Econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein says the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed AI da­ta cen­tre could pro­vide a wel­come boost to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my, but he warns the project is still in its ear­li­est stages.

A To­ba­go po­lice of­fi­cer has been charged with wound­ing with in­tent af­ter al­leged­ly shoot­ing a man dur­ing har­vest cel­e­bra­tions in Bloody Bay on June 8.

The San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion is re­new­ing its call for a tem­po­rary fire sta­tion and emer­gency am­bu­lance ser­vice in the dis­trict, say­ing two re­cent in­ci­dents have re­in­forced the need for faster emer­gency re­sponse and stronger pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ma­yaro Nicholas Mor­ris part­nered with the East­ern Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty and Se­wa TT to host a com­mu­ni­ty health fair at Biche Sec­ondary School on Sun­day.

The Gov­ern­ment is seek­ing to re­as­sure the pub­lic that en­vi­ron­men­tal, tech­ni­cal and reg­u­la­to­ry con­cerns sur­round­ing its pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tre projects will be thor­ough­ly ex­am­ined be­fore any con­struc­tion be­gins.

A Change.org pe­ti­tion call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to halt ap­proval of pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) da­ta cen­tres in Trinidad and To­ba­go has at­tract­ed more than 3,200 ver­i­fied sig­na­tures less than a day af­ter it was launched.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) has is­sued a Yel­low Lev­el Lo­calised Flood Alert from 5:00 am to 4:00 pm on Mon­day, Ju­ly 13, warn­ing that more rain could trig­ger flood­ing in some com­mu­ni­ties.

A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad, sus­pect­ed of op­er­at­ing a broth­el and en­gag­ing in hu­man traf­fick­ing, has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to pur­sue a law­suit over be­ing de­tained un­der a Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­der (PDO) for the past three months.

A 32-year-old labour­er was shot dead out­side a bar in La Ro­maine on Sat­ur­day night af­ter two armed men opened fire on him.

For­mer prime min­is­ters Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Stu­art Young have ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the fi­nanc­ing of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters to di­vert pub­lic at­ten­tion from what they de­scribe as more press­ing na­tion­al is­sues, in­clud­ing vi­o­lent crime, for­eign ex­change short­ages, eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, Point Lisas plant clo­sures, ris­ing debt and Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ex­clu­sion from dis­cus­sions on Venezue­lan gas.

Econ­o­mists are call­ing for greater trans­paren­cy from the Gov­ern­ment, af­ter the lat­est re­ports on the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund (HSF) re­vealed that more than half a bil­lion US was with­drawn over a six-month pe­ri­od, with ques­tions now be­ing raised about how the mon­ey was used and whether the coun­try's fis­cal po­si­tion has been ful­ly pre­sent­ed.
The lat­est HSF re­ports, pub­lished last Fri­day, show the Gov­ern­ment with­drew a to­tal of $3.46 bil­lion (US$510.78 mil­lion) from the fund dur­ing the pe­ri­ods Ju­ly-Sep­tem­ber 2025 and Oc­to­ber-De­cem­ber 2025.
For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and econ­o­mist Mar­i­ano Browne yes­ter­day ar­gued that the with­drawals should have formed part of a broad­er ex­pla­na­tion of the coun­try's fis­cal po­si­tion pri­or to now.
"On Fri­day, the bud­get deficit was low­er than it was pro­ject­ed. Now no­tice, the Fi­nance Min­is­ter made no an­nounce­ment in his bud­get speech, nev­er had com­ment­ed or said that he had made with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund dur­ing his first bud­get speech, nor did he make any state­ment dur­ing his mid-year re­view bud­get speech," Browne said.
He con­tend­ed that key fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion had been omit­ted.

En­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah have sup­port­ed the pro­posed restart of the for­mer Arcelor­Mit­tal steel plant at Point Lisas, but warn that the Gov­ern­ment must dis­close the cost, terms and strate­gic im­pli­ca­tions of the project.