Shortly after midnight on Thursday, December 18, 2025, police received a report of a two vehicle collision involving a motorcycle and a motorcar South Road, Warwick, near Warwick Park.
The motorcycle rider sustained a serious but non-life-threatening injury.
It was ascertained the driver of the motorcar was a Bermuda Police Service (BPS) senior officer. That officer has been arrested on suspicion of impaired driving.
A full investigation into the circumstances of the collision is underway.
The matter has also been referred to the BPS Professional Standards Department, ensuring a comprehensive examination of the incident.
Mr. Darrin Simons, Commissioner of Police stated, “This situation underscores a commitment that defines our service: we hold ourselves to the same level of accountability as we do any member of the public. Integrity matters. Trust matters. When our officers fail to meet the standards we set, we take action.”
The Bermuda Police Service is conducting a thorough investigation into this incident. Members of the public who witnessed the collision are encouraged to contact police at 211 with any information that may assist with the investigation.
The Bermuda Police Service remains committed to making Bermuda safer through professionalism, honesty, integrity, and compassion.
Since the amendment was presented last month by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party, the ECB has intervened on two occasions to warn that it could undermine the Bank of Italy’s independence
International News via Reuters:
An Italian parliamentary committee has approved an amendment to next year’s budget stating that the gold reserves held by the country’s central bank belong to “the people,” lawmakers said, ignoring criticism from the European Central Bank.
Since the amendment was presented last month by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy party, the ECB has intervened on two occasions to warn that it could undermine the Bank of Italy’s independence.
“Gold reserves managed and held by the Bank of Italy, as recorded on its balance sheet, belong to the Italian people,” said the text approved on Friday by the budget committee of the upper house of parliament, the Senate.
The proposed legislation, which still needs various approval steps before entering into force, contains wording aimed at clarifying that it does not override European Union rules protecting central bank independence.
The text is, however, broadly in line with the draft criticised by the ECB in its second legal opinion.
Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said on Monday he and ECB chief Christine Lagarde had resolved the issue last week, on the sidelines of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers in Brussels.
“We believe that the matter can be considered closed,” the minister said in parliament.
Meloni’s party has justified the initiative by arguing that foreign entities who are among the stakeholders of Italy’s central bank should not be able to claim rights over the gold reserves.
An initial, stronger proposal presented to parliament before being reworded by the government, stated that “the gold reserves managed and held by the Bank of Italy belong to the state, on behalf of the Italian people.”
The Bank of Italy says on its website it owns the world’s third-largest national gold stockpile, behind those of the United States and Germany. Its 2,452 metric tons of gold are worth $300 billion, roughly 13% of Italy’s national output.
Giorgetti denied last week any plan to transfer the gold off the Bank of Italy’s balance sheet, a move that would circumvent the prohibition on central banks financing the public sector.
He said the amendment was merely aimed at stating “a political principle.”
Both houses of parliament are due to approve the budget before the end of the year.
The museum was entirely closed on Monday as staff walked out and partly reopened from Wednesday
International News via Reuters:
Staff at France’s Louvre museum in Paris has voted to call off a strike they began on Monday over pay and working conditions, union representatives said on Friday.
“At a general meeting held today, Louvre Museum staff unanimously decided to pause their action in order to allow the museum to reopen and welcome visitors,” the statement from the CFDT-Culture union said.
The museum was entirely closed on Monday as staff walked out and partly reopened from Wednesday. Tuesday is the museum’s weekly closure day.
Trade unions said they condemn “the lack of concrete answers regarding the security plan and the future of the establishment, in a context of dilapidation and deteriorating working conditions”
They also regretted “the silence of the museum’s president, who has neither met with staff nor issued a statement”
A new meeting has been scheduled for January 5 to maintain momentum if the expected responses are not forthcoming.
Reporting by Dominique Vidalon, Noemie Olive, editing by Inti Landauro
The ECB kept rates steady on Thursday and revised up some of its growth and inflation projections
International News via Reuters:
Risks to euro zone growth and inflation are fairly balanced but remain large, so the European Central Bank needs to keep an open mind about future policy moves, Dutch central bank chief Olaf Sleijpen said on Friday.
The ECB kept rates steady on Thursday and revised up some of its growth and inflation projections, a move that probably closes the door to further cuts in borrowing costs in the near term.
But policymakers including Sleijpen were rather cautious in their public comments on Friday, not wanting to take any option off the table just yet given oversized risks that could quickly shift the outlook.
“We are still in a good place, inflation in Europe is moving very close around 2%. You might say it’s almost a kind of central banker’s nirvana,” Sleijpen told a news conference in Amsterdam. “But at the same time, we know the risks are still large.”
“That’s why it is important we maintain our meeting-by-meeting approach and continue to depend on data,” he said. “Risks for growth and inflation I think are fairly balanced, even though they are big.”
The ECB did not give an overall risk assessment for growth and inflation and instead listed a host of factors that may alter the outlook.
However, sources with direct knowledge of the ECB discussions said that most policymakers see risks around the growth outlook as broadly balanced, even if a few thought growth could turn out lower than embedded in the central bank’s own projections.
In the case of inflation, there was even less debate as most policymakers thought risks were balanced.
Reporting by Bart Meijer; Writing by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Hugh Lawson
Japan has accepted importing pork from within the containment zone near Spain’s Barcelona
International News via Reuters:
Japan has accepted importing pork from within the containment zone near Spain’s Barcelona that has been processed and refrigerated before the outbreak of African swine fever in the area, the head of Catalonia’s regional agriculture department told reporters on Friday.
Reporting by David Latona; Editing by Andrei Khalip
The gunman, identified as Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, 48, was found dead Thursday night in a storage rental facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he had rented a unit last month, officials said
International News via Reuters:
The suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, with investigators certain he also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later, officials said on Thursday.
The gunman, identified as Portuguese national Claudio Neves Valente, 48, was found dead Thursday night in a storage rental facility in Salem, New Hampshire, where he had rented a unit last month, officials said.
Valente attended Brown University more than two decades ago as a Ph.D. student in physics and was a former classmate in Portugal of slain MIT professor Nuno Loureiro, 47. Despite those links, authorities said that his motive in the killings remains a mystery.
“I don’t think we have any idea why now, or why Brown, or why these students, why this classroom,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, at a Thursday night press conference in Providence, where the university is located.
Valente entered a building used for Brown’s engineering and physics programs on December 13 and fired at least 44 rounds from his 9 mm pistol, killing two students and injuring another nine, according to the Providence police affidavit for his arrest.
Then, officials say, he fatally shot Loureiro inside his home before disappearing and leading investigators on a manhunt that stretched over five days. Authorities said two guns — including the 9 mm pistol they believe was used in the killings — were found by his corpse.
In Boston, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said at a press conference that investigators had evidence that made them certain that Valente, who was living in Miami and was a lawful permanent resident of the United States, murdered Loureiro in his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO HALT DIVERSITY VISA PROGRAM
The Trump administration quickly pointed to Valente’s permanent residency status as a reason to halt the Diversity Immigrant Visa program’s lottery system that awards green cards to people from countries with relatively low numbers of immigrants to the United States.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X late Thursday.
Noem said she would “immediately” implement a directive by President Donald Trump to pause the green-card lottery “to ensure no more Americans are harmed by this disastrous program.”
Foley said Valente and Loureiro had attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal from 1995 to 2000.
Valente used a phone that was harder to track and did not use credit cards linked to his name, according to Foley.
“He was sophisticated in hiding his tracks,” she said.
Valente also switched the license plates on his rental car in an effort to avoid capture, officials said.
Foley declined to provide many details about the evidence linking Valente to Loureiro’s murder, but said video images showed a rental car Valente was driving near Loureiro’s home. The IP address associated with Valente’s phone was known to have accessed the internet in the vicinity of the slain professor’s home on the day he was killed, Foley added.
Providence police chief Oscar Perez said at a press conference that investigators believe Valente acted alone.
RENTAL CAR BREAKTHROUGH
The big break in the case came via information from a man who had seen Valente inside a bathroom in the Brown University building where he carried out the shooting a few hours later, Perez said.
The witness told police that he found Valente to be extremely suspicious and followed him out of the building and down a street.
The witness saw Valente unlock his rental car and later gave police a description of that vehicle and its license plate, Perez said. Police reviewed video, found the images of Valente’s car, and from there could trace it back to the rental agency, according to officials and the police affidavit.
The rental agency’s security video included Valente’s face and showed him wearing the same clothing worn by the suspect in footage from the Brown University shooting, officials said. Investigators obtained his name from the car rental agreement, and they noted that license plate readers showed Valente had been in the vicinity of the university from December 1 until nearly two weeks later when he carried out the shooting.
Investigators in Providence had said that Valente, whose face was covered by a mask in video from the day of the Brown University shooting, escaped on foot into nearby streets after carrying out the campus killings. That prompted a search that relied heavily on residential security footage because of a lack of surveillance cameras in the classroom building and surrounding area.
Police released images and video of a man believed to be the shooter, based on survivor accounts, and repeatedly sought the public’s help in identifying him. The footage showed the suspect walking in a nearby neighborhood both before and immediately after the attack.
Reporting by Nate Raymond, Brad Brooks, Svea Herbst-Bayliss, Jana Winter, CJ Gunther, Andrew Hay and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Donna Bryson, David Gregorio, William Mallard and Saad Sayeed
Media reports said the federal jury delivered a mixed verdict on Hannah Dugan, 66, an elected judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, acquitting her of one of the two charges she faced
International News via Reuters:
A Wisconsin judge was found guilty on Thursday of helping a migrant evade a planned immigration arrest outside her courtroom, a U.S. Justice Department official said, a victory for President Donald Trump’s administration in its effort to deter interference with its hardline immigration tactics.
Media reports said the federal jury delivered a mixed verdict on Hannah Dugan, 66, an elected judge on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, acquitting her of one of the two charges she faced. She was convicted of obstructing a federal proceeding and cleared of a lesser charge accusing her of concealing a person from arrest, the reports said.
Dugan had pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for her legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This Department will not tolerate obstruction, will enforce federal immigration law, and will hold criminals to account – even those who wear robes,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a social media post.
The unusual case put a judge on trial for actions she took in her courtroom while overseeing cases and reflects tensions over the Trump administration’s use of courthouses to stage arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The prosecution stemmed from a directive by the Justice Department ordering prosecutors to pursue cases of alleged obstruction of ICE enforcement by local activists and officials resisting Trump’s drive for mass deportations.
Prosecutors alleged that Dugan intended to help a migrant from Mexico, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, escape an immigration arrest when he was scheduled to appear before her on domestic violence charges. They said she diverted federal agents and escorted the man and his attorney out of a non-public exit of her courtroom.
“She was focused on orchestrating Flores-Ruiz’s escape,” prosecutor Keith Alexander said in court. “She knew what she was doing. She did it anyway.”
Dugan’s lawyers had argued that she was following a policy directing staff to alert a supervisor to the presence of ICE in the courthouse. They argued that the incident took place at a time of confusion and uncertainty following two prior ICE arrests in the courthouse.
“All she did was send him out into the hallway with his lawyer,” Dugan’s lawyer Steven Biskupic told the jury during the trial.
DUGAN DIVERTED ICE AGENTS, PROSECUTORS SAY
Agents from ICE and other agencies, dressed in plainclothes, planned to arrest the man in a hallway outside Dugan’s courtroom following his hearing.
Dugan angrily confronted the agents and directed them to the chief judge’s office after learning that ICE was present, according to witness testimony in the case. She then dealt privately with Flores-Ruiz’s case and directed the man and his attorney through a private “jury door,” prosecutors alleged.
Flores-Ruiz walked through a public hallway and was arrested outside the courthouse following a brief foot chase.
Dugan was first elected as a county judge in 2016, and before that served as head of the local branch of Catholic Charities, which provides refugee resettlement programs, among other services.
She spent much of her early career as a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, which serves poor people.
Justice Department officials touted the case as an example of prosecutors’ willingness to pursue powerful public officials. The Trump administration has escalated immigration enforcement at state and local courthouses, viewing them as a reliable and safe venue to make arrests.
Activists and some judges have criticized those efforts, arguing the presence of ICE agents undermines trust in the legal system and could dissuade people from seeking justice.
Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Diana Novak Jones; editing by Scott Malone and Raju Gopalakrishnan
Across from where she had taken cover from the gunshots under a bench, Dadon saw two children stranded out in the open, beside their wounded parents
14-year-old Bondi shooting survivor, Chaya Dadon, holds a pendant, in the shape of Israel and the Palestinian territories and a partial Star of David engraved on it , that she bought a few hours before the shooting in Sydney, Australia, December 19, 2025. Reuters/Cordelia Hsu
International News via Reuters:
As two gunmen opened fire on hundreds celebrating Hanukkah on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, 14-year-old Chaya Dadon’s mind was clear.
Across from where she had taken cover from the gunshots under a bench, Dadon saw two children stranded out in the open, beside their wounded parents.
“I knew in that moment, I felt like Hashem was sitting right next to me,” she said in an interview with Reuters, using a Hebrew name for God. “He was whispering into my ear, ‘This is your mission: go save those kids’.”
The schoolgirl left the safety of her hiding spot, pulled the children away and jumped on top of them, covering their bodies with her own. At some point, she was shot in the thigh. But she kept shielding them, reciting the Shema, a Jewish prayer.
“I knew I got shot, but I wasn’t even worried, I channeled all that energy that I had into strength and I made sure that I knew I had to be there for those kids,” she said.
“If I could give up my life saving these children, that’s what I was going to do.”
Her father eventually found them and took her to get help. “When he found me, he told me this after, that I had the girl in this arm and the boy in this arm. And I was just kissing them.”
Sunday’s attack, which officials described as an act of terrorism, killed 15 people and wounded dozens more in Australia’s worst mass shooting in nearly three decades. Police allege the Islamic State-inspired attack was carried out by Sajid Akram, 50, and his 24-year-old son Naveed. Sajid was shot dead by police at the scene, while Naveed has been charged with 59 offences including murder and terror.
Dadon’s story is one of several accounts of bravery and heroism that have emerged in the attack’s aftermath, and she resists being singled out.
“I don’t feel like I’m a hero. I feel like everyone was a hero in that situation,” said the teenager, who attended the annual event with a friend.
“I’ve been going my whole life,” she said. “It’s usually such an amazing event.”
Dadon spent four days at the Sydney Children’s Hospital before returning home on Thursday. She is now walking with crutches, which she has decorated with stickers commemorating some of those who were killed.
She still does not know the children she shielded but hopes to connect with them again.
“Those little kids that have been through things that no one should have been through,” she said, but the ordeal would make the Jewish community stronger.
“Even if they can’t see it now, everyone is going to grow stronger because I really feel like that situation, everyone was tested.”
Reporting by Cordelia Hsu in Sydney; Writing by Christine Chen; Editing by Lincoln Feast.
Sterling was mostly flat against the dollar at $1.3378, while the euro was marginally lower at 87.55 pence
International News via Reuters:
The pound held steady against the euro and the dollar on Friday, after the Bank of England delivered an expected rate cut, while hitting its highest since 2008 against the yen, hit by profit-taking following a well-telegraphed Bank of Japan rate increase.
Sterling was mostly flat against the dollar at $1.3378, while the euro was marginally lower at 87.55 pence. However, the pound jumped almost 0.8% on the day against the yen to a high of 209.75, its highest since August 2008, as traders took profit on the positions they had laid on in the run-up to the BOJ’s decision to lift rates.
With the two central banks going the opposite ways, the gap between their interest rates is now at its narrowest in four years, which would usually boost the yen at the expense of the pound. But now, traders are more concerned about Japan’s longer-term finances than what the Japanese currency is yielding at the moment.
The BoE, meanwhile, cut rates by a quarter point, as expected, on Thursday but the narrow vote suggested not all policymakers were convinced much more easing was needed, given that inflation – the highest among the Group of Seven richest economies – remains high. Governor Andrew Bailey said the overall direction for rates was lower, but possibly at a slower rate.
The pound, which has risen 1% this month so far, rose as much as 0.7% on the day after the BoE decision, only to then end Thursday’s session with just a 0.1% gain.
ING strategist Chris Turner said the pound has drawn some initial support from the BoE, which proved not to lean so much in favour of more rate cuts as some had expected, with policymakers flagging wage growth and overall inflation as remaining stubbornly high. But he said sterling strength may not last long and “bears need patience.”
“We suspect that these wage expectations will come down in the New Year in line with lower headline inflation. In all, we continue to expect 25-basis-point rate cuts in February and April, compared to market pricing of just one cut. And that should mean euro/sterling continues to find support ahead of 0.87,” he said.
Markets on Friday showed traders expect at least one more rate cut by June at the latest, with a roughly 50/50 chance of a second by the end of next year, which would take the base rate down to 3.25%, its lowest since late 2022.
Reporting by Amanda Cooper; Editing by Tomasz Janowski
Police received reports of gunshots heard in the Bandroom Lane and Spruce Lane areas around 10pm tonight
Police Statement:
Shortly after 10:00 p.m. on Thursday December 18, 2025, police received a report of possible gunshots heard in the area of Spruce Lane, Pembroke.
Officers were dispatched to the location and confirmed that shots had been fired into a nearby residence.
An unresponsive victim was located at the residence.
Officers immediately commenced life-saving measures and Emergency Medical Services was contacted and attended the scene where they continued life saving measures and conveyed the victim to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
We are appealing for residents of Bandroom Lane and Spruce Lane, who may have noticed any suspicious individuals or activity in their neighbourhood, shortly before or after 10:00 o’clock tonight to please call the main police number 295-0011.
No matter how insignificant you may think that information to be, please contact us.
You may also call the independent and confidential Crime Stoppers number 800-8477 or speak with a police officer you know.
We would particularly like to hear from anyone in those areas who may have Ring or other CCTV cameras.
We are asking that you check your devices to see whether they may have recorded any images of suspicious individuals or unusual activity as this could assist with the investigation into this matter.
A man had to be extracted from one of the vehicles, a woman suffered a suspected back injury and an infant sustained a forehead injury
Shortly before 6:00 p.m. this evening, police and other first responders were dispatched to a three vehicle road traffic collision involving a van, a car and a motorcycle, near Raynor’s gas station, Middle Road, Southampton.
The collision resulted in a number of persons being injured, including a female, with a suspected back injury, a male who had to be extracted from one of the vehicles and an infant with an injury to the forehead.
The roadway was closed while the collision scene was being processed.
Diversions were put in place at Camp Hill and Riviera Road.
Update issued by BPS:
“The roadway has now been reopened to regular traffic flow. We wish to thank the public for their patience and cooperation while the collision scene was being processed.”
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