Amid es­ca­lat­ing ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, econ­o­mists are di­vid­ed over whether the loom­ing threat of mil­i­tary con­flict will rat­tle glob­al oil mar­kets—and what it could mean for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

For­mer Petrotrin work­ers were buoyed yes­ter­day by news that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to ho­n­our pre­vi­ous agree­ments to al­lo­cate them land and re­open their med­ical cen­tres, as the Re­fin­ery Re­view Com­mit­tee pre­pares to de­liv­er its re­port on the Pointe-a-Pierre Re­fin­ery restart this week.

Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu on Sun­day asked the coun­try’s pres­i­dent to grant him a par­don from cor­rup­tion charges, seek­ing to end a long-run­ning tri­al that has bit­ter­ly di­vid­ed the na­tion.

Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al of the Guyana Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty (GCAA), Re­tired Lt. Col. Eg­bert Field says Guyana’s air­space is open de­spite Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s po­si­tion that the air­space “above and sur­round­ing Venezuela” is closed to air­lines and flights en­gaged in il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Urea, a key com­mod­i­ty for agri­cul­ture that was pro­duced lo­cal­ly in T&T, is now in scarce sup­ply.

In 1977, Janelle Com­mis­siong be­came the first woman of African eth­nic­i­ty to win the con­test af­ter tak­ing home the crown in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, and 21 years lat­er, Wendy Fitzwilliam be­came T&T’s sec­ond Miss Uni­verse in Hawaii.

A grow­ing cho­rus of trade union lead­ers is de­nounc­ing re­cent state­ments sug­gest­ing that on­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly aligned unions—or those that pur­sued lit­i­ga­tion—should ben­e­fit from im­proved wage of­fers, warn­ing that such a shift threat­ens to desta­bilise the coun­try’s long-stand­ing in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions frame­work.

Yes­ter­day, Cara­cas con­demned what it de­scribed as a “colo­nial­ist threat” af­ter US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump re­leased in­for­ma­tion an­nounc­ing that Venezue­lan air­space was blocked, a move Venezuela said amount­ed to an at­tempt to “give or­ders and threat­en the sov­er­eign­ty of the na­tion­al air­space.”

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne an­nounced that a re­newed traf­fic-man­age­ment and wreck­ing ini­tia­tive will com­mence to­mor­row, aimed at ad­dress­ing long-stand­ing is­sues of con­ges­tion and un­safe park­ing across the cap­i­tal.

The White House did not re­spond to ques­tions about what Trump post­ed on his Truth So­cial plat­form, and it was un­clear whether he was an­nounc­ing a new pol­i­cy or sim­ply re­in­forc­ing the mes­sag­ing around his cam­paign against Maduro, which has in­volved mul­ti­ple strikes in the Caribbean Sea and east­ern Pa­cif­ic Ocean on small boats ac­cused of fer­ry­ing drugs as well as a buildup of naval forces in the re­gion. More than 80 peo­ple have been killed in such strikes since ear­ly Sep­tem­ber.

Un­usu­al ac­tiv­i­ty at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port has sparked fresh con­cerns for To­ba­go’s tourism sec­tor, with the To­ba­go Ho­tel and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion (TH­TA) warn­ing of po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial fall­out as the is­land ap­proach­es the Christ­mas sea­son.

Min­is­ter of De­fence Wayne Sturge has con­firmed that the fine de­tails of the radar in­stal­la­tion at ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port can­not be dis­closed, cit­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns.