Haiti’s pres­i­den­tial coun­cil stepped down on Sat­ur­day af­ter al­most two years of tu­mul­tuous rule along­side a U.S.-backed prime min­is­ter, who is ex­pect­ed to re­main in pow­er as the coun­try pre­pares for the first gen­er­al elec­tions in a decade.

Sev­en­ty-two hours af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar en­dorsed a new five per cent Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) trans­fer fee and 10 per cent prop­er­ty pur­chase, the pol­i­cy now ap­pears to be on hold.

Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is says peo­ple who met the cri­te­ria for Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) town­hous­es in Cau­ra, Tu­na­puna, and were as­sured they would get units, are now be­ing re­moved—but Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee has coun­tered that the past Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment was giv­ing those units to “friends, fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers.”

The aunt of po­lice shoot­ing vic­tim Joshua Sama­roo, Camel­lia Sama­roo, yes­ter­day com­plained about the po­lice pres­ence at his fu­ner­al, say­ing it left her feel­ing un­easy.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the ev­i­dence the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has in the fa­tal po­lice shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo will be pre­sent­ed when the time comes.

House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh yes­ter­day ruled that at­tempts by the Op­po­si­tion to re­fer Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath to the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges do not meet the re­quired thresh­old, ef­fec­tive­ly block­ing the move a sec­ond time.

De­spite calls from the Op­po­si­tion for broad­er con­sul­ta­tion, the Gov­ern­ment says it is mov­ing ahead with amend­ments to the Bail Act, in­sist­ing the changes are nec­es­sary to pro­tect the in­tegri­ty of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

With emp­ty seats and few­er young voic­es than usu­al, this year’s San Fer­nan­do Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch re­flect­ed the strain of fund­ing chal­lenges. Still, as a new cham­pi­on, Janaya Clark, 11, of Mod­ern Minds Acad­e­my, was crowned, calls grew loud­er for ca­lyp­so to be made a sub­ject in schools and for Car­ni­val to en­dure de­spite the odds.

Par­ents of stu­dents at Rio Claro East Sec­ondary School staged a protest out­side the school on Thurs­day, vow­ing they will not rest un­til the per­son be­hind a se­ries of vi­o­lent on­line threats is ar­rest­ed.

Three busi­ness­es were af­fect­ed by a fire that broke out at the Bam­boo Set­tle­ment No 3, Val­sayn, on Thurs­day evening.

The fam­i­ly of miss­ing 20-year-old Tyrese Pe­ters is now of­fer­ing a mon­e­tary re­ward for in­for­ma­tion lead­ing to his where­abouts, dead or alive.

A blog­ger and for­mer ra­dio host has been charged with sedi­tion af­ter a post on so­cial me­dia al­leged­ly in­vit­ed for­eign par­ties to tar­get the of­fi­cial res­i­dence of the Prime Min­is­ter.