The High Court has ruled that the Chief of De­fence Staff act­ed un­law­ful­ly by de­clin­ing to re­ceive a rec­om­men­da­tion for the pro­mo­tion of for­mer Trinidad and To­ba­go Reg­i­ment Staff Sergeant Sher­win Rus­sell to War­rant Of­fi­cer Class II.

Sta­cy Ha­jarie had moved in­to her un­cle’s home in Bonasse Vil­lage, Ce­dros, just two weeks ear­li­er. On Sat­ur­day, she watched help­less­ly as flood­wa­ters cov­ered her fur­ni­ture and oth­er be­long­ings in the yard, which she had not yet had time to se­cure.

San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning has main­tained that he was not in­volved in le­gal ac­tion brought by a con­stituent seek­ing per­mis­sion to par­tic­i­pate in the con­stituen­cy’s Women’s League ex­ec­u­tive elec­tions on Sat­ur­day.

So­cial ser­vice or­gan­i­sa­tions are call­ing for in­creased fund­ing in the Oc­to­ber 12 na­tion­al bud­get, warn­ing that in­ad­e­quate sup­port is leav­ing chil­dren’s homes strug­gling to meet ba­sic costs and lim­it­ing ser­vices for vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies.

Fam­i­ly, friends and ad­mir­ers of Ca­lyp­so King of the World Slinger Fran­cis­co, bet­ter known as the Mighty Spar­row, cel­e­brat­ed the man be­hind the leg­end at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice in New York yes­ter­day.

One man is dead and two oth­ers are crit­i­cal fol­low­ing a road traf­fic ac­ci­dent in Cunu­pia short­ly af­ter 6 a.m. to­day.

PNM To­ba­go Coun­cil po­lit­i­cal leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis is warn­ing that there is “no room for com­pla­cen­cy” or per­son­al agen­das with­in the par­ty, as she seeks to strength­en the or­gan­i­sa­tion fol­low­ing the res­ig­na­tion of coun­cil chair­man Nicole Hen­ry-Wal­dron.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says the sweep­ing changes in her Cab­i­net re­align­ment are meant to “in­crease ef­fi­cien­cy, cut costs and bu­reau­cra­cy.”

The fol­low­ing out­lines key changes in the al­lo­ca­tion of re­spon­si­bil­i­ties among min­istries fol­low­ing the 2025 and 2026 re­as­sign­ments. The changes, set out in the rel­e­vant Gazettes, show which port­fo­lios and state agen­cies were gained, re­lin­quished or trans­ferred be­tween min­istries un­der the re­spec­tive min­is­ters.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing whether the Prime Min­is­ter’s Cab­i­net re­align­ment was dri­ven by in­ter­nal pow­er strug­gles in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says the ex­pand­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties placed on some min­is­ters did not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in­to a sig­nif­i­cant­ly heav­ier work­load, since much of the tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive work of Gov­ern­ment was car­ried out by pub­lic of­fi­cers.

Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad says he is un­both­ered by the re­align­ment of Cab­i­net re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, which took ef­fect on Sep­tem­ber 30.