For now, the Drag­on Gas deal is not dead. In fact, Gov­ern­ment is still mov­ing at full speed to ful­fil the en­er­gy arrange­ment with Venezuela.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that the pro­gramme for Cuban health work­ers em­ployed in this coun­try’s hos­pi­tals will con­tin­ue, as he has in­struct­ed two min­is­ters to en­sure the Unit­ed States knows this coun­try has “ticked every sin­gle box” re­gard­ing pro­gramme.

Venezue­lan For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Yván Gil has con­demned US in­ter­fer­ence in the Petro­caribe en­er­gy al­liance, fol­low­ing Unit­ed States Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio’s on­go­ing tour of Ja­maica, Guyana, and Suri­name this week.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has dis­missed claims that the Gov­ern­ment and the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion were reg­is­ter­ing Venezue­lans liv­ing in this coun­try to vote in the Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment, the Cen­tral Bank and the coun­try's top bank­ing ex­ec­u­tives are ex­plor­ing "a cer­tain pos­si­bil­i­ty" to re­solve T&T's long-stand­ing for­eign ex­change avail­abil­i­ty cri­sis.

Tu­na­puna UNC con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Prakash Bharath has thrown his sup­port be­hind for­mer se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent Roger Alexan­der, as the par­ty hi­er­ar­chy re­port­ed­ly de­lib­er­ates on his pos­si­ble can­di­da­cy for the seat in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

The Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and Crime Stop­pers T&T (CSTT) are hop­ing to re­cov­er at least 100 il­le­gal guns be­fore the State of Emer­gency (SoE) ends on April 13.

Se­nior Coun­sel Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj says he can­not un­der­stand how Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie could con­tin­ue to sit in of­fice “as though noth­ing has hap­pened” fol­low­ing the Privy Coun­cil’s rul­ing in the Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar mat­ter.

A taxi dri­ver from San Juan has been sen­tenced to sev­en years in prison af­ter be­ing con­vict­ed of rap­ing a 14-year-old girl over a decade ago.

A trade union­ist has been giv­en the green light to sue the Min­istry of Fi­nance over its re­fusal to dis­close an au­dit re­port in­to a med­ical in­sur­ance plan for teach­ers. 

Tourism Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris has de­fend­ed the di­vi­sion’s over­seas trav­el ex­pens­es, in­sist­ing she has not failed in ef­forts to im­prove the is­land’s air­lift de­spite not se­cur­ing new air­lines.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has filed two com­plaints with the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, ask­ing for probes of al­leged mis­use of pub­lic funds by the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Plipde­co) board in the pur­chase of Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Red Fete tick­ets and al­leged “mis­use of state re­sources, pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees, and tax­pay­er funds to sup­port the PNM’s elec­tion cam­paign.”