Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to is­sue a pre­ven­ta­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) against a 16-year-old boy, the first mi­nor de­tained un­der the cur­rent State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has bro­ken her si­lence on the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the de­liv­ery of an in­vi­ta­tion for the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) re­cent 70th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tions to for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen says con­sul­ta­tions are still un­der­way on the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed na­tion­al pol­i­cy for gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, as ef­forts con­tin­ue to for­malise a frame­work aimed at strength­en­ing crime pre­ven­tion mea­sures.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo says the pay­ment of back­pay owed to teach­ers will not be com­plet­ed by the end of this month, even as re­vised salaries have al­ready be­gun to reach ed­u­ca­tors.

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) at­tor­neys Ran­dall Mitchell and Stu­art Young have filed a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest, call­ing on the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) to give de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on the hir­ing of Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke as an ad­vis­er/con­sul­tant to NGC.

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al says he sym­pa­this­es with work­ers of the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion and is ask­ing for pa­tience as the State pro­ceeds with new salary arrange­ments.

Mus­lims world­wide are fac­ing mount­ing hard­ship as di­vi­sions with­in the glob­al Is­lam­ic com­mu­ni­ty deep­en, a cri­sis in­ten­si­fied by ex­ter­nal forces, ac­cord­ing to Imam Shaykh Mu­naf Mo­hammed.

As the Cuban med­ical pro­gramme ap­pears to be un­rav­el­ling across the re­gion, there has been no of­fi­cial re­sponse from the Min­istry of Health on the is­sue.

Min­is­ter of Jus­tice De­vesh Ma­haraj says leg­is­la­tion to in­tro­duce a pa­role sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go will soon be laid in Par­lia­ment as part of a broad­er ef­fort to re­form the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and re­duce de­lays.

The Court of Ap­peal has raised the pos­si­bil­i­ty of cit­i­zens be­ing able to pur­sue law­suits against fel­low cit­i­zens for breach of their pri­va­cy.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad has en­cour­aged stu­dents from Mor­vant and Laven­tille not to let their fu­tures be de­fined by neg­a­tive stereo­types of their com­mu­ni­ties. 

At a time when na­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion da­ta of­ten shows boys trail­ing be­hind girls aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, one To­ba­go pri­ma­ry school is re­port­ing the op­po­site trend.