Hours after Eastern Caribbean neighbours Barbados declared republic status and swore in its first president, a veteran politician has criticised Jamaican lawmakers’ inertia in severing the country’s links to the British monarchy. Fitz Jackson,.....

Large primary schools have received the green light from Cabinet for a return to face-to-face learning while secondary schools that have achieved a 65 per cent vaccination rate of their student population will be allowed to reopen their doors. A...

A funding fallout from global donors is threatening to worsen already-waning public education campaigns on HIV/AIDS. Alisha Robb-Allen, acting senior director in the HIV/STI Unit in the Ministry of Health...

talks are still ongoing among Jamaica, Colombia and Haiti in relation to the transfer of Colombian fugitive Mario Palacios Palacios but it is unclear how soon the fate of the man fingered in the July 7 assassination of then Haitian President...

Even as Jamaica makes progress in driving down COVID-19 infections, Minister of Health and Wellness Dr Christopher Tufton has warned that high levels of bed occupancy by suspected and confirmed coronavirus patients could derail the country’s...

Concern is growing about the incidence of HIV among Jamaica’s homeless population amid a 57 per cent rise in infections over seven years among a segment of society’s most vulnerable. Health ministry data show that the infection rate among the......

One of the 33 alleged members of the One Don Gang reportedly told the police tersely “a suh di badness guh” before he was charged for being a member of a criminal organisation. The defendant, Rivaldo Hylton, to whom the comment was attributed, w...

The controversial contract that led to sharp dissent among former board members of Clarendon Alumina Production (CAP) has now been placed under the microscope of the Pamela Monroe Ellis-led Auditor General’s Department (AuGD). Finance and the...

WESTERN BUREAU: The Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica (TCJ) is calling for the Government to withhold the salaries of teachers who are found to be operating without a licence, instead of seeking to criminalise them under the Jamaica Teaching Council (...

Padmore Primary School principal Keisha Hayle has returned to the political fold of the Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) and is set to contest the Red Hills division in the upcoming local government elections due in three months. In a......

Senior defence lawyer Bert Samuels has challenged Prime Minister Andrew Holness’ position on how sentences for illegal possession of firearms should be handled, cautioning that the judiciary ought to be free from the influence of the executive and...

UNAIDS Country Director for Jamaica Manoela Manova is recommending condom distribution in prisons as an effective tool to help reduce the HIV transmission rate in local penal institutions. Noting that such a strategy has been shown to be beneficial....

Irregularities uncovered at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) involved payments of more than $30 million, according to “preliminary” estimates by the public cleansing agency. The abnormalities include “glaring concerns” a...

Winston Williams believes he was not vindicated by the very system he thought would protect him after being accused of a rape nearly 40 years ago, an act he insists he did not commit. But after serving an eight-year sentence, he has still not been.....

While there is no HIV hotspot in the country as the sexually transmitted infection is present in communities across the island, the heath ministry has said that, because of the population density in town centres, new cases are most likely to pop up....

WESTERN BUREAU: As global concerns swirl over the new Omicron variant, Dr Kaushal Singh, medical officer of health (MOH) in Hanover, has warned that the projected fourth wave of the deadly coronavirus here could be devastating and is pleading with.....

The chief investigator in the One Don Gang investigation disclosed on Monday that the police have faced difficulties obtaining call records from telecoms providers Flow and Digicel for the phones used by alleged members of the criminal organisation....

Veteran attorney-at-law Nancy Anderson has been lauded in death for her fierce advocacy for human-rights causes, especially for the vulnerable who languished on the margins of society. Anderson, an American migrant, was a leading voice for the...

Citing the controversial arrest and charge of a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) driver that sparked a strike on Monday, transport association heads criticised the police for an abuse of power that has stoked bitter division on the nation’s......

WESTERN BUREAU: Dr Alisha Robb-Allen, acting senior director of the Ministry of Health and Wellness’ HIV/STI Unit, says that young people and communities must be empowered to make responsible sexual choices, even while admitting that the ministry....