​​It’s the second most wonderful time of the year when Jamaican mangoes are in season.  Since April of this year, more than 1,500 boxes of Jamaican East Indian and St. Julian (Julie) mangoes weighing approximately 15,000 pounds have been shipped to the United States.  Jamaica's Minister of Agriculture Floyd Green announced the first shipment of 2021 on his Twitter account.

Jamaican-born University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, a widely recognized visionary leader who elevated the UMSOM into a top-tier biomedical research and patient-focused academic center, announced that he will complete his 16-year tenure as Dean, at the end of the next academic year. He will return to the UMSOM faculty where he will lead a new Center, and continue research and teaching.

Dr. Reece, who is also Executive Vice President for UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, was appointed as the UMSOM's 30th Dean in 2006. Over the course of his Deanship, he led the UMSOM through a period of unprecedented, record-breaking growth and achievements across all its areas of operation, enabling the UMSOM to reach major milestones in research, clinical care, reputation, and global impact. He is considered to be one of the most successful Deans in the U.S., as well as in our institution's rich 214-year history.

Washington, D.C. — On Thursday, Rep. Yvette D. Clarke voted to pass H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act  to modernize and reform our immigration system and secure permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have been, and will continue to be, key to the economic recovery of our nation.  The American Dream and Promise Act provides relief to our nation’s Dreamers, as well as to many Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) holders.  

Grammy-Award winning Jamaican-born reggae artist, Orville “Shaggy” Burrell, will be featured in a Cheetos Super Bowl LV Ad on Feb. 7 alongside actors Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis titled “It Wasn’t Me” based on his 2000 number one hit song.  The minute-long ad features Kunis denying stealing her husband’s Cheetos with Shaggy’s encouragement.

The annual premier Washington D.C. fundraising event of the David 'Wagga' Hunt Scholarship Foundation, (DWHF): The “Jamaica David 'Wagga' Hunt Annual Red Carpet Ball,” will be held virtually this year on Sunday, January 31, 2021, at 7:00 PM and will be streamed live on YouTube to a global audience.

The Red Carpet Ball joins a long list of events which have moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will be held under the Distinguished Patronages of Jamaica's Ambassador to the USA, Her Excellency, Audrey P. Marks, and Principals Dave Myrie and Albert Corcho of Kingston College and Calabar High School, respectively.

Yasmin Mullings, a Jamaican-born prosecutor who served in Minnesota’s Ramsey County Attorney’s Office as a strong advocate for victims of sexual assault, has passed away at age 56.

Mullings and her family migrated from Jamaica to New York when she was 12 years old. She attended Tuskegee University in Alabama for her undergraduate education and then Cooley Law School at Western Michigan University.
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After she passed the New York state bar exam, she went on to hold positions at the Legal Aid Society and the Suffolk County Attorney’s Office in New York. She joined the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office in 2003, where she became an assistant Ramsey County attorney mainly specializing in sexual assault cases, as well as domestic violence and sex trafficking cases.

​​An 18-foot-tall bronze sculpture of Civil Rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. titled ‘Hope Moves Forward’ was unveiled in Atlanta on Thursday, January 14, at the intersection of Northside Drive and Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, across from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. ​

​The statue was created by world-renowned Jamaican-born sculptor and artist, Basil Watson, who was commissioned by the City of Atlanta in 2018 for the project after being selected from a pool of 80 applicants.