U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is meet­ing with oil ex­ec­u­tives at the White House on Fri­day in hopes of se­cur­ing $100 bil­lion in in­vest­ments to re­vive Venezuela’s abil­i­ty to ful­ly tap in­to its ex­pan­sive re­serves of pe­tro­le­um — a plan that rides on their com­fort in mak­ing com­mit­ments in a coun­try plagued by in­sta­bil­i­ty, in­fla­tion and un­cer­tain­ty.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has pledged to push back against any heavy-hand­ed en­force­ment by li­cens­ing of­fi­cers, warn­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans must not be un­fair­ly tar­get­ed.

Der­rick “Stones” Tardieu and Clara­belle Tardieu held each oth­er and wept yes­ter­day, as they were re­unit­ed af­ter one month apart fol­low­ing their trau­mat­ic kid­nap­ping in ear­ly De­cem­ber.

To­ba­go po­lice say they have re­ceived no re­ports of bribery, in­tim­i­da­tion or vot­er ma­nip­u­la­tion ahead of Mon­day’s To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions.

Eli­jah Williams, 33, of Cizan Trace, Blue Basin Road, was said to have been stand­ing on a river­bank north of his house when two gun­men emerged from the wa­ter and be­gan shoot­ing at him.

Rel­a­tives of 23-year-old Ronald Ram­lo­gan have con­firmed that his de­com­pos­ing body was found in the Heights of Gua­napo on Wednes­day.

To­ba­go East MP David Thomas is back­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) strong stance on road traf­fic in­fringe­ments. How­ev­er, oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties on the is­land be­lieve this is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) sell­ing out the in­ter­ests of To­bag­o­ni­ans for favour with the Gov­ern­ment.

As the in­crease in traf­fic fees con­tin­ues to draw pub­lic at­ten­tion, the re­al­i­ty of some oth­er fees is al­so rais­ing con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly those af­fect­ing busi­ness­es.

As the saga of mo­tor ve­hi­cle fines con­tin­ues, the Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved a pro­pos­al for a new tick­et warn­ing sys­tem. Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our con­firmed that the sys­tem will be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment in a few weeks.

For thou­sands of com­muters in south and east Trinidad, the crawl through traf­fic caused by road­side en­force­ment has be­come a fa­mil­iar source of frus­tra­tion. On Wednes­day, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke told Par­lia­ment that the prob­lem has grown so acute that he has asked his of­fi­cers to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in some joint road­blocks with the po­lice.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) of­fi­cial­ly de­clared the start of the 2026 dry sea­son yes­ter­day (Jan­u­ary 8), mark­ing a tran­si­tion to dri­er at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions.

The ini­tial cel­e­bra­tions among the lo­cal Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty ap­pear to have fad­ed, along with their hopes of re­turn­ing home soon, as un­cer­tain­ty about Venezuela’s fu­ture lingers.