Jamaica’s Governor General, Sir Kenneth Hall has resigned as the country’s head of state for health reasons after three years in the office and Prime Minister Bruce Golding has almost immediately announced Hall’s successor as Dr Patrick Allen, an educator and Seventh Day Adventist minister and administrator. Critics have already questioned Allen’s bona fides for [...]
2008, like 2007, ends with a bang that will usher in 2009. In December 2007, it was the assassination of Benazir Bhutto while on the campaign trail that rocked the world as Christendom celebrated one of its high holy periods. This time around, the Christ birthday party and New Year’s bash are being overshadowed by [...]
Thanks for sharing some of your time with us at Abeng News over the past year. We’re making some changes to the look of our site and the newsletter, Abeng Update. The changes come as a result of a shift in the technology we use in the background. The new system has some features that [...]
Barack Obama’s appointments to his forthcoming administration will raise many questions about his campaign themes of bringing change to Washington and restoring America’s image abroad. Two nominations in particular go to the heart of the issue of perception versus reality. The retention of the lame duck Bush administration’s Defence Secretary, Robert Gates and the proposal [...]
President-elect Barack Obama must have seen it coming. There are still celebrations in the most remote reaches of the globe. The expectations following his victory are so stupendous, it seems many are setting themselves up for eventual disappointment. From every corner of the planet, the jubilation that has greeted his accession to power is somehow [...]
On the eve of probably the most pivotal election in US history, Americans have seen the best and worst of themselves. For matters of race relations, an issue that has largely been ignored for decades with everyone knowing, resenting or cherishing their designated place in the society, the presidential campaign has become a cutting board to expose the viscera [...]
The most serenely quiet place you could ever find is the heart of the desert at night. Miles away from civilization, this is where peace and quiet reigns, when there is no wind to whip up a sandstorm., no leaves to rustle, or any insects around to puncture the peace. It is therapeutic. Not so [...]
A New York Times columnist quotes Michael Specter, in the New Yorker: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.” Some friends and colleagues were insulted [...]
And we thought we had seen it all. A US Postal Service cheque, payable to the Postmaster General of Jamaica disappears, untraceable, a feat unheard of in the 21st Century; a computer goes missing from the heavily guarded and most secure offices of the Ministry of Security; millions of dollars, the property of community strongman [...]
Since the news of the project to translate the Bible into Jamaican Creole, many have argued about the legitimacy of Jamaican as a language. Some contend that it is a dialect. A dialect is a regional variation of a standard. Jamaican is not a regional variation of English. Jamaican has a different set of rules [...]