On the open­ing day of the 51st Cari­com Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing last week in St Lu­cia, 25-year-old Rahym Au­gustin-Joseph de­liv­ered a sting­ing analy­sis of the state of the re­gion­al bloc. His words were so sober­ing; Heads of Gov­ern­ment like Mia Mot­t­ley and Dr Ir­faan Ali were pic­tured nod­ding along at times. So­cial me­dia users con­grat­u­lat­ed him for his ster­ling speech, which, by many es­ti­mates, was longer than the re­marks of some lead­ers.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says pro­posed ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence da­ta cen­tres will be de­vel­oped in a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone in Debe, with short, medi­um and long-term plans in place to meet their wa­ter needs.

The Gov­ern­ment’s lat­est US$800 mil­lion sov­er­eign bond may have at­tract­ed over­whelm­ing in­vestor de­mand, but econ­o­mists are warn­ing that the more im­por­tant sto­ry is the grow­ing cost of bor­row­ing and the long-term bur­den the debt could place on the coun­try’s fi­nances.

The Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go is ques­tion­ing why it was ex­clud­ed from dis­cus­sions on the Gov­ern­ment’s agree­ment to ex­plore the restart of the for­mer iron and steel plant at Point Lisas, say­ing dis­placed work­ers de­served to be in­formed be­fore the Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) was signed.

The Gov­ern­ment has banned the ex­port of cop­per for one year, al­low­ing on­ly li­censed man­u­fac­tur­ers to ex­port the met­al un­der strict con­di­tions fol­low­ing a surge in cop­per theft and van­dal­ism of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.

The lat­est pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion or­ders is­sued un­der the State of Emer­gency ac­cuse de­tainees of crimes rang­ing from run­ning an ex­tor­tion net­work linked to Venezuela to steal­ing in­dus­tri­al ma­te­ri­als for the scrap met­al trade, ac­cord­ing to no­tices pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette.

A Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cer, work­ing as a ride-share dri­ver, es­caped death af­ter he was at­tacked with a knife dur­ing a job in San Fer­nan­do.

The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has re­ject­ed al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing the fi­nanc­ing of its Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of us­ing State re­sources to pur­sue po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents in­stead of ad­dress­ing is­sues such as crime, the econ­o­my, un­em­ploy­ment, health­care and ed­u­ca­tion.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice is mov­ing to trans­form the prison sys­tem from one fo­cused on in­car­cer­a­tion to one cen­tred on re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and rein­te­gra­tion.

The or­gan­is­ers of the Gen­er­a­tions of Steel con­cert say tonight's show will go ahead de­spite the with­draw­al of three head­line steel or­ches­tras, while of­fer­ing re­funds to pa­trons who no longer wish to at­tend.

A sec­ond Diego Mar­tin man has been charged with the mur­der of 19-year-old Jay­den Rouff, who was fa­tal­ly stabbed dur­ing J’Ou­vert cel­e­bra­tions in Port of Spain ear­li­er this year.

The Gov­ern­ment has banned the ex­port of cop­per for one year, al­low­ing on­ly li­censed man­u­fac­tur­ers to ex­port the met­al un­der strict con­di­tions fol­low­ing a surge in cop­per theft and van­dal­ism of crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture.