Sev­er­al new faces will grace the Par­lia­ment Cham­ber in the 13th ses­sion, in­clud­ing a Speak­er of the House with no par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley be­lieves T&T’s lead­er­ship struc­ture paints an op­ti­mistic pic­ture for young girls.

Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe says re­ports that Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram was sent on leave are in­cor­rect.

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad says a team head­ed by UDe­COTT is be­ing as­sem­bled to con­duct a de­tailed eval­u­a­tion of the Debe Cam­pus. He said there must be ac­count­abil­i­ty when tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars are spent.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says he has in­struct­ed his min­istry not to is­sue him a Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) pass, in­sist­ing he wants to ex­pe­ri­ence the traf­fic prob­lems of reg­u­lar cit­i­zens.

At this time in T&T's his­to­ry, a lev­el of col­lab­o­ra­tion may be re­quired to ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress cer­tain com­plex is­sues, such as crime - but crime, and oth­er is­sues of crit­i­cal im­port can­not be solved by games of "po­lit­i­cal foot­ball" in the Par­lia­ment, Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ny Beck­les has warned the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment.

Af­ter in­den­tured East In­di­ans sweat­ed and toiled in T&T's sug­ar­cane fields, they en­sured that their chil­dren had a space at the ta­ble of de­ci­sion-mak­ing and to­day, a grand­daugh­ter of Bi­har, In­dia, has tak­en her right­ful place as Prime Min­is­ter of T&T for the sec­ond time.

Grate­ful for her ap­point­ment as an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, Dr Mar­lene Attzs has pledged to draw on her ex­per­tise as an econ­o­mist to ad­dress press­ing na­tion­al fi­nan­cial is­sues.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert yes­ter­day ad­dressed con­cerns over the where­abouts of $135.6 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax­es col­lect­ed by the State, dis­miss­ing the ques­tions sur­round­ing the funds as sense­less.

For­mer min­is­ter of pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion Allyson West is in­sist­ing there were no ghost rentals dur­ing her tenure.

A 64-year-old man was in­jured, and a fam­i­ly of three was tem­porar­i­ly dis­placed af­ter a fire par­tial­ly gut­ted their home in Princes Town yes­ter­day morn­ing.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has pledged to do what he can to sup­port the fight against crime in To­ba­go, promis­ing to en­sure the is­land’s po­lice of­fi­cers have the re­sources they need to keep res­i­dents safe.