As tears of joy and re­lief streamed down their faces while they em­braced de­tainees re­leased from the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre (ECRC), San­ta Rosa, yes­ter­day, rel­a­tives blast­ed the au­thor­i­ties as they ar­gued there was no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the State of Emer­gency (SoE).

Olive Green-Jack, who was de­tained for 81 days un­der the State of Emer­gency (SoE) for her so­cial me­dia post call­ing on Venezuela to at­tack the Prime Min­is­ter at her pri­vate res­i­dence in South Trinidad, says she has learnt her les­son.

In 2025, T&T spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly 72 per cent, 270 days or 6,240 hours, in an SOE, con­tin­u­ing in­to 2026.

With scores of de­tainees re­gain­ing their free­dom fol­low­ing the end of the State of Emer­gency (SoE), two for­mer se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials have warned that the coun­try faces an in­creased risk of gang reprisals and re­newed vi­o­lence.

Less than five per cent of an es­ti­mat­ed 6,500 po­lice of­fi­cers in the TTPS use body cams while on du­ty, said Deputy Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin.

Last year, when the coun­try was in a State of Emer­gency (SoE) from the start to the end of the year, T&T had the high­est num­ber of po­lice in­volved killings at 55.

Friends of Joshua Sama­roo’s com­mon-law wife, Ka­ia Sealy, are ex­pect­ed to take to the streets of Port-of-Spain to­day to call for jus­tice for the 28-year-old woman who was left paral­ysed af­ter a po­lice-in­volved shoot­ing. It was that in­ci­dent that end­ed Sama­roo’s life.

As Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions strug­gle with grow­ing fi­nan­cial chal­lenges and rapid ad­vances in ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, the Min­is­ter of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing, Pro­fes­sor Prakash Per­sad, says an over­haul of the sys­tem and deep­er col­lab­o­ra­tion are nec­es­sary for sur­vival.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal de­scribes the restart of the Pointe-à-Pierre re­fin­ery as a cen­tral part of the Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy strat­e­gy, with dis­cus­sions now un­der­way with In­di­an en­er­gy com­pa­nies as T&T seeks part­ners to bring the fa­cil­i­ty back in­to op­er­a­tion.

De­spite lin­ger­ing ques­tions over the be­hav­iour of a man who was record­ed walk­ing along the roof of the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal this week, the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) has con­firmed that he was safe­ly re­cov­ered and treat­ed.

A stu­dent from a sec­ondary school in Tu­na­puna was ar­rest­ed by po­lice on Fri­day, af­ter he broke in­to a neigh­bour’s house and stole a quan­ti­ty of al­co­hol and jew­ellery.

CEO of Southex, George Singh, de­scribed Fri­day night’s Chut­ney So­ca Monarch semi­fi­nal as a clear suc­cess, as a large crowd packed Fla­va Vil­lage at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah for the first time in the event’s his­to­ry.