The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) has raised con­cern over de­layed Val­ue Added Tax re­funds and the ef­fect on busi­ness­es in sev­er­al sec­tors.

Two men are ex­pect­ed to be charged with pos­ses­sion of firearm and pos­ses­sion of am­mu­ni­tion fol­low­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise in San Fer­nan­do on Thurs­day.

A man was ar­rest­ed af­ter po­lice seized nar­cotics with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of more than $23 mil­lion dur­ing an ex­er­cise in the Fyz­abad dis­trict on Thurs­day.

A Unit­ed States leg­is­la­tor, who last month had been crit­i­cal of Ja­maica over its state­ment on Cu­ba, is now sup­port­ive of the Caribbean coun­try’s po­si­tion on dis­con­tin­u­ing the cur­rent arrange­ment re­gard­ing the de­ploy­ment of Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in the pub­lic health sec­tor.

Two Venezue­lan na­tion­als were ar­rest­ed and a quan­ti­ty of un­cus­tomed goods seized dur­ing a mo­bile pa­trol ex­er­cise in the San­ta Flo­ra dis­trict on Thurs­day.

In­dia mo­tored in­to the Twen­ty20 World Cup fi­nal af­ter beat­ing Eng­land by just sev­en runs in a high-scor­ing semi­fi­nal at Wankhede Sta­di­um on Thurs­day.

The Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) has ex­pressed sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment’s de­c­la­ra­tion of a State of Emer­gency, say­ing the mea­sure al­lows broad­er crime re­duc­tion strate­gies to take root while pro­tect­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Can­cer So­ci­ety (TTCS), in part­ner­ship with the Sco­tia­bank Foun­da­tion, has ex­pand­ed its an­ti-smok­ing and an­ti-va­p­ing ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign to sec­ondary schools in To­ba­go.

Ques­tions re­gard­ing whether se­nior na­tion­al foot­ball coach Dwight Yorke would be re­tained fol­low­ing last year’s un­suc­cess­ful World Cup qual­i­fy­ing cam­paign were fi­nal­ly an­swered yes­ter­day, when he an­nounced he had made the “dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion” to step down.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ac­cus­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of be­ing “dan­ger­ous­ly dis­con­nect­ed from re­al­i­ty,” af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter sug­gest­ed that in­ci­dents of class­room vi­o­lence should re­sult in stu­dents be­ing ex­pelled.

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has re­quest­ed in­creased mil­i­tary sup­port from the Unit­ed States to help Trinidad and To­ba­go com­bat drug car­tels op­er­at­ing in the Caribbean.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is off to the Unit­ed States to­day, ahead of the Shield of the Amer­i­c­as sum­mit in Do­ral, Flori­da, to hold high-lev­el talks with US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and se­nior US of­fi­cials.