A BAHAMIAN insurer yesterday voiced optimism that businesses and homeowners will suffer “no increase in premium prices” for all-perils catastrophe coverage in 2026 despite the multi-billion damages inflicted by Hurricane Melissa.
Anton Saunders, RoyalStar Assurance’s managing director, told Tribune Business that he and other Bahamian property and
casualty underwriters will tell reinsurers that any fall-out from Jamaican insurance claims payouts should be confined solely to the southern Caribbean nation and not shared by others in the region.
Foreign reinsurers largely dictate Bahamian insurance premium costs due to the domestic industry’s heavy dependence on them to help fully underwrite risks domiciled in this nation.
Melissa, a Category Five storm when it devastated Jamaica, emerged just as local carriers had
begun negotiating their reinsurance treaties for 2026.
However, Mr Saunders told this newspaper that the “record profits” enjoyed by reinsurers over the past two years will provide a cushion against any major exposures to Jamaica’s losses and damage. And he suggested that the outcome for The Bahamas will be influenced by the winner of what he described as “a tale of two cities”.
Noting that, prior to Melissa’s development, new reinsurers had been considering whether to enter
the Caribbean market, the RoyalStar chief explained that much will now depend on whether they proceed with these plans or take a more conservative view to not provide extra capacity.
• RoyalStar chief optimistic no catastrophe cover hike
• Industry will tell reinsurers: Keep Melissa to Jamaica
• Says ‘tale of two cities’ with winner to decide outcome
By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor
GRAND Bahama
tourism operators are proposing that one of Carnival’s “smaller ships” call on Freeport Harbour twice a week to ease the up to 90 percent plunge in business since its $600m Celebration Key port opened.
David Wallace, one of the principals behind the Pirate's Cove Zipline and Water Park, yesterday told Tribune Business that tour and excursion providers have also suggested the cruise giant permit 400600 passengers to spend at least half-a-day outside its recently-opened destination to ease their immediate financial pain.
Carnival, he nevertheless described Grand Bahama’s longer-term prospects as “very optimistic” and even asserted that Celebration Key’s impact will be akin to “what Walt Disney did for Orlando”.
Mr Wallace told this newspaper that a November “saviour” for hard-pressed Grand Bahama tourism operators has emerged through Freeport Harbour attracting 15-17 other cruise line calls from the likes of Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line to “help patch up” their businesses.
Describing the nearterm predicament of Bahamian-owned providers as something “we have to work through” with the Government and
He spoke out after Carnival, in a press statement highlighting its contribution to the recent 31st annual Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association (FCCA) conference, said that Celebration Key will in December breach the one million visitor mark just months after its July 2025 opening.
Minister pledges no spending binge before general election
By FAY SIMMONS Tribune Business Reporter
A CABINET minister yesterday pledged that the Government will maintain fiscal discipline and not engage in runaway public spending in a bid to help it retain office at the upcoming 2026 general election.
Michael Halkitis, minister of economic affairs, told the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) Accountant’s Week conference that The Bahamas is experiencing renewed economic momentum that has been boosted by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) upward revision to its growth prospects.
He reassured that, despite the upcoming election, the Government will maintain fiscal prudence and manage public spending carefully, signalling that it will not take on unnecessary debt or overspend to gain political advantage.
“We have new momentum. We are very, very encouraged by the revision upwards of our growth prospects by the IMF in its
Mr Saunders, revealing that the outcome of 2026 reinsurance negotiations will be known “in three weeks”, told Tribune
Should the former view prevail, Mr Saunders said the influx of new reinsurers - and extra coverage capacity - will inevitably “soften” rates and premium prices due to the extra supply. Suggesting that 80 percent of those considering entering the Caribbean will still do so, Melissa notwithstanding, he added that his “crystal ball” predicts there will be no premium price increases in 2025 for Bahamian companies and mortgage holders.
CELEBRATION KEY
• Carnival president: Guests can leave Celebration Key
• Tour operators urge Freeport calls after 90% plunge
• Propose 400-600 passengers off-property for half-day
And the release also quoted Christine Duffy, Carnival Cruise Line’s president, as stating that “people can still leave and take a shore excursion to see” the rest of Grand Bahama outside Celebration Key - an assertion that contrasts with the experience to-date for Mr Wallace and other businesses that rely on the cruise industry for their
Minister denies accountants turned into ‘tax collectors’
By FAY SIMMONS Tribune Business Reporter jsimmons@tribunemedia.net
A CABINET Minister yesterday pushed back at concerns that recent Business Licence reforms have imposed unfair pressure on accountants and turned them into “tax collectors” Responding to complaints voiced at the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) Accountant’s Week seminar, Michael Halkitis, minister of economic affairs, argued that changes to the Business Licence regime should be viewed as an opportunity for the profession to expand its services and help educate the business community on compliance.
During the question-and-answer segment of his presentation, an accountant argued that while the profession accepts its role in
livelihoods especially in the absence of stopover tourism.
“What we’ve actually opened is a very exclusive port of call,” Ms Duffy said.
“People can still leave and take a shore excursion to see the area, but we’re providing over 40 different meal options and a GB’s ‘Walt Disney’ answer giving shortterm headache
supporting government revenue collection, the legislation has effectively turned accountants into tax collectors and subjects them to heavy penalties if clients fail to comply. The accountant questioned the extent to which the new system has improved the collection of Business Licence fees, and the extent to which the Government has seen a significant increase as a result.
“The Business Licence legislation that was recently passed placed severe burdens on the accounting profession, and we accept it because we play a role in the collection of government funds. However, it made us tax collectors and placed a burden on
Banks told: End ‘check box’ approach to new accounts
By NEIL HARTNELL Tribune Business Editor nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
BAHAMIAN commercial banks were yesterday urged to move away from a “check the box” approach to account opening as the time taken to establish new local currency facilities for businesses fell by 28.6 percent in the 2024 second half.
Gowon Bowe, Fidelity Bank (Bahamas) chief executive, speaking after the Central Bank’s semi-annual account opening survey revealed the time required to set-up new Bahamian dollar business facilities was cut by a whole day in the 2024 second half, said the industry still needs to adopt a “relationship” oriented approach that makes it easier for customers to meet their Know Your Customer (KYC) provisions.
Suggesting that the just-released Central Bank survey, which compared the 2024 second and first halves, is helping to identify
“the root causes” of impediments to bank account opening, he told Tribune Business that its publication is also holding banks more “accountable”, helping to improve consumer “trust”, and setting goals for the industry to meet. However, the Fidelity chief also argued that the loudest critics when it comes to bank account opening delays, red tape and bureaucracy, are likely those who have had to
GOWON BOWE
MICHAEL HALKITIS
COMPANIES LACK ‘IN-HOUSE’ SKILLS TO BOOST PRODUCTIVITY
By FAY SIMMONS Tribune Business Reporter jsimmons@tribunemedia.net
THE Bahamas National Productivity Task Force is rapidly escalating its push to enhance efficiency and productivity across both public and private sectors, it was revealed yesterday.
Edison Sumner, the National Productivity Task Force’s (NPTF) chairman, said improving productivity and efficiency is a nationwide priority that applies across the economy.
Speaking at the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) Accountant’s Week seminar, he stressed that the Task Force’s work is not limited to government employees but also addresses challenges faced by private businesses.
Mr Sumner said many companies are struggling with productivity within their own operations and are seeking external expertise because they lack the necessary skills in-house to overcome specific challenges.
“We have to enhance our levels of efficiency and productivity output across private and public sectors. And I keep saying the public and private sectors, because the work that we’re doing is not only conditioned for the public sector. It is not only conditioned for civil servants. It is not only conditioned for the public service workers,” he added.
“We have found, even in our work being done to this point, that there are many private companies who are having challenges with their productivity in their firms. And they've already
started reaching out, saying, listen, we're having some challenges. We do not have the skill sets in-house to deal with it. We need certain expertise to help us get across certain thresholds.”
Mr Sumner said the Task Force aims to provide guidance and access to specialists from a wide range of professional fields who can help companies improve their processes and reach higher levels of efficiency.
He said this effort goes beyond just improving the work of individual employees but also focuses on enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of systems and processes.
“So we look to engage with experts in various fields, whether it has to do with human resources, whether it has to do with the accounting profession, the legal profession, any other profession that can
THE Bahamas is one of four nations that have signed on to the agreement establishing the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM).
This nation joined Anguilla, Dominica and Montserrat in formalising their membership in the 22 year-old organisation, which was inaugurated in Belize City, Belize, in March 2003.
The signing occurred at the sixteenth special meeting of the CRFM Ministerial Council, which was held during the
recently-concluded Caribbean Week of Agriculture hosted by Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Montez Williams, under-secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Marine Resources, signed on behalf of The Bahamas.
Dr Marc Williams, executive director at the CRFM secretariat, welcomed the move by the four Caribbean states, which have already been actively involved in the CRFM - an intergovernmental CARICOM institution.
“Currently, there are 17 member states of the CRFM that have been actively involved in the effective management of the organisation,” he said.
“The CRFM prides itself on meeting the needs of its members with the available resources.
“When attracting resources to support the implementation of our work programme and alleviate the financial burden on member states, the CRFM is frequently asked about its governance framework.”
Dr Williams added that the
help us identify where the challenges are in our businesses, so that collectively we are able to improve on our productive outputs. And again, this is not just labour output. This also improves on systems and processes,” said Mr Sumner.
The Bahamas National Productivity Task Force was established by the Government and officially began its work in September this year. It builds on earlier initiatives by the National Tripartite Council, which brings together the Government, employers represented by the Chamber of Commerce, and workers through trade unions.
The Task Force is designed to lay the groundwork for a broader national productivity infrastructure, with the ultimate goal of improving efficiency, innovation and competitiveness
across both public and private sectors.
The work being done now is meant to prepare for the establishment of the National Productivity, Innovation and Competitiveness Council, which will co-ordinate national strategies and policy reforms to drive productivity improvements across The Bahamas.
The Task Force has already drafted the
initial legislation to formally establish the council as a statutory entity, and this has been submitted for government review. Public consultations are planned to follow.
The work plan is expected to continue through June 2026, by which time the Council should be formally established and ready to begin its operations alongside the new fiscal year.
CRFM has adopted several key policies to improve its governance framework.
These include the Caribbean Community Common Fisheries Policy (CCCFP), which enables participating states to collectively undertake the scientific research and studies necessary to determine the status of fish stocks, determine available fishing opportunities, and develop rational harvest strategies and fisheries management plans to ensure optimum, sustainable resources use and protect the ecosystems.
Other initiatives include the Personal Data Protection Policy, which ensures that the roles and responsibilities of CRFM secretariat employees - with respect to protecting personal data - are clearly defined, understood and followed by all.
The policy provides procedural guidance on how the CRFM secretariat and its governance bodies will implement the policy.
The CRFM secretariat also has an Anti-Bribery and Anti-Corruption Policy to deal with bribery and corruption, plus a Whistleblower Policy, which aims to provide a comprehensive framework that will not only protect whistleblowers from retaliation but also encourage a culture that values ethical behaviour and the disclosure of information vital to the organisation's short and long-term success and well-being.
The CRFM’s 17 member states are Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
The CRFM’s objectives include the efficient management, and sustainable development, of marine and other aquatic resources within the jurisdictions of member states. It also promotes and establishes co-operative arrangements among interested states for the efficient management of shared, straddling or highly migratory marine and other aquatic resources. Technical advisory and consultative services are provided to fisheries authorities of member states in the development, management and conservation of their marine and other aquatic resources.
FROM left to right: Mr. Montez Williams (The Bahamas), Hon. Roland Royer (Dominica), Hon. John P. Osborne (Montserrat), and Hon. Kyle Hodge (Anguilla) sign the CRFM Agreement en bloc.
PHOTO: Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Marine Resources, Saint Kitts and Nevis
EDISON SUMNER
BAHAMAS ‘REALLY ATTRACTIVE TARGET’ FOR CYBER CRIMINALS
By ANNELIA NIXON Tribune Business Reporter anixon@tribunemedia.net
CARIBBEAN companies and organisations are facing an average 2,582 cyber attacks per week and are seeking greater protection against those threats, it was revealed yesterday
Bhavni Makwana, a KPMG accountant, addressing the Bahamas Institute of Chartered Accountants (BICA) accountants week conference said this region experiences 40 percent more cyber attacks than the global average.
“We've seen an explosion of digitalisation in The Bahamas, in the Caribbean region, and it's one of the fastest paced uses of the Internet,” Ms Makwana said. “This makes companies in The Bahamas a really attractive target, because of the growing economic success, the growing use of the Internet and really low levels of resilience.
“We can see four million attempted attacks in Jamaica just in the first part of 2024. BBC News is
telling us it takes, on average, 24 days to recover from an attack, and IBM is telling us the average cost of a cyber incident is $4.9m.”
Ms Makwana said 30 percent of attacks include third parties; 20 percent are because of vulnerabilities that have been exploited; 60 percent of persons have encountered deepfakes, and 60 percent of cyber attacks includes a “human element” - whether it be employees or customers clicking on a ‘fishing link’ or accidentally sharing credentials. While 44 percent of attacks account for ransomware, artificial intelligence (AI) is seeing a growing 10 percent of attacks. “But this is growing month-on-month, year-by-year,” she added. “And then, what we're also seeing in return, is actually some of our clients and customers are coming to us saying, ‘Hey, can you help me implement AI because
cyber criminals are using AI to try and attack us? So can we use AI to try and defend against these attacks?’ And that's how we've been helping some of the companies that we work with.”
Speaking on ransomware specifically, Ms Makwana pointed to the University of The Bahamas’ (UB) experience with such an attack earlier this year.
“Let's bring it closer to home. University of Bahamas, February 2025. The University got attacked,” she said. “They had to shut down their telephone systems, their Wi-Fi, payments, online classes were suspended. This is a big deal. They finally restored some of their systems three weeks later, just like it says on average. But actually, they were pretty lucky. It could have been worse.”
An attendee who is also a UB professor recalled the attack as “traumatising”, saying: “When the attack
happened, I’m an adjunct faculty member and it was very traumatising because I made the decision to use a separate laptop for teaching versus my business, because it created a high sense of sensitivity that if they breach the university, they could be in my system for my business.
“And it made me realise that even within my family, I needed to make sure that family can't send me e-mails from my business, and everything is separate…. Even students, I had to say do not send me a personal e-mail. If it isn’t the university [e-mail] and within the university space, I'm not going to answer.
“We have a lot of systems where they have customer portals, people using sometimes WhatsApp to talk. And I say to clients don't send me a document. I'll come and look at your system.”
Ms Makwana said: “But actually what organisations need to be thinking about… is logical separation. So how do you separate all your networks so that, if
SUMMER BPL CHIEF’S ‘GREATEST NIGHTMARE’
BY FAY SIMMONS
jsimmons@tribunemedia.net
BAHAMAS Power & Light’s chief operating officer said that - while its New Providence network has enjoyed significant reliability improvements - the Family Islands remain the utility’s greatest challenge.
Speaking at the Bahamas Institute of Chartered
Accountants (BICA)
Accountant’s Week conference, Anthony Christie said the Family Islands remain a logistical and technical challenge for BPL as it seeks to deliver reliable power across the archipelago.
“Well, currently, we always measure ourselves on summer readiness; whether we can get through the summer on New Providence. I think we’ve
improved a lot in how we operate and generate electricity here. We only experienced a few major outages, mostly related to the transmission and distribution system or storms, but in terms of generation, we performed very well,” he added.
Mr Christie said the Family Islands face unique challenges due to their scattered geography and
BUSINESSES SUFFER MORE BANK ACCOUNT DELAYS THAN CITIZENS
MORE Bahamian businesses than individual citizens suffered new bank account opening delays during the 2024 second half, it was revealed yesterday.
The Central Bank, unveiling its second annual survey on new bank account openings, found that less than 5 percent of the 1,736 new account applications by resident businesses during the final six months of last year were not approved by end-December 2024
In contrast, more than 99 percent of the 25,345 resident bank account applications were authorised by Bahamian commercial banks. However, this was the only category to experience rejections, with a tiny 0.3 percent denied while no business applications were rejected.
“As to the processing outcomes, commercial banks
approved 99.3 percent of total resident applications, while 0.3 percent were denied,” the Central Bank said. “The denial rate was equivalent to about three out of every 1,000 submissions, as compared to four out of every 1,000 applications over the first half of the year.
“A remaining 0.4 percent of applications, roughly 4.2 out of every 1,000, were either still pending review or incomplete at the end of December 2024, equally distributed between the two categories of submissions. With a 99.8 percent closure rate for individual applications as opposed to just 98.6 percent of business requests, an estimated 99.7 percent of resident individual requests were approved and only 0.3% percent were denied.
“Conversely, only 95.4 percent of requests from resident businesses were approved, leaving an unprocessed volume of 1.2 percent - 12 per 1,000- and incomplete submissions of 3.4 percent - 34 per 1,000 - and none having been denied. Compared to the first half of 2024, about 1.3 percent - 13 per 1,000 - of business requests were turned down, and 1.9 percent - 19 per 1,000 - of these submissions were still awaiting decisions.”
Detailing the volume of new account applications received in the 2024 second half, the Central Bank added: “During the second half of 2024, commercial banks received a total of 28,012 deposit applications, including incomplete submissions. This was almost the same number as in the
someone jumps in, they can't can't do anything more; they can't go further.
“And that is very technical, but it's actually an important point that companies do need to think about, because we're all starting to use Cloud more and more and more. So Cloud logical separation is what companies need to be thinking about.”
Ms Makwana said financial attacks can have severe financial, operational and regulatory impacts. She added that companies can take about three weeks to deal with the impact, but the indirect impact can be felt for up to nine months and the lasting impacts can be felt for up to three years.
Ms Makwana suggested that before an attack happens - because “it is a matter of when not if” - companies must bring about employee awareness and training, identify and access management, have vulnerability and patch management and security monitoring.
Post-incident, companies must think about containment and how they would
older infrastructure, which complicates both routine maintenance and the rapid response to outages compared with New Providence.
“The Family islands remain my greatest challenge due to the dispersed network and logistics of getting equipment and personnel there. Many of these islands also have older units, so maintenance is more difficult,” said Mr Christie.
first half of 2024 - only 141 fewer requests.
“Of this amount, 27,145 (96.9 percent) originated from individuals or entities classified as residents for exchange control purposes, which represented a slight fall in volume of 0.7 percent. Non-residents submitted the balance of 867 (3.1 percent) applications, increasing by 7.6 percent since the last survey. By currency, 27,024 applications (96.5 percent) were for Bahamian dollar accounts, with the remaining 988 (3.5 percent) for foreign currency facilities.
“By type, the most frequent resident application was for savings accounts (72.4 percent), followed by demand deposits (15.8 percent) and fixed accounts (11.7 percent). Compared to the first half of 2024, the number of fixed account applications increased by 19.7 percent, and chequing account applications by 1.2 percent. However, savings account requests decreased by 3.8 percent.”
As for processing rates, the Central Bank said:
“Some islands experienced extended outages, island-wide, which makes summer particularly tough. You can imagine, for example, the Prime Minister at the Cat Island Regatta losing power and getting a call, but thankfully, service was restored within a few minutes.”
He admitted that summer is “honestly… my greatest nightmare,” citing the heightened demand and increased likelihood of outages during peak demand periods.
“Approximately 99.7 percent of resident account applications were processed during the review period, incrementally exceeding the processing rate in the prior period. This comprised, respectively, 99.8 percent and 98.6 percent of private individuals and business submissions.
“That is, only about three out of every 1,000 applications from residents were not processed, as compared to approximately nine out of every 1,000 such requests during the preceding six6 months. Conversely, 98.5 percent of non-resident applications were processed, leaving 15 out of every 1,000 requests still
stop the spread of that incident. They will also need to consider response capabilities and insurance as well as operational resilience.
Ms Makwana added:
“But another thing to keep in the back of your mind is regulation. Regulation is constantly evolving in this area, too. If you've ever worked with a US company that's listed in the US, the SEC has released some regulation that makes it mandatory to report incidents and to report on the company's side of risk management procedures. But there's also regulation in the EU, in the UK. Regulation is evolving. The Bahamas has regulation, too, and it's constantly evolving.”
She said companies must also make cyber security a Board level activity because it “ impacts the whole business, and so the Board needs to be aware of the cyber risk”. She added that those measures will help companies who need support defending themselves against attacks.
Despite these challenges, Mr. Christie stressed that BPL is actively working to strengthen its network and minimise disruptions.
“We’re continuously working to improve, and I hope that by next summer, things will be better. We’re already planning maintenance and identifying what equipment we need to purchase, and hopefully the chief financial officer can find some funds so I can get what’s necessary to ensure a smoother summer overall,” he added.
unresolved at the end of the period, compared to 35 out of every 1,000 remaining submissions unprocessed in the first half of the year.
“Across the major depositor categories, banks also made faster decisions on applications during the second half of the year. Bahamian dollar accounts recorded an average closure rate of 99.7 percent, slightly up from 99.2 percent in the prior period. Similarly, attention to resident foreign currency accounts applications achieved a 100 percent completion rate, compared to an average of 94.8 percent of the corresponding submissions in the previous period.”
November ‘saviour’ for GB’S tourism operators
CRUISE - from page B1
full experience on Grand Bahama.”
Carnival’s release described Celebration Key as being located “within a residential community”.
Ms Duffy said that 20 of the brand’s 29 ships, sailing from 11 different home ports, will call on Celebration Key in 2026. However, this means far fewer passengers and ships calling at Freeport Harbour, as Carnival was previously its major source of business.
The cruise line is now diverting virtually all its Grand Bahama calls to Celebration Key. However, Mr Wallace told Tribune Business he was optimistic that more visitors will start to venture outside the port destination once the novelty wears off to help distribute visitor spending more evenly among the island’s tourism-related businesses.
Asked about Ms Duffy’s comments, he replied: “Let me answer it in a very positive way and honest
way. I still believe that the Carnival cruise port is a wonderful addition to the island of Grand Bahama and, in the long-term, I believe it will do for Grand Bahama what Walt Disney did for Orlando, Florida, in that it will bring thousands of people to Grand Bahama. “But, in the meantime, many of the tours that Carnival presently sells, their numbers have gone down significantly. I’ll give you an example. When Carnival called down at Freeport Harbour, at Pirate’s Cove we would have got about 400 guests. Now, we are getting less than 50 guests.
“If you talk to Banana Bay, another beach destination, they’ll tell you their numbers have gone down from 100 per day when Carnival called to 10-20 persons.” Those represent declines of between 80-90 percent in customer volumes for both businesses, with Carnival’s passengers now content to explore the beaches, lagoons and other amenities offered at
Hurricane cover availability: No ‘overflow but we’ll be OK’
PROTECTION - from page B1
Business: “The reinsurers have enjoyed record profits in 2024 and 2025. Because they have record profits, and rates were adequate, Melissa will have an impact on the Jamaican programme but I don’t see that spilling over to the rest of the Caribbean. That’s us as well.
“I think it will be just like Hurricane Dorian. When Dorian happened, it impacted us but didn’t impact the wider Caribbean. We have a tale of two things. What Melissa did, for people contemplating coming to the Caribbean, they’ll step back and reevaluate their situation. But they might still come.
“It’s a tale of two cities,” reiterated Mr Saunders. “Some people will want to remain disciplined and
don’t want to place excessive capacity. Then there’s the other set of circumstances where market forces drive people to come to market. If that happens, the rates will have to soften. Which one of those wins? We’ll know in the next three weeks.
“My crystal ball is that I’m anticipating there’ll be no rate increase [for 2026]. The extent of any rate reduction depends on which of those two situations wins out in three weeks. I think we’ll be OK. There are some new elements that want to come. They’ll take a second look, but I think 80 percent of those looking will come.”
Mr Saunders said that while he expects no problems with property and casualty coverage availability for The Bahamas, there is unlikely to be a major increase or “overflow” in
Halkitis hails Bahamas growth revision by IMF
recent report for the World Economic Outlook,” Mr Halkitis said. “And I want to assure you, sometimes I go and meet with the international financial institutions, investors, the banks, etcetera, and one of the questions they ask is: When we go to the IMF?
“They say, ‘Well, you’ve got an election coming. How disciplined are you going to be when it’s time
to start spending?’ And we say we’re going to keep up the discipline.” During the question-and-answer segment after his speech, Mr Halkitis was asked whether the Government expects to borrow any more extra during the mid-year Budget in February. He replied that the Government appears to be on track with its projections so far, and does not anticipate needing to request additional funds.
NOTICE
NOTICE is hereby given that TOSHA PLEDGO SMITH of Carmichael Road, New Providence, The Bahamas is applying to the Minister responsible for Nationality and Citizenship, for Registration/ Naturalization as a citizen of The Bahamas, and that any person who knows any reason why registration/naturalization should not be granted, should send a written and signed statement of the facts within twenty-eight days from the 12th day of November 2025 to the Minister responsible for nationality and Citizenship, P.O. Box N-7147, Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas.
NOTICE
NOTICE is hereby given that EDWIN LORENZO DELSINE of #54 Union Village, Nassau, The Bahamas is applying to the Minister responsible for Nationality and Citizenship, for Registration/ Naturalization as a citizen of The Bahamas, and that any person who knows any reason why registration/ naturalization should not be granted, should send a written and signed statement of the facts within twenty-eight days from the 5th day of November 2025 to the Minister responsible for nationality and Citizenship, P.O. Box N-7147, Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas.
Celebration Key and not venture outside the port destination.
“Many persons are choosing to stay there,” Mr Wallace conceded. “We have to find a way of working with Carnival and have to get more people outside of Celebration Key for three to four hours to see parts of the island. They can then go back to enjoy three to four hours at the port before their cruise leaves.
“That’s one of the things we are working on and having some discussions with government on, and have made some recommendations to the deputy prime minister, Chester Cooper; the minister for Grand Bahama, Ginger Moxey; the president of the Grand Bahama Port Authority, Ian Rolle; and the president of the Grand Bahama Chamber of Commerce, Dillon Knowles. In time we will seek to have a meeting with Carnival executives to see how we can co-exist.”
Mr Wallace said Grand Bahama tourism operators are now meeting every Thursday to determine how they can put “flesh” and “meat on the bones” on the potential solutions discussed with Mr Cooper
reinsurance supply. He added, though, that existing reinsurers - because of their recent “tremendous” increase in profits - will have to use that capacity.
“I think that, capacity wise, we’re not going to have a big overflow but I think we’ll be OK,” the RoyalStar chief told Tribune Business, as he predicted: “There should be no increase in premium prices next year. The impact of Melissa should be felt in Jamaica.
“That is what our position will be to the reinsurers. It’s always tough negotiations, whether it’s a hard or soft market, because each side wants to get the best for their companies. But, at the end of the day, we’ll bring it home.”
Jamaica is still calculating the total losses and damage from Melissa, with the latest estimates placing the latter as high as $8bn. Projections for insured losses are as high as $4bn, with payouts for onshore property
“No, we appear to be on track with our projections so far. Well, we’ve just done about a quarter and one month, so it is not anticipated that we, you know, come back to request additional money,” said Mr Halkitis.
He explained that the first quarter of the fiscal year, the three months to end-September, is typically slower for revenue collection while expenses remain steady, which can create the appearance of a shortfall.
“As you know, during the first half of the year, revenues are normally slower while expenses remain constant. During the second
two weeks ago. A follow-up meeting with Mrs Moxey is due to take place within the next 30 days.
“He had already met with the Taxi Union and some of the straw vendor associations so, when we met with him [Mr Cooper], some of the things that were brought to light he already knew,” the Pirate’s Cove chief added. The deputy prime minister informed them that the Ministry of Tourism was in talks with Carnival to station “ambassadors” at Celebration Key to inform passengers of, and direct them to, tours and excursions outside the port.
“We have to appreciate Carnival will sell Carnival,” Mr Wallace added. “We need someone from the Ministry of Tourism to sell Grand Bahama. They were hiring a number of people to work on the port property and provide information about tours.
“The second thing we were saying is that if Carnival was able to call on Freeport Harbour twice a week with one of their smaller ships that will help in the interim.” The Pirate’s Cove chief brushed off assertions that Freeport is an “industrial harbour”, saying such elements were
damage pegged at between $2.4bn and $4.2bn.
Bahamian property and casualty insurers, due to their relatively thin capital bases, have to purchase huge quantities of reinsurance annually to enable them to underwrite the multi-billion risks present in this nation. This means that the premium prices Bahamian households and businesses pay for coverage are largely determined by what reinsurers charge.
Stung by previous multi-billion dollar losses from major hurricanes hitting the US and Caribbean, as well as other catastrophic event payouts, many reinsurers had either pulled out of the region altogether or reduced the capacity and availability of coverage here. The reduction in reinsurance supply resulted in Bahamian insurance premiums increasing in cost by as much as 20 percent since 2022.
Bahamian homeowners and businesses, though, have
half of the year, the Government receives most of its revenue, so sometimes it might seem that you need to do some catching up when you get to mid-year,” said Mr Halkitis.
He added that the Government expects overall revenue performance to improve this year, in part due to new sources of income - including the newly implemented Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax, or 15 percent corporate income tax on entities that are part of multinational groups with over 750m euros in annual turnover. This tax will generate revenue for the first time
NOTICE
NOTICE is hereby given that ROSE KATTIA DUROSIER of Fort Fincastle North Street, Nassau, The Bahamas is applying to the Minister responsible for Nationality and Citizenship, for Registration/ Naturalization as a citizen of The Bahamas, and that any person who knows any reason why registration/naturalization should not be granted, should send a written and signed statement of the facts within twenty-eight days from the 5th day of November 2025 to the Minister responsible for nationality and Citizenship, P.O. Box N-7147, Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas.
NOTICE
NOTICE is hereby given that RENALD TILME of #14 Harmony Hill Road, Nassau, The Bahamas is applying to the Minister responsible for Nationality and Citizenship, for Registration/ Naturalization as a citizen of The Bahamas, and that any person who knows any reason why registration/ naturalization should not be granted, should send a written and signed statement of the facts within twenty-eight days from the 5th day of November 2025 to the Minister responsible for nationality and Citizenship, P.O. Box N-7147, Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas.
also present at the Port of Miami and other cruise line home ports.
“The third thing we had suggested to the Government was to maybe have some programme information on board the ships where some kind of transportation is subsidised by the Government and Carnival to get 400-600 out of the port for three to four hours to see the rest of the island,” he said.
“That will also help Port Lucaya Marketplace, help the charter operators, and help places like Pirate’s Cove, Banana Bay and Junkanoo Beach. They were some of the things we put on the table. We are now looking to put some meat on the bones.”
Mr Wallace said businesses such as H. Forbes Charter Services and S&D Coach Tours had invested heavily in new vehicle fleets in anticipation of the extra business Celebration Key would generate, but this has yet to materialise despite Ms Duffy’s pledge that passengers will be allowed to venture outside the port.
“Many businesses have gone out on a financial limb in anticipation of Carnival’s cruise port,” he told Tribune Business, “and while it’s
been previously warned that cutting, or dropping, property coverage will be “a false economy”.
Tom Duff, who retired as Insurance Company of The Bahamas (ICB) general manager in 2023 after 26 years in the post, warned clients in the company’s 2022 annual report that while they may save premium dollars they run a huge risk of becoming “financially crippled” if their property assets are devastated by a Hurricane Dorian-style storm.
Acknowledging that the affordability of insurance is becoming an increasing concern, with reinsurance costs at their highest-ever level during ICB’s existence, Mr Duff wrote: “The cost of catastrophe reinsurance has risen quite dramatically for 2023 and, as a result, customers will be faced with an unwelcome increase in their renewal premiums.
“Although some may be tempted to cancel or reduce cover, doing so may prove to
before the end of the calendar year.
“This year we expect, amongst other things and the overall improvement in revenue performance, that one of the components of our strategy - finding new sources of revenuewill contribute,” said Mr Halkitis.
“One of those new sources is, we have been able, over the last period - we just completed it, but it’s been a work in progress for some time - the Domestic Minimum Top-Up Tax, from which we expect to get revenue for the first time before the end of this calendar year from one of
still early days, only three to four months in operation, many of them are not experiencing what they projected.
“Like H. Forbes Charter Services, which went out and bought ten additional buses, and S&D Coach Tours, which went out and bought another ten buses. They are not seeing the numbers. If they are running two buses a day they’re lucky. It is not that Carnival is not trying because they make money from those tours. It’s to their advantage to sell them.”
Noting that the cruise line is offering similar attractions to those offered by Bahamian operators, Mr Wallace added: “I just think we have to work our way through this type of circumstance. We are still very optimistic.
“What has been the saviour for us in Grand Bahama this month is that Freeport Harbour has attracted 15-17 calls from different cruise lines - Royal Caribbean, Norwegian, MSC, Margaritaville. They are helping to hold and help patch up the tour business and tour operators now while the numbers from Carnival are not so strong.”
be a false economy as uninsured losses from a major storm can be financially crippling...... The recent phenomenon of the ‘super storm’ is unfortunately a reality that the region can no longer deny. Scientists are predicting that, because of global warming, the region will likely experience an increase in the frequency of these destructive storms.
“This probability represents a major threat to the well-being of The Bahamas and the population at large. It is therefore vitally important that homeowners and businesses take every measure they can to mitigate their risk of incurring serious financial loss from a major hurricane. I encourage all of our policyholders to consider the vulnerabilities of their individual properties and take steps to make them more secure against the risk of hurricane and any other perils.”
the taxpayers who wanted to accrue since 2024. Going into fiscal year 2025-2026, we expect to see more revenue from that.
“So short answer is, no, we don’t expect to [borrow more], barring any disaster.”
Hill, New Providence, The Bahamas is applying to the Minister responsible for Nationality and Citizenship, for Registration/ Naturalization as a citizen of The Bahamas, and that any person who knows any reason why registration/ naturalization should not be granted, should send a written and signed statement of the facts within
NOTICE
Bahamas is applying to the Minister responsible for Nationality and Citizenship, for Registration/ Naturalization as a citizen of The Bahamas, and that any person who knows any reason why registration/ naturalization should not be granted, should send a written and signed statement of the facts within twenty-eight days from the 5th day of November 2025 to the Minister responsible for nationality and Citizenship, P.O. Box N-7147, Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas.
B$ business account openings cut by a day
undergo greater due diligence due to the higher risk they present - such as politically exposed persons (PEPs) and industries/ companies undertaking transactions that meet the threshold triggering greater scrutiny.
The Central Bank unveiled survey results which showed the account opening time for new Bahamian dollar business accounts fell by an entire day during the 2024 second half, taking 2.5 days as opposed to 3.5 days for the first six months of that year, representing a 28.6 percent decrease.
Similar falls were recorded for new personal Bahamian dollar bank accounts, which saw the time required to open such facilities fall from an average of 3.5 days in the 2024 first half to 2.9 days for the six month period between July and December - a 17.1 percent reduction.
However, new foreign currency business accounts took longer to open in the 2024 second half in comparison to the first, hitting an average 8.6 days compared to 8.4 days. Still, foreign currency accounts for individuals saw the opening time reduced from an average 3.9 days to 3.5 days during last year’s second half.
“With regard to resident applications, most financial institutions continued to report that once all supporting documentation was received for resident Bahamian dollar accounts, decisions were rendered within a week, with one institution indicating sameday approvals,” the Central Bank said.
“Weighted by the share of applications received, the average processing time for local currency applications for individuals fell to 2.9 days compared to 3.5 days in the first half of 2024. Similarly, decisions on local currency accounts
for businesses took 2.5 days versus 3.5 days on average in the first half of 2024.
“As for foreign currency applications, although a substantially small fraction of the total average processing times was much longer, these also experienced a shorter wait time in the second half of the year, with the exception of business requests.”
Mr Bowe told Tribune Business that “the benefits of the survey are three-fold”, although he added that it should be extended to measure how effective Bahamian commercial banks are in communicating with their customers about which KYC documents must be provided.
“It makes commercial banks accountable for the timelines to deliver on account opening,” the Fidelity Bank (Bahamas) chief told this newspaper. “What I mean by that is, up to this point in time, what we’ve had was only a ‘he says, she says’ scenario in terms of the customer saying it’s taking too long, and the bank saying there are extenuating circumstances.
“This removes this element of subjectivity. I
Lawsuit challenges TSA’s ban on transgender officers conducting pat-downs
By CLAIRE SAVAGE
The Associated Press
A VIRGINIA transportation security officer is accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security of sex discrimination over a policy that bars transgender officers from performing security screening pat-downs, according to a federal lawsuit.
The Transportation Security Administration, which operates under DHS, enacted the policy in February to comply with President Donald Trump's executive order declaring two unchangeable sexes: male and female.
According to internal documents explaining the policy change that The Associated Press obtained from four independent sources, including two current and two former TSA workers, "transgender officers will no longer engage in pat-down duties, which are conducted based on both the traveler's and officer's biological sex. In addition, transgender officers will no longer serve as a TSA-required witness when a traveler elects to have a pat-down conducted in a private screening area."
Until February, TSA assigned work consistent with officers' gender identity under a 2021 management directive. The agency told the AP it rescinded that directive to comply with Trump's Jan. 20 executive order.
Although transgender officers "shall continue to be eligible to perform all other security screening functions consistent with their certifications," and must attend all required training, they will not be allowed to demonstrate how to conduct pat-downs as part of their training or while training others, according to the internal documents.
A transgender officer at Dulles International Airport, Danielle Mittereder, alleges in her lawsuit filed Friday that the new policy — which also bars her from using TSA facility restrooms that align with her gender identity — violates civil rights law.
"Solely because she is transgender, TSA now prohibits Plaintiff from conducting core functions of her job, impedes her advancement to higher-level positions and specialized certifications, excludes her from TSA-controlled facilities, and subjects her identity to unwanted and undue scrutiny each workday," the complaint says. Mittereder declined to speak with the AP but her lawyer, Jonathan Puth, called TSA's policy "terribly demeaning and 100% illegal."
TSA spokesperson Russell Read declined to comment, citing pending litigation. But he said the new policy directs that
"Male Transportation Security Officers will conduct pat-down procedures on male passengers and female Transportation Security Officers will conduct patdown procedures on female passengers, based on operational needs."
The legal battle comes amid mounting reports of workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees during Trump's second administration. It is also happening at a time when TSA's ranks are already stretched thin due to the ongoing government shutdown that has left thousands of agents working without pay.
Other transgender officers describe similar challenges to Mittereder.
Kai Regan worked for six years at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, but retired in July in large part because of the new policy. Regan, who is not involved in the Virginia case, transitioned from female to male in 2021 and said he had conducted pat-downs on men without issue until the policy change.
"It made me feel inadequate at my job, not because I can't physically do it but because they put that on me," said the 61-year-old, who worried that he would soon be fired for his gender identity, so he retired earlier than planned rather than "waiting for the bomb to drop."
think it institutes a level of accountability. I think that is always necessary. While I’m not a proponent of greater regulation, I believe there should always be accountability for various aspects of our operations.”
Mr Bowe added that the survey’s findings also show opening Bahamas-based bank accounts is “not taking as long as the naysayers are floating”. He argued that the loudest and most frequent criticisms were likely originating from persons who had experienced delays due to the need to subject them to greater due diligence.
“Their criticisms sometimes ring hollow because they have extenuating circumstances,” he added. “They may be high risk customers who fail to provide the due diligence requirements, or fail to accept they are high risk - don’t believe they are PEPs or in industries that are adjudged to be high risk.
“From that perspective I think a lot of the negative commentary is coming from those that probably have circumstances where there are valid reasons why the account is taking longer to open.”
Mr Bowe said the “third and most important” impact of the survey is that it has “given better direction on the objectives we should be striving for. It speaks to how long people have to wait for approval to operate an account and speaks to the timelines to open an account once all all the documents are received”.
However, he argued that the Central Bank survey needs to be “extended” to capture how effective banks and their staff are in communicating to clients all the documents that are required for the KYC, due diligence and account opening process. This, and the adoption of too prescriptive an approach, was what he identified as Fidelity Bank (Bahamas) greatest challenge.
Mr Bowe argued that commercial banks needed to give new customers “options” for compliance, noting that while a business may not have audited and compiled accounts, it more than likely will have undergone Business Licence verification to determine what its annual revenues are.
Halkitis: Business Licence reforms are ‘opportunity’
REFORMS - from page B1
us such that, if we weren’t happy with what was going on, we could face severe penalties,” he said.
“Could you speak to that and tell us the difference it has made in the collection of Business Licence fees? Because we think that you must have seen a tremendous increase from that.”
Responding to the concerns, Mr Halkitis said the Government does not view the reforms as a burden on accountants. Instead, he described them as an opportunity for the profession to expand its services and help educate the business community.
“We don’t look at it so much as a burden being
placed on the accounting profession. I think it also represents an opportunity for you, not only to increase your services, but also to impart some education to our business community,” said Mr Halkitis.
He acknowledged that The Bahamas has struggled for a long time with low tax and Business Licence fee compliance rates, and improving this situation requires certain enforcement measures.
“We have been plagued for a long, long time with low compliance, and unfortunately we have to improve complianceand we have to use some instruments to do it. We have seen an improvement that speaks not only to our
“Some of the financial institutions are looking to check the box as opposed to really extending the relationship framework, which says ‘I form a relationship with a customer, I give them the requirements but also options for how to get documents in,” he added.
“I think the survey helps that. If the objective is to reduce the time taken to get an account, we have to look at the root causes. I don’t have empirical evidence, but I would say that the majority of bank account opening failures or delays is financial institutions not advising customers what is required and giving them options.”
Mr Bowe told this newspaper that other “critical roadblocks”, which the industry must solve collectively, is the lack of a standard information sharing mechanism where clients can authorise one institution to transfer key details to another for KYC verification purposes. All banks, at present, have their own KYC “template” and information required by one is not necessarily needed, or is in a different format, to another’s.
performance, but to the performance of the country as well,” said Mr Halkitis. He added that the Government remains open to dialogue with the accounting profession and BICA, recalling that past issues have been resolved through mutual discussion and co-operation.
“I would say that as far as I’m concerned - and I think I speak for Department of Inland Revenue (DIR) and everyone elsewe always maintain an open and listening ear. When we had some issues a couple of years ago, we were able to sit down, talk through them and come to a resolution,” said Mr Halkitis.
“We don’t look at it as a burden. We have to improve our clients’ compliance culture, and sometimes you have to use certain instruments to achieve that.”
THE DOW RALLIES 550 POINTS TO A RECORD
By STAN CHOE AP Business Writer
MOST U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday and carried the market back to where it was before last week's swoon.
The S&P 500 added 0.2% after erasing a loss taken during the morning. It's been bouncing around lately, coming off Monday's vigorous rebound following its first losing week in four.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied 559 points, or 1.2%, to a record, surpassing its prior all-time high set two weeks ago. The Nasdaq composite lagged the market, though, as Nvidia got back to falling amid continued concerns that stocks caught up in the artificial-intelligence frenzy may have become too expensive. The Nasdaq dipped 0.3%
Helping to lead the market was Paramount Skydance, which jumped even though the entertainment giant reported revenue and profit for the latest quarter that fell short of Wall Street's expectations.
It was the company's first earnings report since Skydance closed its acquisition of Paramount in early August, and investors appeared to be encouraged that it raised its cost-cutting target to at least $3 billion from the previous $2 billion. Its stock leaped 9.8%.
Close behind was FedEx, which climbed 5.4% after
it increased its forecast for profit in the current quarter. Instead of expecting growth from just the summer, the delivery company now also expects profit to rise in this year's holiday-shopping season from last year's.
They helped pull the S&P 500 back within 0.6% of its all-time high, which was set two weeks ago.
They also helped offset a 3% drop for Nvidia, which is Wall Street's most influential stock because of its massive size.
A major investor in Nvidia, Japanese technology giant SoftBank, said it
WATCHDOG GROUP PUBLIC CITIZEN DEMANDS
had sold its entire stake in the AI chip company for $5.83 billion last month. SoftBank is not giving up on AI. It's still focusing on OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
A big question on Wall Street has been whether investors will push the frenzy around AI stocks further. Their sensational growth has been one of the top reasons the U.S. market has hit records despite a slowing job market and still-high inflation. But their prices have shot so high that critics say they're reminiscent of the 2000 dot-com
By BARBARA ORTUTAY and MATT O'BRIEN
AP Technology Writers
THE tech industry is moving fast and breaking things again — and this time it is humanity's shared reality and control of our likeness before and after death — thanks to artificial intelligence image-generation platforms like OpenAI's Sora 2.
The typical Sora video, made on OpenAI's app and spread onto TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook, is designed to be amusing enough for you to click and share. It could be Queen Elizabeth II rapping or something more ordinary and believable. One popular Sora genre is fake doorbell camera footage capturing something slightly uncanny -- say, a boa constrictor on the porch or an alligator approaching an unfazed child -- and ends with a mild shock, like a grandma shouting as she beats the animal with a broom.
But a growing chorus of advocacy groups, academics and experts are raising alarms about the dangers of letting people create AI videos on just about anything they can type into a prompt, leading to the proliferation of nonconsensual images and realistic deepfakes in a sea of less harmful "AI slop." OpenAI has cracked down on AI creations of public figures
bubble, which ultimately burst and dragged the S&P 500 down by nearly half. CoreWeave, whose cloud platform helps customers running AI workloads, fell 16.3% even though it reported a smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its revenue also topped expectations, and financial analysts praised its momentum. But investors seemed to focus instead on supply-chain issues that are delaying a data center and pushing some of CoreWeave's revenue further into the future.
Back on the winning side of Wall Street, BigBear. ai rose 6.1% after reporting better results for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said it would buy AskSage, a generative AI platform built for national-security agencies and other highly regulated areas, for $250 million.
All told, the S&P 500 added 14.18 points to 6,846.61. The Dow rallied 559.33 to 47,927.96, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 58.87 to 23,468.30. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia.
Japan's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.1% even though SoftBank climbed 2%.
Besides the sale of its Nvidia stake, the tech giant also reported a much bigger profit than analysts expected. In the U.S. bond market, trading was closed for the Veterans Day holiday.
Yields have been generally rising since Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned last month that further cuts to interest rates are not a sure thing. The Fed has already cut its main interest rate twice this year in hopes of shoring up the slowing job market. But it's worried that inflation, which has
logo is seen displayed on a cell phone in front of an image on a computer screen generated by ChatGPT’s
— among them, Michael Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mister Rogers — doing outlandish things, but only after an outcry from family estates and an actors' union.
The nonprofit Public Citizen is now demanding OpenAI withdraw Sora 2 from the public, writing in a Tuesday letter to the company and CEO Sam Altman that the app's hasty release so that it could launch ahead of competitors shows a "consistent and dangerous pattern of OpenAI rushing to market with a product that is either inherently unsafe or lacking in needed guardrails."
Sora 2, the letter says, shows
stubbornly remained above the Fed's 2% target, could reaccelerate.
What's making the Fed's job potentially more difficult is that the U.S. government's shutdown has delayed important updates on jobs and other areas of the economy. The Senate has made moves to end what's become the longest-ever shutdown, but it's not assured.
That has left the Fed and investors looking at reports coming from sources outside of the government, which have offered a mixed picture.
A job tracker at Goldman Sachs suggests growth slowed in October from September. After including the effect of a deferred resignation program at the government, U.S. employers overall may have cut 50,000 jobs in October, according to economist David Mericle. Such softening in the job market has traders betting on a roughly two-in-three chance that the Fed will cut interest rates at its next meeting in December, according to data from CME Group. Expectations for such cuts, which Wall Street loves because they can goose the economy and investment prices, are another reason stocks have hit records recently.
the apps' restrictions. The news outlet 404 Media on Friday reported on a flood of Sora-made videos of women being strangled.
OpenAI introduced its new Sora app on iPhones more than a month ago. It launched on Android phones last week in the U.S., Canada and several Asian countries, including Japan and South Korea.
a "reckless disregard" for product safety, as well as people's rights to their own likeness and the stability of democracy. The group also sent the letter to the U.S. Congress.
OpenAI didn't respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
"Our biggest concern is the potential threat to democracy," said Public Citizen tech policy advocate J.B. Branch in an interview.
"I think we're entering a world in which people can't really trust what they see. And we're starting to see strategies in politics where the first image, the first video that gets released, is what people remember."
Branch, author of Tuesday's letter, also sees broader concerns to people's privacy that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations online.
OpenAI blocks nudity but Branch said that "women are seeing themselves being harassed online" in other ways, such as with fetishized niche content that makes it through
Much of the strongest pushback has come from Hollywood and other entertainment interests, including the Japanese manga industry. OpenAI announced its first big changes just days after the release, saying "overmoderation is super frustrating" for users but that it's important to be conservative "while the world is still adjusting to this new technology."
That was followed by publicly announced agreements with Martin Luther King Jr.'s family on Oct. 16, preventing "disrespectful depictions" of the civil rights leader while the company worked on better safeguards, and another on Oct. 20 with "Breaking Bad" actor Bryan Cranston, the SAG-AFTRA union and talent agencies.
"That's all well and good if you're famous," Branch said. "It's sort of just a pattern that OpenAI has where they're willing to respond to the outrage of a very small population. They're willing to release something and apologize afterwards. But a lot of these issues are design choices that they can make before releasing." OpenAI has faced similar complaints about its flagship product, ChatGPT. Seven new lawsuits filed last week in California courts claim the chatbot drove people to suicide and harmful delusions even when they had no prior mental health issues.
LEGAL NOTICE
Pursuant to Companies Act, 1992 (Chapter 308 of the revised Statute Laws of The Bahamas, 2001) GRUPOTEC BAHAMAS LTD. Company Number 203376 B (In Voluntary Liquidation)
Notice is hereby given in accordance with Part VII, of the Voluntary Winding Up of a Company of the Company’s Act, 1992, that Grupotec Bahamas Ltd. is in voluntary liquidation. The date of the commencement of the Liquidation is the 12th day of September 2025.
The Liquidator is Mr. Craig A. (Tony) Gomez of Baker Tilly, The Deanery, 28 Cumberland Street, P.O. Box N-1991, Nassau, Bahamas.
Notice is also hereby given that the creditors of the abovenamed Company are required within 14 days of the date of this notice to send their names, addresses and particulars of their debts or claims to Mr. Craig A. (Tony) Gomez, the Liquidator of the Company, or in default thereof they will be excluded from the benefits of any distributions before such debts are proved.
WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT TRUMP'S PLAN TO GIVE AMERICANS A $2,000 TARIFF DIVIDEND
By PAUL WISEMAN
AP Economics Writer
PRESIDENT Donald Trump boasts that his tariffs protect American industries, lure factories to the United States, raise money for the federal government and give him diplomatic leverage.
Now, he's claiming they can finance a windfall for American families, too: He's promising a generous tariff dividend.
The president proposed the idea on his Truth Social media platform Sunday, five days after his Republican Party lost elections in
Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere largely because of voter discontent with his economic stewardship — specifically, the high cost of living.
The tariffs are bringing in so much money, the president posted, that "a dividend of at least $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone.''
Budget experts scoffed at the idea, which conjured memories of the Trump administration's short-lived plan for DOGE dividend checks financed by billionaire Elon Musk's federal budget cuts.
"The numbers just don't check out," said Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. Details are scarce, including what the income limits would be and whether payments would go to children. Even Trump's treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, sounded a bit blindsided by the audacious dividend plan. Appearing Sunday on ABC's "This Week,'' Bessent said he hadn't discussed the dividend with the president and suggested that it might not mean that Americans would get a check from the government.
Instead, Bessent said, the rebate might take the form of tax cuts.
The tariffs are certainly raising money — $195 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, up 153% from $77 billion in fiscal 2024. But they still account for less than 4% of federal revenue and have done little to dent the federal budget deficit — a staggering $1.8 trillion in fiscal 2025.
Budget wonks say Trump's dividend math doesn't work.
John Ricco, an analyst with the Budget Lab at Yale University, reckons that Trump's tariffs will bring in
$200 billion to $300 billion a year in revenue. But a $2,000 dividend — if it went to all Americans, including children — would cost $600 billion. "It's clear that the revenue coming in would not be adequate,'' he said. Ricco also noted that Trump couldn't just pay the dividends on his own. They would require legislation from Congress. Moreover, the centerpiece of Trump's protectionist trade policies — double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country in the world — may not survive a legal challenge
that has reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In a hearing last week, the justices sounded skeptical about the Trump administration's assertion of sweeping power to declare national emergencies to justify the tariffs. Trump has bypassed Congress, which has authority under the Constitution to levy taxes, including tariffs. If the court strikes down the tariffs, the Trump administration may be refunding money to the importers who paid them, not sending dividend checks to American families.
THERE'S NO TIMELINE ON WHEN FLIGHT CUTS WILL EASE UP AFTER THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN ENDS
By RIO YAMAT, JOSH FUNK and JOHN SEEWER Associated Press
AIRLINES have canceled more than 9,000 flights across the U.S. since the Federal Aviation Administration ordered flight cuts last week to ease demand on control towers, which are short-staffed during the federal government shutdown.
Although the government appears set to reopen in the coming days, airport disruptions, flight cancellations and economic losses won't disappear right away.
Here's how the air travel network is being impacted:
Flights remain disrupted as the shutdown nears an end
Another 1,200 domestic flights were canceled Tuesday as the FAA increased its target for cutting flights at the nation's busiest airports to 6%, up from 4%.
There were fewer cancellations than in recent days, which Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy attributed to more air traffic controllers returning to work after news of a shutdown agreement.
Cancellations and delays also piled up due to ripple effects from flight cuts and severe weather. FAA air traffic chief Frank McIntosh said the agency restricted large sections of airspace over the weekend "to slow the entire country down, which forced massive cancellations and delays."
Flight cuts won't end until the FAA sees safety improve
The FAA hasn't said when it will roll back flight limits. Duffy reinforced Tuesday that the cuts will remain — even after the shutdown ends — until safety metrics improve and staffing levels stabilize at air traffic control facilities. The cuts are set to rise to 10% Friday.
Duffy has declined to share the specific safety data that prompted the flight cuts. But in a news conference at Chicago's O'Hare airport, he cited reports of planes getting too close in the air, more runway incursions and pilot concerns about controllers' responses.
Air traffic controller shortages won't go away either
The nationwide shortage of controllers isn't new, but the shutdown likely made it worse, with Duffy saying that 15-20 controllers are retiring every day and some younger controllers leaving the profession.
And it doesn't take many controller absences to create problems. During the shutdown, a number
of controllers who weren't being paid called off work as they dealt with increased stress and the need to take side jobs to cover their bills.
Former FAA air traffic control chief Mike McCormick said it's similar to when many controllers left during the pandemic because "when the stressors in the workplace become too much of a challenge then those who can will resign or retire."
Airlines will need to readjust after the flight cuts are lifted
The flight restrictions upended airline operations in just a matter of days. Many planes were rerouted and aren't where they're supposed to be.
McCormick said he expects operations to recover within days, similar to after a major snowstorm. Eric Chaffee, a Case Western Reserve professor who studies risk management, warned the disruptions could last weeks as airlines face "complex operational hurdles" and winter weather complicates recovery before Thanksgiving.
"It's similar to if you start pulling threads out of a tapestry," Chaffee said. "What you may find is that lots unravels in addition to what you are trying to remove."
Holiday travel outlook darkens amid persistent disruptions
The pace of airline ticket sales for Thanksgiving travel has slowed as travelers reconsider flying. Aviation analytics firm Cirium said ticket sales during the busy late November season are still expected to be up over last year, but only slightly.
Major airports bear the brunt of flight cuts
Hub airports in Denver, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas and the New York area have seen the bulk of the cancellations. They've also been plagued by long delays caused by staffing shortages in regional air traffic control centers and towers.
Smaller regional airlines like SkyWest and Republic have been hit hardest because they fly many of the regional routes being dropped by the major airlines.
Trump's post demands controllers get back to work
The head of the air traffic controllers union said controllers were not staging an organized walkout and remain committed to their jobs. However President Donald Trump on Monday blasted those who've taken time off during the shutdown, posting on social media "get back to work, NOW!!!" He also called for docking their pay while
giving $10,000 bonuses for those who stayed.
Duffy said the bonuses would be for controllers who never missed a shift during the shutdown while he may take action against
those who continually failed to show up for work.
He said that after the shutdown, all controllers should receive 70% of their pay within 48 hours.
Airlines face mounting losses
Canceled flights and mounting delays are adding to big losses for the airlines. The lost revenue is likely
FDA names longtime cancer scientist Pazdur to lead drug center
By MATTHEW PERRONE AP Health Writer
THE Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday named a longtime regulator of cancer medicines to lead the agency's drug center, replacing the former drug director who was recently ousted after an ethics complaint.
Dr. Richard Pazdur, a 26-year veteran of the agency, will become director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, the FDA's largest unit. A cancer specialist, Pazdur
has previously served in numerous FDA roles, most recently leading the agency's Oncology Center of Excellence.
Pazdur's appointment comes just over a week after Dr. George Tidmarsh abruptly departed the agency after federal ethics lawyers began reviewing "serious concerns about his personal conduct," according to a government statement. Tidmarsh, a former pharmaceutical executive and scientist, had been recruited to the
agency by FDA Commissioner Marty Makary.
A lawsuit filed early this month alleged that Tidmarsh used his position at the FDA to pursue a "longstanding personal vendetta" against the chairman of a Canadian drugmaker's board of directors. The two men had previously worked as business associates at several pharmaceutical companies, according to the lawsuit.
Tidmarsh has denied any wrongdoing in media interviews. He did not respond to requests for comment
to add up to "hundreds of millions of dollars a day,'' said Greg Raiff, CEO of the Elevate Aviation Group. He expects the toll to show up when the airlines start issuing earnings warnings for the fourth quarter.
Millions of people were affected
An estimated 5.2 million passengers have been affected by staffing-related delays or cancellations since the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, according to Airlines for America, an industry trade group.
Henry Evans, a University of Michigan student, expected to fly Delta to Detroit on Sunday after visiting family in New York.
But after repeated delays the flight was canceled, so Evans rented a car and drove nine hours through the night to make his Monday morning classes in Ann Arbor.
Two rental counters told him they were out of cars that night. "I got a sense that a lot of people were doing a similar thing to me," he said.
sent by The Associated Press to him and his lawyer. Pazdur is one of the last remaining members of the FDA's senior leadership to survive months of retirements, firings, resignations, and other actions by the Trump administration that forced longtime employees out of the agency.
He'll be tasked with bringing stability to a unit that has been riven by low morale, return-to-office orders and turf battles with other parts of the agency, including the vaccine and biologics center led by Dr. Vinay Prasad.
The FDA's drug center has lost more than 1,000 staffers over the past year to layoffs or resignations, according to agency figures.
PASSENGERS self check in at the American Airlines counter at Orlando International Airport Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025, in Orlando, Fla.
Photo:John Raoux/AP
TOP DIPLOMATS FROM G7 COUNTRIES MEET IN CANADA AS TRADE TENSIONS RISE WITH TRUMP
By ROB GILLIES and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press
TOP diplomats from the Group of Seven industrialized democracies are converging on southern Ontario as tensions rise between the U.S. and traditional allies like Canada over defense spending, trade and uncertainty over President Donald Trump's ceasefire plan in Gaza and efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand said in an interview with The Associated Press that "the relationship has to continue across a range of issues" despite trade pressures as she prepared to host U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and their counterparts from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Anand also invited the foreign ministers of Australia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, South
Korea, South Africa and Ukraine.
Anand said critical priorities for discussion Tuesday night include talks on advancing long-term peace and stability in the Middle East.
"The peace plan must be upheld," Anand said.
The diplomats will meet with Ukraine's foreign minister early Wednesday.
Britain says it will send 13 million pounds ($17 million) to help patch up Ukraine's energy infrastructure as winter approaches and Russian attacks intensify. The money will go toward repairs to power, heating and water supplies and humanitarian support for Ukrainians.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, who made the announcement before the meeting, said Russian President Vladimir Putin "is trying to plunge Ukraine into darkness and the cold as winter approaches," but the British support will help keep the lights and heating on.
Canada recently made a similar announcement.
Canada's G7 hosting duties this year have been marked by strained relations with its North American neighbor, predominantly over Trump's imposition of tariffs on Canadian imports. But the entire bloc of allies is confronting major turbulence over the Republican president's demands on trade and various proposals to halt worldwide conflicts.
One main point of contention has been defense spending. All G7 members except for Japan are members of NATO, and Trump has demanded that the alliance partners spend 5% of their annual gross domestic product on defense. While a number of countries have agreed, others have not. Among the G7 NATO members, Canada and Italy are furthest from that goal.
Anand said Canada's recent budget includes $80 billion Canadian (US$57 billion) in defense spending.
"We are going to reach 2%
this year and 5% of GDP by 2035," she said. There have also been G7 disagreements over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, with Britain, Canada and France announcing they would recognize a Palestinian state even without a resolution to the conflict. With the Russia-Ukraine war, most G7 members have taken a tougher line on Russia than Trump has.
The two-day meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Lake Ontario near the U.S. border comes after Trump ended trade talks with Canada because the Ontario provincial government ran an anti-tariff advertisement in the U.S. that upset him. That followed a spring of acrimony, since abated, over Trump's insistence that Canada should become the 51st U.S. state.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney apologized for the ad and said last week that he's ready to resume trade talks when the Americans are ready.
Anand said she will have a meeting with Rubio but noted that a different minister leads the U.S. trade file. The U.S. president has placed greater priority on addressing his grievances with other nations' trade policies than on collaboration with G7 allies.
"Every complex relationship has numerous touch points," Anand said in the interview, "On the trade file, there is continued work to be done — just as there is work to be done on the numerous touch points outside the trade file, and that's where Secretary Rubio and I come in because the relationship has to continue across a range of issues."
Anand said Rubio asked her during a breakfast meeting in Washington last month to play a role in bringing countries to the table to ensure that Trump's Gaza ceasefire plan has longevity, including with a future Gaza reconstruction conference.
U.S. officials said Rubio, who also may have meetings
with other G7 counterparts and at least one of the invited non-G7 foreign ministers, would be focused on initiatives to halt fighting in Ukraine and Gaza, maritime security, Haiti, Sudan, supply chain resiliency and critical minerals. Canada's priorities include ending the war in Ukraine, Arctic security and security in Haiti. There will be a working lunch on energy and critical minerals that are needed for anything from smartphones to fighter jets. Canada has 34 critical minerals and metals that the Pentagon is eager for and investing in for national security.
MARINE FORECAST
Supreme Court extends its order blocking full SNAP payments, with shutdown potentially near an end
By GEOFF MULVIHILL and MARGERY BECK
Associated Press
THE Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.
The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.
The order will expire just before midnight Thursday.
The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday.
Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it's
not clear how quickly full payments would resume.
The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the federal government shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.
Beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.
How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it's easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.
Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be
some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.
An urgent need for beneficiaries
Pennsylvania, full
went
received anything by Monday.
Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.
That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what's left in the pantry — mostly rice and ramen.
"It's kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right," Malliard said. "To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly."
The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.
"I figure that I've spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine," said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a "little food pantry" in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.
SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court
The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power — and impact food access for some 42 million Americans.
The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said
CHINESE
LONDON Associated Press
A CHINESE woman who was found with 5 billion pounds ($6.6 billion) in Bitcoin after defrauding more than 128,000 people in China in a Ponzi scheme was sentenced by a U.K. court on Tuesday to over 11 years in prison.
Police said the investigation into Zhimin Qian, 47, led to officers recovering devices holding 61,000 Bitcoin in the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the U.K. Qian, dubbed "cryptoqueen" by British media, was arrested in April 2024 after spending years evading the authorities and living an "extravagant" lifestyle in Europe, staying in luxury hotels across the continent and buying fine jewelry and watches, prosecutors said.
Police said she ran a pyramid scheme that lured more than 128,000 people to invest in her business between 2014 and 2017, including many who invested their life savings and pensions. Authorities said she stored the illegally obtained funds in Bitcoin assets. When she attracted the attention of Chinese authorities, Qian fled to the
Stephanie Scarbrough/ AP
recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order. An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement was set to kick in Tuesday night before the top court extended the order blocking full SNAP payments.
Congressional talks about reopening government
The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds. Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.
President Donald Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it "looks like we're getting close to the shutdown ending."
Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn't be up to the courts.
"The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority," Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. "The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government."
The coalition of cities and nonprofit groups who challenged the SNAP pause said in a court filing Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, is to blame for the confusion.
"The chaos was sown by USDA's delays and intransigence," they said, "not by the district court's efforts to mitigate that chaos and the harm it has inflicted on families who need food."
U.K. under a fake identity. Once in London, police said she rented a "lavish" house for over 17,000 pounds ($23,000) per month, and tried but failed to buy multimillion pound properties in a bid to convert the Bitcoin.
Investigators found notes Qian had written documenting her aspirations — including her "intention to become the monarch of Liberland, a self-proclaimed country consisting of a strip of land between Croatia and Serbia."
They said other notes showed Qian detailing her hopes of "meeting a duke and royalty." Judge Sally-Ann Hales said Qian was the architect of the crimes from start to finish.
"Your motive was one of pure greed. You left China without a thought for the people whose investments you had stolen and enjoyed for a period of time a lavish lifestyle. You lied and schemed, all the while seeking to benefit yourself," Hales said.
The businesswoman, who had pleaded guilty to money laundering offenses and transferring and possessing criminal property, was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years and eight months at Southwark Crown Court.
In
November benefits
out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not
A CASHIER scans groceries, including produce, which is covered by the USDA Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), at a grocery store in Baltimore, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025.
