Some thoughts on the year gone

Image by Getty Images via DaylifeTwo outstanding websites have broad and comprehensive perspectives on the year gone in and for the Caribbean:

• BBC Caribbean's Pick[s] of the Year: BBC Caribbean's pick of the year was Usain Bolt's phenomenal rise to sporting fame, with special coverage of diaspora business; the tourism crisis; crime; homosexuality; soca music; and interviews with high profile regional figures. It also features coverage of some of the year's major events, including Guyana's hosting of Carifesta X; the deaths of Byron Lee and David De Caires; and the region's chronic cricket problem
• Caribbean: 2008 in Review at Global Voices: Janine Mendes-Franco reviews the year in politics; freedom of speech; human rights; crime & health; disasters; the economy; sport; and fond farewells

CaribWorldNews.com also has two stories on Caribbean Americans in 2008:

• CWWN's Caribbean American People of the Year: their picks, all from the political realm, include second generation Barbadian and Barack Obama Attorney General nominee Eric Holder Jr.; Haitian-American political director for Obama Patrick Gaspard; and Caribbean-descended New York Governor David Patterson
• Caribbean American Year in Review: an overview, from the high points (record Caribbean voter turnout and involvement in the US political process; the Caribbean's success at the Olympic Games; and the inclusion of a Caribbean designation – CARIBID – on the US census form), to the low points (Caribbean-Americans lose savings and investments on Wall Street, face retrenchment, and a cut in remittances back home as global recession hits; a Jamaican psychiatric patient dies from negligence at a Brooklyn Hospital; a Haitian-American Walmart employee is trampled to death on Black Friday in New York; disappointment around the relocation and reorganisation of Caribbean Week in June; and New York Governor David Patterson's slow response to aiding Haitian hurricane victims)