A Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer, who has been sus­pend­ed since Jan­u­ary 2021 af­ter be­ing charged with beat­ing his then-girl­friend, was freed of the charge yes­ter­day af­ter the State re­peat­ed­ly failed to pro­duce wit­ness­es to sub­stan­ti­ate the al­le­ga­tion, in­clud­ing the com­plainant.

As some sec­ondary schools re­quire par­ents to pay for school pack­ages cost­ing $4,000 or more, oth­ers are seek­ing to ease the fi­nan­cial bur­den by of­fer­ing free text­books, ze­ro reg­is­tra­tion fees, and pro­vid­ing ad­di­tion­al sup­port for stu­dents.

Mikel Meri­no scored in the 88th minute on a re­bound yield­ed by back­up Bel­gium goal­keep­er Senne Lam­mens, and Spain ad­vanced to the World Cup semi­fi­nals with a 2-1 vic­to­ry on Fri­day.

Gov­ern­ment is look­ing at new ways to ease for­eign ex­change short­ages, al­though of­fi­cials say the mea­sures will not in­crease the over­all sup­ply of US dol­lars. Se­nior min­is­ters and the Cen­tral Bank met with en­er­gy sec­tor rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day to dis­cuss im­prov­ing how for­eign ex­change is al­lo­cat­ed across the mar­ket.

Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath has ap­point­ed a new Board of Di­rec­tors for the Pow­er Gen­er­a­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Pow­er­Gen).

Three of the head­line steel or­ches­tras billed to per­form at Sat­ur­day’s Gen­er­a­tions of Steel con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah have with­drawn from the event, cit­ing con­trac­tu­al and ad­min­is­tra­tive is­sues.

The rush to se­cure Cer­tifi­cates of Good Char­ac­ter for re­cruit­ment dri­ves by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the Air Guard, the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force and oth­er state agen­cies has once again ex­posed long­stand­ing pro­cess­ing prob­lems at the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, where se­nior of­fi­cers say on­ly one ma­chine is avail­able to han­dle hun­dreds of ap­pli­ca­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has praised the strong re­la­tion­ship be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States, say­ing the part­ner­ship con­tin­ues to de­liv­er tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits in health­care and oth­er key sec­tors.

The Ju­di­cia­ry has in­tro­duced a Prac­tice Di­rec­tion gov­ern­ing the use of gen­er­a­tive ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence in court pro­ceed­ings, aimed at en­sur­ing AI is used re­spon­si­bly and eth­i­cal­ly. Is­sued by Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh on Ju­ly 7, the rules took ef­fect on Ju­ly 8.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley says Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is try­ing her best as po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Peo­ple are be­ing tar­get­ed by scam­mers pos­ing as Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) or Min­istry of Hous­ing agents, who claim they can se­cure HDC homes by by­pass­ing the of­fi­cial al­lo­ca­tion process in ex­change for mon­ey, the HDC has warned.

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife, Genevieve, have se­cured an ur­gent hear­ing be­fore the Court of Ap­peal next Tues­day, as they seek to over­turn a de­ci­sion by Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad re­fus­ing their re­lease from de­ten­tion over an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.