Trinidad and To­ba­go and the Unit­ed States are ex­plor­ing clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion in sports diplo­ma­cy, youth de­vel­op­ment and sport tourism fol­low­ing a meet­ing be­tween Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts and Unit­ed States Chargé d’Af­faires Philip Kern.

Six peo­ple, in­clud­ing two teenage boys, were ar­rest­ed and a home­made shot­gun with am­mu­ni­tion seized dur­ing sep­a­rate an­ti-crime ex­er­cis­es in Cen­tral and North Cen­tral Trinidad.

A 48-year-old man from Va­len­cia has been sen­tenced to 18 years in prison for re­peat­ed­ly rap­ing a 15-year-old boy, whom he took in af­ter the boy ran away from home over a decade ago.

A 17-year-old Clax­ton Bay ju­ve­nile has been charged with pos­ses­sion of a firearm and pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to firearm-re­lat­ed of­fences re­port­ed on Tues­day.

The Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries (MEEI) has held dis­cus­sions with bp Trinidad and To­ba­go (bpTT) and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (NGC) on the de­vel­op­ment of the Man­akin/Cocuina cross-bor­der nat­ur­al gas project.

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) elec­tions of­fi­cer In­dar Paras­ram has de­nied al­le­ga­tions of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in the on­go­ing San Fer­nan­do East par­ty group (PG) elec­tions, in­sist­ing that the process has been pro­ceed­ing smooth­ly, with on­ly one mi­nor is­sue re­port­ed.

In-per­son vot­ing for this year’s midterm elec­tions be­gan Fri­day, ush­er­ing in the fi­nal six weeks for Amer­i­cans to de­cide which par­ty they trust to lead Con­gress through a cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis, a pro­longed war in Iran and oth­er press­ing is­sues.

Be­lize’s Prime Min­is­ter John Briceño says the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice (ICJ) will re­ceive oral pre­sen­ta­tions in the case be­tween Guatemala and Be­lize from Feb­ru­ary 22 -26 next year.

There may soon be vir­tu­al­ly no safe zone from over­lap­ping cli­mate threats for chil­dren across parts of the East­ern Caribbean, with new re­search warn­ing that more than nine in ten could be ex­posed to at least three cli­mate haz­ards by mid-cen­tu­ry.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice says 395 peo­ple de­tained un­der pub­lic de­ten­tion or­ders (PDOs) dur­ing the state of emer­gency have been re­leased fol­low­ing the ex­e­cu­tion of re­vo­ca­tion or­ders.

Sev­er­al Op­po­si­tion MPs have raised con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill, with for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land de­scrib­ing it as “more egre­gious and se­ri­ous” than the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill that failed in the Sen­ate ear­li­er this year.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad has wel­comed the stronger ju­di­cial over­sight pro­posed un­der the new Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill but cau­tions that the leg­is­la­tion risks be­com­ing lit­tle more than a crime-sup­pres­sion mea­sure if it fails to ad­dress the so­cial con­di­tions that con­tribute to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.