A Princes Town man is due to ap­pear be­fore a Siparia Mag­is­trate to­day, charged with the pos­ses­sion of a firearm af­ter be­ing ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the South West­ern Di­vi­sion Task Force (SWDTF) dur­ing an an­ti-crime ex­er­cise in Pe­nal yes­ter­day. Karl Richard­son, 29, a labour­er of Bor­de Narve Vil­lage, Princes Town, was ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers around 5:30 pm on Tues­day. Dur­ing the ex­er­cise, of­fi­cers had cause to stop and search a gold Ti­i­da mo­tor ve­hi­cle with a lone oc­cu­pant at Gopie Trace, Pe­nal.

The search re­sult­ed in a knap­sack con­tain­ing a pis­tol and an emp­ty mag­a­zine be­ing dis­cov­ered on the back seat of the ve­hi­cle. Richard­son was sub­se­quent­ly charged for the of­fence by Cpl (Ag.) Den­ver Marsh of the SWDTF on Tues­day. The ex­er­cise was co­or­di­nat­ed by Snr. Supt. Neville Adams, Supt. De­onar­ine Bas­deo and ASP (Ag.) Wayne Ab­bott, con­duct­ed by Sgts. Shel­don Ablacks­ingh and Fa­reed Khan and in­clud­ed of­fi­cers of the Pe­nal Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tions De­part­ment.(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN)…[+]

Police are investigating the deaths of two sisters from Saudi Arabia whose bodies, bound together with tape, washed up on New York City’s waterfront last week.

The sisters, Tala Farea, 16, and Rotana Farea, 22, were discovered on 24 October on a bank of the Hudson River, about 225 miles from Fairfax, Virginia, where they lived and were reported missing in August. As of Tuesday, investigators had not determined how they died. The sisters’ bodies were taped together and facing each other, but had no obvious signs of trauma, police said. They were both fully clothed.

The day before the bodies were discovered, their mother told detectives that she had received a call from an official at the Saudi Arabian embassy, ordering the family to leave the US because her daughters had applied for political asylum, New York police said on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia’s consulate general in New York said in a statement that it had “appointed an attorney to follow the case closely”. It said embassy officials in Washington had contacted the family and “extended its support and aid in this trying time”. It added that the sisters were students “accompanying their brother in Washington”.

New York City police sent a detective to Virginia to learn more about the sisters. Chief of detectives Dermot Shea said they were particularly interested in finding out what happened since they were reported missing, and what led them to New York City. “We are looking at all clues in their past life,” Shea said.(theguardian)…[+]

Dominic Raab has appeared to suggest the UK’s Brexit negotiations with the European Union could be completed before 21 November, in a letter to a Commons select committee that emerged on Wednesday.

Writing to the Brexit select committee, the cabinet member responsible for the day-to-day negotiations said he would be “happy to give evidence when a deal is finalised, and currently expect November 21 to be suitable”.

The suggestion was contained in an optimistic three-page letter dated 24 October but only released on Wednesday afternoon by the committee of MPs that also said “we are not far from an agreement” on the vexed question of what backstop arrangements to adopt if a free trade deal cannot be signed.

The UK wants the EU to agree to drop the Northern Ireland-only backstop in favour of allowing the entire UK to remain in a country-wide “temporary customs arrangement” with the 27-country bloc if no free trade deal can be concluded by time the transition period ends in December 2020. Raab’s letter suggests the EU has accepted the idea of the temporary customs arrangement. “We agree on the principle of a UK-widecustoms backstop,” the Brexit secretary wrote.(theguardian)…[+]

The FBI has been asked to investigate whether a hoaxer offered women money to make false allegations about Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Several journalists and bloggers in the US received an email this month purporting to be from a woman who had been offered money to smear Mueller with bogus claims of inappropriate behaviour decades ago.

After Mueller’s office was told about the email, it referred the matter to federal investigators, who are now likely to examine whether the hoax scheme described in the woman’s email is real – or if the email itself contains false information.Peter Carr, Mueller’s spokesman, said in a statement on Tuesday: “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the special counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation.”This statement itself was rare for Mueller’s office, which has built a reputation over the past 17 months for almost never making public remarks about its activities outside of court hearings and legal filings.

Mueller has come under sustained pressure from Donald Trump and some Republicans in Congress, who have tried to dismiss his investigation as a “witch-hunt”. Mueller has so far obtained criminal convictions of Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for financial crimes, along with guilty pleas from several people including Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and Rick Gates, his former deputy campaign chairman.(theguardian)…[+]