The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) has de­fend­ed its de­ci­sion to ar­rest so­cial ac­tivist Alyssa Phillip dur­ing the Labour Day pro­ces­sion in Fyz­abad, say­ing she was charged af­ter al­leged­ly lead­ing an unau­tho­rised march and fail­ing to com­ply with po­lice in­struc­tions to dis­perse.

An agree­ment to de­vel­op dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion train­ing cen­tres was se­cured at the ITU Re­gion­al De­vel­op­ment Fo­rum for the Amer­i­c­as (RDF-AMS) and the Re­gion­al Work­shop on Reg­u­la­to­ry In­no­va­tion and Sand­box in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia, on Wednes­day, June 17, 2026.

There is no short­age of in­ter­na­tion­al cognoscen­ti of­fer­ing World Cup analy­sis for tour­na­ment fol­low­ers to wade through so you do not need mine. I will state the ob­vi­ous, though - 2026 is the most com­mer­cial­ized, mon­e­tized and politi­cized World Cup ever. If you are lucky, you have ac­cess to a paid stream­ing ser­vice, a visa to en­ter one of the host coun­tries, or a high priced tick­et to watch a match live. If not, FI­FA has adopt­ed a Pon­tius Pi­late stance and washed its hands of you and your prob­lems. FI­FA claims “foot­ball unites the world and brings peo­ple to­geth­er to cel­e­brate the beau­ti­ful game”. But in 2026, World Cup foot­ball - which should be freely avail­able to or­di­nary work­ing peo­ple via pub­lic tele­vi­sion, easy en­try in­to host coun­tries and rea­son­ably priced tick­ets - is now a com­mod­i­ty with re­strict­ed ac­cess.

For gen­er­a­tions of cit­i­zens, the sprawl­ing com­pound on the West­ern Main Road has been en­tire­ly syn­ony­mous with law en­force­ment. Since the 1890s, near­ly every po­lice of­fi­cer who has sworn to pro­tect and serve our na­tion has marched through its his­toric gates. Yet, long be­fore it be­came the bedrock of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), the St James Bar­racks was a vi­tal mil­i­tary strong­hold built to safe­guard the British Em­pire’s most prized Caribbean pos­ses­sion.

The Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion’s (HDC) de­ci­sion to can­cel its con­tro­ver­sial $3.4 bil­lion De­sign-Build-Fi­nance hous­ing pro­cure­ment ex­er­cise was the cor­rect one. While the move has sparked po­lit­i­cal de­bate and re­newed scruti­ny of the hous­ing sec­tor, the over­rid­ing prin­ci­ple must re­main the pro­tec­tion of the pub­lic in­ter­est and the in­tegri­ty of the coun­try’s pro­cure­ment sys­tem.