Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro will ex­tend his in­creas­ing­ly re­pres­sive rule over Venezuela un­til 2031 when he is sworn in on Fri­day, de­spite cred­i­ble ev­i­dence that his op­po­nent won the lat­est elec­tion and fol­low­ing protests against his plan to serve a third six-year term.

A show of sol­i­dar­i­ty at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, last night. Whether it will hold up will be seen over the next 48 hours.

Leader of the To­ba­go Coun­cil of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), An­cil Den­nis, has shut down claims that the par­ty is im­plod­ing af­ter re­ports sur­faced that the move to gath­er sig­na­tures among its MPs to fa­cil­i­tate the ap­point­ment of Stu­art Young as prime min­is­ter had hit a stum­bling block.

While Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­bers at­tend­ed a meet­ing of the Cen­tral Ex­ec­u­tive at Bal­isi­er House yes­ter­day, ahead of the Gen­er­al Coun­cil meet­ing to­mor­row, the op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) claims they were sum­moned to be lam­bast­ed over their re­sponse to En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young be­ing cho­sen as Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s suc­ces­sor.

Con­sti­tu­tion­al at­tor­ney Mar­tin Daly, SC, has warned that the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) risks em­bar­rass­ing Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo if it seeks her ap­proval to ap­point Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young as prime min­is­ter with­out the sup­port of all its MPs.

While there is no va­can­cy for Prime Min­is­ter now, if there is a va­can­cy or an in­ter­nal Par­lia­men­tary “coup,” the rel­e­vant as­pi­rant can sub­mit suf­fi­cient names to show they have the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of MPs, say Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) par­ty sources.

While most of the coun­try came to know Ran­dall War­ren Hec­tor as the first mur­der to oc­cur dur­ing the State of Emer­gency (SoE), the state pros­e­cu­tor was yes­ter­day re­mem­bered by his fam­i­ly, friends and the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty as a hum­ble, jovial and God-fear­ing man.

The South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tists has ex­tend­ed sym­pa­thy to mu­si­cian and so­cial jus­tice ac­tivist Lou Lyons for be­ing in­cor­rect­ly im­pli­cat­ed in the mur­der of spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor Ran­dall Hec­tor af­ter at­tend­ing a church ser­vice. 

Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo says she is “deeply and over­whelm­ing­ly” dis­ap­point­ed that she is un­able to at­tend the 18th Pravasi Bharatiya Di­vas (PBD) con­ven­tion in In­dia, where she is this year’s chief guest.

The Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al has ad­mit­ted that a pur­port­ed gun amnesty un­der reg­u­la­tions for the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE) is not cur­rent­ly in ef­fect. 

To­ba­go po­lice say they are mak­ing strides in re­duc­ing crime on the is­land, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the de­c­la­ra­tion of the State of Emer­gency (SoE) on De­cem­ber 30. How­ev­er, they again lament­ed that young peo­ple, from as ear­ly as age 12, are be­ing lured in­to crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

Af­ter the mur­der of 29-year-old Nicholas Mor­gan, one of his neigh­bours is ap­peal­ing to peo­ple to turn away from a life of crime.