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....

Seeking to staunch bloodshed with more than 1,300 people killed this year, Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Sunday promised a vigorous legislative push to tackle the country’s galloping murder rate. The thrust follows last Thursday’s blocking o...

The privatisation of electrical inspection services previously offered by the Government Electrical Inspectorate (GEI) has led to a meteoric rise in costs for customers seeking to become registered on the grid which could threaten the push for...

WESTERN BUREAU: As countries have rolled down the shutters on travel to several southern African countries to buy time to stave off the Omicron coronavirus variant, Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett says that the scale of the impact here....

Physicians are reaffirming the need for Jamaicans to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as a new variant deemed highly transmissible has already triggered the imposition of travel restrictions in several southern African states, this as the United...

A slew of scandals dogging the Government has caused Prime Minister Andrew Holness to call for the fast-tracking of the Public Bodies Management and Accountability Regulations, 2020, to bolster the governance framework of the boards of public...

WESTERN BUREAU. Political battle lines have been drawn as the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) seeks to end the People’s National Party’s 40-year control of the Westmoreland Municipal Corporation (WMC) when the next local government elections are held...

“Nobody went out there and picked HIV off a shelf.” That pithy and profound message by Joseph McIntyre, deacon of Boulevard Baptist Church in St Andrew, served as a rallying cry on Sunday for Jamaicans to end discrimination against people with ...

Thirty-two-year-old Dwayne Fowler, the bus driver charged in connection with the deaths of five people and the injury of 18 others, had his bail extended in the St Catherine Parish Court last Friday. Fowler will return to court on December 14. It......

The Holness administration’s investment in the health sector has been hailed as a key plank of its development plan in central Jamaica. Michael Stern, deputy leader-elect of Area Council Three, said that construction of two modern clinics in May.....

Tomorrow, the Cabinet will discuss Jamaica’s plans to address the new omicron variant of COVID-19 that now has the world on high alert, triggering travel bans, and which the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared to be “of concern”, Heal...