Part of the success of the just-ended 38th Anniversary of the Royal Anguilla Police Force was that three members of the community were major winners of the raffles which were among the various Police Week activities.

The Department of Environment in Anguilla has set out to educate the public on the threat to the island’s landscapes and seascapes by a number of alien invasive species. The lunch time meetings have been appropriately dubbed “the Brown-Bag Lunch Presentations” taking about 20 minutes.

With Nomination Day having been on January 21, and several days having elapsed since then, Election Day is just three weeks away on February 15.

Candidates in the seven electoral districts contesting the February 15 General Election in Anguilla have been exhorted, as incumbent and aspiring political leaders, to focus their attention on good leadership and to follow the example of the Biblical Nehemiah.

This week is a history-making period in Anguilla as it is the first time that a Roman Catholic Church Diocesan Assembly has been held on the island. It is the 26th Meeting of the Association of the Diocesan Clergy of the Province of Castries with over 30 Priests and Deacons attending from across the region. The five-day Assembly opened with a Mass on Monday evening, January 18, at St. Gerard’s Parish Church at Wallblake.

With the General Election in Anguilla announced for Monday, February 15, all the machinery relating to the polling has virtually been put into place by the Supervisor of Elections, Mr. Colville Petty, OBE.

St. James School of Medicine was launched in Anguilla on Monday this week in a brand new locally-owned building in The Quarter, with an initial 25 students, from the United States and Canada, enrolled.

After much speculation, the Anguilla House of Assembly was dissolved on Wednesday, January 6, on a proclamation issued by His Excellency the Governor, Alistair Harrison, in preparation for elections to a new House of Assembly which are due to be held on February 15. Nominations will close on January 21. (See proclamation elsewhere in The Anguillian).

In the above photograph, is a presentation of a model of the proposed Ferry Terminal at Blowing Point, recently put on display there for general information.

Not many aircraft watchers assembled at the road-side perimeter fence at Wallblake Airport to look at the arriving and departing executive jets, now back in Anguilla in large numbers. But the ground handlers were beaming with delight in the run-up to and during the Christmas holiday period as a flotilla of the planes, absent for several months, swooped in at the runway one after the other.

Even as Pastor Norril Gumbs, of the First Baptist Church at Welches, was delivering his sermon at the Christmas morning service at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, on the birth of Christ in a manger, maternity nurses there were busily recording the birth of a boy and girl a few hours apart.

Anguillian, the Rt. Rev. Errol Brooks, Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeastern Caribbean and Aruba, has been honoured by Her Majesty The Queen.

Whenever the Christmas Season comes around, the story surrounding the ancient city of Jerusalem and the birth of the Christ Child takes centre stage. It was therefore not uncommon for the celebrated St. Augustine’s Choral, directed by professional musician Lennox Vanterpool, and the Youth Chorale, led by Margaret Augustus to dub their joint programme on Sunday, December 20, Reflections on Bethlehem.

The roof of Bethel Methodist Church at South Hill reverberated but remained intact as choir after choir, six in all, plus other groups and the congregation in general, burst forth in lively Christmas hymns in what was termed a Festival of Choirs on Sunday, December 21.