As the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 Bud­get looms on Mon­day, stake­hold­ers are call­ing for speed­i­er im­ple­men­ta­tion of projects.

Six days be­fore Pas­sion Desserts told cus­tomers that its stores and op­er­a­tions were of­fi­cial­ly closed, Pas­sion Desserts Lim­it­ed had al­ready been struck off the Com­pa­nies Reg­is­ter.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has come out in de­fence of the Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team, led by Sham­sudeen Ayube and is warn­ing teenagers who choose to be­have like adults that they can­not ex­pect to fall back on their sta­tus as chil­dren when the law in­ter­venes.

With the na­tion­al bud­get just days away, three Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have out­lined dif­fer­ent pri­or­i­ties, with Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee hop­ing for enough mon­ey to build more homes, Phillip Alexan­der push­ing to meet the Gov­ern­ment's hous­ing tar­get, and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der putting the pro­tec­tion of lives ahead of his min­istry's fi­nan­cial al­lo­ca­tion.

A man be­lieved to be a Ja­maican na­tion­al was killed in Ch­agua­nas yes­ter­day morn­ing, while an­oth­er man be­lieved to be his com­pa­tri­ot was de­tained by po­lice in con­nec­tion with the in­ci­dent.

An­tho­ny Daryl Bap­tiste of Don Av­enue, Va­len­cia, died on the spot when he lost con­trol of his ve­hi­cle, crashed in­to a kerb wall and then the perime­ter wall of an Evan­gel­i­cal Church along Old Va­len­cia Road, Va­len­cia, on Sat­ur­day evening.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der is de­fend­ing po­lice over­time spend­ing, say­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice was not giv­en enough of­fi­cers and re­sources in the past to prop­er­ly car­ry out its du­ties.

The Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA), tasked with in­de­pen­dent­ly scru­ti­n­is­ing po­lice shoot­ings, says it is of­ten learn­ing of the in­ci­dents through the news rather than re­ceiv­ing the re­ports it is legal­ly re­quired to get from of­fi­cials.

Po­lice and sol­diers can­not be de­ployed un­der the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Act un­til they are trained in hu­man rights, the use of force and con­flict de-es­ca­la­tion, rais­ing ques­tions about how soon the new crime-fight­ing pow­ers can be put in­to ef­fect.

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath has rub­bished claims by Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les that the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) may be fail­ing to ad­e­quate­ly treat the coun­try’s wa­ter be­cause of an in­abil­i­ty to pay sup­pli­ers of treat­ment chem­i­cals.

The rel­a­tives of peo­ple re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at the Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency (A&E) De­part­ment of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope, say they ful­ly agree with com­ments from po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front Mick­ela Pan­day, liken­ing con­di­tions at the unit to that of a “war­zone.”

For­mer En­er­gy Min­is­ter and Port-o- Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young is ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of pre­sid­ing over the col­lapse of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy sec­tor amid mount­ing un­cer­tain­ty over ma­jor in­dus­tri­al op­er­a­tions and job loss­es at Pro­man.