The Government has crafted a lean Budget for the upcoming fiscal year, focusing on an ambitious vaccination programme and jobs as linchpins to spark economic recovery. Both the recurrent and capital budgets are flat year on year, but the Government....

At least one Jamaican university has begun liquidating its investments to cushion the fallout sparked by COVID-19, which has decimated the budgets of tertiary schools islandwide. Institutions have been hit by a downturn in commercial operations,......

The Jamaican Government has hinted that it will punish anyone found guilty of breaching the JAMCOVID web portal with findings from an independent review expected to be turned over to the Holness administration today. The warning comes after the...

Western Bureau: Wild celebrations erupted in Accompong Town, St Elizabeth, last evening as supporters of 43-year-old Richard Curry sang and danced after it was announced that he had dethroned the incumbent, Ferron Williams, to become the new...

No ear-splitting vuvuzelas. No chest-thumping gusto. No full-throated bellows. An anticlimax. The carnival of bodies and bravado that transformed Duke Street into a canvas of colour was muted on Thursday amid a scaled-down ceremonial opening of...

WESTERN BUREAU: In a radical shift to a moderate inoculation plan, the Jamaican Government will now purchase 3.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines at a cost of $5 billion to immunise two million citizens in 2021. Originally, the Government had...

The Government’s revenue from tourism-related activities is being projected to take a massive hit in the upcoming fiscal year because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. An analysis of the Revenue Estimates 2021-22 shows that the Government is...

Petrojam, the state-owned oil refinery, says its performance is projected to remain stable in the new fiscal year, with no significant fluctuations in prices anticipated. It said that the global crude oil market is expected to remain fairly stable.....

Governor General Sir Patrick Allen used Thursday’s Throne Speech to resurrect commitments pitched in the lead-up to the 2020-2021 parliamentary year, an admission that some key legislative ambitions remained stillborn. The governor general told......

The exposure of personal data for tens of thousands of Jamaican and international travellers on the Government’s much-touted JAMCOVID web portal has triggered fears that the breach could threaten confidence in the Holness administration’s propo...

Finance Minister Dr Nigel Clarke is being pressed by a non-governmental charity and a household helper to carve out targeted assistance for struggling families whose budgets have been savaged by the coronavirus pandemic. With the 2021-22 Estimates.....

A leading Indian manufacturer of a vaccine in late-stage clinical trials has wooed the Holness administration with a pledge to inoculate Jamaica’s 2.8 million population. Bharat Biotech, the company that produces the COVAXIN vaccine, intends to.....

Armed men threw a Molotov cocktail through a window to flush 80-year-old retired mason Clifton Berry from his Rhymesbury home in Clarendon then shot him dead as he tried to escape on Wednesday night. It is the latest in a string of such attacks...

Munro College Chairman Elias Azan has said that the loss of almost a year of schooling because of coronavirus restrictions could set back the country for decades. His comment comes in the wake of this week’s closure of the all-boys high school in....

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP): An international tribunal has found that the Jamaican Government violated the rights of a gay man and a lesbian, according to a ruling released Wednesday, and activists say it could set a precedent in a region long known....

Christians yesterday marked the beginning of Lent with new-look Ash Wednesday services marked by fasting and prayer across the island amid the pandemic and its restrictions. Lent is the 40-day period of reflection on Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and.....

A push by Christian media workers from TBC Radio to join the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) has resulted in a dispute, with reports of a stand-off at Sunday’s annual general meeting (AGM). The row has triggered the resignation of legal...

The cold-blooded murders of two of their colleagues within 24 hours has driven fear into dozens of farmers across Westmoreland who now believe they are being targeted by deadly criminals. The murdered farmers have been identified as 62-year-old...

As the sentencing date inches closer for one of the killers of Simone Campbell-Collymore, her family is pressing for the maximum sentence to be imposed, preferably life without parole. Keshtina Bonner, the younger sister of the businesswoman, who......

WESTERN BUREAU: Disgraced former flight attendant Kalina Collier is not likely to be banned from ever visiting Jamaica, as Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett urges the closing of that chapter in the country’s history. Collier brought Jamaica’s na...