Christopher Coke’s US release moves to January 2028 after second sentence reduction

United States prison records now show Christopher “Dudus” Coke, 57, leaving custody on 29 January 2028 after officials trimmed his term by another year, the second such reduction in roughly fifteen months under rules that reward sustained good conduct. He is completing a 23-year term imposed in August 2011 following guilty pleas to racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit assault with a dangerous weapon, and is held at the federal correctional complex at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Pastor Merrick Al Miller, a long-standing family associate who was at the wheel when Jamaican officers detained Coke in June 2010 on an extradition warrant, told The Gleaner the inmate has taken part in faith-based programmes behind bars. Weeks before that arrest, Coke had slipped away from Tivoli Gardens after forty-eight hours of heavy shooting between state security units and armed supporters; when the guns fell silent, sixty-nine civilians and one Jamaica Defence Force member were dead in an episode widely viewed as a grave rupture in recent national life.

Health leaders say no hantavirus illness has surfaced locally but they are watching reports of sickness and deaths tied to a cruise vessel off West Africa, with more than two dozen travellers from at least twelve nations going ashore and setting off cross-border tracing. On Wednesday Chief Medical Officer Dr Jacquiline Bisasor-McKenzie said surveillance remains robust and the threat is presently judged low, while noting that laboratory capacity could be expanded quickly if reagents and staff training were mobilised, as occurred during the COVID-19 emergency. Officials remind the public that the virus spreads mainly through rodents and their droppings, that early signs can mimic influenza, and that anyone with symptoms after rodent exposure should seek care at once; the World Health Organization also rates global propagation risk as low.

In Gordon House, Speaker Juliet Holness used Tuesday’s sitting to restate that the ceremonial mace embodies parliamentary authority after Southwest St Andrew MP Dr Angela Brown Burke lifted it last week and was suspended for the rest of that session. The Speaker argued the act challenged the chair and orderly debate, not merely decorum. Dr Brown Burke, while conceding the gesture was improper and offering no apology, used her sectoral contribution to complain of repeated disrespect, declaring, “If I come before you and every day you disrespect me, them say one day the bucket bottom I go drop out,” and insisting opposition members deserve a fair hearing before rulings are made.

Cabinet spokesperson Dr Dana Morris Dixon said on Wednesday that the Attorney General’s Chambers will appeal an April 30 Supreme Court decision that voided a mining licence issued to Bengal Development Limited for the Dry Harbour Mountains of St Ann after Prime Minister Andrew Holness overruled the Natural Resources Conservation Authority; the bench found inadequate evidence and said residents’ environmental rights were infringed. The dispute unfolds as legislators review a bill to create the National Reconstruction and Resilience Authority, which would let ministers override regulators in defined cases.

A ministerial review team chaired by Howard Mitchell told reporters Tuesday that the University Hospital of the West Indies operates like a patient in intensive care after years of weak governance, with a tax bill to Tax Administration Jamaica exceeding forty billion dollars, monthly shortfalls near three hundred million, and a board structure the panel calls flawed because chief executive Fitz Gerald lacks a seat while medical committee head Dr Carl Bruce sits on the board yet reports upward to the CEO. The group wants the founding statute, last substantially revised in 1962, rewritten and the eighteen-member board slimmed; the probe followed an Auditor General’s finding of more than five hundred twenty-one million dollars in poorly documented contracts and wider compliance failures.

The Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency is probing a masked man seen with what appears to be a firearm in an online clip threatening staff and pupils of Stella Maris Preparatory School in St Andrew, including talk of fifty million dollars and a second school. Major Basil Jarrett confirmed a report was filed, and Principal Sister Mary Joseph emailed parents on Thursday calling the footage disturbing while saying its authenticity could not be verified and urging adults not to show it to children.

Officers in St Thomas acting on intelligence on Tuesday night raided property in the Land Weh area and seized more than sixteen hundred pounds of cocaine packed in twenty-three knitted sacks, worth upward of four hundred million dollars; two Jamaicans were detained and not named pending enquiries.

Police statistics to 2 May show national homicides at one hundred eighty-four against two hundred thirty-eight in the like period last year, with shootings and robberies also down, yet Manchester’s toll jumped from five slayings to fourteen, a spike highlighted by a 2 May double murder during a Farm District home invasion. Hanover and St Elizabeth posted increases while St James logged twenty-four killings and St Andrew South seventeen.

Former St Catherine South constables Ramon Booth and Marlon Hamilton must each pay five hundred thousand dollars immediately or serve three months for extorting three thousand dollars from a motorist whose car was being towed on Mandela Highway in August 2023; Acting Parish Court Judge Janelle Nelson Gayle imposed the penalty Tuesday after February convictions, citing betrayal of public trust.

Gospel artist David “Kukudoo” McDermott, celebrated for mento-flavoured spiritual sets rooted in wake-yard culture, died on Friday, with confirmation posted that morning on his social channels; among his last large appearances was last August’s Jamaica Labour Party rally in Half Way Tree, St Andrew, where the election date was unveiled. He once worked at Bernard Lodge estate before a home-recorded wake performance launched hits such as “King David”.

United States streamer Darren Jason Watkins Jr, known as IShowSpeed, landed in Jamaica on Thursday on a wider regional swing, drawing crowds at Norman Manley International Airport and stops such as Emancipation Park.

Manchester City and Reggae Girlz striker Khadija Shaw collected the Football Writers’ Association women’s player-of-the-year prize in England after netting nineteen goals in twenty-one Women’s Super League matches with one round left, putting her within one goal of a third straight season of twenty or more and a likely third golden boot since joining in 2021. The BBC reported Friday that contract talks with City have stalled and Chelsea are front-runners for her signature, with chatter of a seven-figure fee.