Gov­ern­ment’s an­ti-Home In­va­sion bill isn’t a “one-stop fix-all” pol­i­cy an­swer to crime and home in­va­sions, since there are oth­er mat­ters to be dealt with, in­clud­ing the lib­er­al­i­sa­tion “in a rea­son­able way” with ac­cess to firearms and oth­er meth­ods of de­fend­ing one­self.

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Sen­a­tor San­jiv Bood­hu says pro­vi­sions in the Gov­ern­ment’s Home In­va­sion (Self De­fence and De­fence of Prop­er­ty) Bill 2025 are al­ready cov­ered by ex­ist­ing law and the bill doesn’t al­low peo­ple to sim­ply “load de ’mat­ic, knock it on dem, emp­ty the clip, re­load and knock it on dem again.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi is ques­tion­ing whether the Home In­va­sion bill would ex­tend pro­tec­tion to squat­ters, ask­ing if in­di­vid­u­als who have no le­gal claim to land they oc­cu­py would still be en­ti­tled to de­fend them­selves against in­trud­ers.

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has se­cured an­oth­er le­gal vic­to­ry in its bid to block a move by con­trac­tor Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices (SIS) to al­leged­ly dis­pose of its as­sets pend­ing the res­o­lu­tion of ar­bi­tra­tion pro­ceed­ings over the con­tro­ver­sial Beetham Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant.

Con­vict­ed triple mur­der­er Daniel Agard has lost his bid to se­cure ear­ly re­lease from prison. 

BEI­JING, CHI­NA — Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der’s sug­ges­tion that T&T look to Chi­na to deal with so­cial me­dia threats has ig­nit­ed dis­cus­sions about pri­va­cy, free­dom of ex­pres­sion and the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of adopt­ing for­eign poli­cies.

The shut­down of Nu­trien’s am­mo­nia op­er­a­tions at Point Lisas is slow­ing the sup­ply of ni­tro­gen fer­tilis­er and farm­ers say the short­age is al­ready af­fect­ing crops in both pineap­ple and rice fields.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has ex­tend­ed con­grat­u­la­tions to Saint Lu­cia’s Prime Min­is­ter Philip Pierre af­ter his Saint Lu­cia Labour Par­ty re­tained its leg­isla­tive ma­jor­i­ty in yes­ter­day’s gen­er­al elec­tion.

Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), the re­gion’s largest car­ri­er, will sus­pend two re­cent­ly opened routes and sus­pend its Bar­ba­dos base of op­er­a­tions ear­ly next year, deal­ing a blow to re­gion­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty. Ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 10, the air­line will sus­pend its routes to San Juan, Puer­to Ri­co, and Tor­to­la, British Vir­gin Is­lands. CAL will al­so sus­pend its base op­er­a­tions at Bar­ba­dos’ Grant­ley Adams In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Feb­ru­ary 2026. Flights orig­i­nat­ing out of Bar­ba­dos will be resched­uled and re­timed to op­er­ate out of Trinidad’s Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in­stead. As a re­sult, all crews based in Bar­ba­dos will be re­quired to op­er­ate flights out of the Port of Spain hub.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine says he does not sup­port “out­siders” mak­ing de­ci­sions for To­ba­go and be­lieves the is­land must have a greater say in mat­ters that af­fect it. He has made it clear that he wants a seat on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil and has pledged that the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) will push for To­ba­go to have a voice on na­tion­al de­fence and in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions if re-elect­ed on Jan­u­ary 12.

The Of­fice of the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer and the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion yes­ter­day signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Agree­ment that pro­vides a 10 per cent in­crease in salaries and al­lowances for pub­lic of­fi­cers for the pe­ri­ods 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019. The agree­ment al­so con­sol­i­dates the Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance for both tri­en­nia.

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dar­ryl Din­di­al says a re­cent threat to his life made on so­cial me­dia has been “un­com­fort­able” for him as he is sim­ply do­ing his job, but has thanked the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) for their re­sponse in find­ing the per­son re­spon­si­ble.