Niger­ian en­er­gy com­pa­ny Oan­do PLC, the Gov­ern­ment’s pre­ferred bid­der for the lease of the Pointe-a-Pierre re­fin­ery, has been strug­gling fi­nan­cial­ly.

Vote split­ting and man­u­fac­tured ma­jori­ties have long in­flu­enced the po­lit­i­cal land­scape of T&T, shap­ing elec­tion out­comes in ways that of­ten do not re­flect the pop­u­lar vote. Un­der the first-past-the-post sys­tem, gov­ern­ments have fre­quent­ly been formed with a ma­jor­i­ty of seats while se­cur­ing less than 50 per cent of the votes cast.

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has urged the na­tion to take a deep­er look at the long jour­ney of the Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty, re­flect­ing on the hard­ships en­dured by its ear­ly devo­tees and the last­ing gen­er­a­tional ef­fects of such trau­ma, as re­vealed by psy­cho­log­i­cal re­search.

One man was killed, an­oth­er was in­jured, and a third es­caped un­hurt dur­ing a shoot­ing in Co­corite on Fri­day night. The de­ceased has been iden­ti­fied as Justin Ar­joon, 20, of Far­fan Street, Co­corite, St James.

Sev­en-year-old Eli Grif­fith, di­ag­nosed with AD­HD, had the chance of a life­time to live out his dream of be­com­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer for a day. On ca­reer day at Mara­bel­la Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School, Eli proud­ly donned a po­lice uni­form, a gift from his dot­ing grand­moth­er Deb­bie Pe­ters.

At­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing med­ical doc­tor Joel Teelucks­ingh have for­mal­ly called on the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty to re­con­sid­er its al­le­ga­tions of mis­con­duct against their client and drop any in­tend­ed in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Fr An­tho­ny de Ver­teuil, a for­mer prin­ci­pal at St Mary’s Col­lege in Port-of-Spain, has bro­ken his si­lence on a bul­ly­ing in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and an­oth­er stu­dent, Im­ran Khan, that oc­curred some 33 years ago.

For­mer deputy chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Diego Mar­tin North East con­stituen­cy ex­ec­u­tive Ricky Shanklin says while they stepped back from be­ing part of the elec­tion ma­chin­ery this time, they have not aban­doned the par­ty.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day, 11 out of 14 T&T na­tion­als were de­port­ed. They ar­rived at Pi­ar­co Air­port at 2.50 am.

The PNM To­ba­go East and West can­di­dates say that de­spite the in­creased num­ber of con­tenders, they are not in­tim­i­dat­ed and won’t back down, as their work will speak for them on April 28.

Catholic priest Fr An­tho­ny de­V­er­teuil, who was the for­mer prin­ci­pal at St Mary’s Col­lege has now come out pub­licly about the bul­ly­ing in­ci­dent in­volv­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and an­oth­er stu­dent Im­ran Khan, which oc­curred some 33 years ago.

As he ac­knowl­edged the threats posed by crim­i­nals in and out of prison, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les has promised that ad­di­tion­al re­sources will be di­rect­ed to the prison ser­vice to clamp down on il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties be­hind bars.