Students pay fine for artifact smuggling

In crime news the six U.S. students and their professor who yesterday pled guilty to exporting Mayan artifacts will not have to spend time behind bars. Working against the magistrate’s ultimatum to pay up today or go to Hattieville, the American visitors this morning presented the money to the Clerk of Magistrate’s Court in Belize City and presumably flew off this afternoon. The seven, all attached to Ohio’s Heidleburg University, had been engaged in field studies near Placencia. They were searched Wednesday at the International Airport and displayed Mayan pottery that they had unearthed at a small site near Placencia Lagoon. They claimed that they did not know it was illegal to take the artifacts out of the country.