De­spite sci­en­tists mak­ing ex­tra­or­di­nary dis­cov­er­ies in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s deep sea, Dr Di­va Amon says they have bare­ly scratched the sur­face, and the coun­try must now take greater charge of un­der­stand­ing and man­ag­ing what lies be­neath its wa­ters.

To pre­vent an up­surge in crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty fol­low­ing the re­lease of more than 500 peo­ple de­tained with­out charge dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE), Sean De Mills says the State must now fo­cus on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion pro­grammes.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is warn­ing crim­i­nals that her Gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to take “harsh and bru­tal mea­sures” against those who ter­rorise law-abid­ing cit­i­zens, even as the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ap­proach­es its Sep­tem­ber 17 end date.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she has de­cid­ed, on the ad­vice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, to de­clas­si­fy and re­lease a re­port show­ing the re­sults of wider ac­tions tak­en by the pro­tec­tive ser­vices to re­duce crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty dur­ing the State of Emer­gency.

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.