Jamaica News Bulletin

USA Track & Field this week proposed that the world's two sprinting powerhouses challenge each other in a unique, dual-meet format that could see some of track and field's superstars match up like never before.
 
USATF has formally invited Jamaica to engage in a home-and-home series in 2009 that that will pit the two nations' sprinters and hurdlers against each other in head-to-head, team-scored competition.

Hon. L. Michael Henry, Ministry of Transport and Works, the National Road Safety Council’s Vice Chairman, Dr Lucien Jones, Executive Director, Paula Fletcher and Council co-sponsor, Earl Jarrett, recently returned from the first High Level Ibero-American Road Safety Forum for Latin America and the Caribbean (EISEVI).  The seminar, themed, ‘Protecting Lives”, was held in Madrid Spain between 23 and 24 February 2009.

No one yet has any real idea about when the global financial crisis will end, but one thing is certain: government budget deficits are headed into the stratosphere. Investors in the coming years will need to be persuaded to hold mountains of new debt.

Although governments may try to cram public debt down the throats of local savers (by using, for example, their rising influence over banks to force them to hold a disproportionate quantity of government paper), they will eventually find themselves having to pay much higher interest rates as well. Within a couple years, interest rates on long-term US Treasury notes could easily rise 3-4%, with interest rates on other governments’ paper rising as much, or more.

In one week, Michelle Obama sat for a formal White House portrait, dressed in somber, tailored clothes; posed for a snazzy People magazine cover, dressed in a slightly down-market, hot-pink lace outfit that showed plenty of skin; let the national media know that the First Family would be getting its new puppy from a rescue shelter; and had her press office mention casually that “secretaries and policy makers” had been invited for popcorn and movies at the White House.

That same week, in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 1930’s, a national poll found that support for President Barack Obama was remarkably high, with respondents consistently saying that he “cares about people like me.”