Football: U17 women’s Concacaf qualifier in progress
It’s the showdown everyone has been waiting for — and it wasted no time living up to the hype.
With a place in the final on the line, tournament favourites Panama struck first, converting from the penalty spot in the eighth minute to take an early lead. Dominating possession and dictating the tempo, Panama looked poised to cruise toward yet another convincing victory.
But the Lady Gombey Warriors had other plans.
Absorbing wave after wave of pressure, Bermuda’s back line stood firm, refusing to be overrun. And in the 17th minute, one moment of precision was all they needed. A perfectly weighted through ball split the defence, and Daley Outerbridge calmly rolled her finish past the advancing goalkeeper — the first goal conceded by Panama in the tournament — to pull Bermuda level.
Former Premier Dr. Ewart Brown calls for all criminal charges against him to be thrown out; a decision on whether the case should be dismissed could be handed down late February
A judgment in the abuse of process application filed by Dr. Ewart Brown could be handed down as early as the end of next month.
Lawyers concluded their submissions today where Dr. Brown is calling for all criminal proceedings to be thrown out. Jasmine Patterson has more in this report.
The Facebook and Instagram parent expects annual capital expenditure to be between $115 billion and $135 billion, compared with $72.22 billion a year earlier
International News via Reuters:
Meta on Wednesday forecast its annual capital expenditure to increase sharply, as the social media giant builds artificial intelligence infrastructure in the pursuit of superintelligence.
The Facebook and Instagram parent expects annual capital expenditure to be between $115 billion and $135 billion, compared with $72.22 billion a year earlier.
Meta’s ad platform has remained its growth engine, allowing advertisers to automate and personalize their campaigns and help the company support its investments in AI infrastructure to achieve superingelligence – a theoretical milestone where machines could surpass human performance.
The company is laying off about 10% of staff at its Reality Labs group, which has about 15,000 employees, as it redirects resources from some of its metaverse products to wearables.
The unit — which has accumulated more than $70 billion in losses since 2021 — includes Meta’s ambitious metaverse bet that prompted the company to change its name from Facebook.
Meta is building several gigawatt-scale data centers across the United States, including one in rural Louisiana, a project U.S. President Donald Trump said would cost $50 billion. It would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan.
To boost its energy infrastructure, Meta has partnered with companies such as Vistra, Oklo, and TerraPower that will position it as one of the leading corporate buyers of nuclear power in the world.
Meta recently appointed Trump ally Dina Powell McCormick as president and vice chairman in a bid to drive partnerships with governments and investors for its AI projects. Along with other senior executives she will also focus on the company’s global fleet of data centers.
Last year, Meta signed contracts with Alphabet, CoreWeave, Nebius for additional compute power, signaling pressing need for capacity expansion due to internal constraints.
The spending spree has been prompted by Big Tech’s rivalry in Silicon Valley’s AI race, where Meta has stumbled after its Llama 4 model met with a poor reception. Now the company is betting on its new AI models, launched internally this month.
The holiday quarter results come as the company’s Advantage+ automated advertising suite is gaining strong advertiser adoption due to its ability to streamline campaign setup and enhance return on ad spend, analysts have said.
In the past year, Meta launched ads on WhatsApp and Threads, creating direct rivalry with platforms like Elon Musk’s X, while Instagram’s Reels continues to jostle with TikTok and YouTube Shorts within the lucrative short-video market.
Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo
The company’s shares plunged more than 7% in extended trading
International News via Reuters:
Microsoft delivered a marginal beat on quarterly revenue expectations for its crucial cloud-computing business on Wednesday, amplifying investor doubts about the payoff from its hefty artificial intelligence spending and highlighting growing competition in the industry.
The company’s shares plunged more than 7% in extended trading.
The company said revenue at its Azure cloud division grew 39% in the October-December period, its fiscal second quarter. That compares with a consensus estimate of 38.8%, according to Visible Alpha.
Total revenue rose 17% to $81.3 billion in the second quarter, while analysts expected $80.27 billion, based on estimates compiled by LSEG.
The Windows maker has long enjoyed a first-mover advantage in Big Tech’s AI race thanks to its early bet on OpenAI, whose technology powers most of its offerings, including M365 Copilot.
But a strong reception for Google’s latest Gemini model and the launch of autonomous agents, such as Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, have posed risks both to Microsoft’s AI business and the software offerings that have long been central to the company.
That has weighed on Microsoft’s stock as investor doubts persist over whether Big Tech will deliver enough returns to make up for the AI spending. Collectively, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta and Amazon are expected to spend more than $500 billion on AI this year.
Some analysts have said that mounting losses at OpenAI, in which Microsoft has a 27% stake, could drive up expenses as the company books its share of those losses.
Late October’s major OpenAI restructuring gave Microsoft that stake. And while the overhaul included a commitment from OpenAI to buy $250 billion of Azure services, it also freed the ChatGPT creator to pursue cloud deals with other companies that could lower its reliance on Microsoft.
OpenAI has agreed to a $38 billion cloud deal with Amazon Web Services since then.
Reporting by Deborah Sophia and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona
In keeping rates unchanged, the Fed cited still-elevated inflation alongside solid economic growth, and gave little indication in its latest policy statement of when borrowing costs might be reduced again
International News via Reuters:
Global stocks were on pace to snap a five-session streak of gains on Wednesday, while the U.S. dollar held on to gains after the Federal Reserve kept rates steady, as widely expected.
In keeping rates unchanged, the Fed cited still-elevated inflation alongside solid economic growth, and gave little indication in its latest policy statement of when borrowing costs might be reduced again.
Investors will now turn to comments from Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends in May, for clues on the path of interest rates.
U.S. stocks showed little reaction to the Fed statement, with the S&P 500 posting slight losses after crossing above 7,000 for the first time ahead of earnings from megacap companies Microsoft, Tesla and Meta Platforms after the closing bell, while results from Apple are due on Thursday.
“The Fed didn’t rock the boat. It was widely expected that they’d be on pause. The reality is we probably don’t see any cuts until Powell is out of the Fed sometime after May,” said Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group in Omaha.
“They did cite some positives on the labor market front, but clearly inflation is a worry. Just look at the soaring commodity prices we’ve been seeing recently.”
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 24.74 points, or 0.05%, to 49,028.15, the S&P 500 fell 4.39 points, or 0.06%, to 6,974.21 and the Nasdaq Composite rose 28.14 points, or 0.12%, to 23,845.24.
MSCI’s gauge of stocks across the globe fell 0.73 points, or 0.07%, to 1,050.35 after climbing to an intraday record of 1,055.04, marking its third straight intraday record.
The pan-European STOXX 600 index closed down 0.75%, weighed by a drop of about 8% in LVMH after the Louis Vuitton and Tiffany owner reported quarterly results, but CEO Bernard Arnault said he was cautious about the year ahead.
FX WATCH
The dollar showed signs of steadying after its biggest daily percentage drop since August 1, as U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday seemed to shrug off its recent weakness, sending the greenback to a four-year low.
The dollar has stumbled recently on expectations of continued Fed rate cuts this year, tariff uncertainty, policy volatility, including threats to the central bank’s independence, and rising fiscal deficits, all of which have dented investor confidence in U.S. economic stability.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, rose 0.79% to 96.66, with the euro down 1.07% at $1.1911 after breaching the $1.20 mark following Trump’s comments.
European Central Bank policymakers flagged increasing concerns over the euro’s quick appreciation against the dollar, warning it could drag inflation down even as price growth is already set to undershoot the ECB’s 2% target.
The Fed meeting comes as the Trump administration continues a criminal investigation of Powell, an evolving effort to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, and the nomination of a new chief.
Markets are not pricing in more than a 50% chance of a rate cut until the central bank’s June meeting, according to CME’s FedWatch Tool.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar strengthened 1.08% to 153.84, while sterling weakened 0.56% to $1.3768.
The United States has a strong dollar policy and that means setting the right fundamentals, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, while denying that the U.S. was intervening in currency markets to support the yen after the Japanese currency surged against the greenback last week.
The recent dollar weakness has given support to other commodities, helping gold hit a record above $5,300 an ounce. U.S. crude rose 1.07% to $63.07 a barrel, and Brent climbed to $68.27 per barrel, up 1.04% on the day after hitting a four-month high of $68.53.
Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak, additional reporting by Pranav Kashyap and Twesha Dikshit in Bengaluru, Dhara Ranasinghe in London and Tom Westbrook in Singapore; Editing by Timothy Heritage, Jan Harvey, Alexander Smith, Rod Nickel
The Swedish streaming platform said in a blog post that its payouts in 2025 grew by more than 10% from a year earlier, with independent artists and labels accounting for half of all royalties
International News via Reuters:
Spotify said on Wednesday it had paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry last year, adding that it was the largest annual payment to music from a retailer in history.
The Swedish streaming platform said in a blog post that its payouts in 2025 grew by more than 10% from a year earlier, with independent artists and labels accounting for half of all royalties.
The company has been prioritizing retaining and bringing in new artists to the platform as it faces stiff competition from other major players such as YouTube and Apple in the music-streaming market.
YouTube said in October it had paid out more than $8 billion to the music industry in the 12 months between July 2024 and June 2025.
“Since Spotify pays out two-thirds of all music revenue to the industry – almost 70% of what we take in – as Spotify revenues grow, music payouts have grown as well,” the blog said.
The company reinvests the money it keeps into the platform, it said, as it looks to grow various content formats such as podcasts, videos and audiobooks.
Spotify recently raised the prices for its premium subscription plans in several markets to boost profits and leverage its large user base to drive growth.
It had 713 million monthly active users at the end of the third quarter.
Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas
Nathan Trott reached a significant milestone at the Cardiff City Stadium as the Bluebirds continued their impressive ascent in Sky Bet League One. The Bermudian international recorded his tenth shutout of the campaign in a dominant 4-0 victory over Barnsley on Tuesday, further cementing his reputation as one of the division’s premier shot-stoppers. Trott’s composure between the posts—highlighted by a stunning first-half save to deny a Davis Keillor-Dunn thunderbolt—provided the foundation for an expansive Cardiff display that left the visiting Tykes with no answer to the hosts’ superior clinical edge.
While Trott celebrated a clean sheet in Wales, there was a different story for Nahki Wells at the John Smith’s Stadium. Luton Town manager Jack Wilshere opted to shake up his starting eleven following a disappointing weekend defeat at Plymouth, leaving Wells on the bench for the trip to Huddersfield Town. Despite the tactical shift, the Hatters struggled to find their rhythm, and Wells was introduced as a 61st-minute substitute to provide a spark. However, the Terriers held firm to secure a narrow 1-0 win, leaving Luton to reflect on a difficult night in West Yorkshire.
Further down the pyramid, Kane Crichlow and Chelmsford City enjoyed a fruitful evening at the Melbourne Stadium. In a tightly contested National League South clash against Tonbridge Angels on Monday, the Clarets managed to edge their rivals 1-0. Crichlow’s technical quality in the middle of the park was vital in helping Chelmsford navigate a cagey affair and secure three valuable points in front of the home supporters.
The evening was less kind to Coleridge Fubler Jr. and Qur’an Raynor, whose Binfield FC side traveled to Kent for a Velocity Cup Quarter-Final. Facing a high-flying Ramsgate at the Southwood Stadium, the Moles found the step up in quality difficult to handle. Despite a spirited effort from the Bermudian duo, with Raynor introduced as a 73rd-minute substitute, Binfield bowed out of the competition following a comprehensive 5-0 defeat. While the cup run ends in disappointment, the experience of reaching the final eight will undoubtedly serve as a platform for their remaining league campaign.
Papplewick and Linby Cricket Club have made a significant move ahead of the new campaign, securing the signature of Bermudian international Zeri Tomlinson. The young standout becomes the first official signing for the club’s new player-coach, Robin Smith, who arrived from South Africa with a formidable reputation and a prolific record of over 5,000 runs in the UK.
Tomlinson, who made his senior international debut for Bermuda at just 15, arrives at Papplewick following a spectacular 2025 season. During his time at Sedbergh School in England, he established himself as a dominant force, highlighted by a superb 108 runs in May—the highest overseas score by a Bermudian that week. He also showcased his big-game temperament at Old Trafford, striking a fluent half-century in a T20 showcase.
The 18-year-old carried that form back to Bermuda, where he struck his maiden Premier century with a blistering 102 for Warwick Workmen’s Club. However, it was his tactical switch to Somerset Cricket Club that defined his summer; Tomlinson was selected as a Colt for the historic Cup Match, where he took over the gloves as the champions’ primary wicketkeeper after scoring a fluent 51 in the Colts game.
Currently the Captain of the Bermuda Under-19 team, Tomlinson’s arrival marks a new era for Papplewick as they look to blend youth with the seasoned experience of Smith at the helm.
Taylor White produced a commanding individual display in the pool this past weekend, though her efforts were not quite enough to prevent Bentley University from falling to a narrow 147-139 defeat against Pace University. In a tightly contested dual meet at the Goldstein Fitness Center in Pleasantville, New York, the Falcons saw their final regular-season contest decided by a mere eight points.
White, a senior from Warwick, showcased her versatility by playing a pivotal role across both individual and relay events. Her afternoon was highlighted by a superb victory in the Women’s 200 Yard Freestyle, where she controlled the race from the outset to touch the wall in a winning time of 2:00.32.
Beyond her individual triumph, the Bermudian was a key component of the Falcons’ relay strategy. She spearheaded the Bentley 200 Yard Medley Relay A team, delivering a sharp leadoff backstroke leg that helped her quartet secure second place. White later returned to the blocks to claim another runner-up finish, this time in the Women’s 200 Yard Backstroke, trailing only Pace’s Eugenia Morossi, who swept both backstroke events on the day.
White capped her competitive day by leading off the Bentley 400 Yard Freestyle Relay team, joining forces with Bella Montanari, Fotini Anastasiadou, and Skyla Lang to power to a victory in 3:44.71. Despite the narrow team loss, White’s form remains a major positive for Bentley as they transition into post-season mode. The Falcons now have two weeks to prepare for the Northeast-10 Conference Championships, scheduled for February 12th to 15th in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Four earn air traffic control licences after rigorous training
A milestone was reached for aviation in the country today after four young Bermudians were recognised for earning certifications as qualified air traffic control specialists.
Dejon Robinson, Hannah Fletcher, Nakiiah Robinson Baker and X-onna Stevens (absent) were today presented with their licences after successfully completing rigorous training and beating out more than 100 other applicants.
All four graduates range in age from 22 to 31.
Fostering the next pipeline of Bermudian talent in the aviation industry is a top priority for the Bermuda Airport Authority, which says it aims to have a full slate of trained and experienced Bermudians by the time the airport’s project agreement with Skyport concludes.
WATCH the full report above.
Bermuda Broadcasting also spoke to Dejon Robinson about his motivation to pursue a career in aviation.
Two, four-year engineering scholarships are worth $100,000 each
Hamilton, Bermuda – 28 January 2026 – Bermuda Electric Light Company Limited (‘BELCO’ or the ‘Company’) has announced two new Electrical Engineering Scholarship Awards for 2026, with a total value of $100,000 each.
Each four-year scholarship provides $25,000 per year to support aspiring electrical engineers in advancing their education while fostering opportunities to contribute their expertise within BELCO and the broader Bermudian community. BELCO’s objective is to increase the number of qualified Bermudian engineers that have a knowledge base that enables active participation in Bermuda’s changing energy landscape. Recipients will be expected to work at BELCO for up to four years upon graduation, subject to availability of a suitable position.
BELCO Director Human Resources & Culture LaKeitha Cunningham said: “BELCO has been empowering Bermudians for decades through scholarships, awards and internships and we are pleased to offer two new Electrical Engineering Scholarship Awards for 2026. As we look to the future, and our goal to build a resilient energy company, we need qualified, knowledgeable employees and these scholarships are critical for the development of our workforce. I encourage those interested in electrical engineering and power systems engineering, and who are motivated to build a career at a great company, to submit an application so that the next generation of Bermudians will have the training and expertise to help us achieve our future sustainability goals.”
Applications are now open and close April 30, 2026. For eligibility requirements and application details, visit belco.bm/scholarships.
The new Electrical Engineering Scholarships expand BELCO’s comprehensive educational support portfolio, which includes:
The Llewellyn Vorley Engineering Scholarship provides recipients the opportunity to further their knowledge in engineering fields and to share knowledge and experience with the Company and wider community. The BELCO Scholarship Selection Committee’s objective is to increase the number of qualified Bermudian engineers participating in the field and ensure assistance for recipients’ educational endeavours. The four-year scholarship award is $25,000 per year.
The BELCO STEM Education Awards are open to students studying for an undergraduate degree in science, technology, engineering and math. The number of awards and value, between $2,500 and $20,000, will be at the discretion of the Committee. These awards are for a first degree and are awarded for one academic year only. Candidates must have provisional acceptance or notification to an accredited educational institution.
The A.T. Oughton Post Graduate Business and Finance Scholarship provides up to $25,000 for one year to Bermudians pursuing graduate degrees in business or finance. These academic fields are particularly important to fulfil BELCO’s leadership requirements, so that the Company can meet its commitment to be Bermuda’s trusted and preferred provider of energy and infrastructure solutions.
The C. Eugene Cox Post Graduate Environmental Studies and Sustainability Scholarship is valued up to $25,000 for one year. BELCO is committed to a sustainable energy future, and this scholarship will increase the number of qualified Bermudian engineers so that the Company can achieve its sustainability goals. The scholarship will be granted to suitable candidates studying for graduate degrees in Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Engineering, Environmental Studies and Information Technology, or related disciplines.
To apply or for more information, interested applicants can visit belco.bm/scholarships.
Bermudian track standouts Arima Turner and Amaris Munya delivered a series of strong performances this past weekend as they represented Montverde Academy at the high-profile Sunshine Showcase in Gainesville, Florida. Competing at the Alachua County Events Center, the duo continued their impressive indoor campaigns against some of the region’s elite collegiate and high school talent.
Turner, a senior from Paget, was among the leading figures for the Florida-based academy in the short sprints. In the Girls 60 Meters, she navigated a competitive field to secure 11th place overall, crossing the line in 7.79 seconds. She followed that up with a standout display in the 200 Meters, where she stopped the clock in 25.08 seconds to earn an impressive sixth-place finish in a race featuring several top-ranked sprinters.
In the middle-distance events, Warwick native Amaris Munya tested her endurance in the Girls One Mile. Maintaining a steady pace throughout the eight-lap contest on the banked track, the junior fought her way to 15th place with a time of 5:37.07.
For the Bermudian pair, who recently impressed at the Virginia Showcase, the meet provided another vital platform for high-performance development as they build toward the major indoor championship season.
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