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Jamaica's House of Representatives passed changes letting way more people wipe old convictions off their records, and Justice Minister Delroy Chuck said most offenders only mess up once before going straight. The bill bumps eligibility from five-year sentences up to ten-year stretches while...

American authorities grabbed a sanctioned oil tanker near Venezuela that was pretending to be registered under the Guyanese flag even though it never actually signed up with that country. Guyana Maritime Administration Department said the Motor Tanker SKIPPER got intercepted while falsely flying...

Jamaica still has 32 deaths under investigation from Hurricane Melissa, while officials confirmed the body count hit 45 people, and another 13 people remain missing. ODPEM Director General Alvin Gayle told reporters at Jamaica House that leptospirosis cases spiked to 84 suspected infections plus...

Jamaica shut down government holiday parties after Hurricane Melissa wrecked the country, and Education Minister Dana Morris Dixon said offices can do small recognition stuff internally, but renting outside spaces is off the table. She wants agencies to reach out to workers living in destroyed...

Magistrate Judy Latchman shot down a defense move to send constitutional questions about the Azruddin Mohamed and Nazar Mohamed extradition case up to the High Court, and the hearing rolls forward with the US expected to bring evidence against the We Invest in Nationhood guys on 11 counts...

Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis dropped new legislation in Parliament that cranks up penalties for anyone running migrant-smuggling operations through the islands, and the bill lets prosecutors go after people who plan routes, finance trips, or hide migrants, whether the whole thing happens...

Jamaica Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett got picked to run a new Caribbean Tourism Organization committee that wants to keep more vacation cash circulating inside the region instead of leaking out to foreign companies. The group pulls in reps from Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Saint...

Caribbean Development Bank president Daniel Best put out a statement saying his organization stays locked into fighting corruption because dirty money keeps sabotaging development across the region. He pointed to UN numbers showing bribes eat up a trillion bucks every year, while another 2.6...

A matatu flipped over at the Museum Hill roundabout, and people driving by, plus random pedestrians, jumped in to help right after it happened. Traffic cops showed up to lock down the area and keep cars moving, but nobody confirmed how badly the passengers got hurt or what made the vehicle roll...

Laurent Saint-Cyr showed up at the airport to meet 230 Kenyan cops who just flew in to help deal with the gang situation, and Kenya sent Deputy National Security Advisor Joseph Boinett, plus some other officials, to drop them off. The crew from Kenya is replacing 100 officers heading home after...

Haiti just dropped its election schedule after years of putting it off, and the country wants to run general elections next summer, even though gangs basically run half the capital. Jacques Desrosiers from the Provisional Electoral Council said voting happens in two rounds on specific dates next...

A former prison health officer from Uganda is claiming the system screwed him over after he wouldn't fake receipts for COVID money he never got. James Turyatunga says his bosses at Kitalya Prison wanted him to sign documents confirming payments that didn't actually reach him and other medical...

Wamala Region cops are looking into what appears to be a homicide after Henry Lubwama Kisitu turned up dead in Bukyanga Cell over in Kiboga district. Kisitu lived in Kyengera town council before he went missing for a few days, and Robert Kawuki found the body while trying to ditch his dead dog...

The US and Uganda just locked in a five-year deal worth $2.3 billion to prop up health services across the country, with Washington kicking in $1.7 billion and Kampala promising to add over $500 million. Finance minister Matia Kasaija and Ambassador William W. Popp both signed off on the...

Rebels from the M23 movement grabbed control of Uvira after weeks of fighting that left 74 people dead and pushed over 200,000 residents out of South Kivu Province into neighboring countries. The UN said 83 more got injured while combat spread through a dozen towns before M23 spokesperson...

Uganda's lawmakers admitted they have zero clue how the biometric voting machines work just weeks before the election, and opposition leader Joel Ssenyonyi called out the whole mess after the Electoral Commission asked for nearly half a trillion shillings to build thousands of new polling...

Uganda runs on over 100,000 private security guards who outnumber cops in some cities, but the industry is basically held together with duct tape and hope. Grace Matsiko from the Uganda Private Security Association told a conference at Protea hotel that most guards get maybe a few days of...

Child rights groups in Uganda told politicians to stop dragging kids into campaign events because the whole thing keeps putting them in danger during rallies and roadshows. Joseph Biribonwa from the National Initiative for Civic Education said everyone, from parents to media outlets, needs to...

A Ugandan college student named Maria Nankya got harassed online after posting photos, and the whole thing escalated from rude comments to sexual threats, hitting her email inbox. Research from Twaweza dropped last week showing that nine out of ten African women who use the internet report...

Three Tanzanian reporters got killed during election protests, and journalist Maneno Selanyika's family had to hold his funeral without finding his body after checking hospitals and morgues. Master Tindwa Mtopa from Clouds Media got shot at his house in Dar es Salaam, while Baraka FM's Kelvin...