We lost Twitter and got X. We tried out Bluesky and Mastodon — well, some of us did. We fretted about AI bots and teen mental health. We cocooned in private chats and scrolled endlessly as we did in years past. For social-media users, 2023 was a year of beginnings and endings, with some soul-searching in between. 

Here’s a look back some of the biggest stories in social media in 2023 — and what to watch for next year: 

GOODBYE TWITTER 

A little more than a year ago, Elon Musk walked into Twitter ‘s San Francisco headquarters, fired its chief executive and other top executives and began transforming the social-media platform into what’s now known as X. 

Musk revealed the X logo in July. It quickly replaced Twitter’s name and its whimsical bluebird icon, online and on the company’s San Francisco headquarters. 

“And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk posted on the site. 

Because of its public nature and because it attracted public figures, journalists and other high-profile users, Twitter always had an outsized influence on popular culture — but that influence seems to be waning. 

“It had a lot of problems even before Musk took it over, but it was beloved brand with a clear role in the social-media landscape,” said Jasmine Enberg, a social-media analyst at Insider Intelligence. “There are still moments of Twitter magic on the platform, like when journalists took the platform to post real-time updates about the OpenAI drama, and the smaller communities on the platform remain important to many users. But the Twitter of the past 17 years is largely gone, and X’s reason for existence is murky.” 

Since Musk’s takeover, X has been bombarded by allegations of misinformation and racism, endured significant advertising losses and suffered declines in usage. It didn’t help when Musk went on an expletive-ridden rant in an onstage interview about companies that had halted spending on X. Musk asserted that advertisers that pulled out were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to get lost. 

Continuing the trend of welcoming back users who had been banned by the former Twitter for hate speech or spreading misinformation, in December, Musk restored the X account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, pointing to an unscientific poll he posted to his followers that came out in favour of the Infowars host who repeatedly called the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax. 

LGBTQ+ and other organisations supporting marginalised groups, meanwhile, have been raising alarms about X becoming less safe. In April, for instance, it quietly removed a policy against the “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals”. In June, the advocacy group GLAAD called it “the most dangerous platform for LGBTQ+ people”. 

GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ education group, announced in December that it was leaving X, joining other groups such as the suicide prevention non-profit Trevor Project, saying that Musk’s changes “have birthed a new platform that enables its users to harass and target the LGBTQ+ community without restriction or discipline”. 

HELLO X. AND THREADS. AND BLUESKY 

Musk’s ambitions for X include transforming the platform into an “everything app” — like China’s WeChat, for instance. The problem? It’s not clear if US and Western audiences are keen on the idea. And Musk himself has been pretty vague on the specifics. 

While X contends with an identity crisis, some users began looking for a replacement. Mastodon was one contender, along with Bluesky, which actually grew out of Twitter — a pet project of former CEO Jack Dorsey, who still sits on its board of directors. 

When tens of thousands of people, many of them fed-up Twitter users, began signing up for the (still) invite-only Bluesky in the spring, the app had less than ten people working on it, said CEO Jay Graber recently. 

This meant “scrambling to keep everything working, keeping people online, scrambling to add features that we had on the road map”, she said. For weeks, the work was simply “scaling” — ensuring that the systems could handle the influx. 

“We had one person on the app for a while, which was very funny, and there were memes about Paul versus all of Twitter’s engineers,” she recalled. “I don’t think we hired a second app developer until after the crazy growth spurt.” 

Seeing an opportunity to lure in disgruntled Twitter users, Facebook parent Meta launched its own rival, Threads, in July. It soared to popularity as tens of millions began signing up — although keeping people on has been a bit of a challenge. Then, in December, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in a surprise move that the company was testing interoperability — the idea championed by Mastodon, Bluesky and other decentralised social networks that people should be able to use their accounts on different platforms — kind of like your e-mail address or phone number. 

“Starting a test where posts from Threads accounts will be available on Mastodon and other services that use the ActivityPub protocol,” Zuckerberg posted on Threads in December. “Making Threads interoperable will give people more choice over how they interact and it will help content reach more people. I’m pretty optimistic about this.” 

MENTAL-HEALTH WORRIES 

Social media’s impact on children’s mental health hurtled towards a reckoning this year, with the US surgeon-general warning in May that there is not enough evidence to show that social media is safe for children and teens — and calling on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now”. 

“We’re asking parents to manage a technology that’s rapidly evolving that fundamentally changes how their kids think about themselves, how they build friendships, how they experience the world — and technology, by the way, that prior generations never had to manage,” Vivek Murthy told The Associated Press. “And we’re putting all of that on the shoulders of parents, which is just simply not fair.” 

In October, dozens of US states sued Meta for harming young people and contributing to the youth mental-health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. 

In November, Arturo Béjar, a former engineering director at Meta, testified before a Senate sub-committee about social media and the teen mental-health crisis, hoping to shed light on how Meta executives, including Zuckerberg, knew about the harms Instagram was causing but chose not to make meaningful changes to address them. 

The testimony came amid a bipartisan push in Congress to adopt regulations aimed at protecting children online. In December, the Federal Trade Commission proposed sweeping changes to a decades-old law that regulates how online companies can track and advertise to children, including turning off targeted adverts to children under 13 by default and limiting push notifications. 

WHAT TO WATCH FOR IN ’24 

Your AI friends have arrived — but chatbots are just the beginning. Standing in a courtyard at his company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters, Zuckerberg said this autumn that Meta is “focused on building the future of human connection” — and painted a near-future where people interact with hologram versions of their friends or coworkers and with AI bots built to assist them. The company unveiled an army of AI bots — with celebrities such as Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton lending their faces to play them — that social-media users can interact with. 

Next year, AI will be “integrated into virtually every corner of the platforms”, Enberg said. 

“Social apps will use AI to drive usage, ad performance and revenues, subscription sign-ups and commerce activity. AI will deepen both users’ and advertisers’ reliance and relationship with social media, but its implementation won’t be entirely smooth sailing as consumer and regulatory scrutiny will intensify,” she added. 

The analyst also sees subscriptions as an increasingly attractive revenue stream for some platforms. Inspired by Musk’s X, subscriptions “started as a way to diversify or boost revenues as social-ad businesses took a hit, but they have persisted and expanded even as the social-ad market has steadied itself.” 

With major elections coming up in the US and India among other countries, AI’s and social media’s role in misinformation will continue to be front and centre for social-media watchers. 

“We’re not prepared for this,” A.J. Nash, vice-president of intelligence at the cybersecurity firm ZeroFox, told the AP in May. “To me, the big leap forward is the audio and video capabilities that have emerged. When you can do that on a large scale, and distribute it on social platforms, well, it’s going to have a major impact.” 

The post World Social Media: X and Threads are born and AI gets personal appeared first on RG Magazines.

To feel 2023 is to listen closely and think on the words of awe, dread, anger, disconnect, loss — and yes, love — that flowed from people directly involved in the world’s most recent turns of history. 

WONDER 

“I’m feeling the goose bumps, and it’s a very happy moment … You can see the energy. It’s beyond words.” 

— Shrini Singh as she watched the live broadcast of Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 landing on the lunar surface, making India only the fourth country to achieve this milestone. The successful landing showcasing India’s rising standing as a technology and space powerhouse sparked celebrations across India. Singh was speaking in New Delhi on August 23. 

EXASPERATION 

“We are here all together, all the world together, to combat climate change and, really, we’re negotiating for what? We’re negotiating for what in the middle of a genocide?” 

— Hadeel Ikhmais, a climate-change expert with the Palestinian Authority, on December 1 during the COP28 talks in Dubai. The Israeli offensive had killed more than 18,700 Palestinians as of the weekend of December 16 and 17, the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory says.  

DISAPPOINTMENT 

“They told me that this country was different. But for me, it’s been hell.” 

— Karina Obando, 38, a mother from Ecuador who has been given until January 5 to leave the former hotel in New York City where she has been staying with her two young children. She is one of thousands of migrant families in an emergency shelter system who has been ordered by the city to clear out, with winter setting in. Mayor Eric Adams says the order is necessary to relieve a shelter system overwhelmed by asylum seekers crossing the southern US border. 

PAIN 

“What is most painful is that years after the brutalities and the stealing of our land, British companies are still in possession of our ancestral homes, earning millions from their comfortable headquarters in the UK, while our people remain squatters.” 

— Joel Kimutai Kimetto, 74, speaking to the AP in a phone interview during King Charles III’s visit to Kenya in October. Kimetto said his grandfather and father were kicked out of their ancestral home by the British. 

HOPE 

“God gave me a new lease on life.” 

— Osama Abdel Hamid, weeping at a hospital in Idlib, Syria, after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the deadliest in decades, devastated his war-ravaged country and parts of Turkey on February 6. He said most of his neighbours died when their shared four-storey building collapsed. As he fled with his wife and three children, a wooden door fell on them, shielding them from falling debris.  

DISILLUSIONMENT 

“This is probably the most uniquely horrible choice I’ve had in my life.” 

— Andrew Collins, 35, an independent from Windham, Maine, on the likely showdown in next year’s election between political foes, men who each have served one term as president, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden. Collins participated in a poll this month from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research, in which American voters made clear how less than jazzed they are about such a rematch in 2024. 

AWE 

“It is amazing to see this huge berg in person — it stretches as far as the eye can see.” 

— Andrew Meijers, chief scientist on board the research ship RRS Sir David Attenborough, which crossed paths with the mega iceberg known as the A23a near Antarctica in early December. The iceberg is three times the size of New York City, or more than twice the size of Greater London. 

SHOCK 

“When they asked me to open my bra … I was shocked! But I couldn’t speak or refuse. When I tried to cover my breast with my hand, I was even scolded and yelled at…I was totally confused, nervous and humiliated, especially when I was told to lift my left leg on the chair.” 

— Priskila Ribka Jelita, a 23-year-old model and a 2023 Miss Universe Indonesia contestant, describing her “body check” in an interview with The Associated Press on August 15 in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

APPRECIATION 

“There was silence and like a mist, as if it was dusk, but only a few minutes later the birds were singing again.” 

— Carmen Jardines, 56, watching the “ring of fire” eclipse in October from Cancún, Mexico, on the dance of the moon and the sun cheered by millions across the Americas. 

INTENTION 

“I’m trying not to do anything that alienates anyone. But I can’t just not do the right thing because I’m scared.” 

— Cydney Wallace, a Black Jewish community activist in Chicago, part of a growing number of Black Americans who see the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank and Gaza reflected in their own fight for racial equality and civil rights. The recent rise of protest movements against police brutality in the US, where structural racism plagues nearly every facet of life, has connected Black and Palestinian activists under a common cause. 

The post What They Said In 2023 appeared first on RG Magazines.

Sport and politics would ideally never mix but as the world becomes increasingly divided on societal issues, sporting platforms have turned into lightning rods for social activism. 

Be it athletes or spectators, disobedience or disruption has been the order of the day as they attempt to transcend the boundaries of the arena and convey their views to millions of people worldwide. 

When Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the US national anthem at NFL games to protest against racial injustice in 2016, little did he know the butterfly effect his deed would have as it sparked debates and polarised a country. 

But his gesture has since been embraced by top leagues around the world, none more so than England’s Premier League — European football’s most lucrative and popular competition. 

A spillover from the Black Lives Matter movement that began more than three years ago, the league’s players continue to fight discrimination by taking a knee before some games this season. 

“We are unified in our belief that any form of discrimination has no place within football or wider society,” the 20 Premier League captains said this year. 

“[We] are committed to using our platform to help celebrate diversity and show our support in the fight against racism.” 

The continued protests are, to a large extent, to do with rampant online abuse which rears its ugly head every week, with social-media platforms seemingly unable to stem the flow of unbridled rage and racist abuse that lands in players’ inboxes. 

Outside the arena, Olympic medal-winning wrestlers in India found out the hard way what lies in store for those who leverage their popularity to go up against a member of the ruling party after months of protests on the streets fell on deaf ears. 

India’s top wrestlers were detained by police in May when they intensified their protest demanding the arrest of their federation chief, Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, over allegations of sexual harassment of female athletes, which he denied. 

As images of wrestlers being manhandled by police were beamed across the world, 2016 Olympic bronze medal-winner Sakshi Malik said: “This is how our champions are being treated. The world is watching us.” 

On the other hand, sporting platforms have also been a stage for spectators to amplify causes, and 2023 was no different in dividing viewers when activists disrupted big events from tennis grand slams to golf majors and cricket matches. 

Just Stop Oil protesters interrupted Wimbledon matches when they released orange ticker-tape on to the grasscourt surface, while the group also stopped play by scattering orange powder at an Ashes Test and the World Snooker Championship. 

Their controversial and disruptive tactics have been condemned by athletes and fans alike, but they also garnered sympathy from popular and outspoken football pundit Gary Lineker. 

“I completely understand where they’re coming from — disruptive protest is the only one that gets any publicity. I get it,” said Lineker, who presents BBC’s Match of the Day football highlights programme. 

“I also understand why people get so upset with it, particularly in sport. I think what is more important is probably our existence in the future rather than slight disruption of sporting events.” 

US Open tennis champion Coco Gauff, who has spoken out on various causes, also has no qualms about such protests, even though climate activists disrupted her semi-final at Flushing Meadows and one glued his feet to the stand’s concrete floor. 

“I think that moments like this are history-defining moments,” Gauff said. “If that’s what they felt they needed to do to get their voices heard, I can’t really get upset at it.” 

The post Sport continues to be a catalyst for protest appeared first on RG Magazines.

The tide turned against inflation. 

Artificial intelligence went mainstream — for good or ill. 

Labour unions capitalised on their growing might to win more generous pay and benefits. 

Elon Musk renamed and rebranded the social-media platform Twitter, removed guardrails against phoney or obscene posts and ranted profanely when advertisers fled in droves. 

The American housing market, straining under the weight of heavy mortgage rates, took a wallop. 

And Taylor Swift’s concert tour scaled such stratospheric heights that she invigorated some regional economies and drew a mention in Federal Reserve proceedings. 

A look back at ten top business stories in 2023: 

RAGING AGAINST INFLATION 

The Fed and most other major central banks spent most of the year deploying their interest-rate weapons against the worst bout of inflation in four decades. The trouble had erupted in 2021 and 2022 as the global economy roared out of the pandemic recession, triggering supply shortages and igniting prices. 

By the end of 2023, though, the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England had taken a breather. Their aggressive rate hikes had brought inflation way down from the peaks of 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent energy and grain prices rocketing and intensified price spikes. 

In the United States, the Fed’s policymakers delighted Wall Street investors by signalling in December that 2024 would likely be a year of rate cuts — three to be exact, in their expectations — and not rate hikes. The Bank of England and ECB sounded a more cautious note, suggesting that inflation, although trending down, remained above their target. 

“Should we lower our guard?” Christine Lagarde, the ECB president, told reporters. “We ask ourselves that question. No, we should absolutely not lower our guard.” 

The Council on Foreign Relations, which tracks interest rates in 54 countries, found that central banks turned aggressive towards inflation in the spring of 2022. Policies remain tight, the council found, but the overall anti-inflation stance has eased. 

AI GOES MAINSTREAM 

Artificial intelligence thrust itself into public consciousness this year. But the technology, while dazzling for its ability to retrieve information or produce readable prose, has yet to match people’s science-fiction fantasies of humanlike machines. 

Catalysing a year of AI fanfare was ChatGPT. The chatbot gave the world a glimpse of advances in computer science, even if not everyone learnt quite how it works or how to make the best use of it. 

Worries escalated as this new cohort of generative AI tools threatened the livelihoods of people who write, draw, strum or code for a living. AI’s ability to produce original content helped to fuel strikes by Hollywood writers and actors, and legal challenges from bestselling authors. 

By year’s end, the AI crises had shifted to ChatGPT’s own maker, OpenAI, which was nearly destroyed by corporate turmoil over its CEO, and to a meeting room in Belgium, where European Union leaders emerged after days of talks with a deal for the world’s first major AI legal safeguards. 

WORKERS SCORE GAINS 

The long-battered American labour movement flexed its muscle in 2023, taking advantage of widespread worker shortages to demand — and receive — significantly better pay and benefits. From Hollywood writers and actors to autoworkers to hotel workers, 510,000 labourers staged 393 strikes in the first 11 months of 2023, according to Cornell University’s Labour Action Tracker. 

Under its pugnacious new president, Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers struck the Big Three automakers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, Jeep and Ram — and won pay raises, improved benefits and numerous other concessions. 

Hollywood writers and actors, as a result of their walkouts, secured higher pay and protection from the unrestricted use of artificial intelligence, among other concessions. 

The unions’ gains marked a resurgence for their workers after years following the Great Recession of 2007-09 when union power further dwindled, wage gains languished and employers seemed to have their pick of job candidates. An explosive economic rebound from the Covid-19 recession of 2020 and a wave of retirements left companies scrambling to find workers, and provided labour unions with renewed leverage 

Still, even now, unions remain a shadow of what they once were: as of last year, roughly 10 per cent of US employees belonged to labour unions, way down from 20 per cent in 1983. And back in the 1970s, the United States experienced an average of 500 strikes a year, involving two million workers, said Johnnie Kallas, a labour expert at Cornell. 

MUSK’S X-RATED TRANSFORMATION 

A little more than a year ago, Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, fired its CEO and other top executives and began transforming the social-media platform into what’s now known as X. 

Since then, the company has been bombarded by allegations of misinformation, endured significant advertising losses and suffered declines in usage. 

Disney, Comcast and other high-profile advertisers stopped spending on X after the liberal advocacy group Media Matters issued a report showing that their adverts were appearing alongside material praising Nazis. (X has sued the group, claiming it “manufactured” the report to “drive advertisers from the platform and destroy X Corp”.) 

The problems culminated when Musk went on an expletive-ridden rant in an onstage interview about companies that had halted spending on X. Musk asserted that advertisers that pulled out were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to get lost. 

“Don’t advertise,” X’s billionaire owner said. 

HOUSING’S MISERABLE YEAR 

Remarkably, the US economy and job market largely avoided pain in 2023 from the Fed’s relentless campaign against inflation — 11 interest-rate hikes since March 2022. 

Not so the housing market. 

As the Fed jacked up borrowing rates, the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rate shot up from 4.16 per cent in March 2022 to 7.79 per cent in October 2023. Home sales crumbled. For the first ten months of 2023, sales of previously occupied homes sank 20 per cent. 

Yet at the same time and despite the sales slump, home prices kept rising. The combination of high mortgage rates and rising prices made homeownership — or the prospect of trading up to another house — unaffordable for many. 

Contributing to the squeeze was a severe shortage of homes for sale. That, too, was a consequence of higher rates. Homeowners who were sitting on super-low mortgage rates didn’t want to sell their houses only to have to buy another and take on a new mortgage at a much higher rate. Mortgage giant Freddie Mac says 60 per cent of outstanding mortgages still have rates below 4 per cent; 90 per cent are below 6 per cent. 

CRYPTO CHAOS (CONTINUED) 

If 2022 was the year that the cryptocurrency industry collapsed, 2023 was the year of the spillover from that fall. 

The year’s headlines from crypto were dominated by convictions and legal settlements as Washington regulators adopted a much more aggressive stance towards the industry. 

A jury convicted Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, of wire fraud and six other charges. Weeks later, the founder of Binance, Zhao Chengpeng, agreed to plead guilty to money-laundering charges as part of a settlement between US authorities and the exchange. Among the other crypto heavyweights that met legal trouble were Coinbase, Gemini and Genesis. 

Yet speculation that crypto may gain more legitimacy among investors helped more than double the price of bitcoin. After years of delays, regulators are eventually expected to approve a bitcoin exchange-traded fund. Whether that would prove sufficient to sustain bitcoin’s rally over the long run remains to be seen. 

BANKING JITTERS 

Historically, high interest rates benefit banks; they can charge more for their loans. But in 2023, higher rates ended up poisoning a handful of them. 

The industry endured a banking crisis on a scale not seen since 2008. Three mid-sized banks — Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank — collapsed. 

For years, banks had loaded up their balance sheets with high-quality mortgages and treasuries. In an era of ultra-low rates, those mortgages and bonds paid out puny interest. 

Enter the spectre of inflation and the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes. As rates jumped, the banks’ bonds tumbled in value because investors could now buy new bonds with much juicier yields. With pressure on the banks mounting, some anxious depositors withdrew their money. After one such bank run, Silicon Valley collapsed. Days later, Signature Bank failed. First Republic was seized and sold to JPMorgan Chase. 

Investors remain concerned about mid-sized institutions with similar business models. Trillions of dollars in commercial real estate loans that remain on these banks’ books could become problematic in 2024. 

GLOBAL MARKETS RALLY 

From Austria to New Zealand, stock markets rallied through 2023. As inflation eased, stocks climbed despite sluggish global economic growth. 

A tumble in crude-oil prices helped slow inflation. A barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 14 per cent through mid-December on expectations that the world has more than enough oil to meet demand. 

An index that spans nearly 3,000 stocks from 47 countries returned 18 per cent in US dollar terms as of December 11. Healthy gains for Apple, Nvidia and other US Big Tech stocks powered much of the gains. So did the 45 per cent return for the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, which sells the Wegovy drug to treat obesity and the 33 per cent return for the Dutch semiconductor company ASML. 

The bond market endured more turbulence. Bond prices tumbled for much of the year, and their yields rose, over uncertainty about how far central banks would go in raising rates to curb inflation. 

The yield on the ten-year US Treasury briefly topped 5 per cent in October to reach its highest level since 2007. Yields have since eased on the expectation that the Fed is done raising rates. 

World economy’s resilience 

Over the past three years, the global economy has absorbed one hit after another. A devastating pandemic. The disruption of energy and grain markets stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A resurgence of inflation. Punishing interest rates. 

And yet economic output kept growing in 2023, if only modestly. Optimism grew about a “soft landing” — a scenario in which high rates tame inflation without causing a recession. The head of the International Monetary Fund praised the global economy for its “remarkable resilience’’. 

The United States has led the way. Defying predictions that high rates would trigger a US recession, the world’s largest economy has continued to grow. And employers, fuelled by solid consumer spending, have kept hiring at healthy rates. 

Still, the accumulated shocks are restraining growth. The IMF expects the global economy to expand just 2.9 per cent in 2024 from an expected 3 per cent this year. A significant concern is a weakened China, the world’s No 2 economy. Its growth is hobbled by the collapse of an overbuilt real estate market, sagging consumer confidence and high rates of youth unemployment. 

THE US ECONOMY (TAYLOR’S VERSION) 

Taylor Swift dominated popular culture, with her record-shattering $1 billion concert tour, her anointment as Time magazine’s Person of the Year and her high-profile romance with Travis Kelce, the Kansas City Chiefs NFL star. 

The Swift phenomenon went further yet. It extended into the realm of the national economy. Her name came up at a July news conference by Fed chair Jerome Powell, when Powell was asked whether Swift’s blockbuster ticket sales revealed anything about the state of the economy. Although Powell avoided a direct reply, Swift’s name came up that same month in a Fed review of regional economies: her tour was credited with boosting hotel bookings in Philadelphia. 

Economist Sarah Wolfe, of Morgan Stanley, has calculated that “Swifties” spent an average of $1,500 on airfares, hotel rooms and concert tickets to her shows — although it’s perhaps worth noting that Beyoncé fans spent even more; an average $1,800). 

The post World Business: From AI and inflation to Musk and Swift appeared first on RG Magazines.

In between, there was a short-lived rebellion in Russia, a dam collapse in Ukraine, and the spilling of much blood on both sides of the conflict. 

Twenty-two months since it invaded, Russia has about one-fifth of Ukraine in its grip, and the roughly 1,000-kilometre front line has barely budged this year. 

A crunch has come away from the battlefield. In Western countries that have championed Ukraine’s struggle against its much bigger adversary, political deliberations over billions in financial aid are increasingly strained. 

Russian president Vladimir Putin is playing a waiting game two years into a war that proved to be a costly miscalculation by the Kremlin. He is wagering that the West’s support will gradually crumble, fractured by political divisions, eroded by war fatigue and distracted by other demands, such as China’s menacing of Taiwan and war in the Middle East. 

The international political outlook could turn sharply in Putin’s favour after next November’s elections in the United States — by far Ukraine’s biggest military supplier and where some Republican candidates are pushing to wind down support for its war. 

Nearly half of the US public believes the country is spending too much on Ukraine, according to polling published in November by The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research. 

“The political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic is changing,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Transatlantic solidarity has been steady. But I don’t think it will remain steady for ever.” 

The shifting sentiment could benefit Putin, analysts say, as he seeks at least to keep Ukraine in limbo and eventually compel it to accept a bad deal to end the war. Putin announced in early December that he will run for re-election in March, all but guaranteeing he keeps his repressive grip on Russia for at least another six years. 

“It’s been a good year, I would even actually call it a great year” for Putin, says Mathieu Boulegue, a consulting fellow for the Russia-Eurasia programme at Chatham House think-tank in London. 

Western sanctions are biting but not crippling the Russian economy. Russian forces are still dictating much of what happens on the battlefield, where its defensive lines feature minefields up to 20 kilometres deep that have largely held back Ukraine’s months-long counteroffensive. 

The counteroffensive was launched before Ukraine’s forces were fully ready, a hurried political attempt to demonstrate that Western aid could alter the course of the war, said Marina Miron of the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London. 

“The expectations [for the counteroffensive] were unrealistic,” she said. “It turned out to be a failure.” 

Putin got a victory he desperately wanted in May in the fight for the bombed-out city of Bakhmut, the longest and bloodiest battle of the war. It was a trophy to show Russians after his army’s winter offensive failed to take other Ukrainian cities and towns along the front line. 

A mutiny in June by the Wagner mercenary group was the biggest challenge to Putin’s authority in his more than two decades in power. But it backfired. Putin defused the revolt and kept the allegiance of his armed forces, reasserting his hold on the Kremlin. 

Wagner chief and mutiny leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was killed in a mysterious plane crash. And any public dissent about the war was quickly and heavy-handedly stamped out by Russian authorities. 

Still, Putin has had setbacks. He fell afoul of the International Criminal Court, which in March issued an arrest warrant for him on war crimes, accusing him of personal responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. That made it impossible for him to travel to many countries. 

Ukraine has so far clawed back about half the land that the Kremlin’s forces occupied in their full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the US, but it is going to be hard to win back more. 

The big Ukrainian push fell far short of its ambitions, even though Western countries had given Kyiv a variety of weapons and training. 

That has raised uncomfortable questions in the West about the best way forward. “We’re in a very awkward moment now,” said Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

The Russians have been ruthless in their determination to stop the Ukrainians punching through their lines. They were suspected of sabotaging the major Kakhovka dam on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine, having possessed the means, motive and opportunity to do so. The dam’s collapse flooded a huge area where Ukrainian forces might have may have been able to break through. 

For its part, Ukraine has proved able to strike far behind enemy lines, even hitting Moscow with long-range drones. It has bloodied Russia’s nose by hitting with missiles and drones a key bridge in Moscow-annexed Crimea, oil depots and airfields, and the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol. 

By showing it can strike in the Black Sea, Ukraine has been able to push Russian warships away from the coast, although not entirely. At one point, Russia turned its sights on Ukraine’s Black Sea ports — a vital conduit to global trade — and its farming infrastructure, destroying enough food to feed more than one million people for a year, the British Government said. 

Yet while Russia has endured huge losses of troops and equipment, the country possesses the scale to soak up those setbacks. 

Putin, who foreign officials say has secured large supplies of ammunition from North Korea, has put together a state budget that devotes a record amount to defence as it increases spending by about 25 per cent in 2024-2026. He has also ordered the country’s military to increase the number of troops by nearly 170,000 to more than 1.3 million. 

For Ukraine, the challenge is resourcing another offensive operation. Its troops are motivated but exhausted, analysts say. 

Zelensky has tirelessly lobbied Western leaders to keep help coming, aware they are his country’s lifeline. He has travelled to Washington three times in the past two years. 

US president Joe Biden travelled to Kyiv in February in a display of Western solidarity. He now wants Congress to grant an additional $50 billion for the war in Ukraine. 

Support for Kyiv shows signs of fraying, however. Biden’s proposal is stuck in a divided Senate. 

Zelensky scored a diplomatic victory late in the year when the European Union granted Ukraine accelerated talks on joining the bloc. But even that triumph was tempered by the knowledge that the process could take years, as could clinching Nato membership. 

And the EU’s denial of 50 billion euros (about $55 billion) in aid to help keep the battered Ukrainian economy going was frustrating for Kyiv. 

Italian premier Giorgia Meloni perhaps expressed the predicament most succinctly in November when she inadvertently told a pair of Russian prank callers that “there is a lot of fatigue” on the issue of Ukraine. 

“We are near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out,” she said. 

The post Ukraine ends year disappointed by stalemate with Russia appeared first on RG Magazines.

The achievements of our Olympic champion have often been the starting point for any article written about Bermuda sport, but with Duffy ruled out of action for the entirety of 2023 with a persistent knee injury, it was time for the island’s other sporting stars to shine. 

And shine they did. 

Conor White led the way at the Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile, in October, when he won only Bermuda’s tenth medal at the Games and the first since Duffy picked up bronze in Toronto in 2015. 

White finished third in the cycling time-trial to round off a year full of medals for him after also picking up hardware at the Central American and Caribbean Games and the Caribbean Championships. 

His success was more than matched by wheelchair sprinter Jessica Lewis, who does what she always does at the Parapan Am Games, and that’s win the T53 100 metres in record time. 

Lewis smashed her own Games record by more than half a second to win her third gold in the event after victories in Canada in 2015 and Lima in 2019. 

Yushae DeSilva-Andrade is rocketing up the world boccia rankings, and she announced herself on the global stage with a silver medal at the same event. That performance came hot on the heels of gold at the World Boccia Cup in Brazil and she heads into the 2024 Paralympics in Paris as a genuine medal contender. 

In sport the margin between success and failure is often small and the national teams agonisingly fell at their respective final hurdles in their quest to take on the world’s elite. 

The cricket team were just one game away from qualifying for a World Cup for the first time since 2007 but suffered a heart-wrenching defeat by Canada in the final Americas region qualifier for the T20 World Cup. 

Under Niraj Odedra, a respected trophy-winning coach from India, Bermuda’s players showed professionalism, perseverance and passion to galvanise the country’s cricket fans behind them. 

A stunning 86-run victory over favourites Canada in the opening game of the tournament on home soil gave hope that after 17 years Bermuda could again be taking on the likes of India, England and Australia on the greatest of stage of all. 

Echoes of 2007 came in the shape of Bermuda’s star of the tournament, Kamau Leverock, the nephew of Dwayne Leverock who entered cricket folklore after his stunning slip catch in the World Cup. The younger Leverock hit 83 in that opening match and 98, from 59 balls against Cayman Islands, eventually ending as the tournament MVP. 

With Bermuda winning four of their first five matches, with the other a no result, and Canada making up for their defeat against the home side by thrashing every other opponent they played, the final match of the tournament was a straight shoot-out. 

With heavy overnight rain making for a tricky pitch and reducing the match to 18 overs, Canada won the toss, elected to bat and made 132 for four, a score no more than respectable. 

For a while, a winning chase looked on with opener Leverock in the twenties and No 3 Terryn Fray finding form for the first time in the tournament as he reached 30. But when Leverock fell for 23 and captain Delray Rawlins followed him within five balls, the task looked tough, with only Allan Douglas Jr (22) of Bermuda’s last eight batters making more than three runs. 

The future is now up in the air, with Odedra yet to be offered a new deal and Lloyd Smith returning as Bermuda Cricket Board president after defeating incumbent Arnold Manders 7-6 at the annual meeting just a few weeks ago. 

There were eerie similarities between cricket and football, with Bermuda’s football teams engendering a feel-good factor among the public as they entered their final matches of the year top of their leagues only to falter. 

The men were sitting proudly at the summit of Concacaf League B group C with promotion and future matches against the likes of Jamaica, Honduras and Panama in their own hands. 

Under new Canadian coach Michael Findlay, who replaced Kyle Lightbourne at the start of August, there were definite signs of improvement and a much more attractive style, but a win was needed away against French Guiana in the final round of fixtures to secure promotion. 

A 3-0 defeat was a disappointing way to end the campaign, but Findlay will be encouraged by the contributions made by some exciting young players. 

It was a similar scenario for the women’s team who topped their Women’s Concacaf Gold Cup group going into the final day of matches. 

After two wins against St Vincent & the Grenadines, one by default, a win and draw against Barbados and a home victory against Dominican Republic, Naquita Robinson’s side needed just a point against the latter to secure a spot in the Gold Cup play-off stages but lost 2-0. 

On the domestic front, Jordan DeSilva announced his retirement as Somerset cricket captain after a draw with St George’s ensured the Cup Match trophy stayed in the West End for at least another year. 

Dion Stovell was again the star, hitting 139 in his second successive Cup Match century as Somerset fell short in an ambitious attempt to inflict an inning defeat. Stovell’s side scored 404 in their first innings, bowling out St George’s for 219 and leaving them at 242 for six after following on. 

Bermuda’s tight-knit football community was in mourning in May after PHC Zebras captain Marco Warren was killed in an incident on the roads. 

Warren was the league’s standout performer and had been named Bermuda Football Association Player of the Year for the third time in just five seasons three weeks before his death 

The 29-year-old almost led his side to their first Triple Crown in 52 years last season, helping his side to glory in the Premier Division and Friendship Trophy before losing 2-1 to North Village in the FA Cup Final, with Warren unavailable through suspension. 

The post Duffy sidelined but there is no shortage of talking points appeared first on RG Magazines.

The mature and developing markets of international insurance and reinsurance remain the bright spots on the business landscape, of which there is evidence in this newspaper on almost a daily basis. 

Employing an increasing number of Bermudians, the companies and other international businesses support service providers such as accounting firms, law firms, banks and advisers, and indirectly a host of other enterprises. 

The talent base being built here has become a buffer to the surge of unemployment in our economy in recent years. 

But what else for the health of Bermuda business? 

Faced with a continued slump in air arrivals for the foreseeable future, hints of what the new year has in store can also be found in a review of local business, the global tax initiative, the economy, tourism and infrastructural construction. 

It is fair to say that a post-Covid surge in residential construction projects gave the industry a boost this year. 

However, a leading construction boss has told us that momentum is not expected to last in 2024. 

Alex DeCouto, co-owner and president of Forte Building Group Ltd, said: “The word that comes to mind for 2023 is ‘indigestion’ as a metaphor because it was a very busy year for local companies. 

“We have not had any mega projects like we had before Covid — the airport, Belco, Morgan’s Point — where foreign entities came in to do the work, but in 2023, everything was done by local companies and that is better for us in the market. 

“Covid created a real jolt in the arm for residential where the residential construction market went sky high. 

“The commercial market is still active enough, too. Businesses were making investment and it was active commercially.” 

Mr DeCouto said rising prices for items such as concrete and concrete block, a tight labour market, and backlogs in the planning department that were exacerbated by the hack of the Government’s online systems in September, will contribute to a slowdown in the residential construction market next year. 

However, he added: “It looks like commercial construction will stay healthy. 

“We are bidding on lots of projects that are on tap — industrial, restaurants and office renovations. 

“We are getting lots of inquiries about the office renovation market. That is all good for Bermuda as well.” 

Two high-profile projects, the Fairmont Southampton makeover and Brookfield Reinsurance’s 91 Front Street scheme, are expected to come online next year. 

Mr DeCouto said: “Brookfield is easily swallowed up by local capacity. It is not a large building for Hamilton. It is a small site for a new build. It doesn’t take a lot of workers. 

“It’s a great job, and an awesome investment for Bermuda, but it has nowhere near the impact of the Southampton Princess on the local labour market. 

“The Southampton Princess is a gut and refit, and very labour-intensive.” 

Mr DeCouto said the project will require between 400 and 500 workers. 

He added: “The majority of workers will not be coming from the local market. There will be locals interested in working the job, but the local market is exhausted. 

“Twenty-five to 30 per cent of the labour market in the industry is already on work permits.” 

Switching gears, in 2023 it was hard to find any aspect of Bermuda life not impacted by skyrocketing costs. Food inflation remained above 10 per cent, electricity was up 20 per cent and some rents increased by an estimated 30 per cent. 

It was a year that left many Bermudians feeling the bite of the rising cost of living. 

The former Bermuda Chamber of Commerce president, businessman Peter Everson, said things will improve when Bermuda gets the Fairmont Southampton hotel operating again. 

“The biggest surprise for 2023 was the lack of progress on that,” the economist said. “We really need to get that going again. It will be a direct employment benefit for 600 jobs. It would also be the equivalent to another ten additional flights at the airport.” 

However, he did not anticipate getting the hotel — which closed in October 2020 — open again for at least another two years. 

Looking forward, he thought that food prices may start to stabilise next year. “We all hope they do,” he said. 

He also thought fuel prices could become more reasonable. 

“The oil and gas production in the US has been increasing, which provides some relief for prices in our region,” he said. 

American energy companies are now churning out a record 13.2 million barrels of oil a day, more than Russia or Saudi Arabia, and are expected to add another 500,000 barrels a day next year. 

Mr Everson said a change in the way Belco sets its fuel adjustment rate would help the hotel industry. 

“Bermuda would be better served if the FAR was fixed in October of each year for the next year,” he said. “Currently, a hotel in the summer months might be receiving a bill for $600,000, the next month it might be $660,000 and the next $580,000. You can see what the impact that has on hotel profits because they pre-sell a lot of their rooms.” 

Earlier in the year, urban planner Jonathan Starling, attributed local inflation to economic shocks of the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and climate change. 

Like anywhere else, the economy will always be a central issue. In the face of crippling debt and annually spending more than we make, the Government has promised a day in the near future when revenues will exceed expenditure, a needed development to begin cutting into what we owe to foreign interests. 

For that to happen, we need to grow the economy. Bermuda’s gross domestic product expanded 3.60 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 over the same quarter of the previous year. 

Just this December, one company blamed “the prolonged stagnation of Bermuda’s economy” for the laying-off of 19 staff just before Christmas. 

There are whispers that trouble at the BAC Group is not the only bad news on the shoulder-season horizon. 

Bermuda has been held together by the success of international business, and the executive decision to not just make Bermuda their home, but to directly participate in our affairs, to be positive corporate citizens, and in many cases make our concerns, their concerns. 

The major global issue that we have been forced to face together this year, and in the future, is the impending introduction of the global minimum tax. 

Corporate Income Tax legislation was passed in the House of Assembly and it is proposed that from 2025, Bermuda will start taxing multinational corporations with more than €750 million (about $827 million) of global annual revenue, as determined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. 

It will end the island’s historical status as a zero-rate jurisdiction. 

The tax will be set at 15 per cent, although investment and spending by corporations — such as funds spent towards the creation of jobs, training and career development, local infrastructure investment and investment in support of the environment — could generate tax credits. 

There is enormous hope within the Government that revenues can be used to cut other taxes such as payroll and customs duties, to help reduce the cost of living and the cost of doing business. 

A Tax Reform Commission will go through the implementation of the corporate tax and make suggestions on the reduction or elimination of existing taxes and customs duties. 

It is expected that the commission will deliver its recommendations by mid-2024. 

The post Bleeding realities as long as Fairmont Southampton stays shut appeared first on RG Magazines.

Scheduled to come into force in 2025, the legislation will transform how Bermuda does business — at least as far as major multinational enterprises are concerned. 

David Burt, the Premier and Minister of Finance, emphasised that it was too early to tell what the outcome might be of levying a 15 per cent tariff on corporations with yearly takings of at least €750 million (about $827 million). 

The Bill got the green light in the House of Assembly on December 15, followed by the Senate three days later. 

There was little debate that the tax would have an extraordinary impact on the Government’s revenues. 

Where MPs clashed was on the question of how to apply the funds. 

The Premier bridled at a move by the One Bermuda Alliance to earmark the revenues for paying down Bermuda’s national debt. 

Mr Burt chided the Opposition, accusing the OBA of presuming to know better than bodies such as the Tax Working Group and the Tax Reform Commission — telling the House it was far too early to allocate future revenues to anything specific. 

Opposition MP Michael Dunkley responded that the proposal was merely an amendment that the government side could vote down. 

The Opposition gave guarded support overall. 

In the end, the OBA’s suggestion was ruled out by Dennis Lister, the Speaker of the House, because it had been put forward for a money Bill affecting the Government’s revenue. 

The Fiscal Responsibility Panel recommended that the island seize the opportunity of such a landmark change to overhaul its tax system, including moving away from payroll tax to a low-rate personal income tax. 

The island is likely to see revenues coming in by 2026 — but December 2023 marked the end of the debate. 

Bermuda’s top judge wrapped up his tenure in December after more than five years on the job. 

Narinder Hargun looked forward to travelling and spending time with family after stepping down as Chief Justice, with his career devoted to the island’s commercial courts as well as some milestone constitutional cases. 

Mr Hargun revealed that the Government had agreed, at least in principle, to boost the number of judges in the commercial courts from two to three, adding that the move would strengthen Bermuda’s reputation for handling international business. 

December took a tragic turn for Bermuda and the loved ones of Steve Parkes, who would have turned 54 on Christmas Day. 

The carpenter and family man was shot dead on the night of December 11 in an attack in the Mary Victoria Road neighbourhood of Devonshire. 

Police described the killing, which marked the island’s fourth murder of 2023, as a grim case of mistaken identity. 

MPs in the House of Assembly called Mr Parkes a community-minded man looking to use his skills to help the island’s disaffected young people. 

A predawn fire on December 14 swept through the Boatport Boat Storage facility in St George’s, with roughly 40 vessels consumed in the blaze. 

The scale of the destruction shocked the community, and the East End in particular, with boats exploding and sheets of flame billowing into the skies over Wellington Slip Road. 

The loss to boat owners is likely to be tallied in the millions, and the fire came as a gut-wrenching blow to William and Edward Lawrence, owners of the facility. 

The cause of the blaze remains under investigation by the Bermuda Fire and Rescue Service. 

Bermuda’s high cost of living was a refrain throughout 2023. 

Electricity costs sparked a rare public protest outside Belco when the rise in global oil prices caused the energy regulator to approve a hike in the fuel adjustment rate. 

But there was a reprieve for consumers in December, when the Regulatory Authority announced the FAR would drop again starting in January. 

Lastly, 2023 will be remembered by many for epic levels of rain. 

It was the wettest year since modern record-keeping began in 1949. 

The constant downpours caused havoc for Bermuda’s roads, but at least left residents with brimming water tanks. 

The post December: Plunge taken on landmark tax appeared first on RG Magazines.

The trial of Kamal Worrell, a former lawyer, started on November 17 and saw him charged with murdering the mother of his child, Chavelle Dillon-Burgess. 

Ms Dillon-Burgess went missing in April 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 shelter-in-place regulations. 

Her disappearance baffled the community, raising questions of how someone could disappear on an island on lockdown, and the public rallied during a months-long search for her. 

The Where’s Chavelle? campaign, which called for her return home, nearly rivalled reporting on the then-novel coronavirus. 

To this day, Ms Dillon-Burgess has not been found. 

Mr Worrell was charged on March 2, 2021, and denied killing her on an unknown date between April 10 and June 11, 2020, as well as a string of assault charges from 2019 and a wounding charge from 2018. 

The trial, which started on November 9, featured stories of alleged abuse and violence, painting Mr Worrell and Ms Dillon-Burgess’s relationship as one marked by arguments and toxicity. 

Friends and family of the missing woman spoke of how they frequently saw the couple arguing and how Ms Dillon-Burgess often shared her complaints and a desire to leave. 

They also spoke of horrific allegations of controlling and abusive behaviour, including beatings, threats, controlling what Ms Burgess ate and refusing to let her see their infant child. 

Mr Worrell argued that Ms Dillon-Burgess was an explosive and temperamental woman, which forced him to defend himself and keep her from their son for his own protection. 

He suggested that Ms Dillon-Burgess had a history of secrecy and likely left their home and, later, the island without anyone noticing. 

The trial was also marked with stalls and days of adjournment, including an instance where Mr Worrell took himself to the hospital because he cut himself shaving — the first time in Bermuda’s history a trial had been delayed for such an occurrence. 

Mr Worrell’s injury was deemed superficial and he did not receive any stitches for the close shave. 

The murder trial carried on into December and will resume in January 2024. 

November also saw a former Progressive Labour Party senator charged with the May death of much loved footballer Marco Warren. 

Curtis Richardson was charged with causing Mr Warren’s death by driving a vehicle, which had a taxi licence plate, in Hamilton Parish without due care and attention. 

The 48-year-old, who was charged in Magistrates’ Court on November 8, was not required to enter a plea because the matter must be heard in the Supreme Court. 

Mr Warren, 29, played for PHC Zebras and Bermuda, and worked as a programme co-ordinator with the Department of Youth, Sport and Recreation. 

He was found on North Shore Road, just west of Trinity Church Road, at about 3.15am and was pronounced dead soon after. 

Outrage followed his death, as many mourned the loss of a beloved and talented figure. 

As of recording, Mr Richardson has not entered a plea. 

November also saw the disappearance of a teenager who went missing for three weeks out of the month. 

Ajahni Lema-Bascome, 16, was first reported last seen at about 11.30pm on November 9 in the Slippery Hill area of St George’s. 

His disappearance soon reached a week without any sightings or warnings. 

By Week 3, police assured the community that “someone knows where Ajahni is” and believed that “complicit adults” were harbouring the teenager. 

Soon after, people “closely associated with Ajahni” told police that he was safe and well, but appeared unwilling or unable to reveal his presence. 

Police reminded the public that Ajahni was still a juvenile and that harbouring him was an offence punishable by law that could result in a fine of up to $3,000 or up to six months in jail. They added that they had no evidence of harm being inflicted on him. 

The disappearance happened shortly after Raquel Sofia Sousa Sequeira, aged 15, returned home on November 5 having disappeared for about a week. A second disappearance would follow for her in December, this time lasting two weeks. 

However, Ajahni remains at large, having been last spotted by police on December 21 in Spanish Point, Pembroke, before taking evasive action. 

The post November: Trial of the Century appeared first on RG Magazines.

Malachi Symonds had leased and cleared a government-owned plot of land across the road from the Devonshire Post Office, but two years into the five-year agreement, a conflict emerged between himself and the Department of Planning over “unauthorised structures” on the field. 

While Mr Symonds maintained that the chicken coop and roadside stalls were temporary structures, the department said they broke the terms of the lease. 

Mr Symonds was told that his failure retroactively to apply for approval meant his lease would end on November 30. 

However, he insisted that the chickens were an essential link in the sustainable farming at the site, by eating agricultural waste and producing manure fertiliser. 

“My dream was to have a chicken coop at the back and a sales area like a little barn, all made of wood, nothing concrete, with wood chips on the ground,” he told The Royal Gazette. 

“It would be like going back in time to the old days, and I could invite other new businesses to come and sell at the stall. The idea is to promote Bermuda business, healthy living, healthy foods.” 

The Ministry of Public Works said that it had attempted to work with Mr Symonds and the decision to terminate the lease was made reluctantly. 

The ministry said: “Both the ministry and the Department of Planning expressed a willingness to collaborate with him, provided he submitted a retroactive planning application to rectify the situation. 

“Mr Symonds was duly informed of the requirement in May 2022 and was granted an additional six months to apply. 

“Regrettably, he refused to follow through with the necessary submission or provide the requested documentation to the planning department.” 

Mr Symonds urged the public to reach out to their Members of Parliament, and the story spread quickly on social media. 

A week later, Lieutenant-Colonel David Burch, the Minister of Public Works, announced that he had met with Mr Symonds and that a “positive resolution” had been found. 

Ministry officials were said to be helping Mr Symonds to prepare and submit a completed retroactive application. 

Colonel Burch added: “It has always been our intention to avoid terminating Mr Symonds’s lease, and I firmly believe in supporting opportunities for local farmers. 

“While I regret that our ministry has had to take this course of action, I am very pleased that it has led to a positive resolution.” 

Mr Symonds thanked the public for their “almost unbelievable” support during the conflict. 

“Everybody thinks of Bermuda as being a divided place,” he said. “I saw everybody come out, whether Black or White, Bermudian or non-Bermudian, to say they were happy to talk to their MPs and move this forward. 

“If Bermuda continues on this path, I think we can do a lot more as a community to help take this island forward.” 

In the neighbouring parish, voters had their voices heard in a by-election to fill the Smith’s South seat left vacant by the retirement of Cole Simons, the Leader of the Opposition. 

The One Bermuda Alliance retained the seat, one of just six held by the party in the House of Assembly, after Ben Smith defeated Progressive Labour Party candidate Mischa Fubler. 

Mr Smith captured 457 votes to 167 for Mr Fubler out of a total vote count of 624. 

In the wake of his victory, Mr Smith thanked his wife and supporters, adding: “Today is a message and I hope that everybody is listening to that message.” 

The month also continued the trend of heavy rainfall in 2023, with 12.23 inches of rainfall over the course of the month, making it the wettest October since 1988 and the third wettest on record. 

While the total rainfall for the month fell short of the 1967 record of 14.55in, October 13 proved to be the fifth-wettest day on record, with 5.51in of rain recorded. 

The worst of the downpour occurred during the morning rush hour and about the same time as high tide, factors that combined to cause challenges for motorists who faced flooded roads in several low-lying areas. 

The post October: Sun shines on Just A Farmer appeared first on RG Magazines.