Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has con­firmed that in just over two weeks, he will hand over lead­er­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go to prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young.

The let­ter from the 21 Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) MPs who sup­port En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s el­e­va­tion to prime min­is­ter will come in­to play af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley sub­mits his let­ter of res­ig­na­tion to Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo on March 16.

The busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is hop­ing for a smooth tran­si­tion of pow­er when En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Stu­art Young takes over from Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on March 16.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has heaped scorn on the tenure of out­go­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, ac­cus­ing him of pre­sid­ing over a crime epi­dem­ic that cost thou­sands of in­no­cent lives, the col­lapse of the econ­o­my and over­all na­tion­al hard­ship.

It was a bit­ter­sweet mo­ment for mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment and the Ari­ma com­mu­ni­ty when the lega­cy of late D’Abadie/O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian, was etched on­to the very streets she once served.

Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) leader Gary Grif­fith has stressed that his par­ty wasn’t in­volved in invit­ing UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to a March 12 meet­ing be­ing held by NTA, HOPE and Com­mu­ni­ty Ref­or­ma­tion Net­work. The three groups have formed the Pro­gres­sive Al­liance coali­tion.

The ver­bal abuse al­le­ga­tions made against Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness, and So­cial Pro­tec­tion and Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor, fol­low­ing a meet­ing with Pub­lic Health Ser­vices De­part­ment work­ers on Tues­day morn­ing, have tak­en a new turn. The work­er she al­leged­ly cursed is dis­miss­ing the claims made by his col­leagues.

For­mer Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and ret’d Brig Gen­er­al John Sandy says he was alarmed to hear re­cent re­ports al­leg­ing that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 25,573 rounds of 5.56 am­mu­ni­tion were miss­ing but hopes the mat­ter can be set­tled and made pub­lic to ease the na­tion’s con­cerns.

Phillip “Black Sage” Mur­ray won all his Ex­tem­po bat­tles and the Ex­tem­po war on Tues­day night, de­feat­ing Bri­an Lon­don in the fi­nal round of the Na­tion­al Ex­tem­po Monarch Com­pe­ti­tion to claim his fourth over­all ti­tle.

Eight-year-old Xhaiden Dar­ius has added an­oth­er ti­tle to his tro­phy cab­i­net for the sea­son, af­ter tak­ing the Ju­nior School’s In­tel­lec­tu­al Na­tion­al Chut­ney Monarch ti­tle yes­ter­day.

Hamas was set to hand over the bod­ies of four hostages late Wednes­day in ex­change for Is­rael’s re­lease of hun­dreds of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers, days be­fore the first phase of their cease­fire will end.

Xhaiden Dar­ius and Dabria Bap­tiste are the new Ju­nior and Se­nior School’s In­tel­lec­tu­al Na­tion­al Chut­ney Mon­archs re­spec­tive­ly.