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For people who have been quietly struggling with doubts about their relationship, the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day can feel fraught. As 14 February approaches, questions that were once easy to sidestep often become harder to ignore.

In a study that tracked romantic couples over a year, relationships were about 2.5 times more likely to end during the two weeks surrounding Valentine’s Day than during the months before or after. When researchers accounted for relationship length, prior relationship history and gender, the odds of a breakup during this window were more than five times higher.

At first glance, this timing may seem strange. Why would couples break up just before a holiday devoted to love, connection and commitment?

Participating in Valentine’s Day sends a message — not privately, but visibly — that a relationship is intact and future-oriented. And that pressure might just be too much for some couples.

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A psychological turning point

These findings suggest that Valentine’s Day functions less like a wrecking ball and more like a spotlight.

For couples who have been struggling for months, Valentine’s Day can bring those feelings into sharper focus, forcing people to confront questions they may have been postponing: Are we happy? Are we moving forward? Is this relationship something I want to celebrate?

Psychologists refer to moments like Valentine’s Day as temporal landmarks: points that divide time into a psychological before and after. They prompt people to take stock of their lives and make decisions they have been postponing. Romantic relationships are no exception.

Rather than creating doubt, these dates tend to accelerate decisions that were already unfolding, turning private uncertainty into a sense that change is overdue.

Valentine’s Day makes other people’s relationships unusually visible, often in idealized form, encouraging social comparisons that add fuel to the fire.

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The pressure to perform

Not all temporal landmarks carry the same emotional weight, however. Valentine’s Day is an unusually ritualized and commercialised landmark. Consumer research shows that the holiday tends to evoke polarized reactions — people are far more likely to either love or loathe Valentine’s Day than to feel neutral about it.

In the weeks leading up to the holiday, advertising, store displays and social media amplify expectations about what counts as love: gifts, effort, public displays and visible commitment. Taking part in the ritual signals commitment and investment in a shared future; opting out can invite questions or disappointment.

In this sense, Valentine’s Day does not just invite reflection — it demands a performance.

This helps explain why breakups often happen before Valentine’s Day rather than after. Ending a relationship afterward can feel deceptive, especially if gifts were exchanged or plans were made. Many people would rather leave than perform romance they no longer feel, or accept gestures that imply a level of commitment they are unsure they can sustain.

That timing reflects a broader tendency to delay difficult decisions around holidays. Ending a relationship is emotionally uncomfortable at the best of times, and research shows people sometimes delay breakups to spare their partner pain. Holidays can intensify that hesitation.

In a nationally representative survey, 22 per cent of American adults said they ended relationships before Valentine’s Day because they did not want their partner to buy them gifts or spend money when they already knew the relationship was ending.

Uncertainty becomes impossible to ignore

The sense of being torn — wanting to avoid hurting a partner while also feeling unable to keep pretending — reflects a state psychologists call ambivalence.

Ambivalence is not indifference; it is the uncomfortable experience of holding competing motivations and emotions at the same time. Many people feel ambivalent long before a relationship ends, even in relationships that look stable from the outside. Research shows that this kind of internal conflict predicts lower satisfaction and greater instability over time.

Valentine’s Day intensifies ambivalence because it transforms private uncertainty into public signalling. Participating in the holiday sends a message that a relationship is intact and future-oriented. Dinner reservations, office flower deliveries and social media posts all carry symbolic weight.

Social comparison can add fuel to the fire. Valentine’s Day makes other people’s relationships unusually visible, often in idealised form. Couples appear everywhere — online and offline — celebrating love with carefully curated gestures. Decades of relationship research show that commitment is shaped not only by how satisfying a relationship is, but by how it compares to expectations and perceived alternatives.

When Valentine’s Day raises the bar for what love is supposed to look like, a relationship already marked by ambivalence can suddenly feel inadequate by contrast.

Not everyone experiences this pressure in the same way. Research shows that people who are uncomfortable with emotional closeness or public displays of romance often find Valentine’s Day especially stressful, which can amplify dissatisfaction and make withdrawal more likely.

Valentine’s Day rarely ends relationships on its own, of course. But it can make months of uncertainty suddenly very real, turning private doubts into decisions that feel urgent and unavoidable.

Emily Impett is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 10, 2026

Rocket or arugula? How a salad vegetable mapped the Italian diaspora

Source: Radio New Zealand

If you watch American cooking shows, you’ve likely experienced “salad confusion”. You see a chef preparing what looks like rocket, but they call it arugula.

It’s the same plant (Eruca sativa). It has the same peppery bite. So why do English speakers use two completely different names?

The answer isn’t just a quirk of translation. It is a linguistic fossil record revealing the history of Italian migration.

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A Latin word with a double life

It all starts with the Latin word eruca.

Crucially, this term had a dual meaning. It referred to the vegetable, but also meant “caterpillar” – maybe because the plant’s hairy stems resembled the pests often found on brassicas.

As the Roman Empire faded and Vulgar Latin (the language of the vulgus, or the common people) evolved into the Romance languages, this single word split along two paths.

The Northern route: aristocratic ‘rocket’

As the word travelled north through Italy, it morphed from eruca into the Northern Italian diminutive ruchetta.

From there, it crossed the Alps into France, becoming roquette.

By the 16th century, French culinary influence was dominant in England. The first written record appears in 1530, in John Palsgrave’s text L’esclarcissement de la langue francoyse (Clarification of the French Language – said to be the first grammar of French for English speakers), translating roquette to “rocket”.

By 1597, English botanist John Gerard was describing “garden rocket” in his large illustrated Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes, cementing it in the British lexicon.

This terminology travelled with the First Fleet. In Australia, “rocket” was a colonial staple, not a modern discovery. Planting guides in the Hobart Town Courier from 1836 list rocket alongside other brassicas, such as cress and mustard, as essential kitchen garden crops.

This is why people in Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand say “rocket”. For these speakers, the word followed an aristocratic, pre-industrial path.

The Southern route: migrant ‘arugula’

In the United States, the word “arugula” didn’t arrive in books; it arrived in pockets.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, millions of Italians emigrated to the US. This was a mass migration of the working class, predominantly from Southern regions like Calabria and Sicily.

These migrants spoke regional languages, erroneously called dialects, rather than Standard Italian.

In the South, eruca had evolved differently. We can trace this in historical dictionaries: Gerhard Rohlfs’ monumental Dictionary of the Three Calabrias (1932–39) records the local word as arùculu.

Similarly, Antonino Traina’s Sicilian-Italian dictionary (1868) lists the variant aruca.

When Italian immigrants established market gardens in New York, they sold the produce using their dialect forms. They weren’t selling the French roquette; they were selling the Calabrian arùculu.

Over many years, this solidified into the American English “arugula”.

For decades, arugula was an “ethnic” ingredient in the US, underscoring its origins as “an unruly weed that was foraged from the fields by the poor”. It wasn’t until a New York Times article on May 24 1960 that food editor Craig Claiborne introduced it to a wider audience.

Noting it “has more names than Joseph’s coat had colors”, he used the New York market term “arugula” alongside rocket in his recipes, inadvertently codifying it as the standard American name.

There is perhaps a sense that “arugula” might come from Spanish, given the influence of words like cilantro in American culinary terminology.

In Spanish, Latin eruca evolved into oruga which is uncannily similar to “arugula”. But, linguistically things are a little more complex.

While the Spanish word maintains the reference to the plant it also retains the Latin term’s double meaning: a salad vegetable and a caterpillar.

According to Bréal’s Law of Differentiation, named for the linguist Michel Bréal, languages detest absolute synonyms. If a word has two meanings, the language will intervene somehow. Indeed, today’s Spanish speakers prefer to call the plant rúcula. If you were to ask for an ensalada de oruga in Spain today, you’d probably get odd looks and, maybe, a caterpillar salad.

What about ‘rucola’?

So where does the word rucola – seen on menus in Rome today – fit in?

While the Anglosphere was splitting into rocket and arugula, Italy was undergoing its own linguistic unification. Standard Italian rucola is another diminutive which gradually won out over other regional variants.

Philologically, rucola represents a middle ground. Its rise in usage in Italy in the second half of the 20th Century eclipsed competing terms like rughetta, ruchetta or ruca.

Rucola now has international reverberations. The preferred term in Spanish is modelled on it, it appears in many other European languages and it is making inroads in the English lexicon.

From peasant weed to political symbol

By the 1990s in the US, the “peasant weed” had completed a remarkable social climb. It became a political shibboleth for the American “liberal elite” (most famously during Obama’s Arugula-gate in the 2008 presidential election campaign).

Meanwhile, in Australia, rocket popped up as the ubiquitous garnish of the cafe culture boom found on everything from pizza to smashed avo.

The divide is a reminder that language is rarely accidental. When an Australian orders “rocket,” they echo a 16th-century exchange with France. When an American orders “arugula”, they echo the voices of Southern Italian migrants in 1920s New York. And when someone uses “rucola” perhaps it’s a way of evoking Italy’s mythical, UNESCO-awarded gastronomy.

Matt Absalom is senior lecturer in Italian Studies, The University of Melbourne.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 10, 2026

Third US lawsuit against author Neil Gaiman dismissed by judge

Source: Radio New Zealand

Neil Gaiman at an event in 2024. Jamie McCarthy / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA

All three US lawsuits accusing author Neil Gaiman of sexually assaulting his children’s nanny in Auckland four years ago have now been dismissed.

Scarlett Pavlovich filed lawsuits against Gaiman and his wife Amanda Palmer in the US states of Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New York last year.

She accused Gaiman of multiple sexual assaults while she was working as the family’s nanny in 2022.

The New York lawsuit was dropped last year, and the Wisconsin lawsuit was dismissed in October, with the judge saying Pavlovich needed to pursue the case in New Zealand.

AP has now reported that US District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston threw out the Massachusetts filing late last week on the same grounds.

The British author has denied the claims, but argued that as the alleged abuses occurred in New Zealand – where Pavlovich is a citizen and Gaiman has permanent residency status – the US had no jurisdiction over the allegations.

Pavlovich sued Gaiman, author of The Sandman comic book series and the novel American Gods, while Palmer was accused of knowing that Pavlovich was vulnerable, and failing to warn that Gaiman had a history of predatory behaviour, according to court papers.

The lawsuits sought unspecified damages that were “reasonably believed” to exceed US$1 million (NZ$1.7m) on multiple claims, Reuters earlier reported.

In his motion to dismiss, Gaiman called the claims a “sham”, saying while he and Pavlovich did engage in “sexual activity”, they never had sexual intercourse and it was always consensual.

“None of Pavlovich’s claims are true,” Gaiman said.

Pavlovich painted a very different picture of the events in an interview last year with Vulture, a US entertainment news page for the New York Magazine.

Pavlovich said she agreed to baby-sit the couple’s child, but soon Gaiman began sexually abusing her, including by raping her, choking her, and assaulting her in the presence of his child, according to court papers.

The abuse allegedly lasted several weeks, until Gaiman and his child left for Europe.

At the time, she was 22 and Gaiman was 61.

Following the publication of the allegations, Gaiman wrote that he had “never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever.”

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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 10, 2026

Wuthering Heights is one of the year’s most controversial films

Source: Radio New Zealand

Ever since whispers of casting choices began popping up on social media, Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has been a lightning rod for controversy. Now days away from the movie’s highly anticipated premiere, fans and critics are still arguing.

Fennell is not the first to attempt a screen adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic novel; the 1847 story has been thrown onto the silver screen more than a dozen times in multiple different languages.

But whether it be the nature of modern internet discourse, or Fennell’s reputation as a provocative filmmaker, Wuthering Heights has been picked apart for everything from its leads to the quotation marks Fennell draped around her title: “Wuthering Heights”.

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What is Wuthering Heights?

A story within a story, Wuthering Heights follows the lives of two families tumbling through the trials and tribulations of the late-18th-century British class system, with the relationship between heiress Catherine and brooding blow-in Heathcliff embedded in its heart.

A staple of many high school curricula, part of why fans are so fierce around Wuthering Heights is the story’s ability to grow and unfold as the reader does.

Margot Robbie’s (left) LuckyChap production company has had a hand in all of Emerald Fennell’s feature films.

Universal/Warner Bros

“It is a book that keeps on giving,” says Claire O’Callaghan, senior lecturer in English at Loughborough University and editor-in-chief of Brontë Studies.

“You can read it when you’re 15 and take away one set of ideas and insights and then read it again years later and find new ideas in it.”

O’Callaghan says the subtext bubbling beneath the novel’s surface is what’s kept the text relevant for hundreds of years.

“The book’s complexity speaks to so many different themes that we are all still grappling with — the line between passion and obsession, the nature of revenge, belonging, family, the importance of friendship, complex relationships — familial and otherwise — and trauma, so much trauma,” she says.

“The book’s detail is extraordinarily rich, and it is a book that generates debates, discussion and division. Its themes remain relevant now; we’re still grappling with so many of the ideas and issues Emily wrote about.”

Who is Emerald Fennell?

Barely half a decade into her feature directorial career, Emerald Fennell has already, for better or worse, garnered the reputation of a provocateur.

Her debut feature, 2020’s Promising Young Woman, followed Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a 30-something med school dropout who practised vigilante justice in memory of her fallen friend.

“Promising Young Woman was an unflinching excoriation of male violence against women, led by a sterling turn from Carey Mulligan,” film critic Stephen A Russell tells ABC Arts.

“[Mulligan and Fennell were] willing to go to the darkest places without losing sight of mordant humour and a surreal sense of style. I, for one, was exhilarated by her punching-up pluck.”

Weaponising the concept of the “nice guy”, Promising Young Woman announced Fennell as a potential new Hollywood auteur — scooping up five Academy Award nominations and a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Fennell.

Her follow-up, 2023’s Saltburn, saw Fennell once again playing in the world of power imbalances, this time shifting her focus from sex to class as she sent blue-collar Oxford student Oliver (Barry Keoghan) to infiltrate the upper-class Catton family at their lavish estate.

Bolstered by her dazzling debut, Saltburn outperformed Promising Young Woman at the box office but split critics.

“That ability to set cats against perturbed pigeons can be a double-edged sword, with many folks feeling Saltburn was a decided step-down in terms of original writing, in favour of the low-hanging fruit of flap-starting scenes,” Russell explains.

Jacob Elordi starred as oblivious rich kid Felix in Saltburn.

MGM and Amazon Studios

“The more morally ambiguous nuance of Promising Young Woman seemed to be thrown out with Saltburn’s playing-to-the-cheap-seats bathwater.

“Nothing we’ve seen so far of Wuthering Heights — acknowledged to be seen through Fennell’s teenage horn — suggests more of the former over the latter. We’ll see soon enough.”

What is the internet saying?

As a text heavy with history and meaning to millions of fans, questions of fidelity to the original story have arisen around Fennell’s modern Wuthering Heights.

Many were quick to point out that the casting of Caucasian Australian Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff strips the story of integral class context.

Fennell said seeing Elordi with sideburns while filming Saltburn inspired her choice for the actor as Healthcliff.

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“In the opening chapter [of Wuthering Heights], Heathcliff is described as ‘a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect’ and then regularly described as Black or dark in various ways,” O’Callahan says, elaborating that other characters muse if Healthcliff’s origin is Indian or Chinese.

“To that end, even while being ambiguous about Heathcliff’s precise ethnicity, Emily constructs Heathcliff as a non-white and non-English character.”

In the run-up to the film’s release, some fans have pushed back on this interpretation to argue that the description of Heathcliff meant something different to those reading in the 19th century.

“Jacob Elordi’s casting overlooks Heathcliff as a person of colour, and this has raised concerns not only about how the book is represented but how this particular adaptation and casting decision reflects other issues regarding race and representation onscreen and in culture more widely,” O’Callaghan says.

Multiple other Caucasian actors have played Heathcliff in film adaptations, including Lawrence Olivier, who was nominated for an Oscar for his 1939 performance and then-newcomer Ralph Fiennes in the 1992 remake.

One of the few deviations was Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation, which saw Black actor James Howson as Heathcliff.

When directly asked about the casting choices, Fennell said her casting of Elordi was inspired by how she imagined Heathcliff as a teenager.

She told the Hollywood Reporter: “I knew right from the get-go I couldn’t ever hope to make anything that could even encompass the greatness of this book. All I could do was make a movie that made me feel the way the book made me feel.”

When the same question was pressed on Elordi, the actor also impressed that the film was a product of Fennell’s particular vision — pointing to the inverted commas in the title as a differentiation between film and text.

Fans also have raised concerns with the casting of Margot Robbie, who is in her mid-30s, as Catherine who is in her late teens for a majority of the book, as well as the modern costuming being at odds with the setting of the book.

“The images released from the film, especially Cathy’s white wedding dress, have again raised concerns about accuracy — here, historical accuracy,” O’Callahan says

“The poofy, white gown Catherine is shown to wear on-screen is more akin to the types of bridal gowns that came later in the 19th century.”

“Some have suggested that the style of Catherine’s gown is more reminiscent of Queen Victoria’s wedding gown worn from the 1840s onwards,” O’Callahan says.

Universal/Warner Bros

Anything else?

Beyond aesthetic interpretations, O’Callahan says there’s one important aspect to get correct in order for the filmed adaptation to be faithful to the text — that Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship is not one to aspire to.

“For me, the complexity of the fine line between love, loss and grief are paramount to Wuthering Heights, as is the tale of revenge,” O’Callahan says.

Fennell has said the inverted commas around her film’s title represent that it’s her teenage interpretation of Wuthering Heights.

Universal/Warner Bros

“I don’t know if the new adaptation will glorify or glamorise the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, but the novel certainly doesn’t do that.

“Heathcliff is a character that is loved and loathed by readers in equal measure — and in some cases, readers love to hate him too. He is reviled as much as he is pitied.”

What are early reactions saying about Wuthering Heights?

While full critical reviews for Wuthering Heights are being kept under embargo until the film’s 12 February release, first reactions have started to pop up on social media.

Overwhelmingly positive, IndieWire editor Anne Thompson predicted the movie would “soar at the box office”.

Critic Kirsten Lopez praised the changes made to the text by Fennell, saying “Emily Bronte girlies like me are gonna eat up Wuthering Heights with a spoon”.

Multiple reactions also praised the performances of Elordi and Robbie, while also conceding the 2-hour-and-16-minute run time feels overly long.

US critic Randy Jones provided a more cryptic reaction, repeating the phrase Aretha Franklin gave when asked her opinion on Taylor Swift’s artistry and placing aspects of the film alongside forgotten literature adaptations Beastly and Red Riding Hood.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 10, 2026

Catherine O’Hara’s cause of death revealed

Source: Radio New Zealand

Emmy-winning actress Catherine O’Hara, who starred in Schitt’s Creek and Home Alone, died from a blood clot in her lungs, her death certificate reveals.

The Canadian-born performer was rushed to the hospital on 30 January after having difficulty breathing at her home in the ritzy Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles.

The 71-year-old, who starred in Beetlejuice and more recently in Apple TV’s Hollywood satire show The Studio, was declared dead a short time later.

The actress’s death certificate said she had died of a pulmonary embolism and listed rectal cancer as a secondary factor.

O’Hara was born in Toronto in 1954, where she joined the legendary comedy theater Second City, alongside Eugene Levy, with whom she would collaborate throughout her career, including on the smash TV series Schitt’s Creek.

Her break into movies came in 1980 with Double Negative – also alongside Levy, and John Candy.

In 1988, she played Winona Ryder’s stepmother in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice. She would later marry the film’s production designer Bo Welch. The couple had two sons, Matthew and Luke.

But it was in 1990 that she became widely known to a global audience, as the mother of Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin in Home Alone.

She would reprise the role in the film’s sequel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, which featured a cameo from Donald Trump, decades before he would become US president.

In 1993 she collaborated again with Burton on The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The versatile comedienne also appeared in British filmmaker Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries that revel in silly spectacles of Americana, like zany dog handlers in Best in Show, vain folk singers in A Mighty Wind, and award-hungry actors in For Your Consideration

But she is perhaps best known by modern audiences for her role in Schitt’s Creek, created by Eugene Levy’s son, Dan Levy.

The role brought her an Emmy for best lead actress in 2020. She was also awarded a Golden Globe and a SAG Award.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 10, 2026

Palace ready to help UK police in any inquiry into king’s brother Andrew

Source: Radio New Zealand

By Michael Holden, Reuters

Britain’s King Charles III has made clear his “profound concern” at allegations against Andrew, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said. AFP / POOL / PAUL ELLIS

Buckingham Palace says it is ready to support any police investigation into King Charles’ younger brother after emails suggested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor might have shared confidential British trade documents with Jeffrey Epstein.

Mountbatten-Windsor, already cast out of the royal inner circle over his close relationship with Epstein, has faced fresh scrutiny since the recent publication of millions of new documents relating to the late convicted US sex offender.

“The king has made clear, in words and through unprecedented actions, his profound concern at allegations which continue to come to light in respect of Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct,” a palace spokesperson said.

Royal family ready to back investigation of Andrew

In the latest files released in the US, emails suggest he shared official British trade documents with Epstein in 2010, after Epstein’s conviction for child sex crimes, leaking information from his then-role as an official government envoy.

The documents appear to show that Andrew forwarded Epstein reports about Vietnam, Singapore and other places, which he had been sent in relation to an official trip.

Trade envoys are usually barred from sharing sensitive or commercial documents. The 65-year-old second son of the late Queen Elizabeth has always denied any wrongdoing and has not responded to requests for comment since the latest release of Epstein files.

Thames Valley Police said the issue had been reported to them and that they were assessing whether to formally investigate.

The palace added: “While the specific claims in question are for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to address, if we are approached by Thames Valley Police, we stand ready to support them as you would expect …

“As was previously stated, their majesties’ thoughts and sympathies have been, and remain with, the victims of any and all forms of abuse.”

The king’s son Prince William and his wife Kate had said on Monday they were deeply concerned by the continuing Epstein revelations, in another pointed message from the royal family.

“Their thoughts remain focused on the victims,” their spokesperson told reporters ahead of the prince’s arrival on a high-profile tripto Saudi Arabia.

Andrew and Epstein an embarrassment for King and royals

Mountbatten-Windsor was forced to quit all official royal duties in 2019 over his ties with Epstein and, in October, King Charles removed his title of prince. Last week, he was forced to move out of his royal mansion.

In 2022, he settled a lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre which accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a teenager, through her association with Epstein. Giuffre died by suicidelast April.

While the royal family have attempted to distance themselves from Mountbatten-Windsor, he remains a thorn in their side.

“Charles, how long have you known about Andrew and Epstein?” a man shouted from the crowd as the king arrived in Clitheroe, northern England, the second time he had been heckled in a week.

Last week, police also said they were reviewing a new allegation against Andrew, triggered by the latest files, involving a woman being taken to an address in Windsor near London, where he has lived on the royal estate.

Over the last 10 days, revelations from the files have also engulfed Prime Minister Keir Starmer in what is widely viewed as the biggest crisis of his premiership for having appointed Peter Mandelson, an acquaintance of Epstein, as ambassador to the U.S.

Like Andrew, it appears that Mandelson also shared sensitive government files from 2009 and 2010 with Epstein, and police are investigating claims of misconduct in public office.

– Reuters

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 10, 2026

Why Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance matters

Source: Radio New Zealand

In just over 13 minutes worth of music, stars and symbolism, Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny rewrote what it means to be American in a time of strife.

For months, conservatives from the president on down have painted him as anti-American. Last night, Bad Bunny asked: What if I’m the real American?

Bad Bunny — who introduced himself with his real full name, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — brought the iconography of Puerto Rican culture to his Super Bowl halftime show performance, a joyous and high-energy affair that celebrated the island where he was born and its place in the American story.

Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny performs during Super Bowl LX Patriots vs Seahawks Apple Music Halftime Show.

AFP / Patrick T Fallon

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After playing some of his biggest hits, Bad Bunny stared down the camera and spoke in English for the only time during the performance to say, “God Bless America”.

He followed with a list of more than 20 nations in North, Central and South America while dancers trailed him displaying the flags of many of those nations, with the US and Puerto Rican flags most visible directly behind him.

While the US often uses the word “America” to identify itself as a single, distinct country, many of its neighbors use it to refer to a greater unified continent, a point that Bad Bunny hammered home when he spiked a football that read “Together we are America,” before launching into his nostalgic anthem ‘DtMF’.

Bad Bunny performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Chris Graythen / Getty Images / AFP

The message was clear: Bad Bunny declared himself an American patriot in the broadest sense of the term and he doesn’t think it’s a view that should really be left up to a coin toss.

Meet Lincoln Fox Ramadan

While performing ‘NUEVAYoL’ — a song considered to be a tribute to immigrants and Puerto Rico’s diaspora in New York — Bad Bunny was seen giving a Grammy statuette to a young boy who seconds before was watching the moment the musician won the award on TV, alongside two adults.

The young boy was played by a child actor named Lincoln Fox Ramadan, who was cast based on his resemblance to a young Bad Bunny. The segment was meant to symbolise the artist handing a Grammy to his younger self, a representative from Ramadan’s talent agency W Group told CNN on Sunday.

Wendy Woods, talent agent, owner and CEO of The W Group Artists and Entertainment group in Florida, said she was “blown away” by Ramadan’s performance and was “honoured” to help him get on the stage with Bad Bunny.

Bad Bunny performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images via AFP

For a brief moment, the internet ran with rumors that the boy was Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old who was taken into ICE custody in Minneapolis and placed with his father in a family detention facility in Texas, before being released earlier this month while his case plays out.

Though ultimately untrue, the moment could be seen as a message of support to immigrants across the US, harkening back as it did to the night Bad Bunny aligned himself with those calling for an end to the Trump administration’s unprecedented immigration crackdown.

A wedding moment

Throughout the show, Bad Bunny celebrated pastimes beloved in Puerto Rico, from dominoes to boxing, and also the families and generations that make up life on the island.

At one point in his performance, a man was seen proposing to a woman; later, they were seen together wearing all white, getting married. It was the story of this couple’s nuptials told throughout the performance.

Performers portray a wedding during Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny performance during the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

AFP / Josh Edelson

Once the crowd parted after the wedding ceremony, Lady Gaga made a surprise appearance to sing a Latin-inspired rendition of her Grammy-winning collaboration with Bruno Mars, ‘Die With a Smile’, serving as the wedding singer for the couple, who were then seen cutting into a multi-tiered wedding cake and sharing a long kiss.

Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga perform onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images / AFP

This was yet another moment when the show tidily hammered home its point about freedom and the pursuit of happiness, while making clear that celebrating marriage and children is not a uniquely conservative pursuit.

The show called back continuously to Puerto Rican culture and also featured many famous ‘backup dancers,’ including Jessica Alba, Karol G, Cardi B and Pedro Pascal, and a surprise performance from Ricky Martin, who sang ‘Lo Que Le Pasó a Hawaii’, a warning about the cost of gentrification.

Bad Bunny made good on his promise that viewers didn’t need to learn Spanish in order to enjoy his halftime show.

It was a dance party with a message, one that was blasted on a screen at Levi’s Stadium as he closed out his set: “The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 9, 2026

Doctors recommend pregnant women avoid retinoids. What’s the evidence?

Source: Radio New Zealand

Being pregnant comes with a minefield of advice from doctors, midwives, well-meaning friends and family, not to mention social media and other mums.

There are foods you’re recommended to avoid, and medications that aren’t approved. But skincare is less clear: some products are fine whereas others are not recommended.

The family of ingredients known as retinoids, for example, are booming in popularity in skincare products but there is conflicting advice on their safety for pregnant women.

Retinoids are commonly used to treat acne.

Barbara Krysztofiak/Unsplash

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Retinoids is an umbrella term for vitamin A derivatives that treat all manner of skin concerns from acne to wrinkles, fine lines and pigmentation.

“They’re pretty much the gold standard skincare ingredients because they work for so many things,” says Michelle Wong, a chemist and science communicator based in Sydney.

Retinoids come in different forms.

The most potent are prescription-only acne treatment drugs such as isotretinon, which is taken orally, and tretinoin which is applied to the skin to treat severe acne.

Then there are pharmacist-only products containing adapalene, and a range of “over-the-counter” retinoids such as retinal and retinol which are in topical creams applied to the skin at much lower concentrations.

It’s widely accepted that oral retinoids are not safe for pregnant women and may cause birth defects — and that is labelled clearly on the packaging and drug information leaflets. Prescription-only and pharmacist-only topical retinoids also carry warnings.

But what about over-the-counter (OTC) topical retinoid products?

Confusing advice for pregnant women

NSW Health’s Mothersafe, a service for mothers run by NSW Health, says OTC creams are safe for pregnant women to use because they are applied topically and contain smaller doses, but advises against the use of prescription topical treatments.

Wong agrees.

“Looking at standard retinol products on the market, it should be safe for pregnancy, as long as people are not using it in weird ways,” she says.

But many health practitioners advise against using any type of topical retinoid.

Laura Gerhady, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who studies the effects of medication in pregnancy says there is insufficient research to make clear determinations for the use of topical retinoids during pregnancy.

“Part of that is because most people using topical retinoids will be using them for conditions that are not vital to treat during pregnancy, things like acne.”

There are no mandatory standards for labelling cosmetic skincare products containing retinoids such as retinal and retinol. The only non-prescription topical products that require labelling are those containing adapalene. These products were recently downgraded from prescription-only and made available as behind-the-counter products in pharmacies.

Gerhardy says there isn’t clear labelling because there isn’t a specific guideline on what is and isn’t safe.

“For [all] topical retinoids, the message is that we don’t have great information, but if you use it, it’s probably fine.

“To communicate that in a single sentence on packaging is quite difficult. It is straightforward with oral retinoids — they are certainly harmful in pregnancies.

“But topical is more challenging because we just don’t have the data,” she says.

As research about both prescription and OTC topical retinoids is limited, guidance from health practitioners is typically interchangeable.

Deshan Sebaratnam, a dermatologist at Liverpool Hospital says he advises his pregnant patients to avoid using all retinoids — including retinol — as a precaution.

“Much like alcohol, the safest choice would be to avoid retinol in pregnancy but the absolute risk is low,” he says.

Likewise, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists says that even though the amount absorbed by the body is low, neither prescription nor OTC products are recommended.

What happens if you accidentally use a topical retinoid while pregnant?

Wong says pregnant women who may have used topical retinoids without knowing should not be alarmed.

“Topical retinoids are generally not recommended during pregnancy but it’s not worth panicking about if you accidentally use it once or twice,” she says.

“If applied topically, the amount of product that would enter your system would be quite low.

“Including from prescription creams,” she says, but adds: “There’s still a hierarchy of risk though. For example, tretinoin is the riskiest one.”

A large Nordic study published last year found that while the use of topical retinoids had significantly increased over the past 20 years, there was no evidence of increased risk of birth defects in babies exposed to topical retinoids during pregnancy.

While the authors say those findings are “the strongest evidence to date on the safety of topical retinoids during pregnancy”, they also acknowledge their study may underestimate the risk and more research is needed.

If you are thinking about using topical retinoid products, speak to your healthcare practitioner for advice.

Other skincare ingredients to look out for

Sebaratnam recommends avoiding minoxidil (a hair growth formula) and hydroquinone, which treats dark spots.

“Most other over-the-counter beauty products are probably safe,” he says.

“But mums need to weigh up whether they really need to be using them or not.”

Other products Wong recommends watching out for are online products that might be unregulated or high doses of salicylic acid, a cleanser that is also a chemical exfoliator.

Mothersafe NSW says salicylic acid is safe for use in smaller doses, however “quantities of salicylic acid absorbed may be higher in specific situations so safety of use should be confirmed with MotherSafe or your healthcare provider”.

Wong also cautions against using beauty products bought online that don’t have verified information.

“I would be cautious about those sorts of products that are really cheap and too good to be true,” Wong says.

For most pregnant women, the safest approach is to stick with simplicity; use well-regulated products, and speak to your healthcare practitioner.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 9, 2026

Bad Bunny brings out Lady Gaga as surprise guest in Super Bowl halftime show

Source: Radio New Zealand

Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny turned the Super Bowl into a giant street party, delivering his hits on one of the world’s biggest stages – and becoming the first-ever halftime show headliner to sing only in Spanish.

Anticipation was high for the 31-year-old’s set, amid rampant speculation about whether he would use his platform to renew his criticism of President Donald Trump’s administration in front of tens of millions of viewers.

Just a week ago at the Grammys, where he won the coveted Album of the Year prize, Bad Bunny made a searing statement about Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, earning cheers for saying “ICE out” from the stage.

Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny performs during Super Bowl LX Patriots vs Seahawks Apple Music Halftime Show.

AFP / Patrick T Fallon

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In a set featuring a sugar cane plantation, a traditional “piragua” cart selling treats, and even a wedding, he opened with ‘Titi Me Pregunto’ and feminist anthem ‘Yo Perreo Sola’, with a cast of dancers fueling the party atmosphere.

A wedding during Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny performance during the Super Bowl Halftime Show.

AFP / Josh Edelson

Actors Pedro Pascal and Jessica Alba, and rapper Cardi B were among the guest stars vibing in his familiar ‘La Casita’ backdrop, representing a home in Puerto Rico.

Pedro Pascal, Karol G and Cardi B dance to Bad Bunny’s performance during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Chris Graythen / Getty Images / AFP

Bad Bunny wore an all-white ensemble, with a football jersey featuring the number “64” and “Ocasio,” before donning a classy suit jacket.

He delved into more political territory with ‘El Apagon’ (Blackout), which touches on the displacement of Puerto Ricans on their own island, and the constant problems caused by the unreliable power grid. He carried a Puerto Rican flag at one point.

Bad Bunny performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Chris Graythen / Getty Images / AFP

Surprise musical guests included Lady Gaga, who sang a Latin-inflected version of her hit ‘Die with a Smile’ – the only English lyrics in the show — and Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin.

Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin performs during Super Bowl LX Patriots vs Seahawks Apple Music Halftime Show.

AFP / Josh Edelson

At the end of the set, after listing Latin American countries, Puerto Rico and the United States, Bad Bunny spiked a football that said “Together, we are America.”

A giant screen in the stadium read: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

Signage that reads “The Only Thing More Powerful than Hate is Love” – from Bad Bunny’s Grammys Award acceptance speech – is displayed on the scoreboard during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images / AFP

Early backlash

Bad Bunny has been Spotify’s most-streamed artist in the world four separate times, including last year, and won Album of the Year at the Grammys with Debi Tirar Mas Fotos – the first Spanish-language work to win music’s highest accolade.

But the decision to showcase his work at the Super Bowl in California met with conservative outrage – specifically about the idea that he would not sing in English.

Bad Bunny performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show

Chris Graythen / Getty Images / AFP

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell defended the choice, calling Bad Bunny “one of the great artists of the world.”

The National Football League is also seeking to bolster its international fan base, so booking a global superstar for the primetime musical interlude made perfect sense.

Bad Bunny performs onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show.

Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images via AFP

The NFL entered into an agreement in 2019 with Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation, which leads the league’s entertainment strategy and helps choose the halftime show artist.

Since that time, the list of Super Bowl headliners includes: Jennifer Lopez and Shakira (with a guest spot for Bad Bunny); The Weeknd; hip-hop legends Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige and Eminem; Rihanna; Usher; and Kendrick Lamar.

But JLo and Shakira did not perform exclusively in Spanish, leaving Bad Bunny to set that benchmark.

Participants partake in the performance onstage during the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show at Levi’s Stadium on February 08, 2026 in Santa Clara, California.

Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images via AFP

From Vega Baja to Super Bowl

The son of a truck driver and a teacher, Bad Bunny was born on 10 March, 1994 and grew up in Vega Baja, a small municipality near Puerto Rico’s capital San Juan.

He was working at a supermarket bagging groceries when he got a call from a label over his viral plays on the DIY platform SoundCloud.

Thus began the reggaeton star’s rapid explosion to the top of global music.

Late last year, Bad Bunny released Debi Tirar Mas Fotos, a history lesson in Puerto Rican music that he promoted with a hometown concert residency in San Juan and a world tour.

In Puerto Rico, a US territory since 1898, there was nothing but pride for the island’s native son.

“For someone from here to be at one of the most important events in the United States is a source of pride for every Puerto Rican,” Olvin Reyes, 39, told AFP.

“It’s going to be an event to share with family, something very exciting.”

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

February 8, 2026

Who is megastar Bad Bunny and why he sings in Puerto Rican Spanish

Source: Radio New Zealand

Bad Bunny is on a roll. Among the three wins at the 68th Grammy Awards, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS (I should have taken more pictures) became the first Spanish-language record to win Album of the Year.

On Sunday, Bad Bunny will be the first Latino and Spanish-speaking artist to perform as a solo headliner at the Super Bowl halftime show.

Born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and raised in Borinquen (the Taíno-language name for Puerto Rico), Bad Bunny’s life and music have been marked by political, social and economic crises affecting the archipelago: government corruption, failing infrastructure and debt.

Puerto Rican reggaeton singer Bad Bunny waves a Puerto Rican flag as he takes part of a demonstration demanding Governor Ricardo Rossello’s resignation in San Juan, Puerto Rico on 17 July, 2019.

AFP / Eric Rojas

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Bad Bunny has used his voice to protest in both his music and public statements against national crises and the ongoing effects of colonialism, while celebrating Latinx and Puerto Rican identities.

Bad Bunny started posting songs on SoundCloud in 2016. In 2018, he released his first album, X 100PRE. Sung in Spanish, the album reached number 11 on the Billboard charts.

His third album, 2020’s El último tour del mundo (The Last World Tour), became the first Spanish-language album to reach number one on the Billboard charts. His fourth record, 2022’s Un Verano Sin Ti (A Summer Without You), also topped this chart, this time for 13 weeks.

DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS stands out against Bad Bunny’s previous albums for its focus on Puerto Rican identity and ongoing fight against colonisation. This is reflected in the album through national symbols, genres and, of course, language. Bad Bunny addresses these themes through companion videos explaining central aspects to the collective memory of Puerto Rico.

The current climate in the United States of interventionism and mass deportations, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS has made the domestic Puerto Rican experience resonate among global audiences.

Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (R) performs during his “Debi tirar mas fotos” world tour at the Atanasio Girardot Stadium in Medellin, Colombia, on 23 January, 2026.

AFP / Jaime Saldarriaga

Language and genre

Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory that belongs to the US, and Puerto Ricans are US citizens, but the territory is not counted as one of the country’s states. The US exerts control over the military, politics and economy of the archipelago.

Spanish plays a complex role in Puerto Rico, as a colonial language that was imposed in the archipelago. More recently, Spanish has been embraced as a resistance to English dominance.

Bad Bunny speaks Puerto Rican Spanish, which combines influences from the indigenous Taíno language, African languages, Spanish and English. Studies have found that Spanish speakers may consider this variety as incorrect because its characteristics are seen as distant from the Castilian Spanish norm: perceptions anchored in colonial ideologies that privilege Castilian Spanish.

The Puerto Rican slang Bad Bunny uses on DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS features numerous Anglicisms, or words borrowed from English – a feature of Puerto Rican Spanish.

AFP / Angela Weiss

Among other genres, Bad Bunny sings reggaeton, a Caribbean genre that draws on Jamaican dancehall, American hip-hop and Dominican Republic dembow.

Reggaeton is a popular music genre with underground roots and explicit lyrics. In the 1990s, Puerto Rican reggaeton was subject to government prosecution (including confiscation, fines and negative media campaigns) due to its alleged obscenity. That did not stop its increasing popularity among young audiences in the Caribbean and beyond.

The international popularity of reggaeton artists such as Don Omar, Daddy Yankee, Young Miko, Ozuna and Bad Bunny has changed the perception of Puerto Rican Spanish from a history of deficit views to more social prestige. In the past, the distance from the Castilian Spanish norm was considered something negative, but there is now a strong interest among students of Spanish to learn this variety.

Fluid use of language

Bad Bunny performs onstage at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards at Dolby Theatre on 17 March, 2025 in Hollywood, California.

Monica Schipper / Getty Images / AFP

Bad Bunny’s language does not reflect a purist vision of language with rigid boundaries. Instead, he embraces a creative use of language with fluid boundaries.

The Puerto Rican slang Bad Bunny uses on DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS features numerous Anglicisms, or words borrowed from English – a feature of Puerto Rican Spanish.

He uses unadapted borrowings – such as the words shot, pitcher, flashback, follow, blondie, glossy, brother, bestie, eyelash, underwater and movie. And he also uses hybrid realisations, compound words that combine English and Spanish components such as janguear (adapted from the English “hang out”), girla (girl), ghosteó (ghosted), stalkeándote (stalking) and kloufrens (close friends).

Bad Bunny embraces his Puerto Rican identity in the pronunciation of lyrics and in public commentary. For example, he pronounces the letter “r” as the letter “l” in songs like ‘NUEVAYoL’ (New York) and ‘VeLDÁ‘ (Truth).

The letter “l” becomes a strong identity feature of NUEVAYoL when compared to other iconic renditions of the city, such as those of Frank Sinatra.

By using his voice to celebrate characteristics of Puerto Rican Spanish previously not perceived as prestigious, Bad Bunny is contributing to the values of linguistic diversity and fighting language ideologies inherited from colonialism.

A woman poses in front of a mural at La Placita de Santurce in San Juan, Puerto Rico on 12 July, 2025. The day before Bad Bunny kicked off his blockbuster residency that’s expected to bring hundreds of millions of dollars to the island while showcasing its rich culture, he posted a simple message: Shop Local.

AFP / Ricardo Arduengo

Music as defiance

The way Bad Bunny uses language has been described as an act of defiance and survival. Bad Bunny does not break down language and make it easier for listeners. Rather, listeners have to make the effort of decoding it.

Notably, the lexicographer Maia Sherwood Droz created a Spanish dictionary for DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, including definitions of words, phrases and cultural references to decode the meanings in the album.

In an album loaded with references to the ongoing fight to preserve Puerto Rican identity, he evokes community symbols of “pitorro de coco” (homemade clandestine rum) to “la bandera azul clarito” (the light blue flag, referring to a 1895 Puerto Rican emblem.

When accepting an award at the Grammys, Bad Bunny said:

We’re not savage. We’re not animals. We’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans.

Bad Bunny’s acceptance speech is explicitly rejecting dehumanisation in a ceremony where, finally, music in languages other than English and, importantly, in Puerto Rican Spanish, was honoured and celebrated as the best album of the year.

*Beatriz Carbajal-Carrera is a Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Sydney.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand

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