MADRID (AP) — NA­TO de­clared Rus­sia the “most sig­nif­i­cant and di­rect threat” to its mem­bers’ peace and se­cu­ri­ty, as the mil­i­tary al­liance met Wednes­day to con­front what NA­TO’s chief called the biggest se­cu­ri­ty cri­sis since World War II.

The Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty is re­port­ing that sev­er­al of its Wa­ter Treat­ment Plants (WTPs) on both is­lands have been stopped due to flood­ed riv­er con­di­tions re­sult­ing in clogged in­take screens.

The sail­ing sched­ule for the in­ter-is­land fer­ries has been re­vised, fol­low­ing the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice.

Sev­er­al parts of the coun­try are still with­out pow­er fol­low­ing stormy weath­er con­di­tions yes­ter­day and overnight, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion has giv­en as­sur­ances that work crews are out and seek­ing to re­solve these pow­er out­age is­sues.

The Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TTMS) has con­firmed that the Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing has been dis­con­tin­ued, and an Ad­verse Weath­er Alert/YEL­LOW Lev­el has been ac­ti­vat­ed and will be main­tained un­til 6 pm to­day, Wednes­day 29 June 2022.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, Faris Al-Rawi says, “With the sit­u­a­tion of down­grade we are still in alert mode - but with no gov­ern­ment, an­nounce­ments schools are still in gear for to­mor­row un­less ad­vised oth­er­wise”. 

It was Iw­er George who re­cent­ly sang a song urg­ing par­ty-go­ers to “come in front for your bless­ing, your wa­ter bless­ing.” How­ev­er, those lyrics took on a whole new mean­ing for some as they re­ceived an ac­tu­al sur­prise and un­planned bless­ing from a priest on the week­end.

The Trop­i­cal Storm Warn­ing placed over Trinidad and To­ba­go was dis­con­tin­ued around 11 pm Tues­day.

As the Gov­ern­ment braced for the im­pact of a trop­i­cal wave which has been pre­dict­ed as hav­ing a 70 per cent like­li­hood to turn in­to a trop­i­cal storm, 387 shel­ters across the is­land were put in­to op­er­a­tion on Tues­day.

The warn­ing of Trop­i­cal Cy­clone Two (PTC2) de­scend­ing on T&T on Tues­day trig­gered long lines out­side dozens of su­per­mar­kets and pan­ic buy­ing, as scores of cit­i­zens stocked up on es­sen­tial food sup­plies.

T&T felt the out­er bands of Po­ten­tial Trop­i­cal Cy­clone Two (PTC2) on Tues­day af­ter­noon, with winds gust­ing to 63 kilo­me­tres per hour at Crown Point, To­ba­go, ac­com­pa­nied by heavy rains.

Util­i­ty com­pa­nies were on full alert overnight as the storm ap­proached. Eyes were on T&TEC fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary’s black­out and the com­pa­ny as­sured all key per­son­nel and staff were on full alert. All field staff were called out and ex­ter­nal tree trim­ming per­son­nel are to be avail­able to as­sist with re­sponse ac­tiv­i­ties. The na­tion­wide black­out was caused by a fall­en tree.