A Port-of-Spain man who was at­tacked on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade ear­ly this morn­ing has died at hos­pi­tal.

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump signed a gov­ern­ment fund­ing bill Wednes­day night, end­ing a record 43-day shut­down that caused fi­nan­cial stress for fed­er­al work­ers who went with­out pay­checks, strand­ed scores of trav­ellers at air­ports and gen­er­at­ed long lines at some food banks.

With an es­ti­mat­ed 100,000 peo­ple set to lose work re­lat­ed to Car­ni­val events, en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try stake­hold­ers are ques­tion­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to ban the use of Ude­cott-op­er­at­ed venues for Car­ni­val fetes. They called the move a “death knell” to the coun­try’s en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try.

Sev­er­al Car­ni­val fete pro­mot­ers are al­ready search­ing for new venues to host their Car­ni­val 2026 events af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter di­rect­ed that all fetes be stopped from tak­ing place at the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA).

Cari­com Am­bas­sador Ralph Maraj—and oth­ers in var­i­ous sec­tors—yes­ter­day wel­comed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ac­tion against the noise men­ace in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin says the Gov­ern­ment is not stop­ping fetes, but it is work­ing with the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion to find al­ter­na­tive venues and cre­ate a more bal­anced, in­clu­sive Car­ni­val for 2026.

The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) has been dis­solved fol­low­ing a for­mal re­quest from Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine dur­ing a ple­nary sit­ting last evening. This paves the way for THA elec­tion to be held, al­though no date has yet been an­nounced.

St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves says he is await­ing ad­vice from his at­tor­neys on whether le­gal ac­tion can be tak­en against Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Anil Roberts.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) has ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ac­qui­si­tion of a unit at Vic­to­ria Keyes by St Vin­cent and the Grenadines PM Dr Ralph Gon­salves’ daugh­ter.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath says the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) has ac­cel­er­at­ed ef­forts to fill hun­dreds of teach­ing va­can­cies across the coun­try as part of a wider ini­tia­tive to strength­en both aca­d­e­m­ic and tech­ni­cal-vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion.

For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said the use of tech­nol­o­gy helped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in re­duc­ing kid­nap­pings for ran­som while he led the po­lice ser­vice.

Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der says that ad­di­tion­al tech­no­log­i­cal sup­port may be on the way for lo­cal law en­force­ment as part of re­gion­al ef­forts to com­bat firearms traf­fick­ing.