Mor­vant res­i­dent Frankie “Fishie” Bartholomew, who was shot by un­known as­sailants on Thurs­day night, re­mains in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal.

Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd has ap­point­ed char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or Ross Dar­ling­ton as an as­so­ciate di­rec­tor, ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 21, the com­pa­ny an­nounced in a news re­lease.
Dar­ling­ton joined the firm in Feb­ru­ary 2024 and has been based at its Port of Spain of­fice. His ap­point­ment comes as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to ex­pand its lead­er­ship team to sup­port grow­ing de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion and con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices.
In the re­lease, Ray­mond & Pierre man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Afra Ray­mond said Dar­ling­ton's ap­point­ment strength­ens the firm's tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise.
"Ross brings ex­act­ly the kind of tech­ni­cal rigour and mar­ket in­sight our clients re­ly on. As de­mand for pro­fes­sion­al prop­er­ty val­u­a­tion con­tin­ues to grow, hav­ing some­one of his cal­i­bre join our lead­er­ship team strength­ens what we can of­fer across the re­gion."
Dar­ling­ton holds an As­so­ciate De­gree in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the UWI School of Busi­ness and Ap­plied Stud­ies (ROYTEC), a BA (Hons) in Busi­ness Man­age­ment from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sun­der­land and an MSc in Re­al Es­tate Man­age­ment and De­vel­op­ment from Heri­ot-Watt Uni­ver­si­ty in Ed­in­burgh.
He qual­i­fied as char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­or in 2020 and is al­so a reg­is­tered val­uer.
The re­lease said Dar­ling­ton has worked with both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al firms and has al­so served the In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors of Trinidad and To­ba­go, hold­ing the po­si­tion of as­sis­tant trea­sur­er in 2022.
Ray­mond & Pierre said its roots date back to 1972, when Eu­gene M Ray­mond es­tab­lished Eu­gene M Ray­mond & Com­pa­ny af­ter re­tir­ing as Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions.
The firm said the part­ner­ship with Ralph A Pierre was formed in 1977 fol­low­ing his re­tire­ment as Com­mis­sion­er of Val­u­a­tions. It was in­cor­po­rat­ed as Ray­mond & Pierre Ltd in Jan­u­ary 2000.
The com­pa­ny said it is now the old­est and largest pro­fes­sion­al prac­tice of char­tered val­u­a­tion sur­vey­ors, re­al es­tate agents and prop­er­ty con­sul­tants in T&T.

“Do not go gen­tle in­to that good night; Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dy­ing of the light; Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight;

As melod­ic and rhyth­mic as the heart­beat of the steel­pan is, the in­stru­ment was not al­ways fa­mil­iar to in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences. Sev­en­ty-five years lat­er, a new the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion is pay­ing homage to the gru­elling jour­ney that first took the steel­pan be­yond T&T’s shores.

The re­cent scenes of con­fronta­tion fol­low­ing the FI­FA World Cup fi­nal of­fer a les­son in hu­man na­ture.