Jamaican

Ending a monthlong search that cost 76 people their lives, Jamaican authorities on Tuesday captured Christopher "Dudus" Coke, 42, an alleged trafficker in guns and drugs who is also wanted in the United States. Acting on a tip, police captured Coke in St. Catherine Parish on the outskirts of Kingston. He was dressed like a woman and wearing a wig, police said. Coke was in the company of the Rev. Al Miller, who earlier had mediated the surrender of Coke's brother Leighton to police.

There's no parsing the importance of Tuesday's World Cup qualifier for the U.S. national team. "It's huge," forward Jozy Altidore told reporters of the game with Jamaica at a sold-out Columbus Crew Stadium in Columbus, Ohio. "We have to win. Everybody feels that a little bit. If we don't win, it gets pretty scary. " Only the top two teams in the four-nation group move on to next year's final round of CONCACAF qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. After losing to Jamaica for the first time ever last week in Kingston, anything less than a victory Tuesday could drop the U.S. behind both Antigua and Barbuda and Guatemala with two games left.

Seven days before the opening ceremony and George Fitch already detects something missing from the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Namely, fun. The last time the world's grandest sporting event touched down on Canadian soil -- at Calgary in 1988 -- Fitch assembled the Jamaican bobsled team, a hobbin', bobbin', T-shirt-sellin' crew that became an overnight sensation and, in time, a Disney movie. "People really liked us," Fitch said. "They saw this was good, this was what the Games were all about."

LONDO  - If Usain Bolt was already a legend after completing his second consecutive Olympic sprint double during these London Games, what exalted status has he reached now after running an astonishingly fast anchor leg to help Jamaica set a world record and win the 400-meter relay? The final race on the Olympic Stadium track added to the legend that is Bolt. He was a blur Saturday as he took the baton from Yohan Blake and flew to the finish line, bringing it home in 36.84 seconds.

The death toll in clashes in the Jamaican capital climbed past 50 on Wednesday as the government struggled to regain shaky control of slums where a reputed drug lord is headquartered. The man, a hero in some parts of the Caribbean island but wanted for extradition by the U.S., remained a fugitive and may have escaped the offensive launched to capture him. On a fourth day of smoldering urban violence, Kingston continued under a state of emergency, many streets deserted and gunfire erupting sporadically.

Trevor Rhone, a leading Caribbean playwright and screenwriter who co-wrote the 1972 film "The Harder They Come," which helped introduce reggae music and urban Jamaican culture to international audiences, died Sept. 15 at a hospital in Kingston, Jamaica, after a heart attack. He was 69. "The Harder They Come" starred reggae performer Jimmy Cliff as an aspiring singer who becomes a hero to the poor after killing a police officer. The film, co-written with director Perry Henzell, was drawn from the story of a Jamaican criminal killed by police in 1948.

Stephanie Black's documentary "Life and Debt," opening a one-week engagement Friday at the Nuart in West L.A., looks at the effect of globalization on Jamaican workers, including a dairy farmer, left.

The trial of Jamaican singer-actress Grace Jones, 37, who has been charged with cocaine possession, is scheduled to start today after two witnesses failed to show up at the hearing originally scheduled for Tuesday in Kingston. Police have said an undisclosed amount of cocaine was found in Jones' handbag, wrapped in Jamaican two-dollar notes, during a search in April of the home of her husband, singer and songwriter Chris Stanley.

A disoriented young man with a gun forced his way past security and barged onto a jetliner headed for Cuba, taking the crew hostage, firing a bullet that grazed the co-pilot's face and demanding to be flown off the island, witnesses and police said. After eight hours of negotiations, Jamaican soldiers stormed the plane and arrested the man without further injury, but authorities were deeply embarrassed about the security breach at the airport in Montego Bay, a major Caribbean tourist hub. The gunman was identified as Stephen Fray, a 20-year-old Jamaican who police said was "mentally challenged."

This 100-minute documentary of the late reggae kingpin is a fairly standard blend of interviews--with Marley himself, the late Peter Tosh, Island label chief Chris Blackwell and others--behind-the-scenes clips and some brilliant performance footage from a 1973 British television show featuring the original Wailers line-up. But the tape really excels in tying together the strands of Jamaican social and cultural life that became embodied in Marley's music. The perspective adamantly, and rightly, remains on Marley the home-grown product of Jamaican culture, not the international crossover phenomenon.

LONDON -- Usain Bolt of Jamaica completed his defense of his Olympic sprint double on Thursday, winning the 200 in a season-best 19.32 seconds to lead a Jamaican sweep and cement his place as a legend in the sport, just as he has always wanted, by becoming the first man to repeat in the event. Bolt, who was so loose before the race that he came out wearing a yellow cap with the brim turned backward, chatted up a female official on the field and gave the royal “wave” as he was introduced at Olympic Stadium, won going away.

LONDON -- These are Usain Bolt's Olympic Games. Everyone else here is simply running, jumping, swimming, cycling and rowing in his happy wake. Relaxed enough to drape a comforting arm around the jittery volunteer responsible for collecting his gear at the start line and cheeky enough to give a stiff-wristed royal wave as he was introduced to the Olympic Stadium crowd, Bolt completed a golden grand slam by becoming the first man to win the 100- and...

Usain Bolt has never been shy about saying he wants to become a legend. Coming from almost any other athlete, that declaration might sound arrogant. Coming from Bolt, it's the mission statement for a happy journey he's sharing with the world, stride by stride and gold medal by gold medal. Bolt retained his status as the world's fastest man, overcoming an imperfect start Sunday to blaze away from perhaps the best 100-meter field ever assembled at an Olympic start line. With cameras flashing and a delicious tension lifting fans at Olympic Stadium to their feet, Bolt flew to the finish in an Olympic-record 9.63 seconds, .05 off his own world record.

LONDON -- Usain Bolt kept running. Can you believe he kept running? He was already officially the fastest man in the world, the race was over, his competitors were kneeling and gasping, yet he kept running. Skipping down the track in joy. Spreading his arms as if he were flying. Putting his finger to his mouth to shush his doubters. Breaking into a sudden somersault. Shaking his shoulder, bobbing his head, rolling his eyes. And, yeah man, doing The Bolt. You just knew the most dazzling star of these giant Olympics would be doing his trademark lightning-bolt gesture Sunday night after winning a second consecutive Olympic 100-meter dash in a Games record 9.63 seconds.

LONDON -- With Usain Bolt's first meal at the Olympic village considered worth an entire story on a newspaper's website here - for the record, he ate rotisserie chicken for lunch - it's understandable that Bolt's first news conference since he arrived to defend his Olympic 100- and 200-meter titles would be better attended than some of the first Olympic soccer games. Facing a swarm of camera crews and a packed house of international media on Thursday, Bolt said he's back in form after two surprising losses to teammate Yohan Blake at the Jamaican Olympic trials.

Usain Bolt must have a bad hamstring, which would explain why the dazzling sprinter who set three world records while electrifying crowds at the Beijing Olympics lost twice to compatriot Yohan Blake at the recent Jamaican Olympic trials. It also would explain why Bolt, who previously hadn't lost a 200-meter race other than a qualifying heat since 2007, afterward visited his longtime sports doctor in Germany for treatment and then withdrew from the final London Olympics tuneup meet last week in Monaco.

Much of what Don Snowden considers "revitalized" reggae is nothing of the kind ("The New Toasts of Reggae," April 27). While such artists as Luciano stay essentially true to the music's roots, Bounty Killer and those like him have about as much to do with reggae as Pat Boone does with heavy metal! Whereas original Jamaican toasters like U Roy focused on such themes as repatriation and cultural identity, the look, sound and lyrical content of Bounty Killer et al clearly indicate the category to which they truly belong: rap. Want to hear some vital reggae?

It is not clear how big an honor it is, but Jamaican reggae guitarist and singer Bob Marley has had his name attached to a blood-sucking parasite that infests fish living on coral reefs in Jamaica. The naming is not meant to be a sign of disrespect, said marine biologist Paul Sikkel of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, who coined the name Gnathia marleyi to honor Marley. "I named this species, which is truly a natural wonder, after Marley because of my respect and admiration for Marley's music," Sikkel said.