Mas­quer­aders hop­ing to chip through the streets with Jade Mon­key Car­ni­val dur­ing To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2026 will have to ad­just their plans. In a press re­lease, band leader Seon An­tho­ny an­nounced that the or­gan­i­sa­tion has made the dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion to can­cel its planned J’ou­vert pre­sen­ta­tion, ti­tled “Rise of the Em­pire”.

The Scout As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has trans­formed near­ly 100,000 dis­card­ed plas­tic bot­tles in­to ten park bench­es in­stalled in pub­lic spaces across north-west Trinidad.

The Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (CADV) is call­ing for ur­gent im­prove­ments to the coun­try’s re­sponse to do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, warn­ing that gaps in the jus­tice sys­tem and vic­tim sup­port ser­vices con­tin­ue to put women and chil­dren at risk.

Caribbean Air­lines is ex­pand­ing its re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al net­work with the in­tro­duc­tion of di­rect flights be­tween To­ba­go and Toron­to, the re­sump­tion of com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vices to Cara­cas, Venezuela, and char­ter flights to Pana­ma.

Can­cer pa­tients re­ceiv­ing on­co­log­i­cal care at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC) will soon be able to ac­cess chemother­a­py treat­ment at the in­sti­tu­tion, with a med­ical on­col­o­gy unit ex­pect­ed to open be­fore the end of the year.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of ar­ro­gance, claim­ing it is push­ing through ma­jor pieces of leg­is­la­tion with­out giv­ing the Op­po­si­tion and stake­hold­ers enough time for con­sul­ta­tion.

The State has been or­dered to pay more than $1 mil­lion to a Rio Claro Hin­du pun­dit, his wife and their three chil­dren af­ter they suc­cess­ful­ly sued for ma­li­cious pros­e­cu­tion, claim­ing po­lice fab­ri­cat­ed mar­i­jua­na charges against them.

Near­ly 15 years af­ter 70-year-old Joan Webb was killed in a col­li­sion in­volv­ing a marked po­lice ve­hi­cle, the of­fi­cer who was dri­ving, Bri­an McKen­na, has been con­vict­ed of caus­ing death by dan­ger­ous dri­ving.

A new ex­emp­tion clause in the Gov­ern­ment’s Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026 will al­low peo­ple over 18 but un­der 21 to han­dle, sell, sup­ply or be in pos­ses­sion of al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts dur­ing their law­ful em­ploy­ment.

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment says it vot­ed against the Gov­ern­ment’s sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion rais­ing the le­gal ages for al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling be­cause it be­lieved a Bill with such far-reach­ing con­se­quences re­quired greater scruti­ny and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion.

Se­nior Coun­sel Lee Mer­ry says the Gov­ern­ment’s new age re­stric­tions on al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling, as well as its manda­to­ry iden­ti­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ments, would not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly breach cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights.

When the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026 comes in­to ef­fect next year, there will be po­lice of­fi­cers who may not be able to drink a beer or smoke a cig­a­rette, yet car­ry a firearm.