As ten­sions be­tween the US and Venezuela con­tin­ue to rise, Venezuela’s state-owned oil com­pa­ny Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) has re­port­ed that the José An­to­nio An­zoátegui In­dus­tri­al Com­plex con­tin­ues its op­er­a­tions, de­spite a fire that af­fect­ed its fa­cil­i­ties on Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

As geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions sim­mer be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela, most of the T&T busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to op­er­ate undis­turbed. But one cor­ner of the tourism sec­tor is al­ready feel­ing the chill this Christ­mas.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal is hail­ing a ma­jor ac­cel­er­a­tion in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion from BP Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Cypre sub­sea project, de­scrib­ing it as a mile­stone for the coun­try’s en­er­gy sup­ply.

Rel­a­tives of 32-year-old Na­talia Noel, who died af­ter the ve­hi­cle she was in went over a precipice along the North Coast Road, is blam­ing the fire ser­vice for her death.

Cab­i­net has ap­proved an in­crease in the per­mis­si­ble age for im­port­ing for­eign-used, right-hand dri­ve, pri­vate ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing SU­Vs, sedans, and sta­tion wag­ons pow­ered by gaso­line, diesel, or com­pressed nat­ur­al gas. The al­low­able age has been raised from three years to un­der eight years from the date of man­u­fac­ture.

A for­mer em­ploy­ee of ANSA Bank is set to have to pay mil­lions of dol­lars in com­pen­sa­tion for his role in a $30 mil­lion fraud­u­lent loan con­spir­a­cy in­volv­ing a group of for­eign used car deal­ers. 

A 44-year-old man from Tabaquite has been freed of charges of shoot­ing at three po­lice of­fi­cers fol­low­ing de­lays in pros­e­cut­ing his case.

A man from Ari­ma with a crim­i­nal record of 25 pend­ing cas­es has been grant­ed bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in court charged with rob­bing a woman at a su­per­mar­ket car park in Ch­agua­nas, last Fri­day.

With flash flood­ing af­fect­ing sev­er­al parts of South and Cen­tral Trinidad yes­ter­day, res­i­dents, stu­dents and even a fu­ner­al pro­ces­sion were af­fect­ed as heavy rains caused roads to be­come im­pass­able.

Long-await­ed en­er­gy dis­cus­sions be­tween this coun­try and Guyana will kick­start next year. This was con­firmed by Guyana’s Nat­ur­al Re­sources Min­is­ter, Vick­ram Bhar­rat, who is al­so in charge of the en­er­gy sec­tor in the South Amer­i­can na­tion.

Pub­lic Re­la­tions Of­fi­cer of the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, Faris Al-Rawi, says the “last-minute” change to the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to im­me­di­ate­ly re­strict Car­ni­val fetes and par­ties at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um and Jean Pierre Com­plex to a lim­it­ed pe­ri­od was an­nounced with­out con­sul­ta­tion or tran­si­tion, and it threat­ens the in­come of thou­sands who de­pend on the Car­ni­val sea­son.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) has re­mind­ed fete pro­mot­ers that they are still re­quired to com­ply with the Noise Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Rules (NPCR), even on cor­po­rate or pri­vate­ly owned prop­er­ties.