Po­lice ar­rest­ed six peo­ple and seized three firearms, am­mu­ni­tion, cannabis and con­tra­band dur­ing State of Emer­gency op­er­a­tions car­ried out across sev­er­al po­lice di­vi­sions yes­ter­day.

Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship win­ner Dr Brit­tney Sid­hooram has en­cour­aged Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) grad­u­ates to re­main com­mit­ted to their ed­u­ca­tion, even if they are not placed in their first-choice sec­ondary school.

PNM deputy po­lit­i­cal leader San­jiv Bood­hu is ques­tion­ing whether busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed's re­cent de­ten­tion was linked to his pub­lic crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment's tax­a­tion poli­cies.

As Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les be­gins whip­ping the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in­to shape ahead of the next Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions, the par­ty's chair­man, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, is urg­ing mem­bers to put aside in­ter­nal di­vi­sions and unite be­hind a com­mon goal.

Port-of-Spain May­or Chin­ua Al­leyne says a fis­cal cri­sis he warned about more than two months ago has now ma­te­ri­alised, af­ter the Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion was un­able to meet its June pay­roll oblig­a­tions.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) yes­ter­day de­tained a 69-year-old busi­ness­woman from West­moor­ings in the on­go­ing case in­volv­ing busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve.

A life­time of over­com­ing cere­bral pal­sy has taught Ar­lene Alexan­der re­silience, but the 56-year-old now fears a re­cur­ring leak in her Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) apart­ment could one day rob her of the in­de­pen­dence she fought so hard to achieve.

De­spite be­ing de­clared “per­sona non gra­ta,” Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has pledged Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port to earth­quake-rav­aged Venezuela, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment stands ready to pro­vide hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance as the neigh­bour­ing coun­try grap­ples with wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion.

As so­cial me­dia videos show­ing col­laps­ing build­ings, ter­ri­fied res­i­dents and in­jured sur­vivors emerged from Venezuela on Wednes­day, mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty watched in hor­ror, pray­ing for rel­a­tives, friends and their home­land.

As the toll of deaths and in­juries in Venezuela con­tin­ues ris­ing af­ter Wednes­day's twin "mon­ster" earth­quakes, Cari­com and re­gion­al coun­tries - in­clud­ing T&T - have ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Venezuela, of­fers of as­sis­tance and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

One week af­ter pro­test­er Alyssa Phillip and her moth­er Camille Cares­quero were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) is ques­tion­ing the rea­son­ing be­hind re­strict­ing pub­lic ac­cess to cer­tain ar­eas and of the fur­ther ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment was aware of, or par­tic­i­pat­ed in, a re­cent Unit­ed King­dom as­sess­ment on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while dis­miss­ing at­tempts by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to blame the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the coun­try’s gang prob­lem.