward a can­di­date for the post of Cari­com Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, giv­en that Cari­com’s rules pro­vide for a vote when there is an ob­jec­tion con­cern­ing its Ar­ti­cle 24 pro­to­col, says po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Am­bas­sador to Cari­com, Ralph Maraj, is urg­ing the re­gion­al body to re­spond to what he de­scribes as se­ri­ous pro­ce­dur­al con­cerns sur­round­ing the reap­point­ment of its Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, warn­ing that con­tin­ued si­lence risks un­der­min­ing con­fi­dence in the in­sti­tu­tion.

An ear­ly morn­ing shoot­ing in Moo­nan Road, Waller­field, led to the death of a 34-year-old man and the wound­ing of two oth­ers, in­clud­ing his preg­nant girl­friend, rel­a­tives say.

Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (DCP) in charge of Op­er­a­tions and Gold Com­man­der for the State of Emer­gency (SoE), Suzette Mar­tin, in­sists the SoE is work­ing and has had some suc­cess­es notwith­stand­ing con­tin­ued homi­cides.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Arou­ca/Lopinot Mar­vin Gon­za­les has called on the Gov­ern­ment to end the cur­rent State of Emer­gency, ar­gu­ing that it has failed to ad­dress ris­ing crime and has in­stead left cit­i­zens liv­ing in fear.

A 25-year-old Dun­can Street man, who gave po­lice a fake name, was ar­rest­ed on Mon­day night for phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ing the daugh­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

Tourism Sec­re­tary Zor­isha Hack­ett said her di­vi­sion is work­ing close­ly with stake­hold­ers to at­tract re­turn vis­i­tors to To­ba­go.

While the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) main­tains that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s eco­nom­ic de­cline has been years in the mak­ing, busi­ness­man and Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Clint Ar­joon says ris­ing tax­a­tion and high crime have cre­at­ed an un­bear­able en­vi­ron­ment, forc­ing him to shut down four of his busi­ness­es.