De­spite be­ing de­clared “per­sona non gra­ta,” Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has pledged Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sup­port to earth­quake-rav­aged Venezuela, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment stands ready to pro­vide hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance as the neigh­bour­ing coun­try grap­ples with wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion.

As so­cial me­dia videos show­ing col­laps­ing build­ings, ter­ri­fied res­i­dents and in­jured sur­vivors emerged from Venezuela on Wednes­day, mem­bers of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Venezue­lan com­mu­ni­ty watched in hor­ror, pray­ing for rel­a­tives, friends and their home­land.

As the toll of deaths and in­juries in Venezuela con­tin­ues ris­ing af­ter Wednes­day's twin "mon­ster" earth­quakes, Cari­com and re­gion­al coun­tries - in­clud­ing T&T - have ex­tend­ed con­do­lences to Venezuela, of­fers of as­sis­tance and sol­i­dar­i­ty.

One week af­ter pro­test­er Alyssa Phillip and her moth­er Camille Cares­quero were ar­rest­ed dur­ing the Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions in Fyz­abad, the Law As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (LATT) is ques­tion­ing the rea­son­ing be­hind re­strict­ing pub­lic ac­cess to cer­tain ar­eas and of the fur­ther ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing whether the Gov­ern­ment was aware of, or par­tic­i­pat­ed in, a re­cent Unit­ed King­dom as­sess­ment on gangs in Trinidad and To­ba­go, while dis­miss­ing at­tempts by De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge to blame the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion for the coun­try’s gang prob­lem.

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has crit­i­cised the Prime Min­is­ter over re­cent state­ments re­gard­ing bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and as­sis­tance from the Unit­ed States.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s bud­get de­bate for fis­cal 2027 at the As­sem­bly Leg­is­la­ture in Scar­bor­ough, Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine an­nounced plans to even­tu­al­ly freeze all hir­ing, cit­ing the un­sus­tain­able cost of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture.

One sus­pect re­mains in po­lice cus­tody as the hunt con­tin­ues for the oth­er rob­bers in­volved in Wednes­day morn­ing’s dar­ing ATM heist in Ply­mouth, To­ba­go.

Three Freeport men who ad­mit­ted to killing a friend dur­ing a scuf­fle at a wake in 2019 are ex­pect­ed to be re­leased from prison in less than nine years.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has won a le­gal chal­lenge over the pro­cure­ment process it used for an up­grade to its video sur­veil­lance sys­tem.

A US court on Wednes­day heard ar­gu­ments from at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing two Trinida­di­an men who are su­ing the Unit­ed States over the deaths of their loved ones dur­ing US at­tacks on sus­pect­ed drug car­tels in the re­gion last year.

A 38-year-old man was shot and killed while sit­ting in his ve­hi­cle in Char­lieville, Ch­agua­nas, on Wednes­day evening.