The city of Paterson in New Jersey is paying homage to Jamaican immigrants for their decades’ worth of contribution in building that city. Approval was given in June for renaming a two-block portion of the popular Vreeland Avenue, Jamaica Way. The...
My most indelible experience as a 1970s London architecture student was visiting Poland and touring Auschwitz Birkenau, the largest German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centres operated 1940-1945, inscribed 1979 a UNESCO World Heritage...
On September 10, Jamaica will mark 18 months of fighting the mysterious coronavirus in Jamaica.The first case landed in Jamaica by a carrier from the United Kingdom on March 4, 2020. The Jamaican lady later became ill, and on March 10, the...
Running a country, especially in the middle of a pandemic, is like playing a game of basketball. You can’t use the ones for skittles, golf or table tennis. Moreover, while the fans and spectators are those for whom one plays, the only thing that...
It is said, give a man a gun and he will rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he will rob everyone. This is why the best banks in the Caribbean are in Guyana and Barbados. Even though you put your money in them, they never make you feel that you have...
The formal education system is becoming more and more unappealing to many Jamaican youth – not because young people don’t yearn for reaching the upper echelons of academia or because they don’t value information, but because the cost of education...
Last month’s destruction of hundreds of a licensed grower’s marijuana plants because his recertification could not be completed in time rekindles concerns about the regulatory environment in which the industry exists and the promise of its top...
Last week, using objective criteria, I demonstrated that none of the Maroon communities in Jamaica – largely descended from enslaved Africans – can legitimately be called “indigenous people”, even though centuries ago their ancestors may have...
Over the years, there have been substantial progressive developments in the work world. Today’s teams are vastly different from those of even a decade ago. The inkling of working without a smartphone or without access to the Internet may seem...
Crises. They come in all different colours, shapes and sizes: The 1962 stand-off between the US and the then Soviet Union right here in our backyard; the 1982 Tylenol misadventure which left seven people dead from cyanide poisoning; the 2016...
It is not a position at which we have arrived lightly, but The Gleaner endorses the Government’s decision to, during the new school year, limit in-class teaching of students above age 12 to those who are vaccinated against COVID-19. Fayval...
Published:Wednesday | September 1, 2021 | 12:09 AM
A few weeks ago, an important date for our Caribbean identity slipped by largely unheralded and unnoticed. The fourth of each July is Caribbean Community Day. But July 4, 2021, was also significant for marking the 20th Anniversary of the...
Published:Wednesday | September 1, 2021 | 12:09 AM
The arrival of a shipment from abroad may have eased the shortage of oxygen at Jamaica’s public hospitals. But the island’s health officials, including the minister, Christopher Tufton, owe the public an explanation of how they allowed this crisis...
Published:Wednesday | September 1, 2021 | 12:08 AM
I am moving from looking at the region’s merchandise exports into looking at trade in services starting with tourism, which is the principal service export. As COVID-19 has shown, several countries in the region are tourism dependent. I feel that...
I am writing to respond to an unfortunate innuendo by Mr Delano Franklyn in his article published in The Gleaner on August 28. He referenced the fact that in May 2020, the IMF granted approval for the disbursement of US$520m, and in March 2021, the...
The Reverend Merrick ‘Al’ Miller is set to receive a national honour, Commander of the Order of Distinction, on Heroes’ Day in October this year. According to a Gleaner story, Miller said: “I was a little surprised. A mean, I had to double-check...
Confronting a worsening coronavirus epidemic and a shortage of medical professionals, the Government last week appealed to retired doctors and nurses for help in providing healthcare, including the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines to Jamaicans. “With...
Some straight thinking would help us to stop confusing ourselves and wasting time, money and lives. Can we stop making a virtue of mix-up and claiming crooked thinking to be about ‘personal freedom’, or more seriously, exercise of ‘conscience’? Don...
The COVID-19 era is taking a major toll on every aspect of our lives. We are rapidly approaching two years of anguish, with no end in sight. This plague uses people as the means of multiplying itself and infecting others. Sadly, many people refuse...
If there is an upside from Jamaica’s third wave of COVID-19 infections, it would be that it is convincing – or frightening – some vaccine sceptics to be inoculated against the coronavirus. More people, the health ministry has reported, are turning...
Jamaica has been suffering from a lack of proper and convincing leadership over the last few months. Things are falling apart; the centre cannot hold. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the current leadership of Jamaica cannot manage serious...
Social media challenges have become routine. From the Blackout challenge to the Trip Jump Challenge and several others in between, these stunts have become the rage, and millions over the world are caught up in the frenzy. Some are harmless while...
A nurse died, a front-line essential worker who is fighting the war on COVID-19, and she picked up the virus on the job while working at the Percy Junor Hospital. It is a reality check though often, the cheque that the healthcare workers have to...
During the Olympics, as Jamaican athletes again demonstrated their dominance in track and field, a rather clever meme was circulating on social media. It was a map of the world as seen by Jamaicans. Big and broad, the island stretches across the...
Last Sunday, the latest Trinidad bulletin was that the man who calls the shots in the nation’s prisons put one in his foot. According to the newspapers, the prison commissioner, Dennis Pulchan, was out of commission because he was trying to holster...
