Well-known sports administrator Condé Riley has been found safe and well.
Family members confirmed that the 73-year-old former president of the Barbados Cricket Association has been located following earlier appeals for information on his whereabouts.
A 20-year-old Christ Church man is scheduled to appear in court today after being charged with firearm and ammunition offences.
Kevione Rashaun Norgrove of Best Road, Lodge Road, Christ Church was arrested and formally charged in connection with offences allegedly committed on February 4, 2026.
He has been charged with possession of a firearm and possession of ten rounds of ammunition.
Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl half-time show was one big love letter to his native Puerto Rico, culminating in a message of pride in his home and the Americas, and an appeal for unity with the US.
The 14-minute set included guest performances from Lady Gaga and Ricky Martin, along with cameos from the likes of Pedro Pascal, Cardi B, Karol G and Jessica Alba, who could be seen dancing on the porch of his famous casita, a staple of his shows designed to look like a traditional Puerto Rican home.
The 31-year-old, who was the world’s most-played artist in 2025 according to Spotify, made history by becoming the first musician to perform entirely in Spanish at a Super Bowl, which is normally the most-watched event on US TV.
He did choose to say one line in English, “God bless America”, before listing nations of Central, South and North America as dancers carried their flags.
Behind them, a billboard message read “The only thing more powerful than hate is love”, and he held a football at the end of the segment bearing the slogan in English: “Together, We Are America.”
However, Bad Bunny, real name Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, did not use his performance to make any explicit political statements against the current US administration.
Despite that, US president Donald Trump, who did not attend this year’s Super Bowl, called Bad Bunny’s set “absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER!” on his social media platform Truth Social.
He added that it was “an affront to the Greatness of America” and “nobody understands a word this guy is saying”.
An alternative event, the All-American Halftime Show, was organised by Turning Point USA and was headlined by Trump-supporting singer Kid Rock.
Bad Bunny’s performance at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, marked the first time the singer and rapper has performed in the United States since releasing last year’s Grammy Award-winning album Debí Tirar Más Fotos (I Should Have Taken More Photos).
Puerto Rico, which is a self-governing territory of the USA, was at the heart of everything in this performance, from his early emergence from a sugarcane field to a set that was meant to represent the sounds and sights of the place he calls home.
Transporting himself through a Latin landscape, with set pieces that included everything from a nail salon to a bar, the Grammy award winner reeled off a medley of his biggest hits, including Tití Me Preguntó, MONACO and BAILE INoLVIDABLE.
Family also featured heavily – from a young couple getting married in a crowd full of Latino dancers to the symbolic moment of Bad Bunny handing his Grammy award to a small child as his 2026 acceptance speech played on a small television.
Climbing an electricity pylon – symbolising the infrastructure that was ruined during the devastating storm – and rapping at the same time, he appeared to pay tribute to the people who died in the 2017 Hurricane Maria.
Bad Bunny further spread a message with his outfit – wearing a beige sweater emblazoned with the number 64.
It could represent the official death toll, which turned out to be significantly lower than the estimated thousands who died.
President Trump’s administration was criticised at the time by Puerto Ricans who said it failed to provide the same federal support compared to hurricanes that had occurred on the mainland.
There were no direct criticisms of President Trump, which some saw as a surprise after his two acceptance speeches at last week’s Grammy Awards, which he used as an opportunity to speak out against ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers.
In his Grammy speech after winning best música urbana album, Bad Bunny called for “ICE out”.
Last year, he opted not to bring his world tour to the US mainland, telling i-D magazine he was worried his fans would be targeted by ICE officers.
He also said there were “many reasons” he would not be performing in the US this time around and “none of them were out of hate”.
Elements of Bad Bunny’s tour set, which has travelled to Central and South America and soon heads to Australia, Japan and Europe, were woven throughout Sunday’s performance.
This included his casita, a house which has gone viral on social media several times for its celebrity guests.
Tonight was no different, with Pedro Pascal, Jessica Alba and Cardi B dancing on stage.
Overcoming some early sound issues, the performer leaned heavily on hits from his most recent album, with EoO and DtMF providing some of the high points of the show.
It was not his first time on the Super Bowl stage – he made a guest appearance with Shakira in 2020 – and he brought confidence as the main star. He swaggered from one corner of the stage to the next all while delivering strong vocals.
Lady Gaga was on hand to bring a salsa-inspired rendition of her Bruno Mars collaboration Die With A Smile, and fellow Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin sang Lo Que Le Pasó A Hawaii, a song which warns Puerto Ricans to not allow their culture to be erased.
Bad Bunny ended his performance by shouting “God Bless America” and naming multiple countries and territories, including Puerto Rico and the US, with those two flags carried behind him side-by-side.
Sunday’s show represented the best of Latin culture on the sporting world’s biggest stage. (BBC News)
The Seattle Seahawks produced a devastating defensive display to beat the New England Patriots and claim their second Super Bowl victory.
Two of the NFL’s strongest defences battled it out in Sunday’s showpiece and the Seahawks emphatically came out on top to win 29-13 at Levi’s Stadium.
It was a defensive performance for the ages and Briton Aden Durde played a pivotal role, becoming the first overseas coach to win the United States’ biggest game.
Seattle’s 46-year-old defensive co-ordinator has helped create the most feared defence in the NFL, which has become known as ‘the Dark Side’, and they showed why on American football’s biggest stage in Santa Clara, California.
New England’s second-year quarterback Drake Maye narrowly missed out on this season’s Most Valuable Player (MVP) award but was stifled by the Seahawks, who claimed six sacks, forced three turnovers and scored a defensive touchdown.
After Seattle led 9-0 at half-time, Maye’s first turnover resulted in the game’s opening touchdown for tight end AJ Barner early in the fourth quarter.
Linebacker Uchenna Nwosu then returned an interception for a 45-yard touchdown, while Jason Meyers kicked a record five field goals as Seattle denied the Patriots a record seventh Super Bowl win.
“We were the better team; we’re the best team. We loved each other, we believed in each other and now we’re champions,” Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald told NBC.
“We went to the dark side tonight. We love our players – they made it happen. They made it come to life.”
Most of the 70,823 crowd seemed to favour Seattle, who came into the game as narrow favourites, and their win also means quarterback Sam Darnold completed his redemption story after being written off as a starting NFL quarterback.
The Seahawks are Darnold’s fifth team in his eight-year career – and third in three years – but in his first year in Seattle the former third overall draft pick has won the game’s biggest prize.
The 28-year-old has been haunted by a comment he made as he struggled in a game against the Patriots in 2019, when he said “I’m seeing ghosts”, but Darnold has now exorcised those demons.
Instead, it was Maye who suffered a nightmare when confronted with the fast, physical defence that Durde and coach Macdonald have fashioned in their two seasons together in Seattle.
Such is the breadth and depth of the threat it carries that Devon Witherspoon claimed a sack from cornerback. He, Derick Hall and Rylie Mills only registered 2.5 sacks between them all season but all three got to Maye in the first half.
The Patriots earned only four first downs before the interval and 52 yards in total. Some cruel folks on social media even joked that Bad Bunny gained more yards as he carried a ball during his half-time show.
Hall’s second sack forced a fumble which was recovered by Byron Murphy, who also sacked Maye twice as the Dark Side wrote themselves into Seattle folklore alongside the ‘Legion of Boom’, the defence that led the Seahawks to their previous Super Bowl win in 2014.
“My team-mates and my coaches, they believed in me,” Darnold told NBC.
“Since the first training camp, every single day we came to work. Shout-out to our offensive line for everything they did in the game. But I’ve also got to shout out our defence.
“We did it. It’s been such a special journey with these guys. So much hard work has been out into this and we did it.” (BBC)
Opposition Leader Ralph Thorne has warned CARICOM election observers that “not all is well with democracy in Barbados”, alleging voter disenfranchisement, political interference in electoral administration and an increasingly hostile climate for free participation ahead of Wednesday’s General Election.
He raised the concerns during the Democratic Labour Party’s (DLP) manifesto launch at Gall Hill, St John, on Saturday night, where he told supporters – who remained in place despite persistent rainfall – that he was publicly drafting a figurative letter to the regional observers on behalf of the Barbadian people.
“I want to write a letter to the observers tonight, and I want to write this letter with you,” Thorne said. “Not from my own personal perspective, but from the perspective of the people of Barbados. Before they speak to me, I have to speak to you, because you are the ones voting in this election.” The three-member CARICOM Election Observation Mission, comprising senior electoral officials from Antigua and Barbuda, Belize and Jamaica, supported by staff of the CARICOM Secretariat, arrived in Barbados last Thursday and will remain here until Friday.
Last Friday, Chief of Mission Ian Hughes said concerns raised over the omission of names from the voters’ list fell squarely within their remit, though they had no authority to intervene in the electoral process.
This is the first time Barbados has ever had official observers for a General Election, but Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley said she invited them to safeguard the country’s’ democratic reputation and allow independent bodies to assess the conduct of the poll, amid controversy over the voters’ list and the readiness of the Electoral and Boundaries Commission (EBC).
Thorne said he received a telephone call earlier Saturday from the election observers seeking a meeting, but insisted that any engagement with them had to be grounded in the lived experiences and concerns of ordinary Barbadians.
“You did not bring them here. I did not bring them here,” he told the crowd, “but we have something to tell them. They are not voting for me, and they are not voting for this great Democratic Labour Party. You, the people of Barbados, are the ones who are voting.”
Independence of the EBC
Central to Thorne’s message was the independence of the EBC, which he reminded supporters was constitutionally required to operate free from Government control. He questioned whether that independence had been compromised.
“Dear observers, the Electoral and Boundaries Commission under the law is meant to be an independent constitutional body, independent of the Government of Barbados. And when we say independent, it means independent of Cabinet, independent of political influence and independent of any party,” the King’s Counsel said.
He posed a series of questions which he said formed part of the letter’s core. “Can the chairman of that commission say to the people of this country tonight that the commission is truly and genuinely independent? Has he been in conversation with the Government? Has he been in conversation with Cabinet?”
Thorne, who is the DLP candidate for St John, also raised concerns about last year’s voter enumeration exercise, alleging that it was rushed and improperly conducted.
“Dear observers, sometime last year the Government hired postmen to do an enumeration exercise. And under the customs, conventions and traditions of a democratic country, enumeration is supposed to be patient, careful, transparent and respectful of the rights of every man and woman over the age of 18.”
Short deadline
He reiterated his claim that workers were given a short deadline and offered additional payments for completing the task quickly.
Warning of the consequences, Thorne said: “If one man or one woman is left off that list, democracy suffers. One person disenfranchised is one too many.”
According to him, the outcome of the process placed thousands of citizens at risk of being removed from the voters’ list.
“We heard that 8 291 citizens – some dead, some alive – were to be struck off the list. That means living people denied the right to vote, and the integrity of the list itself thrown into question.”
He cited what he described as a particularly troubling example involving a DLP candidate. “Here is a man, Ensley Grainger, asking people to vote for him, and his own name is not on the list of voters. Take that message back, dear observers.”
The DLP president argued that the timing of the election announcement compounded the problem. He said the bell was rung before the legally established deadline for finalising the voters’ list.
“When that election was called, several thousand people in this country would be denied the right to vote. That is not coincidence. That is a serious matter and it goes to the heart of democracy.”
Beyond electoral administration, Thorne accused the Government of passing legislation permitting the tapping of citizens’ phones, and questioned whether personal data held by telecommunications companies had been accessed for political purposes.
“Dear observers, this is a Government that admitted to tapping people’s phones. This country tonight is in the grips . . . of injustice and democracy is being assassinated for the sake of perpetual power.”
He also alleged that the ruling party had obtained the DLP’s manifesto document before its official launch.
Thorne urged supporters to remain peaceful and engaged, adding that voter turnout would ultimately determine the outcome.
“If they have disenfranchised one, or 100 or 1 000,” he told the crowd, “ten thousand will replace them at the polls come Wednesday.”
He stressed that his appeal to CARICOM observers was motivated by concern for Barbados’ democratic legacy rather than hostility to its institutions. “This is a letter written out of love for country. We welcome you, observers, but we must tell you the truth: the people of this country are watching and they intend to vote.” (CLM)
Update
Well-known sports administrator Condé Riley has been found safe and well.
Family members confirmed that the 73-year-old former president of the Barbados Cricket Association has been located following earlier appeals for information on his whereabouts.
****
Earlier story
The family of well-known sports administrator Condé Riley is appealing for help in locating him.
The 73-year-old former president of the Barbados Cricket Association was last seen in a black Suzuki vitara MW 172 leaving the Bridgetown Port.
His relatives are asking anyone with information that would assist in finding Riley to contact them at 230-6081.
Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has criticised the Democratic Labour Party (DLP) for giving Barbadians little time to analyse its manifesto.
On Friday night, prior to the DLP manifesto launch last night, Mottley took out a copy of the document stating: “We [Barbados Labour Party] gave you a manifesto with 11 days so that you could study it, you could lick it up, tear it, analyse it, do what you want with it because you need to know what your Government is talking about. Ralph Thorne hears the word transparency, but cannot properly put before this country a document that spells out in detail and to give you enough time to read it, to question it, to digest it, to go on the call-in programme and talk about it.”
Mottley was part of the BLP’s line-up for a Deacons Farm, St Michael meeting in support of its candidate Neil Rowe, who is contesting the constituency of St Michael North West.
Thorne, she said, was either taking the electorate for granted “or he doesn’t want you to see how shallow his recommendations are or how unaffordable they are because the easiest thing to do is to get up here and say that I going to reduce VAT to 15 per cent”.
“But the only body who benefits when VAT is reduced is not going to be you the consumer, it is not going to be the Government that loses the revenue, it is going to be the business persons because hardly ever do prices come back down when they go up,” Mottley stated.
She said in 2018 when the BLP captured office, the next year after discussion, rather than reduce VAT, they increased the reverse tax credit and recently proposed for pensioners, disabled special grants and a cost of living payment.
She pointed to the photos in the DLP’s manifesto, questioning whether the people were still supporting the party and made an observation about Thorne’s pose while asking if the party was desperate to use people who have said they don’t want anything more to do with the party.
“I not going to bother with a lot of words because the truth is that it is a lot of nothing because he can’t afford to do half the things that he doing in here.
“Well, I say to you tonight, look at it here because at the end of the day, you ain’t missing nothing,” the Prime Minister said.
In relation to comparisons made between the BLP manifesto pledges and the Jamaica Labour Party’s, Mottley said there was no relationship at the political level but she “gets on with Prime Minister Holness and his cabinet”. The BLP’s sister party was the People’s National Party, she stated, while accusing Thorne of having the JLP advising him. ( AC)
The Barbados Labour Party administration has shown that it has no proper development plan for the north of the island and the decline of Speightstown, St Peter, is evidence of this.
That is the view of Democratic Labour Party political leader Ralph Thorne, who told those attending a meeting in Speightstown on Tuesday night: “There is no proper development plan for the people in the north. We still have people in this country who believe that the St Joseph Hospital [in St Peter] ought to have been revived.”
He said the historic town’s progress “has ceased in many ways because of . . . political and developmental policy”.
“I always make the comparison between Speightstown and Oistins. Oistins continues to thrive as a town because people live there and that is what contributes to the character of township – the fact of residence by people in that town.
“Speightstown has declined as a town; it is not quite as residential as it used to be. It has now become a market and high-end restaurants. Speightstown’s indigenous commerce has moved from coastal Speightstown to what they designed as a bypass [road].”
He was referring to the KNR Husbands Highway, formerly known as the Speightstown By-Pass Road.
“So that your development must be related to people, your physical development must be related to human interest and Speightstown has suffered because the physical development of Speightstown has not been related to . . . human cultural and commercial interest,” Thorne said.
“But people are creative, and those who live in Speightstown or work in Speightstown will tell you that while the main street has become high-end, the local people have moved inland and the bypass . . . that is where local commerce is now emerging. But it is not as vibrant as it used to be.”
Thorne said Speightstown had “a great cultural heritage, but Governments have tended to focus on the high end . . . on the coast, which has destroyed the character of this great town, of this beautiful town, of this centre of commerce and culture”.
“And so the indigenous people, the local people, are forced to move inland because the coast is desirable, and the coast attracts big money.
“When the coast attracts big money, it forces the small people out and we have seen before our very eyes the death of a town at the hands of big money,” Thorne said. (SC)
Friends of Democracy (FOD) candidates have called for sweeping changes to Barbados’ approach to crime, housing and governance, including the reintroduction of capital and corporal punishment, as the party outlined key elements of its platform at a National Rally in Whitehall, St Michael, on Thursday night.
The proposals were advanced by FOD candidate for St Michael North, Ricardo Harrison, who said escalating crime – particularly among the youth – required what he described as serious and decisive action.
“The issue of crime continues to be a bugbear in Barbados. We dance around it, and we look out for the criminal element, but there is nothing in place for the victim. We are saying here that the only way to get this crime wrestled to the ground is to get serious about it.”
Referring to statements previously made by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Harrison said that for heinous crimes such as murder, “those found guilty should be given the death penalty”. He noted that the impact of violent crime extended far beyond the individual act. “Nobody ever gives thought that when you kill a young person, a mother, a child, an entire family grieves. We are saying that, as the Friends of Democracy, let us reintroduce capital punishment. If you don’t want the gallows, which last swung in 1984, then use the electric chair or the gas chamber.” Harrison also called for the return of corporal punishment and hard labour, particularly for young offenders who target vulnerable citizens.
Corporal punishsment
“For those youngsters who don’t want to work but like to prey on older folks, corporal punishment should be introduced. And to add to it, introduce hard labour like was done in the past,” he said.
Turning to housing, Harrison highlighted what he described as a major manifesto pledge of the party.
“The Friends of Democracy, as one of its key manifesto promises, will give you affordable housing,” he said, outlining plans for 100 per cent mortgages for qualified applicants. He said the programme would target public officers, including “nurses, police officers, and civil servants in the salary category of $2 500 to $5 000.”
“These mortgages will be superintended and supervised by creditable agencies,” Harrison added.
Other issues raised by Harrison included public transportation, reducing Value Added Tax, reintroducing price controls on specific goods, the sewage and solid waste tax, and the importation of firearms.
President of the Friends of Democracy, Karina Goodridge, also addressed the rally, telling supporters that “a stronger Opposition equals a stronger Barbados” and pledging that the party “will continue to fight on behalf of every citizen in this nation”.
Speaking in support of Harrison’s candidacy, Goodridge stressed the importance of accountability. “Part of good governance is accountability and transparency,” she said, questioning how citizens could have confidence in leadership “when you don’t have the accountability and transparency that you need as people?”
CARIFESTA budget criticised
She criticised the Government’s handling of the budget for CARIFESTA 2025, saying, “We want to know what was spent, what was budgeted for? Furthermore, we are going into an election, and there are so many unanswered questions.”
Goodridge also argued that Barbados needed to pursue “proper investment plans” rather than overburden citizens with taxes, and suggested medical tourism as one potential revenue stream. “Why is it that tourists can’t bring foreign investment?” she asked.
Addressing health care, she called for a stateof- the-art hospital to curb brain drain, attributing ongoing challenges at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital to “waste and a lot of mismanagement”, and suggesting there was “room for corruption”.
Rejecting the idea that Barbados should be limited to two political parties, Goodridge told the gathering, “It is time that we look at the representatives and strongly ask ourselves if they deserve our vote.”
She also warned that voter apathy threatened “true democracy in this country”, and outlined other proposals, including the creation of coconut water villages to support vendors in the sector.
“We have a policy to have these villages . . . like telling every individual who handles and deals with coconuts that we appreciate your service and that we want to elevate you,” she said. (WH)
Several Barbadian pensioners say Government’s proposed $100 monthly pension increase, though welcomed, will provide only minimal relief as rising food prices, high utility bills and mounting medical costs continue to erode their fixed incomes.
The increase, announced by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley at the Barbados Labour Party manifesto launch at Golden Square Freedom Park, amounts to about $1 200 per year. However, pensioners say the additional funds would be quickly absorbed by basic living expenses, including what some described as the $45 added to water bills as part of the Garbage And Sewage Levy.
Speaking last Thursday, septuagenarian David King questioned the timing and intent of the proposal.
“It should have been done before. Right now, giving me $100 is telling me that’s only [political] strategy. People hungry. When you go in the supermarket, you seeing $300, $400, $500 gone just like that. It is not enough,” King lamented.
No significant ease
Similarly, 68-year-old retiree Marcia Hollingsworth said the increase would help “a little”, but would not significantly ease the financial pressure she and others faced. She added that she would prefer to receive the money as a lump sum rather than monthly.
“One hundred dollars goes fast. Even $100 000 would go fast these days,” she said. Hollingsworth estimated her monthly supermarket bill at between $400 and $500, despite cutting out nonessential items and spacing purchases, such as vegetables, to every two weeks.
Priority over food
“You have to do a lot of manoeuvring just to make ends meet,” she said, adding that medical expenses often took priority over food. “Sometimes my medication alone is nearly $300 a month.
So, you could decide, this $100 is going towards medicine instead of food,” Hollingsworth said. Another pensioner, who identified herself only as Ms Mayers, said frequent price increases in supermarkets were steadily eroding the value of any pension adjustment.
She recalled that in the week before Christmas, a pack of coffee increased by almost $1 to $9 plus, and by Christmas week had risen again.
“It was $11.15 and that is only one item,” she said.
Ms Mayers, who shops weekly, said even small increases added up quickly.
“If your bill going over by $50 a week, that is $200 for the month already. And you ain’t even touch utilities yet. That $100 is going straight through the window,” she said, adding, “But I thankful for it because it might still go somewhere.”
Seventy-seven-year-old Brian Deane said pensioners were forced to adjust to whatever they received.
“You can’t dictate expenditure. You have to think of necessity and live with what is there.
Money is never enough, especially with the cost of living today,” he said.
Another retiree, Michael Aimey, said the increase would not solve the problem but could still help with essentials. “I could still do something like buy some gas, buy some groceries, pay a bill,” he said, noting that his medication costs close to $60 a month. One pensioner, who asked to remain anonymous, said the increase would make little difference to retirees managing serious health expenses. Although his pension was almost $3 000 a month, he said it did not stretch far. “Some doctors charging $400, supermarket bills alone now exceed $700 monthly, leaving little room for other essentials,” he said.
“That $1 200 a year could go on glasses alone. That ain’t food, that ain’t clothes, that ain’t gas,” he added. (TRY)
