I voted Green Leaf. Aleh Yarok. I’m not ashamed to admit it.

Dude, where’s my vote?

47,000 other Israelis also voted for Green Leaf. This is the most votes the party has ever received since it’s inception in the late 1990’s, according to a recent Facebook post by Oren Leibovich the party’s chairman.

This outstanding, almost unbelievable accomplishment was achieved during one of Israel’s ugliest election, full of nationalistic fear-mongering, racism and deception. More importantly, it is on the heels of legislation raising the threshold for making it into the Knesset to 3.25%. With no threshold, for argument’s sake, Green Leaf would have had one representative make it into the Knesset.

A key component of Jamaica’s business community wants regional leaders to determine whether Washington would oppose efforts by the island to export locally produced marijuana to the U.S. for the medical industry when they meet with President Barack Obama in Jamaica early next month.

Both the White House and Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller announced plans for the visit this week as Obama prepares to make his second official visit to a Caribbean trade bloc member state since taking office six years ago.

In 2009, he flew to Trinidad both to meet with leaders and to attend the hemispheric Summit of Americas which Trinidad had hosted also in April of that year.

A Georgia Senate committee passed a medical marijuana bill on Thursday, but hurdles remain before it can become law.

ATLANTA -- A Georgia Senate committee passed a medical marijuana bill on Thursday, but hurdles remain before it can become law.

The bill is similar to a House bill that passed weeks ago.

Addiction specialists took turns telling the Senate committee why legalizing medical marijuana could have consequences.

A weedkiller used on marijuana plants is said to pose a danger to the health of communities where subsistence farming is the mainstay.

The village of Bulawo in Port St Johns is tucked away deep in the hilly valleys of the pristine Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. The beauty of this coastal village is breathtaking, with waves crashing on the rocks and lush forests extending as far as the eye can see.

… Peter Sinkamba has a point. Trouble is, he is from the future. In his enlightenment, he is many years ahead of the average citizen. Indeed he will be misunderstood reviled and even fought because his audience is way behind him. His attitude should be like that of Jesus, 'forgive them Father for they know not what they do'.

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Anthony Hylton, says Jamaica intends to lead a charge in the United Nations to effect changes to the international treaties concerning marijuana.

The aim is to change the schedule class of marijuana in light of scientific studies that have proven its therapeutic benefits and medicinal value.

“We believe that the schedule in which marijuana is now placed, which is one of the highest schedules as a drug, we believe that it should be removed from that schedule and looked at in the light of... the evidence, which has revealed its strong medicinal (value),” Hylton said, while addressing a session of the recently concluded Jamaica Investment Forum (JIF) at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St James.

WASHINGTON—Ann Lee, a Republican precinct chairman in southwest Houston, had her first marijuana epiphany around her 60th birthday.

A workplace fall paralyzed her son Richard from the waist down. When he began to use marijuana to treat his pain, she decided her lifelong opposition to the drug was wrong.

Her second epiphany came after her 80th birthday. NORML, the marijuana advocacy group, invited her to be part of a five-person panel discussion at a conference in 2012. “As we all talked,” she says, “we realized that three of us were Republicans!”

Nevada's vote is set and advocates believe they can get similar measures on the ballot in four other states

On Friday, Nevada lawmakers adjourned without voting on a petition submitted by residents to legalize marijuana and regulate it like alcohol. That means the initiative is going on the ballot in 2016, making Nevada the first state to officially be voting on pot legalization in the next election.

A new Missouri bill would grant clemency to inmates serving life sentences for marijuana-related offenses, which could help a 61-year-old man who’s already served 20 years.

Human rights lobby group Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ) says the government needs to step up its public education programme on legislation, decriminalising the possession and use of small quantities of ganja.

JFJ says there seems to be confusion among the public and the police which it believes is having serious consequences.

The lobby group made the appeal against the background of the shooting death of Garfield Coburn by policeman Constable Kevon Gordon in Lawrence Tavern, St Andrew on March 6.

Coburn was reportedly shot as he resisted attempts by the police to arrest him after being held with a ganja spliff.

The incident was captured on amateur video.