Sev­er­al state-con­trolled com­pa­nies have with­drawn their sup­port for this year’s Di­vali Na­gar, with the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of In­di­an Cul­ture (NCIC) ap­peal­ing to the Gov­ern­ment for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to stage the an­nu­al cel­e­bra­tions.

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.

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Nicholas Paul had to set­tle for the fourth-place fin­ish in the men’s match sprint fi­nal when the Tis­soot UCI 2026 Track World Cham­pi­onship end­ed at the Shang­hai Velo­drome in Shang­hai, Chi­na on Sun­day.

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.

There is a com­pelling case for an in­de­pen­dent re­view of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s now can­celled $3.4 bil­lion hous­ing project, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en se­ri­ous con­cerns re­port­ed­ly raised by the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR).