To­ba­go East MP David Thomas is back­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) strong stance on road traf­fic in­fringe­ments. How­ev­er, oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ties on the is­land be­lieve this is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) sell­ing out the in­ter­ests of To­bag­o­ni­ans for favour with the Gov­ern­ment.

As the in­crease in traf­fic fees con­tin­ues to draw pub­lic at­ten­tion, the re­al­i­ty of some oth­er fees is al­so rais­ing con­cerns, par­tic­u­lar­ly those af­fect­ing busi­ness­es.

As the saga of mo­tor ve­hi­cle fines con­tin­ues, the Cab­i­net yes­ter­day ap­proved a pro­pos­al for a new tick­et warn­ing sys­tem. Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our con­firmed that the sys­tem will be pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment in a few weeks.

For thou­sands of com­muters in south and east Trinidad, the crawl through traf­fic caused by road­side en­force­ment has be­come a fa­mil­iar source of frus­tra­tion. On Wednes­day, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke told Par­lia­ment that the prob­lem has grown so acute that he has asked his of­fi­cers to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in some joint road­blocks with the po­lice.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) of­fi­cial­ly de­clared the start of the 2026 dry sea­son yes­ter­day (Jan­u­ary 8), mark­ing a tran­si­tion to dri­er at­mos­pher­ic con­di­tions.

The ini­tial cel­e­bra­tions among the lo­cal Venezue­lan mi­grant com­mu­ni­ty ap­pear to have fad­ed, along with their hopes of re­turn­ing home soon, as un­cer­tain­ty about Venezuela’s fu­ture lingers.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said the cur­rent dis­pute be­tween the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) and Nu­trien must be viewed in the con­text of what he de­scribed as fail­ures of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion to set­tle crit­i­cal gas and pier user arrange­ments, which he said con­tributed to a “down­stream sec­tor cri­sis.”

A man from Tal­paro has been ac­quit­ted of cul­ti­vat­ing a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar mar­i­jua­na plan­ta­tion in 2011.

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says Trinidad and To­ba­go’s en­er­gy arrange­ments with Venezuela re­main un­changed de­spite the on­go­ing po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary de­vel­op­ments in that coun­try and the Unit­ed States’ Jan­u­ary 3 in­va­sion, which re­moved Nico­las Maduro from of­fice.

Venezue­lans from all walks of life con­tin­ue to protest in the streets, call­ing for the re­turn of Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro af­ter his re­moval by the US mil­i­tary on Jan­u­ary 3.

Cab­i­net has ap­proved $2.3 mil­lion in fund­ing to sup­port 147 un­spon­sored steel­bands for Car­ni­val 2026.

Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) pres­i­dent Ains­ley King says the Na­tion­al Ju­nior Ca­lyp­so Monarch is an in­sti­tu­tion that will not be harmed by its non-in­clu­sion in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Schools’ Car­ni­val Events 2026 list.