Jamaica received a magnificent 60th birthday gift as the Reggae Girlz overcame many obstacles to qualify for our second consecutive World Cup. They clearly had a point to prove after the fiasco regarding their former coach. They played like ladies...
I heard music earlier this week as Minister Nigel Clarke announced that the Government intends to not only extend paid maternity leave but to also introduce paternity and family leave, coming out of the public sector compensation review. I like...
Guyana is one of the most intense, nuanced, and racially divided countries in the CARICOM Reparations initiative. It is the only country in the Caribbean, and perhaps in the world, that has an explicit “reparations bill” that was unanimously passed...
Jose Martí, the national hero of Cuba, once said: “Liberty is the right of every man, to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy.” But it ought to follow that liberty includes a man making a fool of himself in being dishonest and...
The Jamaica Stock Exchange (JSE) rarely tolls its bell. It is a symbolic gesture that this institution offers at the opening of the market when they have something significant to celebrate. On July 12, Horace Levy was in focus because Jamaica:...
Climate finance continues to be one of the biggest unresolved issues of global policy negotiations. Ahead of last year’s UN climate change conference (COP26), climate finance was considered the key challenge facing lawmakers – while some progress...
Recent events force me to return to the vexed issue of press freedom. Unfortunately for readers (both of them), this isn’t the first or second time I’ve pounded on this discordant drum. By now, most civic-minded citizens should know that in 2011,...
“Jamaica urgently needs to adopt an integrated approach to the planning and management of urban spatial development if sustainable urban development is to be achieved,” penned consummate Urban and Regional Planner Pauline McHardy, in a letter to...
The core of every public policy put together by this and every government must include making more of its citizens happy. Happiness is, of course difficult to define. A man in hospital with terminal cancer may find a burst of happiness as his...
Wah gwaan, Jamaica? It is my great honour to come to Jamaica, a shining pearl on the Caribbean Sea, to serve as the 16th Chinese ambassador to Jamaica on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between...
Nearly one in 10 people on this planet live with hunger. In just two years – from 2019 to 2021 – an additional 150 million people were thrust into hunger. The total number of undernourished people has reached the staggering figure of more than 828...
As an occasionally practising lawyer, I agree with UWI including the Use of English in every first year course. Maybe the original reason was to try to improve on the functional illiteracy rate churned out by primary and secondary schools. But I...
Minister Kamina Johnson Smith suffered an embarrassing loss in the race for Commonwealth secretary general last week. The three-vote loss is immaterial. Bright and as exceedingly accomplished as the foreign affairs and foreign trade minister is,...
The United States Supreme Court has reversed Roe v Wade, ending 50 years under one of the world’s most permissive abortion regimes. The American abortion landscape has been fundamentally altered with the decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health...
I have watched with eager anticipation the pitch ball game of insults being hurled across social media following last week’s US Supreme Court overturning of the Roe vs Wade ruling. Amid the angry demands of some women that “privileged, old, white...
This edition of Reparation Conversations pays respect to George Lamming, by presenting excerpts from the 2014 George Lamming Distinguished Lecture, which was delivered by Professor Verene Shepherd at Errol Barrow Centre for the Creative Imagination...
In this article I highlight three women, Vivien Morris (Jamaica), Francia Elena Márquez Mina (Colombia) and Aminata Touré (Germany), who have leveraged their activism and advocacy resourcefulness to effect transformation at individual, community...
Let’s go through this one more time. I promise to try to be quick. The Constitution provides, regarding a governor general’s declaration of a State of Public Emergency (SOE): The Court shall be competent to enquire into and determine whether a [...
The entire Caribbean has been jolted by a loss of volcanic enormity with the muting of one of its most powerful voices: the death of novelist, poet, storyteller, and political advocate George Lamming. True to form, George seemed to have written...
Home today to over 13,000 residents, the construction of the formal community of Harbour View, located in east Kingston was completed in 1963. The low hills behind the community consist of unconsolidated sand and gravel which are unstable. The...
“It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are accountable,” Moliere, French playwright and poet. The public defender told a parliamentary committee in January 2019 that nearly 4,000 people were detained during the St...
Recently, our Security Minister, Horace Chang, offered a view that if more money had been spent on upgrading the police rather than on social-intervention programmes, crime would have been reduced. Let me not accuse the minister of falling into a...
The practice is not new, but it is now blatantly nefarious. The murdering of children that our country seemingly grew accustomed to over the years has now sunk to a new low in the deepening abyss of serious crime. Shockwaves ricocheted throughout...
I find myself initially bemused then increasingly appalled at the intense public commentary on the off-again-on-again Festival Song competition. This example of skewed priorities tells a cynic like me that Government plans to turn Jamaica’s 60th...
Spanish tennis superstar Rafael Nadal’s recent victory at the French Open was his 14th at Roland Garros and 22nd Grand Slam victory, taking him – at 36 years old – two ahead of his “big three” arch-rivals: Swiss, Roger Federer; and Serb, Novak...
