JPS engineers worked through the night to restore power after an unprecedented blackout plunged the entire island into darkness. Share Jamaica was plunged into darkness on Friday night after a major system failure within the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) network triggered a rare island‑wide blackout, cutting electricity to homes, businesses and essential services across all 14 parishes. The outage, which began shortly after 8pm, spread rapidly across the national grid and exposed once again the fragility of the country’s energy infrastructure. Energy Minister Daryl Vaz confirmed the nationwide collapse, calling it “unacceptable” and ordering a full investigation into what went wrong. J PS said the failure originated deep within the system and activated emergency protocols as engineers worked through the night to stabilise the grid. A phased restoration began with the careful restart of generating units to avoid further instability. While the exact cau...
Dr Shola Says Met Police Ignored Death Threats Against Her — Yet Found Time to Interrogate Her Over Comments Defending Ms Rachel
Dr Shola Mos‑Shogbamimu has accused the Metropolitan Police of a disturbing double standard after revealing she was interrogated under caution for online comments defending children’s YouTube presenter Ms Rachel. In a video shared publicly, Dr Shola said officers read her her rights and questioned her on allegations of inciting racial hatred and sending malicious communications, all stemming from posts in which she argued that Ms Rachel’s statement about wanting children to live was not antisemitic. She described the experience as surreal, saying she could not understand how defending a children’s educator had escalated into a criminal‑style interrogation.
What makes the situation more alarming, Dr Shola said, is the backdrop against which this interrogation took place. For years, she has been the target of violent, racist and extremist threats, including a letter threatening to kill her and her family. She has repeatedly stated that these threats were reported to the police, yet no arrests have been made. According to her, the Met Police has not identified the perpetrator, despite the severity of the threat and the involvement of extremist groups. For Dr Shola, the contrast is impossible to ignore: the force that has not solved a credible threat to her life somehow had the time and resources to scrutinise her social‑media commentary line by line.
Dr Shola said the interrogation also focused on her criticism of an Israeli settler who was filmed running over a Palestinian man while he prayed. She said she was questioned for calling the perpetrator a “cold‑blooded demon”, a description she argued was a moral judgement on an act of violence, not an incitement to hatred. She added that she was also questioned for defending activist Zora Mundani, who had criticised the relationship between U.S. policing and Israeli military tactics. For Dr Shola, these lines of questioning point to a troubling pattern: political speech, especially when expressed by Black women, is being policed more aggressively than actual threats to their safety.
Her account has reignited debate about policing priorities, freedom of expression, and the treatment of outspoken Black women in public life. Supporters argue that the Met’s handling of her case reflects a wider issue, that marginalised voices are disproportionately scrutinised for their anger, their activism, and their criticism of state violence, while the threats they face are too often dismissed or deprioritised. Dr Shola’s experience raises a stark question about whose safety is protected, whose speech is policed, and why the balance appears so profoundly skewed.
