In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Michael Si­mon Vic­tor de la Bastide has ques­tioned the log­ic of telling 18-year-olds they are ma­ture enough to vote, mar­ry, dri­ve, join the Po­lice Ser­vice and make oth­er ma­jor life de­ci­sions, but not ma­ture enough to de­cide whether to drink al­co­hol.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Con­rad Enill is warn­ing that more com­pa­nies could leave Trinidad and To­ba­go if the coun­try can­not guar­an­tee suf­fi­cient nat­ur­al gas sup­plies, fol­low­ing Nu­trien’s de­ci­sion to per­ma­nent­ly shut its ni­tro­gen op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has made an­oth­er ad­just­ment to min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, trans­fer­ring four ma­jor skills and vo­ca­tion­al train­ing agen­cies from Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing Min­is­ter Prakash Per­sad to Sport and Youth Af­fairs Min­is­ter Phillip Watts.

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is call­ing on House Speak­er Jagdeo Singh to re­scind his de­ci­sion to block an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion on the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply.

Res­i­dents still strug­gling to re­build their lives af­ter be­ing dis­placed by the new To­ba­go air­port will be get­ting ad­di­tion­al help. Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine made the an­nounce­ment on Mon­day as he not­ed many af­fect­ed res­i­dents were not giv­en suf­fi­cient com­pen­sa­tion.

A par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turb­ing trend has emerged in re­cent years where cannabis and oth­er sub­stances are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing pre­sent­ed in var­i­ous ed­i­ble forms, such as gum­mies, brown­ies, and cup­cakes, ap­pear­ing harm­less or at­trac­tive to youths, cre­at­ing new av­enues through which chil­dren and ado­les­cents may be ex­posed to dan­ger­ous sub­stances, says At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie.

Op­po­si­tion MPs are ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to re­struc­ture the lo­cal gov­ern­ment map to give the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) an ad­van­tage at the next lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) says it has no role in de­ter­min­ing or al­ter­ing the bound­aries of mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, as it con­firmed it was not for­mal­ly con­sult­ed on the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish three new bor­oughs.

To­ba­go is ex­pect­ing a record num­ber of ar­rivals for this year’s Oc­to­ber car­ni­val with the T&T Spir­it fast fer­ry back on the seabridge. The ves­sel re­turned to ser­vice yes­ter­day and is sched­uled to op­er­ate dai­ly from Oc­to­ber 28-30 and on No­vem­ber 2 and 3. The ves­sel adds an ad­di­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty of 8,000 pas­sen­gers and 1,360 ve­hi­cles.

Res­i­dents in sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties have com­plained of dis­coloured wa­ter and sup­ply prob­lems in re­cent days.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says his min­istry is work­ing on ini­tia­tives to ad­dress traf­fic con­ges­tion but could not pro­vide de­tails of the plans.

An elec­tri­cal prob­lem aboard the car­go ves­sel Gold­en Car­ri­er caused pan­ic among some pas­sen­gers on Mon­day as it trav­elled from Port-of-Spain to Scar­bor­ough.