Sec­re­tary of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and So­cial Pro­tec­tion Ian Pol­lard has been hos­pi­talised. In a me­dia re­lease to­day, the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary (OCS) said Pol­lard has been ward­ed at the St Clair Med­ical Cen­tre for the past week.

Ka­ia Sealy has been grant­ed $700,000 bail and per­mit­ted to trav­el back and forth to the Unit­ed States to con­tin­ue med­ical treat­ment while her crim­i­nal case re­lat­ed to a fa­tal po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing in Jan­u­ary is be­fore the court.

De­spite ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment over her treat­ment by po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tors, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Ka­ia Sealy say she has noth­ing to hide and will con­tin­ue to co­op­er­ate with au­thor­i­ties in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Jan­u­ary po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing that re­sult­ed in her boyfriend’s death.

Rel­a­tives of po­lice of­fi­cer Rafael Joseph have round­ly re­ject­ed claims that he re­port­ed­ly killed him­self while in the cus­tody of prison of­fi­cials.

To­day marks one year since Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (CoP) Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro be­gan his role as head of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Se­nior of­fi­cers of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion are deny­ing re­ports that 187 kilo­grammes of cannabis and 187 traf­fick­ing pack­ets of cannabis, with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue of $1.3 mil­lion, were stolen from a po­lice sta­tion.

A do­mes­tic dis­pute in Tabaquite turned vi­o­lent on Mon­day evening when a man was al­leged­ly at­tacked and wound­ed by his broth­er with a cut­lass.

Or­di­nary-sized crops ap­pear to be off the menu for Princes Town farmer Sha­heed Ali, who yes­ter­day har­vest­ed a 100-pound wa­ter­mel­on, less than a month af­ter grow­ing a 600-pound pump­kin in his gar­den.

Plan­ning Min­is­ter and Min­is­ter in the Fi­nance Min­istry Kennedy Swarats­ingh says Gov­ern­ment’s $2.9 bil­lion mid-year sup­ple­men­ta­tion is aimed at strength­en­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty while cre­at­ing the con­di­tions nec­es­sary for long-term eco­nom­ic growth.

In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors Mar­lene Attzs and Fran­cis Lewis are warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go could face mount­ing fis­cal pres­sures, cit­ing ris­ing debt, per­sis­tent for­eign ex­change short­ages and weak eco­nom­ic growth.

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der says the Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing to strength­en Trinidad and To­ba­go’s im­mi­gra­tion laws to im­pose jail sen­tences on de­port­ed mi­grants who il­le­gal­ly re-en­ter the coun­try.

Teach­ers across Trinidad and To­ba­go are of­fi­cial­ly with­draw­ing all ser­vices out­side their strict job de­scrip­tions, with the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) ad­vis­ing ed­u­ca­tors to take men­tal health days as frus­tra­tion over un­paid back­pay in­ten­si­fies.