To­day should have been a day of ex­cite­ment for 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne and her school­mates on a trip to the Mt St Bene­dict Monastery in St Au­gus­tine. In­stead, her class­mates and teach­ers will join her fam­i­ly in mourn­ing her death af­ter the miss­ing Erin school­girl was found dead near an oil well yes­ter­day morn­ing, in an­oth­er trag­ic case of vi­o­lence against a child that has out­raged the coun­try.

Erin was shak­en yes­ter­day by the trag­ic dis­cov­ery of 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne’s body, a loss that has left her school com­mu­ni­ty in mourn­ing.

Trinidad and To­ba­go will be un­der a State of Emer­gency (SoE) un­til Sep­tem­ber, af­ter Gov­ern­ment an­nounced yes­ter­day that it will go to Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day to ex­tend the cur­rent SoE for an­oth­er three months.

As a mat­ter of con­sti­tu­tion­al prin­ci­ple, the bur­den rests on the State to jus­ti­fy why it must con­tin­ue a State of Emer­gency (SoE), since an SoE is not in­tend­ed to be­come the nor­mal frame­work of gov­er­nance, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira says.

That’s the deep-root­ed is­sue which Gov­ern­ment House leader Bar­ry Padarath says is fu­elling threats by en­ti­ties about protest­ing out­side of Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters’ homes.

San Fer­nan­do Cen­tral Sec­ondary emerged as the over­all win­ner af­ter out­per­form­ing sev­en oth­er schools in the Vic­to­ria Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict In­ter-School de­bate at St Joseph’s Con­vent in San Fer­nan­do last Wednes­day.

As Par­lia­ment pre­pares to de­bate laws af­fect­ing school vi­o­lence, parental re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and chil­dren’s ac­cess to so­cial me­dia, the Na­tion­al Coun­cil Par­ent Teacher As­so­ci­a­tion (NPTA) says it in­tends to make its voice heard.

A co­or­di­nat­ed an­ti-crime op­er­a­tion in the ear­ly hours of yes­ter­day morn­ing led to the ar­rest of two Va­len­cia men, the seizure of a home­made shot­gun and the re­cov­ery of a 16-year-old mi­nor.

The Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) is prepar­ing to launch a na­tion­al ini­tia­tive aimed at fos­ter­ing greater racial un­der­stand­ing and uni­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Girl Guides As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go marked its 112th an­niver­sary with a cer­e­mo­ny that high­light­ed dis­ci­pline, ser­vice and the en­dur­ing val­ues of guid­ing.

The En­er­gy Min­istry has ap­proved a farm-in to Block Trinidad and To­ba­go Ul­tra Deep-1 (TTUD-1) by ma­jor Amer­i­can en­er­gy com­pa­ny Oc­ci­den­tal Pe­tro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion (Oxy), says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Young men in Les Coteaux, To­ba­go, say they are be­com­ing rest­less, as they now feel for­got­ten and ne­glect­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).