As armed po­lice took up posts in high-risk schools yes­ter­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar vowed to tack­le school vi­o­lence, say­ing enough was enough and call­ing the ini­tia­tive the be­gin­ning of the end for bul­ly­ing and class­room vi­o­lence.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day urged par­ents and their chil­dren to en­ter the new school term with a re­newed sense of pur­pose to make the most of their ed­u­ca­tion.

As the new school term start­ed yes­ter­day, Na­tion­al Par­ent-Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wal­ter Stew­art laud­ed the re­pairs and emer­gency works car­ried out at over 271 schools na­tion­wide un­der the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Va­ca­tion Re­pair Pro­gramme (VRP).

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der yes­ter­day ad­vised ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) that they were free to “walk away” at any time, if they felt un­able to work with the man in charge and serve as the job de­mands.

Po­lice con­tin­ued their search for two sus­pects con­nect­ed to the kid­nap­ping of Caribbean Air­lines pi­lot Daniel Kawall in the hills of Mar­aval yes­ter­day but were un­suc­cess­ful in lo­cat­ing them.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has laud­ed the ac­tions of po­lice of­fi­cers in res­cu­ing kid­napped CAL pi­lot Daniel Kawall, as he warned crim­i­nals that of­fi­cers would de­fend them­selves with lethal force if nec­es­sary.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo is dis­miss­ing calls to de­val­ue the Trinidad and To­ba­go dol­lar, warn­ing that such a move would do more harm than good to the na­tion­al econ­o­my.

Sev­er­al econ­o­mists are say­ing it would be a dan­ger­ous move for this coun­try’s econ­o­my to raise the ex­change rate of the US dol­lar from TT$6.79 to TT$9. They say such an ad­just­ment, with­out solv­ing struc­tur­al eco­nom­ic is­sues in Trinidad and To­ba­go, will not au­gur well.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says face-to-face talks are ex­pect­ed to take place with the Unit­ed States lat­er this month, af­ter the US ac­knowl­edged her “pub­lic sup­port” of its mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions.

Miss Grand T&T 2025 win­ner Tama­ra Per­sad is claim­ing she has been un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly stripped of her ti­tle and re­placed by the sec­ond run­ner-up.

Par­lia­ment's mid-year re­cess ends on Fri­day, when the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives (HOR) re­sumes with de­bate on the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Amend­ment bill, which will al­low cit­i­zen­ship for ath­letes whose grand­par­ents were born in T&T.

De­spite the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) get­ting set to host con­sul­ta­tions on the pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion next week, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al says the Bill will be brought be­fore Par­lia­ment be­fore the year’s end.