The two chil­dren found in the home of three corpses on Thurs­day were blood-soaked and starv­ing, ac­cord­ing to their grand­fa­ther Dipraj Ra­goo­nanan.

Night­mar­ish scenes gripped 21-year-old Vishard Mo­hammed as he walked in­to his par­ents home on Thursday and found their de­com­pos­ing corpses on the floor of their liv­ing room.

Af­ter eight days in po­lice cus­tody, em­bat­tled Port-of-Spain South MP Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald was re­leased on Thurs­day and vowed to fight sev­en crim­i­nal charges which ac­cused of steal­ing state funds for her per­son­al gain.

Even as he fumed at the me­dia for “try­ing to pin” Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald’s cor­rup­tion scan­dal on him, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Thursday ad­mit­ted that he ex­er­cised flawed judg­ment by re­in­stat­ing her as a Cab­i­net min­is­ter de­spite the trail of al­le­ga­tions that dogged her.

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley says he first heard that Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald was in po­lice cus­tody via Face­book or What­sApp last Thurs­day and was on­ly told of­fi­cial­ly that she was be­ing charged around 10.30 pm last Sun­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley has said it may be time to make a for­mal back­ground check by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s Spe­cial Branch unit a manda­to­ry part of the vet­ting process for prospec­tive of­fice­hold­ers.

Twen­ty-two peo­ple, in­clud­ing sev­er­al fish­er­men, were de­tained dur­ing an in­tel­li­gence-led op­er­a­tion called “Gold­en Tomb­stone” by joint Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty forces in the wee hours of Thurs­day morn­ing.

A strong thun­der­storm brought gusty winds that blew off the roofs, downed trees, util­i­ty poles and pow­er lines across South­west­ern Trinidad yes­ter­day leav­ing res­i­dents trau­ma­tised but un­hurt.

For­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie said the $88 mil­lion debt be­ing tout­ed as the rea­son for staff cuts at the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) was noth­ing more than a red her­ring.

The Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith will ac­count to the na­tion to­day, af­ter his first year in of­fice in charge of the po­lice ser­vice.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia says 61 per cent of the stu­dents who wrote this year’s CAPE ex­am­i­na­tions have re­ceived five or more pass­es.

The In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA) said it is con­sid­er­ing plac­ing signs at sev­er­al beach­es along the North-West­ern Penin­su­la of Trinidad af­ter it found high lev­els of bac­te­ria present in the wa­ter, which it said, could in­crease the prob­a­bil­i­ty of con­tract­ing in­fec­tions and oth­er ail­ments.