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 BY ALPHEA SAUNDERS Senior staff reporter saundersa@jamaica observer.com  Thursday, March 26, 2015    PERCIVAL McIntosh, 66, was going about his business, only to find the sidewalk suddenly disappearing from underneath him, and plunging into a wet, filthy gully on Torrington Road in St Andrew. PERCIVAL McIntosh, 66,  McIntosh, who lost this sight nine years ago, told the Jamaica Observer that on Christmas Eve last year he alighted on Slipe Road from a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus, which he said had detoured. Guided by his cane, he began walking down Torrington Road towards the intersection at Slipe Pen Road. "The next thing I knew, I woke up wet and with my foot feeling as if someone had put iron boots on it [and] people told me I stepped into the gully. I (had) stepped right over and broke my foot," he recounted yesterday. The senior citizen said he was assisted and taken to the Kingston Public Hospital where he received treatment....

BY PAUL A REID Observer Writer reidp@jamaicaobserver.com  Thursday, March 26, 2015      HYDEL High's Shadea Lawrence won the girls' Class One discus with a personal best throw of 48.66m to repeat as champion on day two of the GraceKennedy ISSA Boys' and Girls' Athletics Championships at the National Stadium yesterday. Second in the event was Excelsior High's Shaniece Love (48.01m), while third went to Paul-Anne Gayle of Edwin Allen (47.87). Hydel's Shadea Lawrence  Meanwhile, Edwin Allen's Rochelle Frazer stayed on course to win a third-straight girls' Class One shot put event after easily qualifying in yesterday's preliminaries. Frazer threw 12.45m to finish second behind St Andrew Technical's Ayesha Champagnie (12.70m) with Spalding's Tavia Dixon (12.15m), the only other thrower over 12.00m yesterday. Frazer's teammate Janelle Fullerton is also expected to be among the medallists as well as Vere Technical's Kiona Brad...

Reuters Posted: 03/25/2015 7:53 pm EDT  ADEN/WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia announced on Wednesday it had launched military operations in Yemen, carrying out air strikes in coordination with a 10-country coalition seeking to beat back Houthi militia forces besieging the southern city of Aden where the country's president had taken refuge. Bombers At a news conference in Washington, Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir said Gulf Arab allies and others had joined with the desert kingdom in the military campaign in a bid "to protect and defend the legitimate government" of Yemen President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. He declined to give any information on Hadi's whereabouts. With the Saudi-led military assault, the Middle East's top oil power has been drawn into the worsening Yemeni conflict. The crisis risks spiraling into a proxy war with Shi'ite Iran backing the Houthis, whose leaders adhere to the brand of Shi'ite Islam, and Saudi Arabia a...

AP |  By Greg Keller & Elaine Ganley Posted: 03/25/2015 9:27 pm EDT  SEYNE-LES-ALPES, France (AP) — The first half of Germanwings Flight 9525 was chilling in its normalcy. It took off from Barcelona en route to Duesseldorf, climbing up over the Mediterranean and turning over France. The last communication was a routine request to continue on its route. Airbus 320 Minutes later, at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Airbus A320 inexplicably began to descend. Within 10 minutes it had plunged from its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet to just over 6,000 feet and slammed into a remote mountainside. To find out why, investigators have been analyzing the mangled black box that contains an audio recording from the cockpit. Remi Jouty, the head of France's accident investigation bureau BEA, said Wednesday that it has yielded sounds and voices, but so far not the "slightest explanation" of why the plane crashed, killing all 150 on board. A newspaper report, however, suggests...

BY PAUL HENRY Coordinator - Crime/Court Desk editorial@jamaicaobserver.com  Wednesday, March 25, 2015      THE wife of a police inspector and at least one man who works at the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) were among a panel of 11 jurors, who, in 2014, convicted entertainer Vybz Kartel and three other men of murder, it emerged yesterday. NEITA-ROBERTSON… representing accused juror The revelation was made in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court as attorney Valerie Neita-Robertson cross-examined the JDF worker, Dennis Brown, on the first day of the trial of Livingston Cain -- the member of the Vybz Kartel jury who has been charged with six counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. The charges stem from allegations that between the start of the murder trial in the Home Circuit Court on November 18, 2013 and the rendering of a verdict in the matter in March 2014, Cain tried to persuade his...

BY KIMMO MATTHEWS Observer staff reporter matthewsk@jamaicaobserver.com  Wednesday, March 25, 2015     IN a matter of weeks, the living conditions of 81-year-old Rosalvo Patterson is expected to be significantly improved. Patterson exits his ‘home’ last week Wednesday. The senior citizen, who has been living in an fowl coop in Jericho, St Catherine, for the past five years, is expected to move into a new home, thanks to the kindness of music producer Wayne 'Lonesome' Brown. On Monday, living up to a promise made last Friday -- a day after Patterson's dire situation was highlighted by the Jamaica Observer -- Brown spent approximately $100,000 on plyboard, lumber and other building supplies to be used to construct a house for the ailing Patterson. He drafted skilled friends and family members who have been camping in Jericho since Monday, while they construct the house for the elderly man. "Even though we have heard some persons making promises to help, I ...

Posted: 02/04/2015 12:14 am EST   Too often we hear the phrase  wunderkind applied to just-out-of-college startup CEOs in Silicon Valley. Here’s a vote for using the term in the intended way: to convey that there’s a certain degree of novelty, and yes, wonder, in the ideas that spring from the minds of our youngest generation. To restore our sense of  wunder , we’ve partnered with  Cisco  to profile outstanding kids from around the world who are using technology and ingenuity to speed the pace of social change. Richard Turere grew up along the edge of Nairobi National Park in Kenya. As a young boy tasked with protecting his family’s livestock from roaming lions, he sought a solution that would both protect the livelihoods of citizens in his rural community and prevent others from killing lions in order to do so.  Turere, a tinkerer by birth, came up with an ingenious, safe, cost-effective solution: he created “Lion Lights,” a solar-powered circuit, t...