The jury did not buy the government’s case. After three days of deliberations in U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald’s courtroom, Lil Durk walked out of federal court on Friday acquitted of every single charge against him.[#item_full_content
The history of women in dancehall is a story of persistence against structural resistance, of voices that carved space where none was offered, and of a lineage that stretches from Kingston’s sound-system yards in the late 1970s to the global streaming charts of 2026.[#item_full_content
The Grammy Best Reggae Album history spans more than four decades, forty-plus trophies, and a staggering cast of musicians who collectively define what reggae means to the world.[#item_full_content
Dancehall dance moves are not mere party tricks. They are a living archive of Jamaican culture, a coded language developed in the yards and sound-system dances of Kingston and broadcast to every corner of the world through music videos, the internet, and the bodies of athletes, pop stars, and everyday party-goers.[#item_full_content
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Sept. 11, 2026: As the nation marks 25 years since the September 11, 2001 attacks today, what is lost in the story is that more than 100 Caribbean immigrants who died on 9/11 remain largely absent from the national conversation, despite representing at least 14 different nations and territories across the region.
Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Puerto Rico all lost sons and daughters that day, most of them working ordinary jobs in finance, food service, and building maintenance in the World Trade Center towers, having built new lives in New York after emigrating from home.
Karl Henry Joseph, a firefighter with Engine 207, was born in Haiti and lived in Brooklyn. He was among the first responders who rushed toward the towers as thousands fled, and he did not make it out.
Kris Romeo Bishundat was just 23 when he died at the Pentagon. Born in Guyana, he had represented Guyana’s Under-19 cricket team before later becoming a U.S. Navy Information Systems Technician, living in Waldorf, Maryland at the time of his death.
Nizam Hafiz, also Guyana-born, had similarly played for Guyana’s Under-19 cricket squad and gone on to represent the USA National Cricket Team, working for Marsh & McLennan in the World Trade Center when he was killed.
Michael Richards, a Jamaica-born artist living in Queens, New York, kept a studio on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s Tower 1 as part of a work residency program. Richards had spent years creating sculptures depicting Black airmen, including the Tuskegee Airmen, and his work was known for imagery involving flight, sacrifice, and bodies pierced by aircraft, imagery that took on haunting new meaning after he died in the towers that morning.
Kamini Singh and Ronald Singh both worked at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop Tower 1’s 107th floor, and both died there. Joyce Smith, born in Kingston, Jamaica, and Sarah Khan, who worked in food service on the same floor, were also lost.
The anniversary arrives this year alongside renewed public reckoning over 9/11’s aftermath. Immigrant advocates argue that this lack of visibility reflects a broader erasure of immigrant contributions in American history. This is not just about symbolism — it’s about memory and belonging. Honoring Caribbean victims is honoring the immigrant backbone of New York. It is acknowledging that these men and women were part of the city’s heartbeat.
Some have called for Caribbean-specific commemorations each September, whether through school programs, church services, or cultural centers across the region and diaspora. Others want scholarship funds and community initiatives established in the names of those lost.New York City this week released 170,000 pages of previously undisclosed documents that Mayor Zohran Mamdani says show government efforts to mislead residents about dangerous air quality after the towers collapsed. “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” Mamdani said at a Tuesday news conference, describing the release as overdue “accountability” for New Yorkers.
Many of the immigrants who died on 9/11, and the thousands more from Caribbean communities who worked in recovery and cleanup in the months that followed, were among those exposed to that toxic air without adequate protection. Twenty-five years later, the full human cost, both from that morning and from the years of illness that followed, remains difficult to fully account for.
SEE A FULL LIST OF THEIR NAMES HERE
NewsAmericasNow honors the more than 100 Caribbean immigrants lost on September 11, 2001, and continues covering the anniversary’s ongoing significance for the diaspora.
News Americas, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026: The Caribbean needs a better conversation about sex. For too long, we have talked about sex mainly through the language of danger, disease, morality, or shame. Yet good sexual health is focused on health, happiness, emotional connection, relationships, and quality of life. The World Health Organization recognizes sexual health as part of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being and says it remains important throughout life. The Caribbean does not need more sex. It needs a healthier understanding of sex.
Healthy sex begins with knowledge, consent, responsibility, fidelity, respect, and care. For married couples, sexual intimacy can strengthen emotional connection and contribute to relationship satisfaction and well-being. It can also be part of responsible family formation. The University of the West Indies has made sexual and reproductive health, fertility, family planning, counselling, and reproductive medicine important areas of Caribbean research and service. Its Hugh Wynter Institute exists specifically to advance reproductive health across the region. 
This conversation matters because Caribbean societies are changing. Fertility is declining, populations are aging, and migration continues to reshape our communities and workforces. Small states cannot ignore these realities. But the answer is not to tell people how many children to have. The answer is to build societies where people who freely want marriage and children have the health, knowledge, economic opportunity, social support, and confidence to build strong families. Population renewal should grow from human flourishing, not government pressure.
Our Christian heritage gives this issue a moral foundation. Scripture presents marriage as a covenant of love, companionship, fidelity, and family. Genesis speaks of husband and wife becoming “one flesh.” Proverbs celebrates marital love. Hebrews honors marriage. First Corinthians 7 recognizes mutual responsibility between husband and wife. The message is singularly clear: marital sex has a legitimate place in a healthy Christian marriage. It can express love, strengthen connection, bring joy, and contribute to family life. Sex deserves neither shame nor worship. It deserves ethical wisdom.
That wisdom must become practical. Churches can teach healthy marriage and responsible sexuality. Schools and health systems can provide accurate information and reproductive care. Couples can learn communication, fertility awareness, parenting, and conflict management. Governments can make it easier for families to secure housing, healthcare, childcare, education, and decent work. Caribbean institutions are already contributing to this work: UWI advances reproductive health and fertility care, while the University of the Southern Caribbean has participated with Johns Hopkins, Loma Linda, and Oakwood in research on health, family, and well-being in the Caribbean. 
The bigger idea is this: healthy people build healthy relationships; healthy relationships strengthen marriages; strong marriages nurture families; strong families strengthen communities; and resilient communities strengthen small nations. The Caribbean should therefore stop whispering about sex and start intentionally educating people about it with honesty, faith, science, responsibility, and dignity. We should help people live healthier lives, love more wisely, build stronger families when they choose to do so, and raise children who have reasons to believe in tomorrow. Nation building does not begin in Parliament. It begins with people. And the flourishing of a small nation is ultimately shaped by the health, love, relationships, families, and hopes of its people.
The whole thing started with what looked like a peace message. On September 7, Sarkodie posted a note to his SarkNation fanbase asking them to support his music without going after other artists, warning against the kind of toxic fan wars that have long plagued Ghanaian music Twitter and beyond.[#item_full_content
The detail that caught everyone off guard was not the trial itself, but who got pulled into it.[#item_full_content
Streamers have pulled up outside the Los Angeles courthouse where Lil Durk’s fate is now in the hands of a jury, and the scene is quieter than you might expect.[#item_full_content
The reggae influence on hip-hop is not a footnote in music history. It is the founding chapter.[#item_full_content