Jamaica’s emergency management office said it would likely take three more days to bring the fire under control and five days after that before the foul-smelling smoke stopped billowing from the Riverton City solid waste dump.

Firefighters have struggled to extinguish the blaze at the seaside dump since it erupted Monday night. On Thursday, the waste management authority appealed for help to people with water trucks and heavy-duty equipment.

Officials in the control tower at Norman Manley International Airport on the outskirts of Kingston said no flights had been delayed or rerouted, but air traffic controllers and pilots struggled in the hazy conditions.

Shantytowns ring the open-air landfill, and government housing complexes and middle class neighborhoods have been built nearby. Smoke also hung over the southern city of Portmore, just west of Kingston and downwind from the dump.

The Jamaica Environment Trust said the health of all Kingston residents was being threatened by the gray smoke wafting from the dump, calling the fire an “environmental, human rights and public health catastrophe.”

There has been virtually no control over what is unloaded at the site so fluorescent bulbs containing mercury, car batteries, tires and all manner of industrial, commercial and animal waste are burning there, the group said.

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The movie tells the story of a gang leader in Jamaica with ties to a political party and his struggle raising a child. It stars American actor Roger Guenveur Smith (“Malcolm X”, “Do The Right Thing)” and Jamaican newcomers Sheldon Sheperd and Nicole ‘Sky’ Grey.

Long time Caribbean radio host from WBLS, Dahved Levy will host and there will be a Q&A with director, Storm Saulter following the movie.

Buy Tickets Here

Watch The Trailer

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That Thursday more than a year ago, police in a van skidded to a stop where Mickey Hill stood among friends and relatives outside his home on the main street in Negril, a western beach town popular with tourists. He had just returned from the store with a black plastic bag of groceries: canned milk, flour and cornmeal.

One of the policemen, addressing Mickey as “big man,” ordered him to open the bag, Richard Hill said.

“When he brought his hand out, it was boom boom boom! Man, the first of the three shots went straight through the tinned milk he was holding in front of him,” said Richard Hill. Police then threw his brother’s lifeless body into the back of a jeep and drove away, he said.

The Hill case has become a rallying point to end what human rights activists say is a culture of impunity that has allowed police to serve as judge, jury and executioner. Police said they were investigating the presence of gunmen and had indeed recovered a gun, but witnesses insisted there was no gun, nor were there gunmen, in the area. Hill worked as a captain of a sight-seeing boat.

“He was a family man, a working man, but the cops gave him no chance,” said Hill, his eyes tearing.

The family’s supporters have staged small rallies, including a candelight vigil in Negril on the anniversary of his slaying, demanding answers. The human rights group Jamaicans for Justice raised the case in a report to the U.N. Human Rights Committee.

Hill and the rest of his family are bracing for a delayed round in court to determine whether the accused officer may be held accountable. But in Jamaica, chances are it will be a long, painful wait.

More than 2,000 fatal shootings by security officers were reported by police over the last decade in this Caribbean country of 2.8 million people, but only one officer stands convicted of involvement in a wrongful killing. Police almost always claim that the deaths came as they responded to unprovoked gunfire.

Police statistics show that more accused officers have fled the island than have been convicted of abuse since 1999.

In May 2010, in one of the bloodiest episodes in Jamaica’s recent history, 70 civilians were killed over the course of a few days while security forces hunted drug kingpin Christoper “Dudus” Coke. Officials promised to investigate, but have barely begun.

“After more than a year-and-a-half of waiting, what can you possibly find if you begin an investigation now? Blood samples, gunshot residue, likely fingerprints are lost,” said Yvonne McCalla Sobers, head of the Jamaican rights group Families Against State Terrorism. “That is enshrining impunity.”

Some despair of ever getting answers.

“I have no faith in the integrity of the systems in Jamaica,” said Claudine Clarke, whose father, an accountant, was shot 22 times by security forces in his upscale home outside Kingston during the police and military raids to catch Coke. At the time, authorities said they were operating on intelligence that the powerful gang leader was hiding there.

Most of the killings occur in rough neighborhoods that are seldom seen by the tourists who flock to the scenic island’s beaches. The areas are usually densely populated slums and shantytowns where violence is common.

Deputy Police Commissioner Glenmore Hinds says the complaints are overblown, noting that Jamaican officers often work in very difficult environments and are threatened by the enormous number of illegal guns on the streets. About 70 percent of last year’s roughly 1,100 murders were committed with illegal guns and about 12 to 14 police officers are killed each year.

Hinds said police are trying to dismantle major gangs and lowered Jamaica’s crime rate last year by 23 percent. Allegations of recurrent police abuses are from “ill-informed people,” he said.

“But we would never say that there are not any problems, and we take no comfort in any allegations of wrongdoing,” said Hinds, who pointed out that the 211 reported police killings last year were 69 fewer than the official tally of 2010.

Critics say they see no changes in what they call a shoot-first mentality among police.

“In the late 1990′s, we were aghast at the police killing figures of 130, 140. Now, amazingly, 211 killings is touted as a sign that we had a good year,” Sobers said.

The roughly year-old Independent Commission of Investigations, set up by the government to investigate police abuses, is struggling to get reforms from security forces and cooperation from an ineffective justice system, where a backlog of unresolved criminal cases stands in excess of 414,000.

The commission says investigations of alleged brutality by agents of the state continue to be “plagued by delay, inertia and a lack of adequate resources.”

The problems have been aggravated by an overworked and under-equipped crime lab that can take months or even years to analyze ballistics evidence.

National Security Minister Peter Bunting, who has been in office for about a month, said he hopes to develop new policies encouraging the use of non-lethal weapons to stem the bloodshed.

It is often tough to even know which officers commit abuses because police in gritty slums sometimes wear masks or kerchiefs over their faces and too many routinely conceal their badge numbers on patrols, said independent commission chief Terrence Williams.

“It is already difficult to identify them with all their gear. When on top of that they wear a mask covering their face, it is impossible to identify them,” Williams said.

Police spokesman Karl Angell said there would be no comment about another agency’s criticism. But at a press conference last year, Angell said officers are only permitted to wear masks in “very, very special circumstances” to protect their identities on sensitive operations, and must have received approval of the high command.

Nevertheless, the use of identity-masking balaclavas or handkerchiefs is actually on the rise, according to Carolyn Gomes, executive director of the Jamaicans For Justice rights group.

At least two of the officers who descended upon Hill’s brother on Nov. 4, 2010, were wearing masks, according to relatives and other witnesses.

Hill and his family are getting frustrated with the slow pace of Jamaican justice, which they believe is meant to chip away at their resolve.

Early last year, Williams’ commission arrested and charged an officer with the slaying, but the public prosecutor’s office withdrew that charge, arguing the panel did not have the power to bring a case before the court. The backlogged prosecutor’s office then filed its own indictment, and the accused Kingston-based officer was released on roughly $6,000 bail. Setting a trial date was delayed last month and it’s not clear when the case might be heard.

“The way they do it here, people always wait for years so the witnesses give up if they don’t get scared first,” Hill said quietly, standing beside a tree where one of the accused policeman’s bullets lodged. “But we’re seeing this through. We’re not letting this go.”

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Jamaican police claim that the charges stem from an incident that happened at his home in St. Andrew earlier this month.

The Jamaica Gleaner reports:

The police said detectives assigned to the Centre for the Investigation of Sexual Offences and Child Abuse conducted investigations, which led to Elephant Man being arrested yesterday.

They said he was questioned in the presence of his attorney yesterday and then later charged with grievous sexual assault and rape.

Read More At The Jamaica Gleaner

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Jamaica has been independent for almost 50 years as it left the British Empire in 1962, but the Jamaican constitution still lists Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as the head of state.

Aljazeera reports:

Speaking at her inaugural address on Friday, Portia Simpson Miller, said her government would “initiate the process of detachment from the monarchy”, establishing a republic with a president as head of state, and breaking off links with the former colonial power.

Jamaica is a constitutional parliamentary democracy and also a Commonwealth realm.

“I love the Queen. She’s a beautiful lady and apart from being a beautiful lady a wise lady and a wonderful lady. But I think time come,” Simpson Miller said.

Read More At Aljazeera

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The 66-year-old Simpson Miller took the oath of office Thursday in a ceremony before thousands of guests on the lawn of the governor-general’s residence. Her 1½-year-long first stint in office ended in 2007.

Simpson Miller takes over from Andrew Holness, who was prime minister for a little more than two months.

Her People’s National Party won 42 seats in the 63-seat Parliament. Holness’ incumbent Jamaica Labor Party got just 21.

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Fed up with chronic hard times, voters in this debt-wracked Caribbean nation on Thursday threw out the ruling party and delivered a landslide triumph to the opposition People’s National Party, or PNP, whose campaign energetically tapped voter disillusionment especially among the numerous struggling poor.

The win marks a remarkable political comeback for former Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who was Jamaica’s first female leader during her year-and-a-half-long first stint in office that ended in 2007. The 66-year-old known affectionately as “Sista P” reached out to Jamaicans as a champion of the poor with a popular touch.

“She cares about the ghetto people,” said Trishette Bond, a twenty-something resident of gritty Trench Town who wore an orange shirt and a bright orange wig, the color of Simpson Miller’s slightly center-left party, which led the island for 18 years before narrowly losing 2007 elections.

As word of her election win emerged Thursday night, PNP supporters shimmied and shouted in the capital, Kingston, and motorists honked horns in celebration as they tore down the streets.

“I am humbled as I stand before you and I wish to thank the Jamaican people for their love, for their support and for giving the People’s National Party and the leader of the party her own mandate,” she said, after receiving hugs from numerous candidates, some crying.

Simpson Miller defeated Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who at 39 is Jamaica’s youngest leader and leads the center-right Jamaica Labor Party.

Holness said the defeat will prompt a time of introspection and reflection for party leaders to examine what went wrong.

“I wish the new government well. We hope for the benefit of the country that they will do a good job,” said Holness, who warned during the campaign that an opposition win would scare away foreign investment and dash hopes of economic progress.

While official results have not been released, elections director Orrette Fisher told The Associated Press that preliminary results showed Simpson Miller heading to victory.

“Based on the margins, it appears safe to say” that Simpson Miller’s party won, Fisher said shortly after Jamaican newspapers and broadcasters called the election for the PNP. He expected his office to release the official count and breakdown of parliamentary seats on Saturday.

News station TVJ said Simpson Miller’s People’s National Party won 41 seats in parliament and Holness’s Jamaica Labor Party 22.

Simpson Miller is beloved by her supporters for her folksy, plainspoken style. She became Jamaica’s first female prime minister in March 2006 after she was picked by party delegates when P.J. Patterson retired as leader. But she was tossed out of office a year later in a narrow election defeat.

This time around, she has pledged to lift debt-wracked Jamaica out of poverty, secure foreign investment, and create jobs. Specifics are few, however.

Her party will face deep economic problems in this island of 2.8 million people, with a punishing debt of roughly $18.6 billion, or 130 per cent of gross domestic product. That’s a rate about 10 percentage points higher than debt-troubled Italy’s.

Veteran opposition lawmaker Omar Davies said one of the first things the People’s National Party will do is get “a true assessment of the state of the economy,” a dig at Holness’ party which was accused of rarely providing citizens with a clear picture of the island’s dire fiscal straits.

Holness, who became prime minister two months ago after Bruce Golding, Jamaica’s leader since 2007, abruptly stepped down in October amid anemic public backing, won his parliamentary seat with 54 percent of the vote.

Simpson Miller has been a stalwart of the People’s National Party since the 1970s. She was first elected to Parliament in 1976 and became a Cabinet member in 1989. Partisans have long admired Simpson Miller as a Jamaican who was born in rural poverty and grew up in a Kingston ghetto, not far from the crumbling concrete jungle made famous by Bob Marley.

During her brief tenure as prime minister, her support waned amid complaints she responded poorly to Hurricane Dean and was evasive about a scandal regarding a Dutch oil trading firm’s $460,000 payment to her political party leading up to 2007 elections.

The two top candidates’ different styles were clear while they cast their votes.

Holness is largely seen as unexciting, but bright and pragmatic. He whisked into the voting center in the middle class area of Mona, barely interacting with voters. After being heckled by an opposition partisan, he said he was “very confident” of a Labor victory and departed after taking three questions from reporters.

By contrast, Simpson Miller hugged and chatted with supporters at a school in Whitfield Town and told election workers to help struggling elderly voters.

Her party, which experimented with democratic socialism in the 1970s, is still perceived as more focused on social programs than the slightly more conservative Labor. There are no longer stark ideological differences between the two clan-like factions that have dominated Jamaican politics since the onetime British colony began self-rule in 1944. Jamaica became independent within the British Commonwealth in 1962.

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Jamaican elections have turned violent in the past but there were no reports of trouble as polls opened for the 63 parliamentary races. Soldiers with automatic weapons kept watch over the polling station in the Mona neighborhood where Prime Minister Andrew Holness was expected to cast his ballot and where the voters appeared sharply divided.

Alyshia Campbell, a 27-year-old first-time voter who was one of the first people to trickle in, said she was voting for the opposition People’s National Party because she was able to study medicine in Cuba under the government of Portia Simpson Miller.

“Under them, I got a chance to study so I hope they win,” she said, holding a medical textbook beneath her arm. “It’s harder now.”

Joan Gregory McNeish, showed up wearing the PNP’s color of orange from head to foot.

“Labor and Holness stand for decay, for no ethics, for American-backed corruption,” she shouted to two Associated Press reporters. “PNP the only way forward. Ghetto people won’t take any more crap.”

With most opinion polls putting the two parties in a dead heat, candidates have scrambled for traction with undecided voters across the Caribbean island known as the birthplace of reggae and a hothouse for big-time sprinters.

Holness is a 39-year-old lawmaker who was chosen to be prime minister by his party just two months ago when predecessor Bruce Golding resigned amid anemic public backing. He has promised new jobs in a debt-wracked nation with roughly 13 percent unemployment.

“Jamaicans are now safer, our economy is stable with a solid foundation for job creation,” Holness said in a last-minute national address.

Holness, largely seen as unexciting but calm and pragmatic, said his party has started to reverse economic stagnation and has effectively battled criminal gangs that have long been the scourge of the country. He has also pledged to modernize the bloated public sector without massive layoffs.

He argues that the PNP mismanaged the economy over its 18-year-tenure until its 2007 election loss, causing a steady devaluation of the Jamaican dollar that cut deeply into the purchasing power of most wage earners.

Opposition leader Simpson Miller, a stalwart of the PNP since its days as a democratic socialist faction in the 1970s, has dismissed Holness as indecisive and painted his party as hopelessly corrupt and unsympathetic to the plight of Jamaica’s many poor inhabitants.

Simpson Miller was born in rural poverty and grew up in a Kingston ghetto, not far from the crumbling concrete jungle made famous by Bob Marley. Also referred to as “Sista P” and “Comrade Leader,” she is known for her plain speaking style and warm interactions with supporters.

But detractors say she was out of her depth during her brief tenure as Jamaica’s first female prime minister between March 2006 to September 2007, when her party was narrowly voted out of power.

The winner will face deep economic problems. The island of 2.8 million people has a punishing debt of roughly $18.6 billion, or 130 per cent of gross domestic product, a rate about 10 percentage points higher than Italy’s.

Jamaica’s economy has been on a meager upswing, but roughly 60 percent of government spending still goes to debt and another 30 percent pays wages. That leaves just 10 percent for education, health, security and other parts of the budget.

Still, the monthlong campaign often had a festive feel as cheering, horn-honking caravans of partisans attended packed rallies, waving banners and dancing to reggae tunes pounding out of big speakers.

Political Ombudsman Bishop Herro Blair said Wednesday that the campaign was one of the “best we’ve ever had” in Jamaica, with just three deaths and about a half dozen injuries that he says investigators might eventually determine to be politically motivated.

In the lead-up to the 1980 elections, more than 800 people were killed in political clashes. Since then, large-scale political violence has dissipated and most killings are blamed on the drug and extortion trade.

The political team at the Jamaica Gleaner, the island’s largest newspaper, has projected that Labor will hold onto power by capturing 34 of the 63 seats, while the PNP will claim 29.

Omar Wright, a 23-year-old unemployed man voting in his first election, said a lack of jobs convinced him to vote for the opposition.

“It’s hard out here,” Douglas said on a packed corner in downtown Kingston, where vendors were selling flip flops, towels and phone cards. “I don’t think any of these politicians really know how hard it is, but we need a change.”

Nearby, Reiza Davies, a 29-year-old clothes vendor, said she was voting Labor because people in her community always do.

“Anything is better than the PNP,” she said, making a sour face.

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Dane Lewis, executive director of the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays, said Jamaica Labor Party candidates have “unfortunately descended into pulling the sexuality card” in advance of Thursday’s tight vote.

“It’s been disappointing that they’ve chosen this road yet again because it seems to historically be their stance during campaigning,” said Lewis, adding that his group is not endorsing any political party.

Politicians have routinely railed against homosexuals in Jamaica, where a colonial-era sodomy law bans sex between men and many people in the highly Christian nation perceive homosexuality as a sin.

But during a debate last week with Prime Minister Andrew Holness, opposition chief Portia Simpson Miller called for a review of the law. She argued that professional competence, not sexual orientation, will determine who is selected for a Cabinet post if her People’s National Party wins.

Since then, some top Labor candidates have made homophobic comments at political rallies, among them Cabinet minister Daryl Vaz, who said “God created Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve,” prompting applause and anti-gay slurs from his West Portland constituents.

Labor’s candidate for West Central St. James, Energy Minister Clive Mullings, asserted that easing up on laws against homosexuality would bring God’s wrath down on Jamaica, while West Kingston candidate, Kingston Mayor Desmond McKenzie, used an epithet at a rally while an anti-gay dancehall song played.

In a Sunday editorial, the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper called the recent developments “not only sad, but dangerous.”

“Some might add cynical and vulgar.”

On Tuesday, the opposition People’s National Party stressed that Simpson Miller’s comments were being distorted by Labor partisans. They said the party is committed to a review of the anti-sodomy law, not its repeal.

Peter Phillips, campaign director for the People’s National Party, rejected allegations by Vaz that the opposition had received funding from any international gay rights groups, asserting that Simpson Miller’s party in no way supported “any gay agenda.”

It is not yet clear if either side’s recent comments about homosexuality and the sodomy law will hurt their chances in Thursday’s election for the island’s 63 seats in Parliament. Recent polls have shown the two main parties in a statistical dead heat.

Despite the easygoing image propagated by the island’s tourist boards, Jamaica is by far the most hostile island toward homosexuals in the already conservative Caribbean, gays and their advocates contend.

Many Jamaicans insist hostility toward gays is blown out of proportion by gay activists. Some say Jamaica tolerates homosexuality as long as it is not openly displayed.

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A police statement said the bloody head was found Wednesday along a commercial strip in Spanish Town, a southern city where violent gangs are deeply entrenched and authorities impose frequent curfews.

The head, which investigators say matches Navardo Hodges of the Clansman gang, had a bullet wound in the middle of the forehead, common of gangland executions in the troubled area. A headless body with gunshot wounds was found splayed on a nearby street.

Detectives suspect the twenty-something Hodges was butchered in revenge for killing the sister of Chan Tesha Miller, the reputed Clansman leader who was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison after being convicted of robbery, assault and weapons possession.

Miller’s arrest set off protests in Spanish Town, where the Clansman have long had a powerful presence.

Authorities said the latest decapitation appeared to be related to an ongoing power struggle within the gang, which has been at war for years with the police and another group, the One Order gang. Over the past year, the Jamaican government’s offensive against crime has created power vacuums within the Clansman.

Police had linked Hodges to a dozen slayings and offered a reward of nearly $6,000 for information leading to his capture.

In mid-July, a churchgoing mother and daughter were beheaded by attackers who invaded their home in the Spanish Town area, near where a wanted 18-year-old Clansman member was found with his head chopped off.

To avenge a death, Jamaican gangs sometimes will murder someone who lives in a neighborhood controlled by perceived enemies, and not specifically target a member of a rival gang.

Drysdale was convicted of robbery with aggravation, indecent assault, wounding with intent and illegal possession of firearm.

The Jamaica Star reports:

The police found Drysdale at the hospital suffering from an injury to the penis. When questioned he said that he was in bed with a woman when her jealous lover came home and hit him with a piece of chain on his penis. The penis which was bandaged was almost severed.

The Crown led evidence that on June 20, 2008, Drysdale committed the offences in Stony Hill, St Andrew. He went to the homes of three women, robbed and raped two of them, indecently assaulted the third woman and then wounded her.

Read More At The Jamaica Star

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Chung is half Chinese and his mother is a former reggae star who appeared on the popular British music program, “Top Of The Pops.”

Yahoo Sports reports:

Patrick Chung sits in a Red Robin restaurant located in an outdoor mall near Gillette Stadium. Just 9 years old when the family left, he knows little about his mother’s life in Jamaica. He’s seen pictures and heard her songs. He can sing many of them. But he was too young to know the travelling life, the bands, the DJs and nightclub performances. By the time he was old enough to grasp what his parents did for work, they had moved – first to Miami and then to Rancho Cucamonga, a suburb southeast of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County.

But now as he is rising as a star with New England, as he becomes a bigger and bigger deal in a city where professional athletes are revered, it is the lessons of her career that he does understand. “Be humble,” she always told him. You never know when it all might end.

Read More At Yahoo Sports

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According to reports, 12 officers were injured and one died after Vybz and seven other prisoners held up guards at gunpoint before taking officers’ clothing and car keys to escape. Jamaican police told the Jamaica Observer Vybz did not escape from prison and that the story was made up.

The Jamaica Observer reports:

Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green told the Observer early this morning that he had no knowledge of the reported jail break.

“I know nothing about that. If that had taken place I would would certainly have known,” Green said.

Police at Denham Town Police station, the closest police station to the remand centre were also unaware of the reports as was the Constabulary Communication Network who also claimed ignorance of any jail break.

“It may be an attempt by his cronies to keep him in the news but they don’t need to spread rumours to do that because he will be in the news for quite some time,” one cop told the Observer.

Read More At The Jamaica Observer

MTV UK had reported:

It is reported that Kartel and several other prisoners managed to take control of the prison shortly after 1am local time this morning (30/11/11), taking clothes and keys from guards before escaping in a prison maintenance pickup truck at approximately 1.45am.

One police officer is thought to have died of a heart attack during the escape with at least twelve others injured, including two who were shot with guns apparently smuggled into the prison ahead of the raid.

Read More At MTV UK

The ruling Wednesday rejects a bail application by 35-year-old Vybz Kartel (VIBES KAR-tel) in the slaying of a 27-year-old music promoter who was gunned down on a street corner in July.

Resident Magistrate Opal Smith has not given a reason for refusing bail.

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Kartel has also been charged in an August slaying. Assistant Police Commissioner Ealan Powell has said the dancehall reggae star is being investigated in connection with “a number of murders, shootings and gunrunning.”

Kartel’s defense team has not yet commented on the bail refusal.

A police statement issued Monday evening says dancehall star Vybz Kartel was charged with murder, conspiracy to murder and illegal possession of a firearm.

Police accuse the rapper, whose real name is Adijah Palmer, of conspiring with others to kill a 27-year-old promoter who was slain on a street corner earlier this year.

Kartel’s defense attorney, Tom Tavares-Finson, could not be reached about the allegations on Monday night.

The 35-year-old Kartel was initially arrested Friday for marijuana possession.

Known for sexually explicit and violent lyrics, Kartel has previously been arrested on charges including assault and illegal gun possession. Those charges were later dropped.

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Daughter Patrice Dillon says her father died Wednesday at her home of lung and prostate cancer.

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She says Dillon had been diagnosed with cancer in June and underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor earlier this year.

Leonard Dillon began his career using the stage name Jack Sparrow in the early 1960s. He recorded a series of ska songs, including Bull Whip, which featured a young Bob Marley on backing vocals.

Dillon later formed The Ethiopians, a trio whose best known hits were Train to Skaville and Everything Crash.

Dillon is survived by seven children.

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Golding would resign once a new leader of the Jamaica Labor Party is elected, expected at an annual general conference in November. The party’s leader automatically becomes the prime minister.

The announcement was made in a brief statement credited to Golding and the party. It said Golding informed its central executive committee of his decision at a quarterly meeting in the capital of Kingston. The 63-year-old Golding is a veteran lawmaker who was expected to lead his party into the 2012 general elections.

“(Golding) said the challenges of the last four years have taken their toll and it was appropriate now to make way for new leadership to continue the programmes of economic recovery and transformation while mobilizing the party for victory in the next general elections,” the statement said.

Dennis Meadows, a senator and member of the Jamaica Labor Party’s executive committee, said there has been an “overwhelming response” for Golding to stay on as party leader.

“He feels the chances of the party winning the next elections are at a disadvantage with him at the head, but there’s no questioning of his competence,” Meadows said.

Later in the day, party chairman Mike Henry said the central executive voted to reject Golding’s decision to resign as party leader. However, Information Minister Daryl Vaz said on local radio that the decision about the prime minister’s upcoming resignation was final.

Education Minister Andrew Holness, also from the Labor Party, dominated a poll conducted earlier this year asking islanders who should lead the Caribbean country if Golding were to step down.

Golding’s career has been in jeopardy since 2009 because of his handling of the extradition of Jamaican drug kingpin Christopher “Dudus” Coke to the United States. Critics have slammed Golding for allowing the contracting of a law firm to lobby Washington to drop their request for extradition.

Golding resisted Coke’s extradition for nine months, arguing the U.S. indictment on gun and drug trafficking charges relied on illegal wiretap evidence. Golding’s Parliament district included Coke’s West Kingston slum stronghold.

The stance strained relations with Washington, which questioned Jamaica’s reliability as an ally in the fight against drug trafficking.

When Golding finally agreed to send Coke to the U.S., a hunt for the fugitive led to days of fighting in May 2010 that killed at least 73 civilians and three security officers. Coke was captured about a month later and extradicted.

Last month, Coke pleaded guilty to racketeering and assault charges, admitting his leadership of the brutal Shower Posse gang. He is due to be sentenced in December.

The Coke controversy prompted Golding to offer his resignation last year, but it was rejected by his party.

Peter Phillips, a spokesman for the main opposition People’s National Party, asserted that the ruling party’s announcement was brought on by the Coke saga, one of the bloodiest episodes in Jamaica’s recent history, and the government’s inability to fix the island’s poor economy.

“I think it is reflective of the low standing the prime minister has amongst the Jamaican people. His credibility was destroyed in the Christopher Coke fiasco,” Phillips said during a Sunday phone interview.

From its national executive council gathering in the northern city of Montego Bay, the People’s National Party called on Golding to immediately call general elections “to resolve the crisis of governance in the country.”

Golding, the son of a successful businessman who also served in Parliament, returned his party to power in 2007 after 18 years in opposition.

Last year, he vowed to crush street gangs and replace their strong-armed rule with social programs for the poor. While security forces have since launched a sustained crackdown on gangs that has resulted in decreases in homicides and other crimes, Jamaica’s sprawling underclass is still struggling.

Golding has repeatedly denied any ties to Coke, and even resigned from the Labor Party in the mid-1990s to form a new party that would be free of gang links. He rejoined Labor in 2002.

Political observers say Golding could not have been elected to his parliament seat without the support of Coke, the former don of Tivoli Gardens, which has a long-standing reputation as a vote-rich stronghold for the Jamaica Labor Party. Coke also thrived under the opposition People’s National Party, which led the island for nearly two decades before Labor’s 2007 win.

Bolt’s performance comes nearly a week after he was disqualified from the 100m final, a race in which he holds the world record.

His time was the fourth-fastest ever. Bolt has the world record of 19.19, which he set at the 2009 World Championships, plus he ran 19.30 to win the Olympic gold in Beijing. Michael Johnson of the U.S. ran 19.32 for the previous record.

Read more at USA Today.

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Dudus has been connected to the ruling Jamaica Labor Party and ran the Presidential Clique — which controlled his native Tivoli Gardens — and imported cocaine into the U.S. and guns from the U.S. to Jamaica.

Dudus plead guilty to racketeering charges and admitted to orchestrating the importation of guns to Jamaica and running the Presidential Clique.

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Eager to avoid unrest over the rising cost of food, several island governments are giving away seedlings and gardening kits while promoting a grow-it-yourself approach, just as the U.S. did during World War I and World War II by encouraging citizens to plant “victory gardens.”

In a gritty slum in Jamaica’s capital of Kingston, Beatrice Buchanan is among those who have planted vegetables and fruit as insurance against spiraling food prices.

The 42-year-old nanny has long used her cramped front yard to earn money, caring for neighbor’s children there and selling secondhand clothes from a folding table. Now she’s counting on a newly cultivated patch of soil in her backyard for extra money and to put healthy meals on her family’s table.

Buchanan spends her evenings tending a small garden of dark, leafy callaloo greens and sweet peppers behind her concrete home in a neighborhood of low-slung buildings and narrow, pitted streets.

“Believe me, if I didn’t start up this garden I’d be struggling a lot more now with the market prices going up, up, up,” she said as her sister and teenage daughter helped prepare dinner near a roughhewn hutch where she raises rabbits for meat.

Statistics from Jamaica’s consumer affairs commission show the cost of many staples has at least doubled in the past six years. In February, a pound of rice cost the equivalent of 51 cents, up from about 20 cents in January 2005. The price of a pound of dried salted fish went from about $1.60 in early 2005 to about $3.70 earlier this year.

Even in Caribbean countries with a strong tradition of agriculture, like Jamaica, most impoverished people buy their food and are threatened by the rising cost.

Caribbean leaders “are very concerned and are seeking solutions as the electorate in many countries are on edge and agitated,” said Florita E. Kentish, a Barbados-based coordinator for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

Global food prices have jumped by more than 43 percent since last June, according to the World Bank, due to surging oil prices, bad weather and export restrictions by food-producing countries. Many experts project a rerun of the 2007-2008 food crisis, when high prices led to violence and political tensions in some parts of the world.

The problem is aggravated in the 27 countries and territories of the Caribbean because of high import taxes on the $4 billion in food brought in each year. Caribbean tastes have been turning toward wheat and other grains from abroad rather than abundant local crops such as yams, cassava, sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots and pumpkin.

Jamaica’s government has promoted traveling exhibits with cooking demonstrations, tastings and booths featuring local products. TV commercials also urge families to “Plant up yuh backyard.”

“What we’re saying is there is a little space somewhere where you can grow a little callaloo or bok choy or bell peppers and the reward of consuming that, or sharing it with your neighbors, or trading it with your community is a reward that is second to none,” Agriculture Minister Christopher Tufton said at a recent event where islanders received free gardening kits.

In Antigua and Barbuda, a country of just 87,000 inhabitants, the government has distributed 100,000 vegetable and fruit seedlings to a small army of backyard farmers.

“Food security is everybody’s business. At this point in time, it is critical that we boost food production,” said Jedidiah Maxime, the nation’s acting director of agriculture.

It’s not just poor people who are creating backyard gardens. Some professionals are also getting down in the dirt.

“I was able to sell more than 80 pounds of potatoes and other crops from the backyard garden, and I’ve got no intention of stopping now,” said Dr. Trevor Friday, a physician on the southern Caribbean island of Grenada.

Grenadian Agriculture Minister Michael Lett said his government wants “to get people back to the land so we can at least feed ourselves.”

Roughly 32 percent of the island’s 108,000 residents live below the poverty line, and the 2007 food crisis shook the country.

Nobody expects backyard gardens to solve the Caribbean’s food problems, but officials hope more islanders will take control of what they eat.

A few houses down from Buchanan, Norman Hamilton, 30, has thrown himself into gardening with gusto. His yard boasts rows of callaloo, sweet and hot peppers, tomatoes, potatoes and trees bearing breadfruit, plantain and mango. Six goats live inside a wooden pen and chickens peck at the ground. Several Dobermans patrol the property to protect against thieves.

“When a plant you’ve put in the ground as a seedling is ready to harvest, it’s just a great, great feeling,” Hamilton said, as one of his dogs devoured a fallen mango. “It really feels like you’re accomplishing something real.”

For Fitzroy White, an unemployed parent raising two small boys in a squatter settlement in a poor area of Kingston, gardening holds a greater sense of urgency. His backyard is filled with plantains, yams, sweet potatoes and ackee, a red-skinned fruit with pods of golden flesh.

“The way things are, I can’t afford to buy much food so I’ve just got to grow a lot of it,” White said as a friend tended the family’s one-pot meal, a simmering kettle of rice and red peas. “There’s just no other way to feed my family.”

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JAMAICA — An article on The Grio touches on a frightening new trend of Jamaican women using preventative stomach ulcer medication to abort unwanted pregnancies.

The Grio reports:

Cytotec — the generic name for Misoprostol — is supposed to be accessible only by prescription. But according to reports the drug is being sold in markets and pharmacies around the country.

Demand for the so-called “abortion pill” has grown in recent years as women have learned about it from referrals or word of mouth. While the proper dosage for Cytotec is one pill per day, women seeking to terminate unwanted pregnancies take up to four or five pills in an hour. Without a doctor’s aid the women often take their instruction from the vendor, often non-medical professionals, that sell them the pill.

While doctors officially denounced Cytotec’s use as an abortion pill, they also point out that it is still a safer alternative to the risky back door terminations women may otherwise turn to.

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The dispatch, dated February 2010, warns that that Jamaica could be fertile ground for jihadists because of its underground drug economy, marginalized youth, insufficient security and gang networks in U.S. and British prisons, along with thousands of American tourists.

It says Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal, who was deported back to Jamaica in January 2010, could be a potential catalyst, and it noted that several Jamaican-born men have been involved in terrorism over the last decade.

Another memo says an associate of el-Faisal was suspected of involvement in a previously unreported terror plot in Montego Bay, a tourist center near where el-Faisal now lives. A second associate was allegedly suspected of threats against a cruise ship in nearby Ocho Rios. No details of the alleged schemes were provided in the cables and both U.S. and Jamaican officials declined to comment on them.

U.S. diplomats and law enforcement officials have expressed concern in the past that Middle Eastern terror groups might forge alliances with drug traffickers or take advantage general lawlessness in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The January 2010 return of “extremist Jamaican-born cleric Sheikh el-Faisal raises serious concerns regarding the propensity for Islamist extremism in the Caribbean at the hands of Jamaican born nationals,” said the secret cable, apparently from Isiah L. Parnell, the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy in Kingston.

“Given the right motivation, it is conceivable that Jamaica’s disaffected youth could be swayed towards organized crime of a different nature through the teachings of radical Islam,” said the dispatch dated February 25, 2010.

The cable is one of the quarter million confidential American diplomatic dispatches first obtained by anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and separately obtained by The Associated Press.

There is no hard evidence that Jamaica has a burgeoning problem with extremism, though some of the embassy dispatches list suspected associates of el-Faisal, several labeled as radical Muslims and believed to be involved in drug and human trafficking. One is a 31-year-old Jamaican suspected of involvement in a Montego Bay bomb plot and another man suspected of threats against a cruise ship.

Other Jamaicans involved in terrorism include Germaine Lindsay, one of the four men behind the 2005 suicide bomb attacks on London’s subways, and Lee Boyd Malvo, who was convicted in the deadly sniper attacks that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area in 2002.

Jamaican police say they are monitoring el-Faisal but note that he has no criminal record in the country.

“To the extent that he was living abroad and was convicted of offenses, we do have concerns. But he is a Jamaican and we had to take him back,” said Deputy Police Chief Glenmore Hinds.

One of the leaked U.S. cables said Jamaica’s Ministry of National Security has established a special unit to collect information on Islamic extremism, but it voiced concern about whether the unit would be able to “react rapidly to actionable intelligence and to effectively prosecute an anti-terrorism case in the courts.”

El-Faisal, who is known as “al-Jamaikee,” or “the Jamaican” in Islamist circles, has been living in a rural town outside the northern city of Montego Bay, not far from where he grew up. He has several children.

He declined through a spokesman repeated requests for an interview with the AP.

Mustafa Muhammad, president of the Islamic Council, said el-Faisal’s angry rhetoric and conspiracy theories may attract some young and disenfranchised people, but he doubted it would have much traction among the Jamaica’s roughly 5,000 Muslims.

“Faisal has always been very eloquent and the moment he speaks he captures your attention,” Muhammad said in the library of a whitewashed concrete mosque in Kingston. “That is why it’s so sad, so very sad, about what he has come to believe.”

Jamaica’s Islamic Council has banned el-Faisal from preaching in the country’s mosques because he of his past. He now preaches in informal prayer sessions and conferences.

“He told me that he didn’t think he had ever done anything wrong,” Muhammad said. “That’s a concern to me.”

Born Trevor Forrest in 1963, he was raised in the rolling hills of northern Jamaica. His parents belonged to the Salvation Army, the Christian evangelical group. He converted to Islam after being introduced to the faith by a school teacher at about 16, Muhammad said.

Shortly after his conversion, el-Faisal’s global migrations began. In the early 1980s, he traveled to Trinidad for a Saudi-Arabian-sponsored course in Islamic and Arabic studies. He then went to Guyana for similar studies, according to terrorism researchers.

El-Faisal, now a compactly built 47-year-old man with receding hair, was deported to Jamaica for the second time last year after being arrested in Kenya, where he reportedly encouraged young men to join an extremist Islamic group in Somalia.

Before that, he preached in a London mosque attended by convicted terrorists and was imprisoned in Britain for nearly four and a half years for inciting murder and stirring racial hatred with sermons titled “No peace with the Jews” and “Them versus Us.” In one recorded sermon, he told followers that “the way forward is the bullet.” On another, he said jihadists should use “chemical weapons to exterminate the unbelievers.”

“Faisal’s popularity remains strong with online jihadist supporters, particularly American jihadist groups. His sermons are widely published across the Internet,” said Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst who is now an independent terrorism researcher.

Some experts in militant Islam said his isolation in Jamaica may create a mystique that could draw alienated people into his circle.

“There is a danger that Abdullah Faisal will radicalize individuals in Jamaica, just as he has previously done in the U.K. and elsewhere. He is a powerful, charismatic speaker who is easily capable of presenting Islamist extremism as a rational choice,” said James Brandon of the Quilliam Foundation, a British anti-extremism think tank.

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The London-based human rights group asserted that no one has been punished despite many claims of unlawful killings and arbitrary arrests by security forces.

Neither the police nor the government had any immediate comment on the report released by Amnesty on the one-year anniversary of the launch of raids seeking to arrest Christopher “Dudus” Coke and re-establish order in his barricaded slum stronghold. The operation, one of the bloodiest episodes in Jamaica’s recent history, killed at least 73 civilians.

More than 40 of those who died in Coke’s former Tivoli Gardens community in West Kingston during the state of emergency are alleged to have been victims of “extrajudicial” killings by security forces, Amnesty said.

Unlawful killings were reported elsewhere during the weekslong state of emergency and roughly 4,000 Jamaicans were detained, most without charge, under emergency powers. Two people who slumdwellers assert were last seen in the custody of security forces remain unaccounted for.

Amnesty said that despite some “positive steps” undertaken by Jamaican authorities, investigations have never provided conclusive answers about what happened during the operation. It noted that alleged crime scenes were left unprotected for days and decomposing bodies were buried quickly by authorities in a cemetery near Tivoli Gardens.

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KINGSTON, Jamaica — Lloyd Knibb, an influential Jamaican drummer who played with The Skatalites and helped develop the ska beat, has died, his wife said Friday. He was 80.

Enid Knibb said her husband died from liver cancer late Thursday.

He had been receiving treatment in the U.S. but returned to Jamaica this week, she said.

Knibb’s manager, Ken Stewart, wrote on Facebook on Wednesday that he was accompanying Knibb on the trip back to the Caribbean island.

“I can only hope we make it back so he can enjoy his family and friends and see his homeland one more time,” he wrote.

Knibb was an original member of The Skatalites, a Jamaican ska and reggae band created in 1964. His frenetic style was one of the band’s hallmarks and is best heard on songs including “Guns of Navarone” and “Freedom Sounds.”

The Skatalites broke up in the 1960s, but reunited two decades later in New York. Two of their albums, “Hip Bop Ska” and “Greetings from Skamania,” were nominated for Grammy awards in the 1990s.

Their music has influenced bands including 311, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones and No Doubt.

Knibb last performed with The Skatalites in April.

He is survived by his wife, five children, seven grandchildren and a great grandchild.

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KINGSTON, Jamaica – Mikeisha Simpson covers her body in greasy white cream and bundles up in a track suit to avoid the fierce sun of her native Jamaica, but she’s not worried about skin cancer.

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The 23-year-old resident of a Kingston ghetto hopes to transform her dark complexion to a cafe-au-lait-color common among Jamaica’s elite and favored by many men in her neighborhood. She believes a fairer skin could be her ticket to a better life. So she spends her meager savings on cheap black-market concoctions that promise to lighten her pigment.

Simpson and her friends ultimately shrug off public health campaigns and reggae hits blasting the reckless practice.

“I hear the people that say bleaching is bad, but I’ll still do it. I won’t stop ’cause I like it and I know how to do it safe,” said Simpson, her young daughter bouncing on her hip.

People around the world often try to alter their skin color, using tanning salons or dyes to darken it or other chemicals to lighten it. In the gritty slums of Jamaica, doctors say the skin lightening phenomenon has reached dangerous proportions.

“I know of one woman who started to bleach her baby. She got very annoyed with me when I told her to stop immediately, and she left my office. I often wonder what became of that baby,” said Neil Persadsingh, a leading Jamaican dermatologist.

Most Jamaican bleachers use over-the-counter creams, many of them knockoffs imported from West Africa. Long-term use of one of the ingredients, hydroquinone, has long been linked to a disfiguring condition called ochronosis that causes a splotchy darkening of the skin. Doctors say abuse of bleaching lotions has also left a web of stretch marks across some Jamaicans’ faces.

In Japan, the European Union, and Australia, hydroquinone has been removed from over-the-counter skin products and substituted with other chemicals due to concerns about health risks. In the U.S., over-the-counter creams containing up to 2 percent hydroquinone are recognized as safe and effective by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A proposed ban by the FDA in 2006 fizzled.

Lightening creams are not effectively regulated in Jamaica, where even roadside vendors sell tubes and plastic bags of powders and ointments from cardboard boxes stacked along sidewalks in market districts.

“Many of the tubes are unlabeled as to their actual ingredients,” said Dr. Richard Desnoes, president of the Dermatology Association of Jamaica.

Hardcore bleachers use illegal ointments smuggled into the Caribbean country that contain toxins like mercury, a metal that blocks production of melanin, which give skin its color, but can also be toxic.

Some impoverished people resort to homemade mixtures of toothpaste or curry powder, which can stain skin with a yellowish tint.

The Jamaican Ministry of Health does not have data on damage caused by skin-bleaching agents, though dermatologists and other health officials say they have been seeing more cases.

Eva Lewis-Fuller, the ministry’s director of health promotion and protection, is redoubling education programs to combat bleaching in this predominantly black island of 2.8 million people, where images of fair-skinned people predominate in commercials for high-end products and in the social pages of newspapers.

“Bleaching has gotten far worse and widespread in recent years,” she said. “(Bleachers) want to be accepted within their circle of society. They want to be attractive to the opposite sex. They want career opportunities. But we are saying there are side effects and risks. It can disfigure your face.”

Health officials are running warnings on local radio stations, putting up posters in schools, holding talks and handing out literature about the dangers. But a similar anti-bleaching campaign in 2007 called “Don’t Kill the Skin” did nothing to slow the craze.

The bleaching trend is sparking a growing public debate. Even dancehall reggae hits celebrate the practice, or condemn it.

The most public proponent of bleaching is singing star Vybz Kartel, whose own complexion has dramatically lightened in recent years. His ‘Look Pon Me’ contains the lines: “Di girl dem love off mi brown cute face, di girl dem love off mi bleach-out face.”

Kartel, whose real name is Adijah Palmer, insists that skin bleaching is simply a personal choice like tattooing.

Christopher A.D. Charles, an assistant professor at Monroe College in New York City who has studied the psychology of bleaching, said many young Jamaicans perceive it “as a modern thing, like Botox, to fashion their own body in a unique way.”

Others, however, say it raises awkward questions about identity and race.

“If we really want to control the spread of the skin-bleaching virus, we first have to admit that there’s an epidemic of color prejudice in our society,” said Carolyn Cooper, a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, writing in The Jamaica Gleaner newspaper.

Felicia James, a 20-year-old resident of the Matthews Lane slum, said skin bleaching just makes her feel special, like she’s walking around in a spotlight. She was taught to bleach by her older sister and her friends.

“It’s just the fashionable thing to do. After I bleach, I’m cris,” she said, using a Jamaican term for cool. “Plus, a lot of the boys are doing it now, too.”

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The Huffington Post reports:

Banton was found guilty of conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense and using the wires to facilitate a drug trafficking offense. He was acquitted of attempted possession with the intent to distribute cocaine

Much of the case hinged on meetings and phone calls that were video and audiotaped by the confidential informant, who was working with the Drug Enforcement Administration – and who made $50,000 in commission after the bust.

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Immigration Equality, an organisation which works to secure asylum for individuals persecuted in their home country based on their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV-status, said it won dozens of cases for clients from the Caribbean in 2010.

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Last week CNN international had a poll to determine the coolest nationalities in the world. Brazilians were voted #1 and Singaporeans were voted #2 and Jamaicans were voted #3.

There’s more to Jamaicans than reggae, including Rastafarian (the most kick-back religion ever invented), an accent that’s the envy of the English-speaking world and the planet’s most distinctive and recognizable hairstyle. Note to backpackers: dreadlocks only cool on actual Jamaicans.

Icon of cool: Jimmy Cliff. The “Harder They Come” singer is still bringing it at 62.

Not so cool: High murder rate and widespread homophobia.

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The September 2009 cable says that Kingston Mayor Desmond McKenzie told a U.S. Embassy officer that his administration collaborated for years with Christopher “Dudus” Coke to fight crime, particularly in the powerful slum leader’s stronghold of West Kingston, the home constituency of Prime Minister Bruce Golding.

McKenzie, an influential figure in the ruling Jamaica Labor Party, warned of a doomsday scenario if Washington continued to push for the extradition of Coke, according to the memo, which apparently was written by Isiah L. Parnell, the embassy’s deputy chief of mission. It was released by WikiLeaks and published by the British newspaper The Guardian.

Coke was the alleged crime “don” of Tivoli Gardens, providing services and a lawless, violent sort of order in the slums.

McKenzie “predicted that there would be ‘severe repercussions’ and ‘collateral damage’ if Coke were arrested, and that this would “risk destroying everything the government was trying to do on the economy and crime,’” the leaked U.S. communique said.

In fact, at least 76 people died in battles between drug gangs and authorities after Prime Minister Bruce Golding finally agreed to extradite Coke after fighting the U.S. request for nine months — even to the point of hiring a U.S. lobbyist to oppose it.

The diplomatic cable was written in August 2009, days after the U.S. first asked Jamaica to extradite Coke to face federal drug and weapons-trafficking charges in New York. The U.S. indictment accused Coke of leading the “Shower Posse” — a gang with agents in Jamaica and the United States that was named for its tendency to spray victims with bullets.

Jamaica has a long history of politicians forging alliances with gangsters in vote-rich ghettoes. The political parties built the gangs: Dons received government contracts, and in exchange delivered the votes of their people. Slum dwellers were caught in the middle.

Still, the image of a powerful Jamaican mayor working for years on crime-fighting strategies with a man portrayed by the U.S. Justice Department as one of the world’s most dangerous drug kingpins is stark, especially since Kingston is a city with one of the highest homicide rates in the Western Hemisphere.

McKenzie’s main office line at the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation went unanswered Wednesday.

The government’s information minister, Daryl Vaz, did not immediately provide comment about the WikiLeaks cable.

Washington’s extradition request for Coke immediately became a problem for the Jamaican government because the reputed gang leader was widely known for loyalty to the governing party. The U.S. cable says that Coke was reputedly close to leading figures within Golding’s Jamaica Labor Party, including McKenzie.

In the cable, McKenzie apparently warned the U.S. embassy officer that his “contacts in the communities” had told him personally that they “would not take this (Coke’s extradition) lying down.”

The leaked cable said that McKenzie’s fears of repercussions were not groundless.

“He is easily the highest profile figure whose extradition has been requested in many years, and his long-standing ties to the JLP have put McKenzie, Golding, and other leading party figures in an extremely awkward position,” said the cable.

It also stated that “Coke’s gang provides social and welfare services and turns out the JLP vote in elections, while his business interests profit from lucrative government contracts.”

In another leaked U.S. cable that first appeared Wednesday on the website of the British newspaper The Guardian, Golding’s wife told a U.S. Embassy official that she believed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was under the “pernicious influence” of New York Representative Charles Rangel regarding the extradition request for Coke.

In what was described as an “often surreal and disjointed conversation,” Lorna Golding asserted that Rangel was a sympathizer of the opposition People’s National Party and was “whispering in Secretary Clinton’s ear” to hobble her husband’s government.

The blistering behind-the-scenes diplomatic assessment from December 2009 said Lorna Golding’s “rambling comments and penchant for sharing conspiracy theories” during a tea with an embassy officer was consistent with a “growing sense among many of indecisiveness and a lack of direction on the part of the PM and the JLP.”

U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Yolonda Kerney declined to address specifics or confirm the authenticity of the leaked communiques on Wednesday, but said that cables are “often preliminary, incomplete expressions of a single officer’s assessments” and they should not be seen as representing U.S. policy.

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An 11-year-old boy in Spanish Town, Jamaica claims that he is being contacted by a “duppy” as Jamaicans call ghosts, who pushes him at times.

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Buju Banton, real name Mark Myrie is a free man after serving almost a year in prison while awaiting drug charges. After his September mistrial he was granted bail and can not leave the USA and will have to wear and electronic monitoring device.

Stephen Marley, the son of reggae legend Bob Marley, bailed him out. Buju Banton’s driver and another friend plead guilty and testified against Buju during his trial.

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“We will have to look at ways in which we would be able to assist. But you would recall my comments earlier this year, when I said there must be some way in which Trinidad and Tobago would also benefit,” she said at a press conference, adding that she would have to hold discussions with members of her Cabinet before deciding on what assistance could be provided.

These comments have not only drawn the condemnation of the opposition leader of that country, but of some members of the region who on Facebook, Twitter and through BlackBerry broadcast messages urged a boycott of Trinidad and Tobago products.

The BlackBerry broadcast message, which has been making the rounds, says, “Join me and many of my friends in the “BUY NOTHING MADE IN TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO” campaign. This is a result of the TNT PM’s open statement to the media saying she will not give any assistance to Caricom countries affected by Hurricane Tomas unless it is to the benefit of Trinidad. I wonder if she is aware of the amount of products we purchase daily that is made in Trinidad. PLEASE JOIN AND PASS IT ON. “

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The BBC reports that Isaacs died Monday at his London home. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer.

His wife Linda said Isaacs was “well-loved by everyone, his fans and his family,” and would be greatly missed.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1951, Isaacs began recording in his teens. With his sinuous baritone and romantic songs, he became a leading proponent of the mellow “Lovers Rock” style of reggae.

Isaacs was best known for the title song from his 1982 album “Night Nurse.”

His career was derailed for a spell by drug use, but he released a well-received final album, “Brand New Me,” in 2008.

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The outer bands of the storm hammered Jamaica, toppling bridges and knocking out power to thousands. Many streets were filled with gushing brown torrents of water, prompting Prime Minister Bruce Golding to urge people to stay indoors.

Floodwaters battered squatter communities perched uneasily on the slopes of gullies that crisscross the sprawling capital of Kingston. One slide killed a 14-year-old boy, known to his neighbors as Buju, who was found in an eddy of muddy water. The rest of his family — including four sisters, the youngest just 3-years-old — had not been found by Wednesday evening.

“He was a fun boy. He loved to sing, he loved to play football. It’s not right, the whole family lost,” said Munchie Fuller, a 23-year-old neighbor who watched terrified as a chunk of her own concrete house in Sandy Gully was swept into the raging waters before dawn.

Another resident, Lyndon Bennett, said the people in the shantytown who live along the gully are warned repeatedly to move for their own safety but most refuse to relocate.

“There’s not a proper foundation there, the gully is just stone and dirt. People are told not to live there, but when you’ve got no other options you’ve just got to make ends meet. It’s a real tragedy,” Bennett said.

The storm, which had sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph) earlier in the day, broke apart over the Atlantic, though the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami warned that there were still large areas of heavy rain.

Jamaican Information Minister Daryl Vaz said two people were confirmed dead but warned that the toll could be higher from the flash floods and mudslides. He said 12 people were missing.

Emergency shelters were opened for thousands of Jamaicans who live in ramshackle homes along gullies. Major hospitals were treating only emergency cases. Officials said about 30 percent of the power utility’s customers were without power. Some bridges collapsed in the rushing water.

“All in all, there has been a lot of damage done to infrastructure,” Vaz said. “It’s a serious blow to the country.”

In a rural area of St. Elizabeth parish, people told government officials that two farmers in the town of Flagaman were washed away by murky floodwaters and presumed dead. Another man was reportedly swept away while trying to cross rushing Hope River in Kingston.

Floods flattened fields of bananas, scallions and sweet pepper as the storm’s outer edges raked the island.

The storm also soaked Cuba but no deaths were reported.

In Cuba, state-controlled television showed images of rain flooding roads and highways, especially around the eastern city of Santiago, but there were no reports of major damage. Far to the west in Havana, it wasn’t even raining and there was no flooding.

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Banton was charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and aiding two others in possessing a firearm during the course of cocaine distribution. Prosecutors say Banton conspired to buy cocaine from an undercover police officer last year. He faced life in prison if convicted.

Banton’s attorneys have asked that the reggae singer be released on bond. Banton has been held without bond since his December, 2009 arrest.

Banton’s attorney maintains that the singer was entrapped by a government informant.

The jury had sent a note earlier Monday saying they could not agree on a verdict, but U.S. District Judge James Moody ordered them to continue deliberations. After the second note was sent Moody ruled in favor of the defense motion to declare a mistrial.

The trial ignited a lot of debate in Baton’s home country Jamaica, with fans and critics dissecting every detail of the case in editorial pages and on social networking sites, with his most ardent fans comparing him to the reggae legend Bob Marley.

“I’ve been following it close because Buju is big in Jamaica, like a Bob Marley,” Charles Barrett, a resident of the capital, said Sunday. “Way I see it, they need to free the man cause they don’t have any concrete evidence against him.”

There have even been a few conspiracy theories from fans as to how the Rasta star came to be in this predicament. Some say the U.S government framed him, others point to gay rights advocate groups who have actively protested many of Banton’s appearances because of violent, homophobic lyrics from early in Banton’s career as a brash dancehall singer.

Shows in several U.S. cities were canceled because of protests over those early lyrics and his unapologetic anti-gay stance through the years.

The reason for such fierce debate lies in the cultural influence that many say Banton has had on the music scene in Jamaica. According to musicologist and disc jockey Bunny Goodison, “[Banton has] been extremely important through the years because he’s represented Rastafari and black consciousness in a very focused way.”

Others are more critical of Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie. “No matter how the trial turns out, Mr. Myrie has already let down himself and his fans,” the Jamaica Observer said in an editorial Sunday.

A new trial date is expected to be announced later Monday.

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TAMPA, Florida (AP) — A judge ordered a Tampa jury to continue deliberating on whether Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton conspired to buy cocaine from an undercover police officer last year.

The 12-person jury sent U.S. District Judge James Moody a note Monday saying they hadn’t reached a verdict because none of them had changed their minds since Thursday, when deliberations began after a four-day trial. Moody had released them for the weekend on Friday.

Banton’s attorney asked for a mistrial, which Moody denied.

Banton is charged with conspiracy to possess and distribute cocaine and aiding two others in possessing a firearm during the course of cocaine distribution. He faces up to life in prison.

Banton’s attorney maintains that a U.S. government informant entrapped him.

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Jamaican Reggae singer Buju Banton will have to wait until Monday to know his fate as the 13 member panel of jurors have yet to come to a decision.

The jurors are expected to resume their deliberations at 8:45 Monday morning.

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Buju Banton took the stand yesterday for his drug trial. Carribean360 is reporting that he claimed all of the cocaine talk was him just trying to “talk garbage” and impress the man who turned out to be an informant.

“I was talking garbage. I was just talking straight up garbage. He was trying out-talk me,” Buju testified.

“I’m just a humble musician. I was just talking above my head. I was trying to impress this guy and that’s what got me into this hot seat,” he said in another part of his testimony.

Buju also said that he was shocked when drugs were brought to a meeting at a warehouse with Johnson and former co-accused Ian Thomas in December – a meeting that was videotaped and showed Buju tasting the drugs. “I was in over my head,” Buju said.

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