Now that the races for the leadership of the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) is finally over and we now have our first female Prime Minister – Mrs. Portia Simpson-Miller, the country can expect to settle down.  Or so we were hoping.  Since becoming Prime Minister, Mrs. Simpson Miller has been turning a lot of heads recently.

She announced that things are going to be different.  Many of us were happy to hear that.  Everybody with even a fraction of a brain knew that things could not go on as they have been now for a very long time.  Mrs. Simpson-Miller seemed to have been the fresh air that we were all looking for.  However – what changes power can bring!  Or are they changes?

Mrs. Simpson-Miller has somehow got it into her head that in order to reduce the very high levels of corruption that is now characteristic of Jamaica, all state boards must have at least one pastor.  She has also made it known that it was god who has made her Prime Minister of Jamaica.  She has also made it clear that god will be at the forefront of all of her plans for Jamaica.  Recently, during a funeral service for one of the many victims of our crime crisis, Mrs. Simpson-Miller told the nation that the solution to this scourge is “fasting and prayer”.

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Earlier this spring, two articles out of the eastern portion of the United States kept me laughing heartily. One was from one major newspaper of record out of Washington D.C., and the second was from the OTHER major newspaper of record from the same city. The first article dealt with ‘why’ older Black women (32 and up) are ‘suddenly’ turning their noses up at the prospect of marriage. The second article dealt with the increase in the number of all-female gangs in the nation’s capital, many of them run by younger Black women (16 to 21) – some of them who are ALSO out-of-wedlock mothers.

Faced with the looming threat of a merciless humanitarian crisis, Latin American governments must hack through an entangled web of patent laws, corporate loopholes, and misguided U.S. initiatives, before they can even begin to deliver life-saving drugs to a mounting number of AIDS victims in their countries. In the shadow of the more-publicized African crisis, the AIDS epidemic in Latin America has slowly infected the most vulnerable, poverty-stricken stratums of society, exacerbating the plight of an already economically handicapped region.

In addition, in 2003, a year after the U.S. blocked a major 143-country agreement that would have allowed the world’s poorest countries to purchase discounted pharmaceuticals, the WTO added the ‘paragraph six’ waiver to the controversial Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights (TRIPS), which institutionalizes twenty-year patents on vital AIDS drugs. While the waiver was supposed to allow crisis-ridden countries that cannot manufacture drugs domestically, to import cheap alternatives, no country has yet been able to attain a license to import such reduced-price drugs due to the hopeless rigidity and complexity of the legislation. Such gnawing practical problems have led NGOs to call the arrangement “the present wrapped in red tape.”

Working for the Pharmaceutical Companies

DigiFestival.net, the first multimedia festival of art in streaming video is back!  The competition is sponsored by the Tuscan Government, the Florence District, the European Parliament – Italian Office and the City Hall of Prato.  The call for entries for the 2006 Edition is scheduled for March the 9th and the deadline is set for July the 9th.

When the curtains are raised on the 20th Olympic Winter Games in Torino, Italy the black, green and gold flying high above the white snows of the Italian Alps, leading the Jamaican Delegation will be noticeably absent. Alas, for the first time since we shocked the world and qualified for the
1988 Calgary Games, the Jamaica Bobsleigh Team will not be competing in the Winter Olympic Games.

From the beginning we have been as explosive at the start line as our summer athletes that have surged forward to win Olympic glory. That continues. What has also sadly continued is our inexplicable ability to raise the funds necessary for us to continue to compete at the Olympic level. It seems we have a lot more work to do in that area. Our lone driver, Winston Watt, was
a force majeure on the America’s Cup circuit in the United States and Canada, but with very limited ice time, he was only able to manage a fourth place finish in Koenigsee, Germany and thus did not qualify for the Olympics.

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NEW DELHI: The Indian Government is helpless and unwilling to crack down on the officers siphoning off the government funds in collusion with the underground terrorist outfits in the northeastern states and Kashmir.