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By Balford Henry Senior staff reporter balfordh@jamaicaobserver.com Wednesday, September 30, 2020 A new National Identification and Registration Bill has been completed and is being reviewed at the Cabinet level, Prime Minister Andrew Holness informed the House of Representatives yesterday. This follows the significant landmark reached in April when the Cabinet approved the draft for a new voluntary National Identification and Registration Policy, which includes the introduction of a national identification system (NIDS). Holness said that the Bill has been completed and is being reviewed by the NIDS Policy Committee and the Legislation Committee, which is a sub-committee of the Cabinet, and he is hoping that it will be passed by year end. He said that substantial changes were made to the original policy, which was rejected by the Supreme Court after being passed in the House of Representatives in 2017, and are reflected in the new policy, including voluntary enrolment under the NIDS a...

When a third cancer diagnosis forced Josan Sutherland to decline her first Chevening Scholarship offer in 2018, she was devastated. Not only would the practising physiotherapist have to fight the deadly disease for a third time, but her dream of pursuing advanced studies in her field would have to be put on hold. Josan Sutherland of Jamaica, 3 time cancer survivor “I was lost beyond words. I kept on asking myself, ‘how could this be happening to me’?” she recalled, noting that she received the diagnosis a day after her scholarship acceptance letter. But come next week, Sutherland is scheduled to leave Jamaica for University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom (UK) to pursue a master’s degree in neurological physiotherapy. The 28-year-old is one of 14 Jamaicans awarded the prestigious Chevening Scholarship this year. Sutherland said that her cancer fight started at age 12, when she was diagnosed with bone cancer, which resulted in the loss of her right leg. “I had just s...

A grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky, has indicted Detective Brett Hankison in the case of the shooting death of  Breonna Taylor , charging him with three counts of first-degree wanton endangerment. No charges were filed against Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officer Myles Cosgrove, the other two police officers who were at the scene the night Taylor was fatally shot. Notably, no murder charges were filed against any of the men. First-degree wanton endangerment is a felony that comes with a sentence of up to five years in prison under Kentucky law. Jefferson County Circuit Judge Annie O’Connell issued a warrant for Hankison’s arrest in a Wednesday hearing and set his bail at $15,000. The charges were tied to shots fired into neighboring apartments, not those shot inside Taylor’s. O’Connell read the charges aloud, linking each to the occupants of the three apartments that Hankison “wantonly” shot into by listing their initials. She did not say BT for “Breonna Taylor,” suggest...