BLUEFIELDS BAY, Jamaica - YOUNG fish leap in the wake of a warden’s patrol boat as it motors through waters off Jamaica’s southwest coast that are a brilliant palette of blues. Beneath the surface, reefs bristle with spiny lobsters, and rainbowcoloured parrotfish graze on algae and seawe...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - SINCE 2005 when the late president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez introduced the PetroCaribe initiative, several Caribbean governments have enjoyed a vital lifeline. But the time may have come to review the scope and expectations of the PetroCaribe relationship in the interest of the b...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - The following is an edited version of a speech delivered to the Lions Club of Kingston recently. Many Jamaicans are still uncertain as to the net benefits of our membership of CARICOM. The primary concern has been our trading relations with Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) within t...

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The Jamaica parliament has approved the legislation dealing with human trafficking less than a month after the United States placed the island on a Tier Two status for not fully complying with the minimum standards set by the U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Na...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - MOST PEOPLE, we expect, will welcome the harsher penalties as well as the new offences introduced into the law against human trafficking. For our Government, this week's approval by the House of Representatives of the amendments is a signal to the United States that we are se...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - OPPOSITION Leader Andrew Holness says that the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) believes that Jamaica should consider suspending its relationship with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) until it sorts out current issues with the regional body. "There could be a suspension until we get ...

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica, CMC – A three-day conference supporting economic empowerment and development in the Caribbean and the Pacific begins here on Wednesday. The forum, being organised by the United States Department of State in collaboration with the New Zealand government, will bring togeth...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - JUST before last week's 34th meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Conference of Heads of Government in Port of Spain, we bemoaned in this space that CARICOM, some five years after the eruption of the global economic crisis, had still not formulated a regional response...

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC - The state of the economy will be the focal point of a meeting of trade union officials who have raised concern about how Government paid employees are coping. With a public sector wage freeze in place, the devaluation of the Jamaican dollar and the recent increase in toll ra...

KINGSTON, Jamaica - It is not only the election of Doran Dixon to a second stint as president of the teachers' union. Other evidence abounds of how we have this education thing upside down; that there is a premium on form over outcomes. This past Sunday, for instance, this newspaper highlighted...