At eight years old, Dae-Jhuana Sewell and her sister, Davianna, five, have endured more gun violence than most adults. Already, they have survived a gang invasion, stepped over dead men in their own home, and continue to relive those frightening...
It might be the biggest open secret in the health sector, which several medical professionals reluctantly admitted last week, but Jamaica’s COVID-19 vaccination programme appears to be critically ill – if not dead – with only about 27 per cent of...
Kenesha Robinson is a budding comedian with a gift to make people laugh. But that is on stage. At home, caring for her ailing 77-year-old mother is no laughing matter. At night, she cries, especially when there is no food for her mom to eat before...
Forty-one years on, it is no longer considered a death sentence but instead a chronic disease, in some cases inactive with on-time and consistent treatment. Still, inequality threatens efforts by the Joint United Nations programme for HIV/AIDS (...
From using gamma irradiation technology to curtail mosquito spread to employing nuclear energy to power homes and call centres, industry players last week outlined a slew of initiatives they say will bolster life for Jamaicans while making science...
Between midnight and 3:00 each morning, Natasia Barrett-Boswell is yanked from her bed by a desperate need to comfort her two-year-old son, Xander. The only problem is, Xander has been dead for two weeks now. Still, she can hear him crying. Still,...
The night before the bulldozers rolled in with a battalion of police and soldiers, a helicopter hovering overhead, Suelyn Ward-Brown was on a roadside in the Clifton community in St Catherine, expressing concerns to news teams about the fate of...
Jamaica was never slated to be part of a controversial survey that was to be administered to secondary students in several schools across the Caribbean, the local education ministry has said. But following last week’s uproar in Barbados over the...
There has been a drastic increase in the registration of slot machines across the island, but regulators at the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission (BGLC) say they are still grappling with unscrupulous persons who continue to flout the law...
They may have replaced the broken fences and repainted the muddy walls, but the memories of the treacherous Weise Road flooding in St Andrew two years ago remain etched in residents’ minds and rekindled fears as the threat of Tropical Storm Ian...
Hope has been sparked for three primary schools in three gang-infested communities, with the opening of a long-awaited library that police and educators are praying will help realise the dreams of children most vulnerable to the crime and violence...
The screams erupted as shots ricochet off a wall behind the missed target. Expletives followed, laced with disappointment and joy from either side of the shoot-out. In the end, however, no one died, and the patrols of police and soldiers drove by...
It’s abnormal. It is untenable. And except for drastic interventions as early as the kindergarten level, there seems no end is near for Jamaica’s runaway crime problem, some educators believe. There are also long-standing calls for the severance of...
A snapshot study by researchers at the Northern Caribbean University (NCU) is suggesting that over-exposure of members of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) has caused an erosion of the military’s reputation and public image. The study comes on the...
The horror stories pop up on social media from time to time, but senior members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) are dispelling reports that frantic late-night calls for help to emergency lines and police stations are being turned away or...
At age 40, Andrew Gillings has given up on calling police emergency lines. He took the decision three years ago after he tried calling 119 for the first time to report that thieves were breaking into a neighbour’s car outside his gate in Pembroke...
For seven years, she lived at the Fletcher’s Land Police Station in Kingston; its barracks served as her bedroom, the two guardrooms her living and dining quarters. Seats in the reception area served as her sofa. Fate has been topsy-turvy for...
The Ministry of Education and Youth (MOEY) is seeking public buy-in on what it dubs its legacy policies, aimed at bolstering student experience across the island. But with limited sanctions against some violators, including schools that flout...
It is a matter of timing. Moving too fast or too slow could easily get them a deadly date with destiny as motor vehicles bark down the major highways across the island. The warning signs are large, clear and strategically placed along the highways...
It has been condemned and cauterised by the authorities multiple times, and on every occasion, unscrupulous persons have ripped open the ‘no-entry’ tapes, and made the abandoned premises theirs for business and pleasure. It is the abandoned Inez...
Whether to stave off police pressure or as a tactical hideout, gunmen are taking to the hills and bushes in several criminal hotspots, doubling the threat to the public and security personnel who pursue them. The practice is nothing new, but with...
‘Set-ups’, grave-diggings, vigils, and tears. The story of a rustic Spring Grove community in Porus, Manchester, stumped in grief and preparing to bury two of their own killed in motor vehicle accidents exactly two months apart. The first, 48-year...
Already faced with the perils of COVID-19 and reports that a case of the monkeypox virus has been confirmed locally, Jamaicans are again being warned about the long-standing HIV/AIDS pandemic, which researchers at the Northern Caribbean University...
An analysis of three single-use plastic bags submitted to the Bureau of Standards Jamaica (BSJ) as part of a probe into the Government’s plastic ban has confirmed that the items still on the market are indeed in contravention of the law. The three...
The potency of marijuana since its decriminalisation in 2015 has reportedly increased threefold, which may give some users higher doses than they can manage, a chief researcher at the Caribbean Toxicology Unit (CARITOX) at The University of West...
