The Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (RC­STT) has de­fend­ed its de­ci­sion to ac­cept a $15,000 do­na­tion from a sen­tenced rapist. How­ev­er, it has al­so an­nounced plans to re­view its pro­ce­dures for ac­cept­ing court-or­dered do­na­tions in the wake of pub­lic back­lash over the is­sue.

One day af­ter the fu­ner­al of de­liv­ery sales dri­ver Ronald Marchan, a 34-year-old man ap­peared in court yes­ter­day charged with his mur­der.

A man want­ed in the Unit­ed States for mur­der and oth­er se­ri­ous of­fences was ex­tra­dit­ed from T&T to the US on Sun­day.

As search and res­cue ef­forts con­tin­ue for miss­ing off­shore work­er Pe­te Phillip, one of the work­ers who was safe­ly evac­u­at­ed from the Well Ser­vices Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd oil rig on Sun­day said some of them did not know he was miss­ing un­til they got to their home base in Point Fortin. 

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts be­lieve Anil Roberts was over­looked by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the mar­gin­al St Joseph seat be­cause of his ques­tion­able po­lit­i­cal past.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) La Brea unit will be rec­om­mend­ing Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell as its can­di­date when screen­ing is held, af­ter Mitchell - who holds the ma­jor­i­ty of par­ty group sup­port - al­so ob­tained the ma­jor­i­ty of sup­port from the unit’s Women’s and Youth leagues last Sun­day.

While ques­tions cir­cu­late over who is re­al­ly in charge of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) at present, the par­ty says they are go­ing through a tran­si­tion pe­ri­od.

Sec­re­tary for Set­tle­ments, Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Rur­al De­vel­op­ment in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Ian Pol­lard, has de­nied claims by Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris about job cuts stem­ming from the re­struc­tur­ing of the Client Re­la­tions Unit.

The All To­ba­go Fish­er­folk As­so­ci­a­tion (AT­FA) has giv­en the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly 12 hours to en­ter in­to con­sul­ta­tion with them to dis­cuss the pay­ment of out­stand­ing monies owed to fish­er­folk for clean-up work done dur­ing the oil spill on To­ba­go’s South­ern coast in Feb­ru­ary.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency’s (EMA) air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing net­work, Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter, showed dust has been grad­u­al­ly in­creas­ing since last Fri­day. The Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) jumped to a mod­er­ate lev­el yes­ter­day, as the thick­est part of the dust plume ap­proached. 

Flow cus­tomers ex­pe­ri­enced an in­ter­rup­tion in ser­vice for sev­er­al hours yes­ter­day, af­ter its fi­bre ca­bles were dam­aged.

The Pri­vate Phar­ma­cy Busi­ness Re­tail As­so­ci­a­tion (PP­BRA) is call­ing on the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to work to­geth­er with phar­ma­cists to al­le­vi­ate what it called this coun­try’s on­go­ing drug short­age.