Some mem­bers of the ca­lyp­so fra­ter­ni­ty have passed a vote of no con­fi­dence against sit­ting Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) South/Cen­tral chair­man Steve “Ras Kom­man­da” Pas­call.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has lost a “stal­wart” with the death of coun­cil­lor Vashti Shar­main Sookhoo at the age of 60.

Trinidad and To­ba­go may miss to­day’s to­tal so­lar eclipse, but sky­watch­ers can still look up for an event­ful Au­gust fea­tur­ing shoot­ing stars, a pa­rade of plan­ets and, lat­er this month, a par­tial lu­nar eclipse vis­i­ble from the Caribbean.

The Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to sup­port pri­vate sec­tor projects in Trinidad and To­ba­go as both coun­tries seek to deep­en in­vest­ment and trade ties.

An in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way to lo­cate three firearms be­long­ing to mu­nic­i­pal po­lice of­fi­cers in the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion.

A man fled from the Port-of-Spain Prison on Tues­day morn­ing af­ter prison of­fi­cers caught him at­tempt­ing to throw a pack­age over the fa­cil­i­ty’s perime­ter wall.

The Bar­ba­dos-based De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) Tues­day said it is fi­nanc­ing a US$27.1 mil­lion ini­tia­tive to scale up hy­drom­e­te­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices and mul­ti-haz­ard ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems in Be­lize and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

For­mer UNC MP and for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions Rod­ney Charles is warn­ing that the Gov­ern­ment could face po­lit­i­cal and diplo­mat­ic fall­out if the bal­ance of pow­er shifts in Wash­ing­ton fol­low­ing the No­vem­ber mid-term elec­tions.

The threat of trop­i­cal cy­clone de­vel­op­ment from a trop­i­cal wave ap­proach­ing the Caribbean has di­min­ished, but fore­cast­ers are turn­ing their at­ten­tion to an­oth­er sys­tem far­ther east in the At­lantic that could en­counter more favourable con­di­tions for de­vel­op­ment.

The UNC con­firmed her death in a state­ment ex­press­ing con­do­lences to Sookhoo’s fam­i­ly, friends, col­leagues, fel­low coun­cil­lors and oth­ers who worked with her.

The Min­istry of Cul­ture and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment is us­ing World Steel­pan Day to pro­mote the steel­pan not on­ly as Trinidad and To­ba­go’s na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment, but as a po­ten­tial ve­hi­cle for youth de­vel­op­ment and growth in the cul­tur­al in­dus­try.

Search and res­cue ef­forts were un­der­way ear­ly Tues­day in dozens of cities and towns in west­ern Colom­bia af­ter a pow­er­ful earth­quake struck the re­gion, killing at least 111 peo­ple and leav­ing many trapped un­der the de­bris of dam­aged and de­stroyed build­ings.