When we think of countries sharing common problems, we do not readily think of India and Jamaica. One is a populous multifarious behemoth, home to 1.3 billion people, while the other is a tiny island, the home of reggae and barely 2.7 million...
On June 9, the world paused in tribute to and protest of the killing of George Perry Floyd Jr Reminiscent of the first Moonwalk, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the release of Nelson Mandela, and the 9/11 NYC terrorist attack, there is a sense that we...
June 21 is observed as International Day of Yoga (IDY) throughout the world every year in order to spread awareness about the positive effects of yoga on people’s health. To mark this day, the high commission invites yoga enthusiasts and...
Waking up to screams, thuds, angry shouting, and the sickening sound of someone crashing into a wall, a table, a door. This is the cruel reality of many children and young people across our Commonwealth. As economies, institutions, and social-...
China held this year’s two sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC, China’s top legislature) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC, China’s top political advisory body) in May. The two sessions not only set...
The People’s National Party (PNP) has long been limping around with the twin horrors of its leader, Dr Peter Phillips, showing up less popular in opinion polls than the party he leads and, if that was insufficient ignominy, the PNP consistently and...
The golden-domed Bangla Sahib Gurdwara (abode of the gurus) in India’s capital city of New Delhi, the place of worship of the Sikh community, is cooking 100,000 free meals daily for the needy who have lost their livelihoods because of the COVID-19...
Political debates are hardly ever the stuff that those 40 and younger are even remotely interested in following. But add some spice and fireworks to it, and a new Verzuz is immediately generated. Finance Minister Nigel Clarke is young, handsome,...
COVID-19 has been a global pandemic for several months now, with no end in sight, and the virus is wreaking havoc on economic and health systems. Small, open economies such as those in English-speaking Caribbean have been the hardest hit,...
As the Caribbean begins to look beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, there is much consideration being given to legacies of the pandemic that will contribute to the socio-economic development of Caribbean people. Many of these legacies are expected to be...
The 73rd session of the World Health Assembly (WHA) was successfully held via video link on May 18 and 19. It is of significant importance for this WHA to be held at such a critical moment as the human race battles the novel coronavirus. Fighting...
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are characterised by their exposure to a variety of risks and limited capacity to deal with them when they occur. This is particularly true in the Eastern Caribbean, being especially prone to natural disasters...
Bad news has never been palatable. News of tragedy and horror is scarily assimilated because not to do so is to live in a delusionary place of fantasy. COVID-19 has badly brutalised the global economy, and many countries went into lockdown mode in...
In an article based on a discussion with one of Jamaica’s most noted entertainment journalists, the question was asked about the extent of losses in entertainment over the last two months due to COVID-19. I answered, “$2.5 billion”. That figure...
In May, 175 years ago, Jamaica changed forever. The ship Blundell Hunter completed its voyage from Kolkata, India. On board were 227 adults and 33 children. All of them came from what was then British India. It is perhaps fitting that this 175th...
This bar I know in the Kingston 8 area is, in the best of times, so cramped that if a man should walk in there and inside his shoes, he has athlete’s foot, within an hour, every man would be infected with ‘tinking toe’. That is, of course, a joke...
The crisis of COVID-19 facing Jamaica and its tourism industry must be used as an opportunity to revolutionise the industry and re-engineer the sector to accommodate the new world we will exist in after COVID-19. There is no doubt that this crisis...
Colm Delves had the two most important qualities of a successful CEO – ability and affability. Joining Digicel in 2003 from Hibernia Foods and initially working on a mobile licence in Lebanon, he was soon appointed CFO, quickly making his mark....
Last Thursday morning, I went to visit my youngest grandchild, three-year-old Morgan. As she emerged from her bedroom with her tablet in hand and a scream on her lips then saw me and barged towards me, I knew that a full embrace was not going to...
May 9 marked a very special day for all Russians as the day of the victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic war. At 00:16 hours on that day in 1945 Act of Military Surrender was signed by the German military leaders in Berlin. The...
I cannot quite remember the exact day he called me, but I know that it was sometime in the early 1990s. Six weeks before that, he was selected as constituency caretaker for a rough garrison seat that was going through some changes, slowly but...
The global COVID-19 spread has gone from bad to worse, with over 3.2 million confirmed cases and close to 250,000 deaths, not only has this pandemic claimed innumerable lives, it has also destabilised economies by freezing trade and other economic...
The national priority at this time must be the protection of the Jamaican people against the onset of COVID-19. This has to be done by striking the balance between implementing protective public-health measures and providing a supporting economic...
A few weeks ago while I was hosting a Friday slot of Cliff Hughes Online, a caller engaged me in a brief discussion about a matter that was never at the forefront on my mind. According to him, the inclusion of another major player in the national...
The lessons of COVID-19 are yet to crystallise, but the evidence so far has yielded some early insights of developments that are likely to shape the national and global agenda for the immediate future. The speed and scale of the spread of the...
