Commentary

Specialist personnel from the Royal Navy’s HMS Trent assisting hospital workers clearing the debris at Falmouth Hospital in Trelawny.
December 9, 2025

Chris Elmore | The UK stands with Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa

My visit to Jamaica this week comes just over a month after Hurricane Melissa – the strongest storm ever recorded here – swept across the island, leaving devastation in its wake. I will be visiting…
Balvin Thorpe writes: The deaths we have already seen in Jamaica from carbon monoxide poisoning are preventable.
December 9, 2025

Balvin Thorpe | Jamaica cannot afford another preventable generator death

The aftermath of Hurricane Melissa has revealed more than just infrastructural damage – it has uncovered a dangerous pattern of preventable household tragedies. In the weeks following the storm, the…
Minister of Local Government and Community Development, Desmond McKenzie (second left), with Mayor of Black River Richard Solomon (left), along with other key stakeholders. survey the extensive damage to the Black River Market in St.Elizabeth, following t
December 9, 2025

Editorial | Strengthen local government apparatus

When Hurricane Melissa struck last month, the natural expectation would have been for the island’s local government authorities to be quickly on the frontline, among the first responders, providing…
Minister of Finance and the Public Service, Fayval Williams
December 9, 2025

Editorial | When Fayval speaks

While her Cabinet colleagues have hogged the show, talking about everything – from its economic impact to plans for recovery, Fayval Williams, the finance minister, has been peculiarly quiet in the…
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December 9, 2025

Garth Rattray | Paradoxical desocialisation by social media – Part 1

Over the years, human beings have been extremely inventive and creative in discovering, inventing, or improving / developing things that are extremely useful to us as a race. Although we…
Ambassador Byron Blake
December 9, 2025

Byron Blake | COP30: A requiem for Jamaica and SIDS

With the omission of five small words, “transition away from fossil fuels”, from its final Declaration, COP30 sentenced Jamaica and other small islands and low-lying coastal states (SIDS) to an early…
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December 9, 2025

Orville Taylor | Frogs, plague and Melissa

Ignorance can be fatal. Panicked demagogues drew attention to a pond teeming with tadpoles. In a viral video, thousands of little black creatures wriggling and darkening the water. They were so…
Toppled JPS utility poles are seen along Hargreaves Avenue in Mandeville after Hurricane Melissa swept through Jamaica last month.
December 9, 2025

Editorial | Case for underground power lines

Hugh Grant, the CEO of Jamaica Public Service (JPS), the light and power company, is right about the tremendous cost if the island were to run its overhead power lines underground. His solution:…
Demonstrators protest against cuts to American foreign aid spending, including USAID and the PEPFAR programme to combat HIV/AIDS, at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill Washington DC.
December 9, 2025

Richard Amenyah | Transforming AIDS response to build resilience and hope in the Caribbean

We are in an era of overlapping crises – global financial instability, widening inequalities, and escalating climate shocks, among others, which compound the challenges faced by people living with and…