Prime Min­is­ter and Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has dis­missed sug­ges­tions that her re­cent In­de­pen­dence Day mes­sage sig­nalled an im­pend­ing con­test for the lead­er­ship of her par­ty, de­scrib­ing that in­ter­pre­ta­tion as in­cor­rect.

So­cial ac­tivist First Wave Move­ment leader Umar Ab­dul­lah is call­ing on Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro to in­ves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for sedi­tion over re­marks made dur­ing her In­de­pen­dence Day ad­dress.

De­spite be­ing ab­sent from two re­cent Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) events in­volv­ing par­ty leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-Robin­son, San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning spent last night meet­ing with con­stituents, as the con­stituen­cy be­gan chart­ing a path for­ward fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of its ex­ec­u­tive.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers’ and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA), Gre­go­ry Aboud, is ap­peal­ing for ur­gent po­lice in­ter­ven­tion to quell what he de­scribed as in­creas­ing­ly brazen and re­source­ful crim­i­nals tar­get­ing cop­per equip­ment.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine said the three new po­lice posts in To­ba­go will be ful­ly op­er­a­tional with­in a week.

The Fire­Pow­er Fire­works rep­re­sen­ta­tive who suf­fered third-de­gree burns when fire­works ac­ci­den­tal­ly dis­charged dur­ing prepa­ra­tions for Mon­day’s In­de­pen­dence Day dis­play at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, re­mains in crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

For­mer Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s an­ti-gang leg­is­la­tion is too weak to ef­fec­tive­ly tar­get gang mem­bers, leav­ing po­lice with lit­tle choice but to pur­sue sus­pects for in­di­vid­ual of­fences.

A High Court Judge has re­fused to al­low the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to with­hold the iden­ti­ties of its lawyers in a civ­il law­suit brought by a po­lice of­fi­cer on re­mand for mur­der.

Two men have been ar­rest­ed and charged in con­nec­tion with a dou­ble mur­der in Ari­ma ear­li­er this month, which po­lice said stemmed from an ar­gu­ment be­tween one of the sus­pects and the vic­tims mo­ments be­fore the at­tack.

With To­ba­go’s birthrate falling by more than 50 per cent, the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) is pro­vid­ing par­ents of new­borns with a $500 month­ly grant in an ef­fort to sup­port fam­i­lies and en­cour­age more births on the is­land.

While the in­au­gur­al cul­tur­al event for Trinidad and To­ba­go’s In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions was wide­ly viewed as a suc­cess, con­cerns emerged over the post-event clean-up at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, Port of Spain, when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the site yes­ter­day.

The North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) says it is mov­ing to re­form its pa­tient es­cort and hos­pi­tal at­ten­dant ser­vices fol­low­ing an in­ter­nal re­view that iden­ti­fied se­ri­ous con­cerns over re­cruit­ment, at­ten­dance, dis­ci­pline and man­age­ment over­sight.