Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath says sev­er­al mat­ters aris­ing from foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to state en­ti­ties will be re­ferred to the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) yes­ter­day re­flect­ed a World Bank re­port last week that the T&T econ­o­my de­clined by mi­nus 0.5 per cent last year and is pro­ject­ed to ex­pe­ri­ence re­al growth of 0.2 per cent this year.

“Own­ing our sto­ry and lov­ing our­selves through that process is the bravest thing we will ever do.” — Brené Brown

Shar­da Patasar has placed Trinidad and To­ba­go on the in­ter­na­tion­al map with her new piece, Au­dac­i­ty of Black Wa­ter. The track is in­clud­ed on Earth Ris­ing, Vol II: Mes­sages from the Pale Blue Dot, part of a three-vol­ume project com­mis­sioned by the UK arts or­gan­i­sa­tion, Ar­tan­gel. Patasar’s work stands out as a rare in­stru­men­tal orig­i­nat­ing from the Caribbean rather than In­dia—and the first sitar com­po­si­tion in the se­ries.

While there have been some com­plaints about the re­cent na­tion­al bud­get, once funds are al­lo­cat­ed to­wards crit­i­cal tech­nolo­gies that act as force mul­ti­pli­ers, our coun­try will ben­e­fit from in­creased se­cu­ri­ty ca­pa­bil­i­ties. I would like to use this col­umn to ad­vo­cate for the im­por­tance of drone tech­nol­o­gy and raise aware­ness about the risks posed by drones used by dan­ger­ous non-state ac­tors in our re­gion.