The Unit­ed Na­tions says this year has seen a stag­ger­ing 1,000 per cent or ten-fold surge in sex­u­al vi­o­lence against chil­dren in Haiti dur­ing an un­prece­dent­ed cri­sis which has al­so seen armed gangs con­tin­ue to ter­rorise com­mu­ni­ties amid a grow­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an dis­as­ter.

Po­lice say the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the death of 15-year-old Jay­den Lalchan re­mains ac­tive, even though they found there is in­suf­fi­cient ev­i­dence that showed bul­ly­ing led to the teen end­ing his life. Yes­ter­day, As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Wayne Mys­tar is­sued a state­ment to the me­dia, giv­ing an up­date on the high­ly pub­li­cised probe.

Caribbean econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran says the so­lu­tion to this coun­try’s for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty prob­lems is sim­ple and with­in reach.

Screen­ing of the nom­i­nees for 15 of the PNM’s 22 con­stituen­cies—the ma­jor­i­ty of PNM seats—will all be done on De­cem­ber 2 in six batch­es. Each batch will be screened for ap­prox­i­mate­ly half an hour.

Con­tro­ver­sy is once again brew­ing from with­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, this time over the par­ty’s per­ceived fail­ure to com­mence its screen­ing process of po­ten­tial can­di­dates for the next gen­er­al elec­tion. How­ev­er, mem­bers of the par­ty’s hi­er­ar­chy, in­clud­ing its po­lit­i­cal leader, said they would not be bul­lied in­to rush­ing the process. Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles sent a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ing that while nom­i­na­tions for these po­si­tions opened in De­cem­ber 2023 and have been closed since April 2024, “The de­lay in pro­gress­ing to can­di­date se­lec­tion is rais­ing se­ri­ous con­cerns.”

With spec­u­la­tion grow­ing over the tim­ing of the next gen­er­al elec­tion, two po­lit­i­cal par­ties have re­newed calls for a fixed elec­tion date.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts do not ex­pect that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s “Trop­i­cal Trump” quipped ref­er­ence to St Lu­cia Op­po­si­tion Leader Al­lan Chas­tanet in March will im­pact T&T’s re­la­tions with Amer­i­ca’s new Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion at this time.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine will reach out to each MP, re­quest­ing a meet­ing to dis­cuss the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills, which are set to re­turn to the House for de­bate soon. The let­ters will be sent out some time dur­ing this week.

WASA’s act­ing Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Kelvin Ro­main, is as­sur­ing that all sys­tems are in place to off­set the wa­ter short­fall, as the De­sali­na­tion Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (De­sal­cott) be­gan its sev­en-day shut­down of the Point Lisas De­sali­na­tion Plant to fa­cil­i­tate main­te­nance work.

Piles of garbage across Co­corite and sur­round­ing ar­eas have be­come a ma­jor is­sue for res­i­dents and busi­ness­es in the com­mu­ni­ties.

Ar­son is sus­pect­ed in a fire at a scrap­yard in Princes Town yes­ter­day, re­sult­ing in thou­sands of dol­lars in loss­es.

Joy and pride res­onat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do TML Pri­ma­ry School as 17 top per­form­ers of the 2024 Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) ex­am­i­na­tions re­ceived spe­cial awards for out­stand­ing work.