As the COVID-19 pandemic lays bare gender and other enduring fault lines of inequality, the abuse of women has emerged as a main issue that cannot be ignored. In a July 2020 Gleaner article, my team and I at the Women Entrepreneurs Network of the...
President Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States. He is the fifth of that group who lost the popular vote but won the presidency. First, there was John Quincy Adams in 1824. Next there was Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. Benjamin...
Although Jamaica’s youth leadership space has been active for quite some time now, it is a far cry from the reality we wish to see, as it relates to the development of our Jamaican youth. I now seek to highlight my personal views on a few areas...
Published:Wednesday | November 18, 2020 | 12:08 AM
Analyses, so far, of the trade agreement signed on Sunday between 15 Asia-Pacific countries have been largely framed as a Beijing-manufactured geopolitical victory for China against the United States, which faltered on its Asian policy. Which may...
Published:Wednesday | November 18, 2020 | 12:08 AM
I gave an update on the OACPS-EU post-Cotonou negotiations in October in my article titled ‘Trade updates: CARICOM-USA, WTO, and post-Cotonou negotiations’. With the negotiating timeline extended, the negotiations have been ongoing and reports...
The week of October 18-24, 2020, was recognised as Health Records Week under the theme ‘Preserving Health Information Integrity for Future Development’. A number of activities were staged, within the confines of the COVID-19 protocols, to...
According to UNESCO, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in schools being shut all across the world, and Jamaica is included in the over 1.2 billion children in 186 countries globally that are out of the classroom. Understandably, education has...
When the coronavirus caused Parliament, after the September election, to convene at the Jamaica Conference Centre rather than at its home at Gordon House, Prime Minister Andrew Holness used the opportunity to press the case for the new legislative...
There is likely, in short order, to be an announcement of a temporary lowering of bound tariffs and special duties on agricultural products imported into Jamaica. This move will be to satisfy demand for farm produce at ‘affordable’ prices,...
There is official talk about opening up [the country] for Christmas. Jamaicans want to come home to visit and make merry with relatives and friends. People want to go out and about. Businesses want to earn meaningful income, and people want to have...
I am pleading with Government to accelerate the transition of basic schools to infant schools. When I had the privilege to serve, a process began which changed several scores of struggling institutions into formal association with primary schools...
The need for parliamentary oversight and the accountability of the executive is heightened today due to the increasing importance of government spending to offset the negative social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, worsened by the...
A response to the United Nations (UN) Secretary General António Guterres’ October 2020 policy brief, “COVID-19 and Universal Health Coverage,” in which he urged all countries to speed up and scale up investment in universal health coverage and in...
Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review Working Group dug into Jamaica’s records and made some scathing remarks. As expected, our neighbours to the north bemoaned our homicide rate and the ‘insufficient...
Toots Hibbert, lead singer of the Maytals, made a prophetic statement in his 1966 festival song, Bam Bam. It was about his character: “Soon you will find out the man I’m supposed to be.” The songwriter’s choice of “supposed” conveyed a sense of...
The grilling Jamaica faced last week at the United Nations about conditions in its prisons and the high numbers of police homicides remind us of the administration’s continued silence on its intention for Chief Justice Sykes’ report on the...
Here we go again! It didn’t take long for the newly appointed minister of agriculture to announce a plant-growing initiative. It is what ministers of agriculture do. Minister Floyd Green recently announced a $10-million project to provide...
Since the reopening of public schools in October, students and teachers have been spending hours online as they try to navigate the virtual classroom space in an attempt to meet learning objectives. Using Google Meets, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams,...
As a long-time fan of the Mumbai Indians since 2009 when Kieron Pollard became a member of the team, I believed that they were going to win this year’s Indian Premier League (IPL) tournament. However, given the fact, proven over the four centuries...
“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” – Aristotle The search for quality is often elusive. The CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) recently held their online media sensitisation session for the 11th European...
In philosophy, from the time of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the discipline of ethics has been an attempt to offer a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. What politics tries to do is to codify ethics into law, and to...
If the delay is to allow Prime Minister Andrew Holness to reach an accommodation with the new opposition leader, Mark Golding, then quietly reverse himself on having his party members chair several important parliamentary committees, we’ll...
THE RECENT wave of rainfall associated with the various tropical storms which have affected the island over the past weeks, if nothing, has exposed, once again, the frailty of the country’s physical infrastructure, in particular the building and...
HAVING SPENT March to August 2020 working for the Florida Democratic Party to prepare for the November presidential election, and then for the Biden-Harris campaign since August on voter protection in both Florida and Pennsylvania, I expect to have...
THIS NEWSPAPER owes, and hereby delivers, an apology to Pearnel Charles Jr. We have made demands on him for matters for which he appeared to be accountable, but over which he lacks real authority. Hopefully, that is the result of oversight,...
