NEWS
T&T denies US pressure to end medical study programme with Cuba
The Government is assuring that Trinidad and Tobago has received no directive from the United States to halt the long-standing practice of sending nationals to Cuba to study medicine. The assurance comes days after St Lucia’s Prime Minister Philip Pierre disclosed that his government had been instructed by Washington to discontinue the programme. Pierre made the revelation during his address at the 2nd World Congress on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in St Lucia, which ran from January 27 to 31. Read more here
POLITICS
HDC hikes fees
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar yesterday defended a new Housing Development Corporation (HDC) policy, which has introduced a five per cent fee on the transfer of properties within families and a ten per cent fee on transactions involving the sale of its properties. Her defence came hours after former Housing and Urban Development minister Randall Mitchell posted a document announcing the new policy on his Facebook page yesterday, and slammed the Government for the change. But even while Persad-Bissessar was defending the HDC move, Housing Minister David Lee claimed to have no knowledge of the policy and launched an investigation into the matter. Read more here
BUSINESS
From research to practice
Dr Riann Singh, a senior lecturer in the Department of Management Studies at The University of the West Indies (UWI), is a distinguished scholar with over a decade of experience in research and academia. She currently serves as the deputy dean for Graduate Studies and Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences. At The UWI Principal Awards Ceremony 2024, Dr Singh earned an award for her research on ‘reluctant stayers’, employees who remain in jobs they are not happy with. This adds to her body of work which has also gained international recognition within the broader fields of organisational behaviour and human resource management and the associated contemporary workplace issues. Read more here
REGIONAL
Economic diversification drives job creation, major reduction in unemployment rate —President Ali emphasises
PRESIDENT, Dr Irfaan Ali on Tuesday hailed significant improvements in Guyana’s labour market, attributing the most recent gains to a diversified economic strategy and targeted government policies. Addressing recent data from the Bureau of Statistics during a live broadcast on Facebook, Dr Ali said unemployment had dropped sharply from 12.8 per cent in 2020 to 6.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2024. He highlighted a reduction in female unemployment from 14.4 per cent to under nine per cent and said the gains were evident across both urban and rural areas, signalling more equitable regional development. “Unemployment rates are also fairly balanced across regions. So, it is not to say that the jobs are only created in urban centres,” the President said, adding: “When you look at the distribution of jobs and the analytics behind unemployment rates, you will see that it is evenly distributed in rural and urban centres, which speak to the fact that government growth and private-sector growth is [sic] following the development agenda of the country that is driven by infrastructure, that is driven by policies to push agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, agro processing.” Read more here
INTERNATIONAL
Israeli strikes kill 17 in Gaza, hospitals say, after soldier wounded by gunfire
At least 17 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in the north and south of Gaza, hospitals say. Israel's military said it happened after "terrorists" opened fire in the north of the Strip, seriously wounding a soldier during an operation near the Yellow Line, which marks territory controlled by Israel under the three-month-old ceasefire agreement with Hamas. It added that armoured units and aircraft conducted precise strikes in the area in response to what it considered a "blatant violation" of the truce. Hospital officials said six children were among those killed in the Gaza City and Khan Younis areas. Read more here
4th February 2026