As the re­gion watch­es a rise in US mil­i­tary ac­tiv­i­ty in the Caribbean re­gion, diplo­mats meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do urged calm on Sat­ur­day night, with one busi­ness leader say­ing, “War is bad for busi­ness.”

​​Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers’ Union (CWU) Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer yes­ter­day chal­lenged the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) to come with a prop­er of­fer to work­ers when both sides sit at the ne­go­ti­a­tion ta­ble for a piv­otal round of talks to­day.

In light of the pre­vail­ing eco­nom­ic chal­lenges, gov­ern­ment min­istries and state en­ter­pris­es in T&T are im­ple­ment­ing mea­sures to curb non-es­sen­tial spend­ing dur­ing the fes­tive sea­son.

Four men were killed in four sep­a­rate in­ci­dents that took place be­tween Fri­day night and yes­ter­day morn­ing across T&T.

Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land ho­n­oured 37 young achiev­ers on Sat­ur­day, as the con­stituen­cy host­ed its first Day of Ex­cel­lence Youth Awards at City Hall, Port-of-Spain.

A year ago, Trinidad and To­ba­go ral­lied around 20-year-old Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dent and can­cer pa­tient Chloe Ram­nar­ine, and helped her get life-sav­ing can­cer surgery.

The spread of the ‘Sixx’ and ‘Sev­en’ gangs from T&T to neigh­bour­ing is­lands, along with “copy­cat” crim­i­nals, has been cit­ed by in­ter­na­tion­al and re­gion­al crime an­a­lysts as a fac­tor in ris­ing vi­o­lence in the oth­er Less­er An­tilles is­lands.

The ba­sic facts about the re­cent ap­pear­ance of for­eign mil­i­tary per­son­nel on lo­cal soil should have been ad­dressed by Gov­ern­ment, says for­mer Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray.

A US Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tion spe­cial­ist’s ra­dio an­nounce­ment has con­firmed that the radar in­stalled by the US mil­i­tary forces in Trinidad and To­ba­go is in­deed an AN/TPS-80 G/ATOR radar - and that of­fi­cials say “it can be used in US con­flict with Venezuela.”

Pro­posed leg­is­la­tion to reg­u­late the fire­works in­dus­try will re­quire per­sons to seek per­mits to dis­charge fire­works, ex­cept for pub­lic hol­i­days and De­cem­ber 31 - and fire­works will be re­strict­ed in cer­tain ar­eas, in­clud­ing near zoos, an­i­mal rear­ing fa­cil­i­ties and hos­pi­tals.

There are cur­rent­ly 97 po­lice of­fi­cers de­ployed on a per­ma­nent ba­sis across all 50 schools iden­ti­fied by the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry for School Ori­ent­ed Po­lice Unit (SOPU) of­fi­cers, ac­cord­ing to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath.

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram says there are al­ter­na­tive fer­tilis­ers that farm­ers can use as the Gov­ern­ment seeks to set­tle the on­go­ing dis­pute with Nu­trien.