Today marks World Physiotherapy Day, highlighting the important role physiotherapists play in keeping people healthy, mobile and independent.
This year’s focus is on cardiovascular disease and stroke, kicking off a four-year global focus on noncommunicable diseases.
Qian Dickinson spoke with Dr. Kimberley Watkins, Senior Rehabilitation Physiotherapist at Evolution Healing Center, about the significance of the day and the role physiotherapy can play in prevention, recovery and improving quality of life.
But physiotherapy extends well beyond recovery from major illness or injury. We also asked about some of the most common reasons people in Bermuda seek physiotherapy — and the conditions therapists are seeing most often.
And finally, if you’ve been living with pain, discomfort or limited mobility and putting off getting help, the message is simple — don’t wait.
Here’s why seeking physiotherapy sooner rather than later can make a difference.
Former finance Minister and PLP leadership candidate Curtis Dickinson, issued a statement following a rift within the ruling PLP has spilled over into the Supreme Court
Divisive messages, threats, hateful language … unsubstantiated rumours – a bleak picture of conflict engulfing the PLP.
The words are from Curtis Dickinson, who is vying for leadership of the ruling party.
His is among the plaintiffs in a legal suit seeking to prevent a change in membership rules, ahead of ahead of next month’s leadership challenge.
The cancellation of hundreds of flights and delays to hundreds more renews scrutiny on NATS three years after a flight-plan processing failure caused even more widespread disruption
International News via Reuters:
Flights at major British airports were disrupted on Tuesday by a technical fault at air traffic control provider NATS, the latest in a series of failures that renewed questions about the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure.
The cancellation of hundreds of flights and delays to hundreds more renews scrutiny on NATS three years after a flight-plan processing failure caused even more widespread disruption.
As passengers waited for information in departure halls across the country on Tuesday, airlines questioned whether the country’s air traffic control system was fit for purpose.
NATS said it was solving the problem.
“We have implemented a fix and our flight system is starting to recover. We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery,” NATS said in a statement.
HUNDREDS OF FLIGHTS DELAYED AND MANY CANCELLED
Close to a thousand flights were disrupted on Tuesday, including to and from the largest UK airport, Heathrow.
Data on flight-tracking platform FlightAware said some 490 departures were delayed at six airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol as of 1518 GMT.
Some 525 arrivals at those six airports were either cancelled or delayed, the website data shows.
At Heathrow, 38 of 661 scheduled arrivals had been cancelled or were unable to operate, according to aviation analytics company Cirium. British Airways was the most affected carrier at the airport, cancelling 16 of 333 scheduled departures.
EUROPE’S TRAFFIC-FILLED SKIES
Air traffic control is a tightly timed system in Europe’s extremely busy skies.
Aviation analyst John Strickland said the consequences of even a relatively short outage can be severe because delays quickly cascade through tightly scheduled airline networks.
“A few hours of outage may on the face of it sound limited but the impact is enormous when a substantial number of airports across the UK are affected,” Strickland said.
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been affected by delays of up to eight hours and that it had cancelled more than 50 flights, calling on NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
“How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?” Ryanair Chief Operating Officer Neal McMahon said.
NATS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McMahon’s comments.
Wizz Air also called for urgent reform of the air traffic controller, saying airlines, passengers and airports should not continue to bear the consequences of recurring system failures.
“A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its current form,” Wizz Air said.
Britain’s aviation regulator said it would expect NATS to share a full report of Tuesday’s incident.
The Civil Aviation Authority said it would then consider whether any further steps need to be taken to secure the reliability of the UK’s air traffic control system.
In 2024, the CAA said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after the automatic processing of flight plans had malfunctioned a year earlier, causing chaos across Britain’s airports.
Airline bosses said that outage had cost them over £100 million ($135.49 million) in refunds and compensation.
In July last year, a radar-related technical issue in Britain’s air traffic control system disrupted flights for over four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow.
($1 = 0.7381 pounds)
Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, Josephine Mason, Joanna Plucinska and Pushkala Aripaka; editing by Alison Williams, William James and Barbara Lewis
The Canadian levies follow 50% tariffs the United States imposed on some $20 billion of Canadian goods last month, after several rounds of negotiations collapsed
International News via Reuters:
Canada’s retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods took effect after midnight on Tuesday, intensifying an 18-month-old trade war and spurring Prime Minister Mark Carney to urge a further shift away from the country’s biggest trading partner.
The Canadian levies follow 50% tariffs the United States imposed on some $20 billion of Canadian goods last month, after several rounds of negotiations collapsed. The breakdown has widened a rift between the longtime allies, both of whom have blamed the other for the failed talks.
“We have everything we need to pivot and prosper,” Carney said on Tuesday in a video posted on YouTube after the tariffs came into effect.
“That pivot will come at a cost. There’s always a cost to action. But it doesn’t come close to the cost of standing still,” he said.
A government source said there are currently no talks between the two sides on the level of ministers or government officials.
Ottawa designed the retaliatory measures to put economic and political pressure on Washington, Canadian government officials said, and the tariffs are expected to hit sectors in some competitive states such as Michigan and Ohio, ahead of U.S. midterm elections in November.
The counter-tariffs cover some $20 billion of U.S. goods, with duties ranging from 15% to 50% across products from steel and furniture to clothing and electronics.
While the new tariffs affect a small amount of exports compared with total trade between the U.S. and Canada, some analysts worry the standoff could destabilize the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the free-trade pact that succeeded NAFTA. Together they have underpinned commerce across North America for decades.
“What we are worried about is an escalatory spiral,” said Michael Harvey, executive director of the Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance and a member of Carney’s advisory committee on bilateral U.S. economic relations.
“But at the same time, we totally understand that the prime minister needs to find areas of leverage,” Harvey said.
Trump’s social media posts focused on Canada over the holiday weekend as Ottawa’s tariff deadline approached.
Canadian private jet maker Bombardier would no longer be allowed to sell its planes in the United States unless it started manufacturing in the country, Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Monday, without saying whether an official government order would follow. The company’s shares opened down more than 6% on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Tuesday.
On Monday, Trump posted a map of North America draped in the U.S. flag, including Canada and Mexico. He also shared an AI-generated image reviving a running jab at Carney, calling him “Governor,” a reference to his repeated taunt that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.
U.S. TARIFFS HIT CANADIAN WINE, FURNITURE, DAIRY
Trump’s tariffs implemented last month hit sectors including wine, furniture, dairy products, cement, clothing, fishing rods and hockey equipment, covering $20 billion, or 5%, of Canadian exports to the U.S.
According to Canadian and U.S. government data, Canada has shipped almost 68% of total exports to the U.S. this year, out of which roughly 80% moved duty-free due to exemptions under the USMCA pact. Protections under the agreement have provided the domestic economy some resilience.
The new tariffs, imposed under a Depression-era U.S. law, do not allow Ottawa to exercise USMCA exemptions.
Concerns about the USMCA’s future have fuelled uncertainty about investment and growth, as Canada wages a trade war against an economy 13 times its size.
Polls also show Carney has broad support from Canadians, but that could disappear within months as the consequences of the trade war sink in, according to political analysts.
A new poll from Angus Reid on Tuesday showed that approval of Carney’s performance jumped 11 points to 62% from an August poll.
Meanwhile, just 20% of Americans approved of Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
Trump threatened last month to raise U.S. tariffs on all cars, trucks and automotive parts from Canada to 50% starting January 1, and signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America.
Reporting by Promit Mukherjee; Editing by Caroline Stauffer, Rod Nickel and Deepa Babington
The lawsuit, filed in London’s High Court by STLC Europe Eight, a unit of GTLK Europe, alleges easyJet left leased Airbus jets in Madrid and Cyprus in 2022 without maintenance while airport storage charges continued to accrue
International News via Reuters:
British budget airline easyJet is being sued for at least $72 million by an Irish unit of Russian state-owned aircraft lessor GTLK over allegations it unlawfully abandoned six Airbus planes after terminating their leases following sanctions, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
The lawsuit, filed in London’s High Court by STLC Europe Eight, a unit of GTLK Europe, alleges easyJet left leased Airbus jets in Madrid and Cyprus in 2022 without maintenance while airport storage charges continued to accrue.
According to the claim, the carrier leased the aircraft from STLC and notified the lessor in April 2022 that it was terminating the leases because EU sanctions prevented it from maintaining or repairing the jets.
STLC argues the sanctions did not apply because the aircraft remained outside Russia and the leasing entity was based in Ireland, the report added.
Three jets at Cyprus’ Larnaca International Airport were eventually recovered and sold, but fetched at least $32.5 million less than expected because of their poor condition. The remaining three aircraft in Madrid have yet to be sold, according to the report.
An easyJet spokesperson said the airline intends to defend the claim in full and declined to comment further on the ongoing litigation. GTLK did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Reporting by Rishab Shaju and Sruthi Narasimha Chari in Bengaluru; Editing by Diti Pujara and Tasim Zahid
Rival Ryanair also criticised the agency and called for the resignation of its CEO, Martin Rolfe
International News via Reuters:
European budget carriers Wizz Air and Ryanair on Tuesday called for an overhaul of Britain’s air traffic control provider NATS following a new technical issue that disrupted hundreds of flights at key airports in the country.
“A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its current form,” a spokesperson for Wizz Air said in a statement.
Rival Ryanair also criticised the agency and called for the resignation of its CEO, Martin Rolfe.
“Following the 2023 collapse, we were told lessons would be learned. We were told ‘resilience would improve’. We were told the systems had been fixed. Yet here we are again,” Ryanair Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon said.
NATS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In 2024, Britain’s aviation regulator said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after the automatic processing of flight plans had malfunctioned a year earlier, causing chaos across Britain’s airports.
The UK’s civil aviation body on Tuesday said it had been in touch with NATS over the incident and expects the latter to share a full report on the incident.
“We will then consider whether any further steps need to be taken to help secure the safe reliability of the UK’s air traffic control system,” a spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority said.
Reporting by Pushkala AripakaEditing by Tomasz Janowski
The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed 0.1% lower at 10,811.66 points after briefly turning positive earlier in the day, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 slipped 0.64%
International News via Reuters:
London’s benchmark FTSE 100 ended slightly lower on Tuesday, with gains in commodity-linked shares helping offset broader market weakness, as a week packed with economic data worldwide got under way.
The blue-chip FTSE 100 index closed 0.1% lower at 10,811.66 points after briefly turning positive earlier in the day, while the mid-cap FTSE 250 slipped 0.64%.
• Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthis attacked energy facilities in Saudi Arabia, in a major expansion of the ongoing conflict, sending Brent crude to near $99 a barrel earlier in the day.
• Energy stocks in London rose, with BP and Shell up 0.68% and 0.52%, respectively. [O/R]
• Miners Antofagasta and Glencore gained 4.7% and 4.2% as copper prices hit a record high. The industrial metal miners sector rose 2.7%.[MET/L]
• Pharma stocks were the biggest drags, with medical products maker Smith+Nephew down 3.6% and index heavyweight AstraZeneca sliding 1.4%.
• Other consumer-focused sectors also took a hit. Dunelm tumbled 14.3% after the homeware retailer issued a profit warning for 2027, citing hot summer weather.
• Rising oil prices have reinforced inflation concerns, pushing global bond yields to multi-month highs and hitting risk assets lately.
• Traders are pricing in a 60% chance of a U.S. interest rate hike next week, while they expect the Bank of England (BoE) to remain on hold, according to LSEG data.
• A key U.S. inflation report and economic growth data in the UK due later this week could influence these bets.
• BoE Governor Andrew Bailey said the market curve for interest rate expectations reflected investors adding a “risk premium” because of their worry about further energy price increases.
• Among other stocks, technology service provider Computacenter said its annual profit would top market expectations. The company’s shares, however, closed 7.8% lower, having surged to record highs earlier in the day.
• Mechanical engineering company Goodwin slumped 23.2%. The Financial Times reported that U.S. private equity firm Cerberus is nearing a £1 billion ($1.36 billion) deal for Goodwin’s defence business.
($1 = 0.7390 pounds)
Reporting by Anand Gopal and Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by Maju Samuel
The complaint is the latest by environmental groups over the European Union’s efforts to simplify and scale back policies, a strategy known as the EU “omnibus,”
International News via Reuters:
Environmental campaign groups lodged a complaint against the European Commission on Tuesday, accusing the EU executive of moving ahead with an overhaul of water protection and management laws without enough evidence.
The complaint is the latest by environmental groups over the European Union’s efforts to simplify and scale back policies, a strategy known as the EU “omnibus,” which responds to complaints from industries who say burdensome laws hurt their competitiveness with global rivals like the U.S. and China.
The complaint concerns a Commission plan to revise the EU’s main water legislation this year, in part in response to concerns by mining and metals companies that say the law’s environmental safeguards are delaying permits for new critical raw materials mines and other industrial projects.
In a complaint filed with the European Ombudsman — the EU’s independent watchdog — the World Wildlife Fund, the European Environmental Bureau and three other groups said the Commission had failed to sufficiently gather evidence and consult stakeholders before announcing the planned revision, and that this failure amounted to maladministration.
“Their cumulative effect amounts to a flagrant deviation from established due process, one that materially affects citizens’ rights,” the NGOs said. They argued that the EU water laws are not the reason new mines struggle to get permits, and do not need revising.
A Commission spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Ombudsman will now decide whether to open an inquiry into the complaint. That process can take a few weeks, a spokesperson for the watchdog told Reuters.
The EU watchdog does not have enforcement powers, but rather makes recommendations that can affect future EU lawmaking, and increases scrutiny of the Commission.
Last year, the Ombudsman obliged the Commission to publicly explain why it had fast-tracked other proposals to curb sustainability laws, and not assessed whether the changes complied with Europe’s climate change commitments.
The spokesperson said Muizzu was “deeply disappointed” that Britain did not consult the Maldives when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed to cede sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius
International News via Reuters:
Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu has written to British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, asking him to reopen talks over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, a spokesperson said on Tuesday in a statement.
The spokesperson said Muizzu was “deeply disappointed” that Britain did not consult the Maldives when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer agreed to cede sovereignty of the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius.
A spokesperson for Britain’s foreign office said in a statement: “We continue to speak to our counterparts in the Maldives on a regular basis about a range of issues.
“However, the question of sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago is a matter for the UK and Mauritius, which is why the previous government launched negotiations with Mauritius on the issue in 2022, rather than with the Maldives.”
In and around the capital Banjul, protesters burned tyres in the street and erected barricades, shouting “Barrow must go!” as plumes of smoke filled the air
International News via Reuters:
Police used tear gas to disperse protesters who gathered overnight in multiple locations in Gambia, including near President Adama Barrow’s official residence, to denounce what they described as prolonged power cuts, residents and a Reuters witness said.
In and around the capital Banjul, protesters burned tyres in the street and erected barricades, shouting “Barrow must go!” as plumes of smoke filled the air, the Reuters witness said.
The West African nation’s electricity issues — with some residents reporting blackouts lasting up to 48 hours — come ahead of a presidential election expected in December in which Barrow is seeking a third term.
In a sign of growing frustration with the government, protesters in the town of Farato gathered outside the residence of Vice President Mohammed B.S. Jallow and destroyed banners at an office of the ruling National People’s Party.
Officials are “working relentlessly to restore stability and improve the reliability of electricity supply as soon as possible,” Gambia’s information minister, Ismaila Ceesay, said in a statement on Tuesday that described the events of the previous night as “deeply disconcerting”.
Ceesay apologised to those affected by the power cuts.
“As a government, we recognise the frustration, anger and hardship that many Gambians are experiencing,” he said.
A police spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Barrow visited facilities for the national utility, National Water and Electricity Company Ltd, on Tuesday morning and promised that Gambia would receive new generators this week.
“We are committed to ending this crisis. Gambians deserve reliable electricity, and we will deliver by the end of October,” he told reporters ahead of his address scheduled for 8 p.m. (2000 GMT).
UTILITY WARNED OF DEMAND SURGE DUE TO HEAT
NAWEC said in a statement on August 15 that it was experiencing “an unforeseen surge in electricity demand during the peak period,” which it attributed to high temperatures.
It also reported “a technical incident affecting one of the major power-generating units on the import side,” without elaborating.
The situation would require load shedding “affecting several parts of the country”, but no dates were given.
NAWEC did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
“There is no light everywhere. There is no light. People have been crying about electricity,” said Ousainu Jammeh, a resident of the Westfield area of Banjul.
Jammeh said he went outside to join protesters after tear gas “landed in my house.”
After protests died down in the pre-dawn hours, Jammeh joined crowds of young men who used water to douse fires and clear the barricades.
Traffic had returned to normal in Banjul on Tuesday morning.
Reporting by Pap Saine and Malick Njie; Writing by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Anait Miridzhanian; Editing by Alex Richardson, Mark Porter and Gareth Jones
Bermudian golfer Sienna Mosquera made an encouraging start to her autumn collegiate campaign, carding a two-over-par 74 in the opening round of the inaugural Happy Valley Individual tournament in Pennsylvania.
Representing Lehigh University at the Penn State White Course—played alongside the prestigious Nittany Lion Invitational hosted on the adjacent Blue Course—Mosquera finished the first day tied for 15th on the individual leaderboard.
The Bermudian produced an eventful, attacking opening round that featured five birdies, balanced against seven pars, five bogeys, and a lone double bogey.
Her steady scoring leaves her firmly within striking distance of the top 10 as play heads into the final rounds in University Park.
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