The European launch of a documentary on the 1963 government attack on Rastafari in Jamaica, and a Canadian report that murders in Toronto have fallen 25 per cent since the arrest of Jamaican community don, Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke, serve to highlight that the island’s power structure and culture remain at odds, 50 years after independence from Britain.
The opposition People’s National party was returned to power taking 41 of 63 seats in the House of representatives in Jamaica’s general election Thursday, called by Andrew Holness after just over a month in office to secure his own mandate on inheriting a moribund economy from Bruce Golding. It was a massive defeat after an almost evenly split vote in 2007.
The Canadian Government has decided that people taking the citizenship oath must not have their face covered. The decision is aimed at Muslim women who wear a niqab or a burqa to the ceremony. The announcement Monday by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, at a news conference in Montreal, comes at a time when the culture clash [...]
I must be crazy. Like the gods drinking Coca Cola and dropping the bottle in the Kalahari Desert on Bushmen. Read this and tell me what you think (I’m going to tell you what I think, right after the commercial break): (Jamaica”s) Tourism Minister, the Hon. Edmund Bartlett is expressing shock and disappointment at the [...]
The credit rating of St Kitts and Nevis, the smallest independent state in the hemisphere, took a hit when it defaulted on a bond payment the end of November. The administration of Prime Minister Denzil Douglas, in the midst of developing a debt rescheduling package with the help of London-based consultants, White Oak Advisory, to [...]
When the Mirabal sisters – Minerva, Patricia and Maria Teresa- took up the cause of justice in the 1950s in their native Dominican Republic, they had no idea that they would be the catalyst for a wider international movement for social justice. Their activism against the corrupt and unjust regime of Dictator Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961) [...]
There is nothing like adversity to not only test one’s mettle but demands one to take stock of his/her life and the choices made and to see if/where one can do better. As a leader, adversity will either further burnish your leadership qualities or exposes you in ways that are most unflattering. Recently, Standard & [...]
The Faculty of Engineering and Computing, University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech), has received a software grant with a commercial value of US$38.85M (JA$3.4B) from Siemens PLM software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services. The presentation by Leecorp Ltd, the local representative, [...]
Dr Tilly Johnson, 82, one of Hamilton Farmers’ Market’s longest-serving vendors, has been slapped with a 30 day suspension under the Hamilton Farmers’ Markets’ Zero-Tolerance policy. The staff acted on a customer’s allegation that she was harassed by Johnson; the incident occurred Saturday, May 21st. Johnson was given notice at 3 pm Friday. Despite Ms [...]
Jennifer Lopez is on my Toronto TV as I write, singing I’m Into You, accompanied by the rapper Lil Wayne. It’s a traditional reggae bass line with a little bit of the more recent dancehall rhythm on top – a sound some of us in my youthful days called flyers rockers, associated with the likes [...]