There are two new COVID-19 cases to report tonight. The first of these two cases is a repatriated Belizean. The patient is a male who arrived on a repatriation flight on Friday, July tenth. He is under quarantine and is asymptomatic. The second patient is a man in his fifties who was a patient at […]
Voting started at ten o’clock in the morning at the ITVET compound in Belize City; the delegates from Corozal were first to cast their votes for the new leader-elect of the United Democratic Party. The voting continued up until one o’clock with the Belize City delegates last in line to vote. Less than two hours […]
While Patrick Faber is the new leader elect of the U.D.P., he will not be sitting in the Prime Minister’s chair in the current U.D.P. term. And that’s because Prime Minister Dean Barrow will not be demitting office, as he had said, before his tenure as head of the U.D.P. comes to an end in […]
Pickstock Area Representative Wilfred Elrington garnered the least number of votes in Sunday’s leadership convention. Ten votes in all, which is five less than the total number of voting delegates permitted in the constituency. Going into the event, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said he was not up to campaigning. He had also indicated to […]
Punta Gorda Mayor Ashton McKenzie will not be offering himself as a candidate in the 2021 municipal elections. That’s because he has indicated that he will be retiring from electoral politics at the end of this term. Though he had endorsed Saldivar, McKenzie, who has spent the last six years as a member of the […]
The U.D.P. Secretary General Pearl Stuart is also stepping down. The former executive director of the National Committee for Families and Children took up the post in 2008 when the U.D.P. assumed office under the leadership of Dean Barrow. Stuart has remained in that position since and has served the party faithfully under the PM, […]
And from politics to health; Belize has fifteen active cases of COVID-19 with nine being in the Orange Walk District. On Friday, four more cases were identified and the persons placed at the quarantine facility in Orange Walk Town. All seven cases were identified as persons, who had been crossing the border into Mexico through […]
According to Doctor Manzanero, officials have not been able to trace whether or not the infected persons travelled outside their community. He says that the family has not been forthcoming with information but nonetheless the community of Blue Creek is cooperating. If further cases are identified, Doctor Manzanero says that random sampling will be increased. […]
As you heard, the infected family has not been forthcoming with information to officials about their recent travels. That family remains in quarantine in the Orange Walk Multi-purpose Complex and today from within the facility one of the parents spoke out against authorities. According to the mother, her daughters were never caught illegally crossing the […]
The new leader of the United Democratic Party, who will be referred to as leader elect, will be decided this Sunday. The three-man race has been narrowed down to a very confident Minister Patrick Faber, John Saldivar whose February leadership lasted three days and Foreign Minister Wilfred “Sedi” Elrington, who earlier this week, was totally […]
In the build up to the February ninth leadership convention, former Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber had a public spat with Mesopotamia Area Representative Shyne Barrow. At the time, the prime minister’s son was a staunch supporter of Faber’s political opponent John Saldivar and several nasty exchanges were made by the two on social media. […]
Three more cases of COVID-19 were confirmed on Thursday night and it is expected that four more cases will be confirmed later tonight. All these cases are being recorded in the Orange Walk District, making it the country’s hotspot for the novel coronavirus which remained free of the virus for months. As it is right […]
Another repatriation flight landed today with over twenty persons including military officers and two diplomats. United Airlines landed at the Philip Goldson International Airport at around midday after applications were approved by authorities here. So far, one thousand and fifty-one applications have been made, nine hundred and eighteen have been approved and three hundred and […]
The Philip Goldson International Airport is scheduled to re-open for international travel on August fifteenth. This will allow visitors to enter Belize and jump-start the tourism industry and by extension support the recovery of the economy. There is the fear, however, that the arriving tourists will bring COVID-19. The Ministry of Health, in coordination with […]
Around the country, land disputes are brewing in villages. In the latest case, the Georgeville Village Council is up in arms that a green space reserved for a sporting complex has been parceled off and granted to persons who do not live in the village. The village chairlady says this is contrary to the Village […]
Minister of Education Patrick Faber has been fairly silent on the UB matter. Aside from government cutting the subvention for the national university amid the resulting economic crisis from COVID-19, there has been no official word from the Barrow administration on the standoff between the UB Faculty and Staff Union and the university’s senior management. […]
B.N.T.U. National President, Senator Elena Smith has come forward to say that a majority of schools across the country will not be ready to reopen their classrooms on August tenth, the date scheduled for the commencement of the 2020 academic year. Several reasons have been cited, including a lack of financial resources to assist teachers […]
Going back to Sunday’s leadership convention, a number of U.D.P. area representatives have also shifted their support from John Saldivar to Patrick Faber, including Cayo Central’s Rene Montero and Erwin Contreras. While Faber was defeated earlier this year by a margin of well over a hundred votes, he says that a minimum of sixty votes […]
After spending two nights in lockdown, four women are among a group of twenty-seven gang members who were carted away to the Belize City Prison this afternoon. The police dragnet extended to a total of ninety-nine gang members detained during a predawn raid on Tuesday morning on the Southside of the city. Police are seeking […]
And the man who led the anti-gang operation, Assistant Commissioner of Police Marco Vidal is already on the road to recovery after suffering a stroke on Tuesday evening, following the predawn raid in the Southside of the City. While ACP Vidal recuperates from the cerebro-vascular incident, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams and Deputy Commissioner Edward […]
After nine o’clock this morning, convicted murderer Danny Mason and four other accomplices in the beheading of Pastor Llewellyn Lucas arrived at the Supreme Court to learn their fate. But their appearance was brief and they were escorted back to the Belize Central Prison heavily guarded. Sentencing had been scheduled for today before Justice Antoinette […]
While on the matter of judges, there is word tonight that Prime Minister Dean Barrow will be proceeding to have Senior Counsel Lisa Shoman appointed to the post of judge of the Supreme Court. The Judicial and Legal Services Commission Council and the Leader of the Opposition, we are told, were consulted, as is required […]
Since last week we’ve been reporting on a growing dispute between the University of Belize Faculty and Staff Union and the University of Belize’s administration. The U.B.F.S.U. is only acknowledged as an association because its union certification hasn’t been published and handed over. So, they say that they are being shut out of the university’s […]
As you heard in that story, the President of the U.B.F.S.U. says they are being shut out due to the lack of certification to show its union status. We caught up with B.N.T.U. National President, Senator Elena Smith who joined the protestors today. We asked Smith for her thoughts on that matter and also got […]
A massive judgment with damages of one hundred and thirty-eight point seven million U.S. dollars was handed down earlier this week against businessman John Usher. He was embroiled in the Sanctuary Bay scam a few years ago, along with incarcerated real estate developer turned fraudster Andris Pukke, during which hundreds of millions of dollars were […]
