AFP: Passengers survive horror crash landing in Jamaica An American Airlines jet overshot the runway at a Jamaican airport and ended up in a mangled mess on a beach, but all 154 passengers and crew survived with 91 mainly minor injuries, officials said. Flight AA 331 from Miami arrived in heavy rain at Kingston airport [...]
American Airlines Flight 311 Overshoots Runway in Jamaica, Dozens Injured The Boeing 737-800, filled to capacity with 148 passengers and a crew of six, came down in heavy rain and overshot the runway at Norman Manley International Airport. After its landing gear collapsed and the plane started to break up, it finally slid to a [...]
Buju, bye bye? Mark Anthony Myrie, aka Buju Banton, aka Gargamel, was last week remanded in Federal custody in Miami, Florida by Drug Enforcement Administration agents and charged by the US Attorney with conspiracy to possess, with intent to distribute, some five kilos of cocaine. Buju faces up to 20 years behind bars if convicted. [...]
Cocaine case against reggae star laid out It was Tuesday afternoon when the silver Land Rover with the tag “Jah One” pulled up to La Tropicana de Havana restaurant in Sarasota, according to federal and local law enforcement agents who were staking out the restaurant. Mark Anthony Myrie, Ian Thomas and an unidentified woman got [...]
New Patterns in Dancehall Music: Daggering and “Lock The Block” It’s no secret, music has always been a copycat business. As soon as one particular style, pattern, chord progression or piece of equipment becomes popular, everyone else hops on the bandwagon to try and emulate the success of the creator. I used to loath this [...]
Is Jamaica losing reggae? Few Jamaicans chart in Japan, US and Europe signalling, as pundits suggest, that international reggae doesn’t need Jamaica. The charts in Japan, Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand, up to yesterday, had only one Jamaican-born artiste – Bob Marley – in the top ten. The US and France were also low at [...]
Echo Minott asks ‘What the Hell the Police Can Do?’ With a consistently high murder rate, guns coming in from Haiti on fast boats and a surprise police commissioner resignation, many a law-abiding Jamaican citizen may jut be asking, ‘What the hell the police can do?’ Doubtless many were asking the same thing in 1986. [...]
Reggae album sales plummet It has not been a good year for Jamaican pop music. Sales tracker, SoundScan, reports that music buyers in the United States showed little interest in what Jamaican artistes had to offer in 2009. SoundScan has released sales figures to the end of October. It said, collectively, reggae/dancehall music sold just [...]
Marley heirs wage global war on trademark pirates Coming to a store near you: Bob Marley video games, shoes … snowboards? Heirs of the Jamaican reggae legend are plunging into the global trademark wars, seeking to enforce their exclusive rights to an image that has grown steadily in scope and appeal since the Jamaican superstar [...]
‘A woman we name!’ “A woman we name, so we born lucky!” – Lady Saw. Over the last three years, 141 Jamaicans have taken their lives, 128 men and 13 women. Jamaica’s suicide level is pretty low by world standards. There were 48 in 2008, meaning a national rate of about 1.66 per 100,000, far [...]