SECURITY companies that provide armed guard services are breathing a sigh of relief over planned changes to the regulatory regime for firearms licensing, which will allow their operations to continue unhindered in certain circumstances. In 2018 CEO of the Firearm Licensing Authority (FLA) Shane Dalling indicated that the changes were coming to the law to eliminate the situation where the firearms licences are issued to the principals of security companies, and not the entity itself.He explained at a meeting of a parliamentary committee at that time, that this could present a situation in which ..read more

SCORES of children at Corinaldi Primary School in St James were left traumatised on seeing a parent using a baton to beat a security officer at the institution on Monday afternoon . At press time Monday night the condition of the security officer was unknown, but following the incident he was rushed to Cornwall Regional Hospital where he has been undergoing treatment for the injuries sustained. The Jamaica Observer was told that about 4:15 pm, after school had been dismissed, a disagreement developed between the security officer and the parent, who apparently had made his way onto the school c ..read more

LONDON, United Kingdom (AP) - The World Bank says Ukraine's economy will shrink by 45.1 per cent this year because of Russia's invasion, which has shut down half of the country's businesses, choked off imports and exports, and damaged a vast amount of critical infrastructure. Unprecedented financial and export sanctions imposed by Western allies in response to the war, meanwhile, are plunging Russia into a deep recession, lopping off more than a tenth of its economic growth, the World Bank said in a report Sunday. The war is set to inflict twice the amount of economic damage across Europe and ..read more

AMIDST the rising anti-social behaviour amongst students, Shantelle Morrison, guidance counsellor at Norman Manley High School in St Andrew, has appealed to stakeholders in education to implement programmes in schools that will help students cope during face-to-face classes since COVID-19 had kept them away from that setting for some two years. According to Morrison, many children were exposed to a lot of physical, sexual and mental abuse while confined to a home setting. She argued that the experiences during the period in which schools were shuttered generated negative behaviours in some chi ..read more

LITTLE LONDON, Westmoreland - In an effort to steer the country's most at-risk young men away from a life of crime, legislative changes are being explored to make youth service mandatory. "It is clear to me that a part of the solution to our problem is that we must be out there, literally, recruiting the young men before the gangs recruit them," said Prime Minister Andrew Holness, in explaining the rationale behind the initiative. There is an emergency, he said, within the 16 to 24 age group of Jamaican men, one which the Government is treading carefully, on the legislative front, to address ..read more

SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland - Male students at Little London High School no longer have to be jealous that the girls' restroom is nicer than theirs. Last Friday, a group of alumni called Global Humanity Network Incorporated (GHNI) donated $1.5 million that will be used to spruce up the boys' restroom, as was done for the girls last December. "Little London is very special to that organisation and we were able to get them to come on board and partner with us. The area of concern really was that the male students felt really jealous about the female bathroom. They felt that they were being marg ..read more

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - The mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol said Monday that more than 10,000 civilians have died in the Russian siege of his city, and that the death toll could surpass 20,000, with corpses that were "carpeted through the streets".Speaking by phone Monday to The Associated Press, Mayor Vadym Boychenko also said Russian forces brought mobile cremation equipment to the city to dispose of the bodies, and he accused Russian forces of refusing to allow humanitarian convoys into the city in an attempt to conceal the carnage.The mayor's comments emerged as Russia claimed th ..read more

Jamaica College Old Boys' Association (JCOBA) says it is welcoming a recent decision by the school board to "back track from accusations of misappropriation that were levied against Major Basil Jarrett and the JCOBA" two weeks ago. "The walk-back came in two 11-page letters from the board's Deputy Chairman Lance Hylton to both The Gleaner and Jamaica Observer newspapers where Hylton wrote that 'No one has accused Jarrett of misappropriation of any funds', in regard to the JCOBA's handling of the uniform centre at the school," JCOBA said in a news release last week. The association also stated ..read more

ALTON Baker, the man convicted for the slaying of two St Elizabeth students in January 2014, on Friday had his murder convictions set aside and substituted for manslaughter after the appeal court found that the trial judge had erred in failing to leave the issue of provocation to the jury, and as such deprived Baker "of the consideration of the lesser offence of manslaughter". The St Elizabeth man, who was in 2017 convicted on two counts of murder before Justice Martin Gayle, had been sentenced on both counts to life imprisonment at hard labour, with the stipulation that he should serve 30 yea ..read more

THE United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) is using a slew of strategies under its five-year country programme to help bolster national efforts to protect and secure the rights of Jamaican children, and reduce inequities which confront them in the society. Jean Gough, UNICEF regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, says the 2022-2026 programme includes ramping up access to digital learning. "This is something that we progressively need to roll out across the different countries; children do not need to lose their education system, but continue learning. We are looking at it as i ..read more