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World’s oldest person celebrates turning 117

Nationnews Desk
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World’s oldest person celebrates turning 117

The world’s oldest living person celebrates turning 117 years old in Surrey on Friday with her family and friends.

Ethel Caterham, who lives at Hallmark Lakeview Care Home in Lightwater, took on the mantle in April 2025 after the death of Brazilian nun Sister Inah Canabarro Lucas at the age of 116.

Born three years before the Titanic disaster and eight years before the Russian Revolution, Ethel has also lived through two world wars.

In addition, she is one of the oldest people to survive Covid-19, after contracting it in 2020 at the age of 110, according to Guinness World Records.

Originally from Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire, the second youngest of eight children, Ethel was raised in Tidworth, Wiltshire.

The last surviving subject of King Edward VII, as a teenager she travelled to India in 1927 and began working as an au pair to a military family there.

Ethel met her husband Norman, a lieutenant colonel in the British Army, at a dinner party in the UK in 1931 and the pair later lived in Hong Kong, where she set up a nursery school.

They then raised two daughters, both of whom died before her.

Norman also went on to die in 1976, while one of her sisters, Gladys, also became a centenarian, living until she was 104.

Ethel, who was still driving when she turned 97, was visited by King Charles last September, just after her 116th birthday.

During their meeting, she recalled his 1969 investiture as the Prince of Wales, when he was 21, telling him: “All the girls were in love with you and wanted to marry you.”

However, the title of the oldest person ever is still held by French woman Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 having lived to 122 years 164 days, says Guinness World Records. (BBC News)

‘70% of workers disengaged’

Nationnews Desk
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‘70% of workers disengaged’

Barbados could be losing $1.6 billion a year to disengagement and lost productivity in the workplace.

That is the “conservative” estimate of new research by Dr Shindale Seale, an international organisational strategist based in the United States, who presented her findings at the Central Bank of Barbados’ recent 46th Annual Review Seminar.

In an interview while in Barbados, the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of SEADE Coaching & Consulting said she believes that organisations in Barbados were virtually paying what was tantamount to a “productivity tax” because they were not measuring the cost of “cultural misalignment”.

Seale, who is a Barbadian, launched the Cultural Excellence & Economic Development Strategy (CEEDS™) Framework here in April, which she is calling “the first methodology purpose built to quantify what cultural misalignment is costing your organisation in real dollars”.

With research from American analytics and advisory company Gallup concluding that there is approximately 70 per cent disengagement among workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, Seale said she initiated a survey involving companies which participated in the CEEDS™ Framework launch to determine the extent of their disengagement/productivity tax.

“The range in their productivity tax was astronomical. We had an MSME losing like $560 a year, to a banking outfit losing like $12 million a year, and everywhere in between. So it was too salient to ignore,” she shared.

With that as her base, Seale took her research further by estimating the losses at a country level, including using information on Barbados’ workforce and salary figures.

“So we’re looking at 70 per cent of Latin American Caribbean workforce is either not engaged or actively disengaged. When you apply that to the Barbadian organisations and what they’re paying their people, the productivity loss estimate base is around $1.6 billion annually,” she said.

“And [this] is conservative because it’s . . . telling you kind of where we’re at around ballpark, what we call the order of magnitude of what we’re losing. So it’s significant enough that we really need to measure it properly. And this is where I’m looking at that further study,” Seale added, while welcoming the expert feedback she received at the seminar on her research paper Measuring The Hidden Productivity Tax: Quantifying Cultural Impact On Economic Competitiveness In Small Island Developing States.

Three pillars

She said her expanded research would “help me to refine it in a way that would allow it to be a much more longitudinal study”.

Stressing that “this is not consulting theory, these are active client results”, the CEO explained the CEEDS™ Framework was built on more than 30 years of organisational development expertise, doctoral-level research and was vetted through research across 200-plus organisations in 15 industries.

CEEDS™ is built on three pillars – cultural transformation, economic impact and community resilience.

“First is the cultural transformation pillar . . . that we align with [your] disengagement tax,” Seale said.

“Our next one is Pillar 2, which is our income impact which is aligned with our innovation gap. That’s a really, really important piece that I think in Barbados . . . it’s not really as prioritised.

“The third pillar is called the the community resilience pillar and we attribute that to the reputational capital at risk.”

She added: “It’s an economic framework with cultural inputs and financial outputs, essentially. It’s like a systems framework where we start with deriving the organisation’s number, and that number is basically what your general productivity tax is that you’re paying,” she noted.

“What that basically means is we calculate your disengagement, your innovation gap and your reputational capital at risk.

“Once we have that number, then we know what your starting point is, and from your starting point, then we can determine what behaviours are going on in your organisation that are exposing you to financial risks or financial loss.” (SC)

TAP upset with cashless rollout

Carlos Atwell
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TAP upset with cashless rollout

Operators in the Transport Augmentation Programme (TAP) are “furious” over the apparent stealth launch of the cashless system, leaving them wondering how they would be paid or even buy diesel.

Chairman of the United Transport Co-operative Ltd, Hudeen Hinds, said he was most surprised when passengers started showing him prepaid cards from last week as payment.

“We are furious with the management of the Transport Board. There’s been talks about a cashless system but we told them we can’t do it because we need cash to maintain our vehicles and put in diesel. Lo and behold, last week they started selling prepaid cards for bus fare without our knowledge. Now passengers are using the cards and we don’t know how we will get paid,” he said.

Government has announced its intention to implement a cashless fare collection system in phases, with the goal of a full cashless overhaul of Transport Board buses by early next year. 

Hinds said his organisation, made up of former Transport Board drivers, represented around 40 TAP members but the changes affected everyone. He said the sensors to read the cards had been installed around a year ago but charged the system should not have been fully implemented without proper ventilation with the members, noting the Transport Board had not held a meeting with them in over a year.

“For the past week this system was working and we have not been paid. The Transport Board has no answers for us, messages left in the group chat go unanswered. Everyday they are collecting money for those cards but there’s none for us. Last Friday, I had about 11 people presenting cards and I had to put in diesel at the end of the day with no money collected,” he said.

Hinds shared the voice notes he made in the same chat. In part, he said: “Good morning to one and all, this is Hudeen Hinds, the president of the United Transport Cooperative. Seeing this update and knowing that we don’t get paid on time when the month comes, there are some concerns that my members have raised to me in regards to these prepaid cards that the Transport Board is operating. These cards will limit our cash flow.

“So again, I’m going to re-emphasise. If I collect 40 passengers who were supposed to pay me cash, and they bring cards and the Transport Board has the money, how am I going to put diesel in my bus? When are we going to get these payments? Why hasn’t management spoken to us about this situation? This is supposed to be a partnership but it seems to always go Transport Board’s way.”

The DAILY NATION contacted Transport Board chief operations officer Lynda Holder, who said she was off-island and redirected the queries to chief executive officer Fabian Wharton. While Wharton did not answer or return the calls or messages, Hinds later said a message appeared in the chat calling for an emergency meeting today with the TAP owners at noon at the Weymouth Headquarters to discuss their concerns. This message was posted around half an hour after the initial attempt to contact Wharton was made. 

Marcus Garvey’s legacy honoured at Amphitheatre rededication

Nationnews Desk
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Marcus Garvey’s legacy honoured at Amphitheatre rededication

The Marcus Garvey Amphitheatre was rededicated during a ceremony with Garvey’s family as special guests. The plaque was unveiled by Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley and Dr Julius Garvey.

After the unveiling, the entourage moved to the steel Shed for poetry, musical tributes and a fireside chat about the life of the late Pan Africanist and philosopher.

Minister Trevor Prescod said no black man in the 20th century was written about by independent academics more than Garvey. He said the western world did not recognise him as a philosopher but Garvey left an indelible mark in the psyche of Caribbean people.

Dr Julius Garvey is Marcus Garvey’s son. Also present was Dr Garvey’s wife Constance and his grandson Jackson.

Bajans deeper in debt

Shawn Cumberbatch
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Bajans deeper in debt

Barbadian families are deep in debt.

While the latest Financial Stability Report (FSR) flags the $6.64 billion in household debt at the end of 2025 as one of the “critical areas of supervisory attention”, economist Dr Ankie Scott-Joseph warned that the bigger concern was Bajans owing lenders more than they are earning, an outcome which worsened last year for the first time since the 2020 pandemic.

The 2025 FSR, which is published by the Central Bank of Barbados and the Financial Services Commission, disclosed that “household indebtedness rose in 2025, reversing several years of gradual improvement”, but noted that families were able to make their loan payments.

Financial sector regulators said that households’ continued accumulation of savings “built resilience to income shocks”, as they warned that “rising borrowing costs or a deterioration in labour market conditions could strain more vulnerable households with limited financial buffers, underscoring the need for close monitoring of household vulnerabilities”.

With the household debt stock rising from $6.40 billion in 2024 to $6.64 billion last year, the FSR also shared that Barbadians owed more debt than they were earning in income. This category of debt is the money that all individuals living in a home have borrowed and have to repay to commercial banks and other lenders, including for mortgages, car loans, other consumer loans and credit cards.

“The debt-to-income (DTI) ratio increased by approximately seven percentage points to 162 per cent, its first material rise since 2020 and above the pre-pandemic level of 154 per cent,” it stated.

“The debt service ratio (DSR) was unchanged at eight per cent, indicating that affordability was maintained despite the higher debt stock. The divergence between the two measures warrants monitoring: households are carrying more debt relative to income, and the stability of the debt service ratio depends on lending rates remaining at current levels.”

Scott-Joseph found this section of the analysis on household debt concerning.

“The $6.64 billion does not tell you much on its own. Look instead at what households owe against what they earn. Barbadian households owe about $1.62 for every dollar they earn in a year. That figure had been falling since 2020, and last year it rose,” said the economics lecturer at The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.

“Before COVID it was $1.54, so we are now worse off than we were then. Savings grew at about the same rate as the debt, so people are not raiding their savings to keep up. But that saving is not spread evenly, and the households that need a cushion most are the ones least likely to have one.”

She added: “Loan payments are affordable now, but only while interest rates stay where they are.

“About eight cents of every dollar a household earns goes back to the bank in loan payments, and that did not move last year. Your monthly payment is set by your loan rate. If the banks raise rates, the payment goes up, and the extra has to come from somewhere. Usually, it is the grocery bill.”

The report stated that household lending remained the largest source of loan exposure in 2025, describing associated risks as “contained but concentrated”.

“Loans to households accounted for approximately 54 per cent of DTIs’ loan portfolios and grew modestly, driven by mortgages and consumer credit. Despite rising debt levels, key indicators of indebtedness and debt serviceability remained stable, supported by favourable lending conditions.

“However, the high concentration of credit in the household sector leaves the system exposed to shifts in labour market conditions or external shocks, which could weaken repayment capacity and affect asset quality,” it added.

The FSR also said the composition of household debt “remained relatively unchanged” in 2025, with mortgages continuing to dominate and consumer lending strengthening.

“Mortgage balances grew by 2.1 per cent alongside improved credit quality. Banks extended 14.7 per cent more new mortgages to households than in 2024,” financial sector regulators reported.

“Consumer loan growth was driven by higher demand for auto financing, while credit card balances increased modestly by 0.6 per cent. Credit quality improved significantly, with the share of non-performing credit card loans declining from 3.5 per cent in 2024 to 2.9 per cent in 2025, suggesting improved repayment capacity.”

Credit card transactions by households reached $1.03 billion in 2025, up from $1.01 billion in 2024.

Scott-Joseph said: “Watch the car loans. Most of what households owe is on houses, and a mortgage leaves you owning something at the end. The smaller part is consumer borrowing and that is where the growth was last year. The report says car loans drove it. A car is worth less every year you own it. What you owe on it stays the same.

“For several years, households slowly paid down what they owed relative to their income. Last year that turned around. One year is not a trend, but it is a moment to pay attention. A loan with no savings behind it means the first bad month goes on credit. Households should save at least one month of bills before taking on more debt,” she said.

CCJ makes changes to panels

Nationnews Desk
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CCJ makes changes to panels

PORT OF SPAIN – The Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) said recently it has implemented with “immediate effect” revised arrangements for the assignment of judicial panels.

“Under the new arrangements, all judges of the Court will sit on all panels, subject to a Judge being formally excused from sitting
for a legitimate reason,” the CCJ said in a statement.

It said that the arrangements “are intended to promote consistency, transparency, and flexibility in the allocation of judicial work and to support the efficient administration of justice”.

The move by the CCJ follows ongoing controversy sparked by the leak of internal communications that formed the subject of a story published by the Sunday Express newspaper on August 9.

The newspaper had reported that a number of accusations had been made against Justice Winston Anderson, who had become the fourth CCJ president on July 6, 2025.

The disclosure by the newspaper has led to the Regional Judicial and Legal Services Commission stating that it will conduct “a transparent and independent review” of the allegations made against Justice Anderson.

The CCJ president in a nine-page statement last weekend, described the allegation “as wholly untrue”  and that the constitution of panels has always formed part of the administrative responsibilities of the President of the CCJ.

“Since the establishment of the Court, that responsibility has been exercised in accordance with long-established institutional practice and with the sole objective of ensuring the orderly, efficient and impartial administration of justice. It has never been exercised to influence the outcome of any proceedings.”

Justice Anderson said he was also rejecting “entirely the suggestion that panels of this Court have been constituted or altered to secure predetermined outcomes. Such allegations are unsupported by the facts, inconsistent with the Court’s long-established practices, and contrary to the principles upon which this Court has operated since its establishment.

 “However, to put this matter to rest, going forward, every Judge of the Court will be required to sit on every panel, unless the Judge opts out for a legitimate reason and is excused.”

In the statement recently, the CCJ said, reiterating that “the new arrangements take effect immediately”. (CMC)

Police investigating unnatural death

Sherrylyn Clarke
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Police investigating unnatural death

Police are conducting investigations into an unnatural death early this morning in a St Michael district.

The body of a female was discovered at the home she shared with relatives around 5 a.m., in what is a suspected suicide.

A medical doctor visited the scene, examined the body and pronounced death. (PR/SAT)

Support Services:

If you have mental health challenges, for assistance please contact:

Ministry of Health and Wellness

Lifeline Barbados at 536-4500

Two on a string of theft and firearm charges

Nationnews Desk
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Two on a string of theft and firearm charges

Farrell and Jones appeared before Chief Magistrate Douglas Frederick in the District ‘A’ Criminal Court #1 today.

They were not allowed to plead to the indictable offences and were remanded to Dodds Prison and are scheduled to reappear on September 17, 2026.
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Tyrese Leroy Farrell and Reaquan Jacobi Jones, both 23 years old, are scheduled to appear in the District ‘A’ Criminal Court today on a number of joint and separate charges across three divisions.

Farrell, of Ealing Park South, Christ Church; and Jones, of Lot 4, Bournes Land, St Christopher, also in Christ Church, are jointly charged with two counts of robbery on August 9 and possession of a firearm and 14 rounds of ammunition on August 11 in the South Division.

Farrell is separately charged with possession of 15 rounds of ammunition on August 11 and two counts each of assaulting and resisting an officer in the execution of their duty on August 16.

Reaquan Jacobi Jones (GP)

Jones is charged with assisting an offender on August 11.

In the Bridgetown Division, Farrell is charged with robbery on July 18, two counts on July 25, escaping lawful custody on August 14 and two counts of resisting an officer in the execution of their duty on August 16.

Farrell is also charged with Assaulting an Officer in the Execution of Their Duty in the Northern Division on August 16. (PR/SAT)

Nicholls touts law’s value to national security

Antoinette Connell
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Nicholls touts law’s value to national security

There is no need to fear that a law seeking to collect information on travellers will criminalise anyone.

The proposed law, said Minister of Home Affairs Gregory Nicholls, is to protect Barbados’ borders and respond to threats.

The Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record Bill, 2026, which was debated in the House of Assembly last week, was eventually passed in the Senate yesterday.

Nicholls, who piloted the Bill, said it represented a significant enhancement of national border security apparatus and immigration security.

It makes provision for the “collection, transmission, processing, and the sharing of advanced passenger information between Barbados and our partners within the regional security network, as well as our international partners”.

Passenger name record (PNR) data will be collected on those travelling by air and sea in and out of the country and, said Nicholls, the process was not new, as a framework for advanced passenger information sharing has been in place since 2007 when the Caribbean hosted the ICC World Cup. The latest law is a single statutory framework that goes beyond the specific concerns of the

Immigration Act to consolidate border security protection.

“This aligns Barbados with many international standards under the International Civil Aviation Convention, and certainly as it relates particularly to the passenger name record framework, the International Maritime Organisation and INTERPOL.

“It cannot be denied that in the contemporary environment that we live in, we can no longer depend on securing our borders when people arrive at them. Border management will require us to act long before people arrive in Barbados. This requires advanced intelligence, electronic data exchanges, risk assessments based on the information gathered, and timely identification of threats long before they arrive,” Nicholls said.

It is important for the country to know whether travellers posed a risk to Barbados, its border security and public safety “and to allow us to be able to respond to the challenges before these threats reach our border,” Nicholls told the Senate.

The Barbados Immigration Department and other security agencies were participating in “robust discussion” on enhancing border security as the movement of people across borders had become more fluid, faster, complex and interconnected, Nicholls pointed out. (AC)

Govt urged to make legislation clearer

Sherrylyn Clarke
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Govt urged to make legislation clearer

Independent Senator Karina Goodridge is calling on Government to ensure legislation moving through Parliament should never be written in a way to cause uncertainty or “confusion” to members of the public.

Goodridge, president of the Friends of Democracy, was interrupted several times yesterday and had some points struck from the record during her presentation on the Domestic Terrorism Bill, 2026, in the Senate chamber.

Attorney General Wilfred Abrahams, who introduced the Bill to the Senate, and Government Senator Ramon Alleyne, both rose on points of order or elucidation during her address.

She said although it was only five pages long, it “raises significant legal questions”, including overlaps with existing legislation.

“It has the possibility to raise questions of the breadth, the vagueness and the overlapping of the statutes, the incorporation of offences pretty much from other enactments, or let me rephrase that and say, looking at other statutes in Barbados that could fall under that scope or threshold of serious criminal offence and the treatment of the same conduct as both an aggravating factor and a separate offence,” Goodridge pointed out in her summation.

“I would suggest that these matters be greatly explained and resolved before the Bill is passed, because before it goes out to the public who will scrutinise and who will look to the legislation as one that they should follow again, Sir, the law must be certain and clear for them.”

Goodridge is an attorney and one of her major concerns was the removal of “the usual judicial discretion to determine whether sentences should run concurrently or consecutively”. She called on Abrahams to explain this.

“Judges do usually have the discretion whether to make sentences run concurrently or consecutively, this does take that away. I accept that; it was intended to take it away because the domestic terrorism is a charge that stands by itself, is a separate offence,” he explained.

“The discharging your firearm in public or discharging your firearm or possession of firearm might be the initial offence – a serious criminal offence – but the circumstances of the public aspect and the striking fear in the heart of other people is any domestic terrorism offence so your sentence would not probably be subsumed under the initial charge.”

Abrahams said judges retained the discretion to impose a sentence of life imprisonment, but it does not mean it will be done.

“For certain we are taking away the discretion that the sentencing for domestic terrorism must run consecutively with the other sentence that constitutes serious criminal offence, so when you finish that sentence whether it’s probation or whatnot, your sentence is stuck to domestic terrorism.”

The issue of possible double penalisation was also raised by Goodridge. She noted there could be cases where an underlying criminal offence is being punished, then it may constitute domestic terrorism and earn a consecutive sentence.

“That raised a serious concern to me about double penalisation or what we would call double counting of the same conduct. So I would say that we would need to explain really in more detail where the same element of conduct should both increase the sentence for the underlying offence and then form the basis for a separate offence carrying an additional or consecutive sentence,” Goodridge appealed.

Abrahams addressed some of the queries raised and promised a sub-clause under question would be deleted, but the Bill was passed before debate moved on to the Advance Passenger Information and Passenger Name Record Bill, 2026. (SAT)

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