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Stories by Erica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Published:Sunday | September 1, 2024 | 12:23 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

The urgency to prepare for the new academic year was clear at several schools in southern Manchester last week. Many were still grappling with the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, which had caused significant damage to their facilities. School...

Published:Sunday | August 25, 2024 | 12:08 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Sixteen years after Jamaica and the European Union (EU) struck a duty-free deal, shelves devoid of each other’s goods on both sides have left former EU Ambassador Marianne Van Steen and local business leaders disheartened. Van Steen, whose tour of...

Published:Sunday | August 18, 2024 | 12:06 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

European Union (EU) Ambassador Marianne Van Steen concluded her tour of duty on August 7, heading back to Brussels with a pledge to enhance EU- Caribbean partnerships as she maintains a keen interest in the region in a new post that will keep her...

Published:Sunday | August 11, 2024 | 12:14 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Medical social workers (MSWs) at the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) are wilting under the weight of thousands of case files as they support patients through trauma and recovery, relying on each other for emotional strength when the...

Published:Sunday | August 4, 2024 | 12:09 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

The University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) is grappling with a staggering $16 billion in unpaid debt accumulated over more than a decade from chargeable services provided to hundreds of patients. The St Andrew-based teaching hospital is not...

Published:Sunday | July 21, 2024 | 12:08 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Dr Theresa Rodriguez- Moodie is deeply concerned about the repeated actions of mankind that harm the environment. As the CEO of the Jamaica Environment Trust (JET), she fights daily for the protection of the environment, arguing that without a...

Published:Sunday | July 7, 2024 | 12:11 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Despite ongoing concerns over maternal and infant mortality at some hospitals, specialists across the island are employing advanced medical techniques to ensure the health and survival of vulnerable children. In recent years, Jamaica’s medical...

Published:Sunday | July 7, 2024 | 12:10 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

The aftermath of Hurricane Beryl – the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic – left a stark and unmistakable trail of destruction across Jamaica’s south central coast. The storm brushed the south coast of Jamaica as...

Published:Sunday | June 30, 2024 | 12:10 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

The history of racially motivated experimentation on black Americans within the United States health system – often conducted without their knowledge or consent – has had a detrimental impact on black healthcare in the country, asserts Jamaican-...

Published:Sunday | June 30, 2024 | 12:09 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Senior members of Jamaica’s two main political parties say they are treating their respective upcoming annual conference seasons as the last major internal mass mobilisation efforts before the next general elections. The next parliamentary polls...

Published:Sunday | June 23, 2024 | 12:10 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

As mysteriously as they vanished 13 days prior from Jacob’s Ladder, the Mustard Seed Communities home in St Ann caring for Haitian orphans, 10 Haitian adults returned to the facility on Friday morning. However, a hydrocephalic orphan boy who...

Published:Sunday | June 16, 2024 | 12:13 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

On September 7, Deputy Police Commissioner Fitz Bailey will retire from the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) after serving for 40 years and seven months. And although he would pursue his dream job as an accountant if given an opportunity to start...

Published:Sunday | June 16, 2024 | 12:13 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Of all the crime scenes seared in the memory of retiring Deputy Police Commissioner Fitz Bailey, none has shaken the father of three more than the 2022 Cocoa Piece massacre in which a mother and her four children were slaughtered by a relative. “I...

Published:Sunday | June 9, 2024 | 12:10 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Gwendolyn Morgan Kluge arrived in Germany long before the Berlin Wall, which separated East and West Germany, came down in 1989. In over 50 years, the octogenarian not only became the first black woman in her city to own and run a business, but she...

Published:Sunday | June 9, 2024 | 12:06 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Hidden in the shadows of Jamaica’s nightlife amid a regulatory vacuum lurks a sinister trend: the use of synthetic drugs to prey upon and victimise women in their late teens to early 40s through drugging, rape, abduction and pornography. This had...

Published:Sunday | June 2, 2024 | 12:14 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

A move by the United States to remove Cuba from the list of countries “not fully cooperating” in its counter-terrorism efforts but keeping it among those fingered for being state sponsors of terrorism has not given Cubans in Jamaica and in their...

Published:Sunday | May 19, 2024 | 12:10 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

The current impasse between the Government and Opposition, on the report of the Constitutional Reform Committee (CRC), was bound to happen, according to AJ Nicholson, a former attorney general and minister of justice. Nicholson, speaking with The...

Published:Sunday | May 12, 2024 | 12:12 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Best defined as educational institutions and buildings designed to provide learning spaces and environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers, schools are where learners should maximise their potential for the development...

Published:Sunday | May 12, 2024 | 5:41 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Lawyers from around the world who are specialist drafters of legislation are now in Jamaica for the beginning of the three-day biennial general meeting of the Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel, being held at the Ocean Eden Bay Hotel...

Published:Sunday | April 28, 2024 | 7:19 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Two months after a strong showing in the local government elections (LGE) in which the opposition People’s National Party (PNP) pulled out more votes than in the 2020 general election, its president, Opposition Leader Mark Golding, still trails...

Published:Sunday | April 21, 2024 | 12:08 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader Prime Minister Andrew Holness is being urged to go to today’s meeting of the party’s Central Executive with political guns blazing, ready to crack the whip at the executive and officers, remove members whose time...

Published:Sunday | April 14, 2024 | 2:28 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Now in the winter of his political career, Fitz Jackson, the seven-term member of parliament (MP) for St Catherine Southern, has found a spring. It’s a spring that has borne him accolades nationwide, for it has been the springboard for the...

Published:Sunday | March 31, 2024 | 1:30 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

A strategic plan to restore the image of the sole internationally-approved maritime education and training university in the Western Hemisphere has begun to bear fruit. Employing a multipronged approach to repair the massive reputational damage as...

Published:Sunday | March 31, 2024 | 1:28 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Started in 1978 by Monsignor Gregory Ramkissoon, and surviving on the generosity of donors worldwide, the Mustard Seed Communities provides a safe haven for those rejected and abandoned by their families and society. The non-profit organisation,...

Published:Sunday | March 24, 2024 | 12:15 AMErica Virtue - Senior Gleaner Writer

Nestled in the serene community of Haddon in Moneague, St Ann, is Jacob’s Ladder. A safe haven where modern-day disciples and angels care for scores of the most disadvantaged children and adults. Located on 150 acres, it is the largest operation...

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