Just before three p.m. today, the body of a man was found inside his Toyota Four-Runner taxi off Fabers Road Extension on the south side of Belize City. Forty-eight-year-old Santiago Rodriguez, a taxi operator with the Pound Yard Taxi Cooperative, was executed; shot once to the back of the head inside the vehicle by a […]
There is a disturbing report of the death of a five-month-old baby in the south. The newborn boy died on March third, under rather mysterious circumstances. It is believed that baby Ricardo Quintero died after being administered the wrong medication at a private health center in Independence village. That Friday morning, the lifeless body of […]
Police confirmed today that the Orange Walk house of visa facilitator Barton Middleton was searched on Thursday morning as we reported in our newscast. The search came on the heels of Middleton’s appearance before the Senate on Wednesday where he indicated he would not say anything further in respect of missing visa foils to which […]
While employees of the Corozal Free Zone stayed away for a second day due to issues with management of C.E.O. Valentino Blanco, employees of all Social Security Board branch offices country-wide showed up to work today in their union t-shirts, as they did last week. They intended to send a message to higher ups that […]
A one-point-seven-five percent pay raise is on the table for employees. According to Singh, a lot of staff members have accumulated vacation days for which they expect to be paid. That results in increased money for the Board to pay out and it also affects your contributions to the Board which are the basis for […]
There’s also unrest among government employees at the Treasury Department, located within the Central Bank of Belize. Since this morning, News Five can confirm that the employees have been on a go-slow with a threat of further action by next week. This morning, a meeting was held with Financial Secretary Joseph Waight and Treasury officials. […]
Last week, a petty officer at the Belize National Coastguard, Randy King filed a complaint against his Commander, Admiral John Borland. King claimed that apart from verbally abusing him inside an office, the commander threatened his job and his life. The petty officer sought criminal charges against the Commander and had requested legal action against […]
The Ladyville jurisdiction of the Belize Police Department recorded its third murder since the start of the year. On Wednesday night, a seventeen-year-old student was gunned down on the Lord’s Bank Road, just a stone’s throw from where he lived in the village. Brandon Randy Bradley was riding home when he was shot to the […]
Just minutes before the murder of Brandon Bradley, there was an armed robbery at the 24/7 Gas Station located at the junction of the Phillip Goldson Highway and the Lord’s Bank Road in Ladyville. Surveillance video provided to the media by the proprietor of the establishment shows that around nine-thirty-nine p.m., a female gas attendant […]
Police in Belize City are still busy fighting crime, even though the gang element has for now been removed as a major source of worry. Sometime this afternoon, the downtown store of GO Wireless was targeted by two robbers on a motorcycle. Police report that the men got away with an undisclosed sum of cash. […]
The Corozal Commercial Free Zone has had its share of recent troubles with imports falling drastically and sales plummeting as well. Now comes word that with a new man at the helm, administrative staff protested by not showing up to work today because of unenumerated ‘issues’ with their boss. News Five understands that all activity […]
On the eve of the extended holiday weekend, opposing gangs met in the city to commit to a crime free weekend. The meeting was held at the Raccoon Police Station and attended by representatives of all gangs and top cop Chester Williams of the Eastern Division South as well as mediator Dianne Finnegan and Motivational […]
On Wednesday, Orange Walk businessman Barton Middleton flatly told the senators in the Immigration inquiry that he had nothing more to say in regard to questions of his alleged involvement in under-handed immigration deals with the eight missing visa foils taken from the Western Border Station in 2012. Middleton appeared before the Senate prior to […]
According to the latest statistics released by the Statistical Institute of Belize, though food prices are down slightly, Belizeans are feeling the pain of a higher cost of living due to hefty increases in prices in the transport category. The prices of goods and services regularly purchased by Belizean households were two point three percent […]
The Senate Special Select Committee resumed hearings in public today into the Auditor General’s report, calling three witnesses. One of the witnesses called today was Barton Middleton, the elusive Orange Walk businessman who previously caught a severe case of amnesia over his alleged role in facilitating visas for Chinese nationals, following a purported surgery for […]
Retired Immigration Officer Therese Chavarria has seen it all in thirty years at the Department, dating back to 1986. She took her leave last year after being transferred to Punta Gorda following assignments in the Passport Section and the head office in Belmopan, which was where she was at the height of the period documented […]
Chavarria spoke to the issue of shortcuts in the Department to benefit a chosen few, accomplished through bribery. In one instance, a prospective applicant for a passport, accompanied by a woman well-known to the Department, flunked his interview after his particulars were taken. He was not able to identify where he was born or even […]
As to how the passport was caused to be printed despite Chavarria’s investigations, it turns out that former Cabinet Minister Carlos Perdomo was the one pushing for it. He apparently appealed directly to Director Meighan who later belatedly informed Chavarria of the decision. As for the five hundred dollar bribe to look the other way, […]
At the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, fuel prices at the pump went up for a second time in less than a month. As the fiscal year kicked in, on April first, premium gasoline, regular and diesel went up on the heels of an announcement by the Prime Minister during his budget presentation that eighty […]
The prospect of government purchasing the Chon Saan Building in Belmopan is officially off the table, and Cabinet has given the green light to the Immigration Department to scout around once again for a new office space. Well, they aren’t looking very far. In fact, a pretty huge piece of unused real estate is being […]
As the Immigration hearings continued into the afternoon, simultaneously in Belmopan, a swearing-in ceremony took place, across the plaza, at the civic center. More than a hundred individuals became citizens of this country after taking the oath of allegiance. The new citizens heard from the Minister of State for Immigration, Beverly Williams. News Five’s Isani […]
The Belize National Teachers Union and the million dollar payout to non-striking teachers remain in the news tonight. The B.N.T.U. executive is saying that it is not buying the story by Deputy Prime Minister Patrick Faber that the U.D.P. did not have a hand in the run-up to the election of a new union president […]
Late last Thursday evening, upon emerging victorious as the new president-elect, Senator Elena Smith best described those moles as only she can. Having spotted the so-called U.D.P. operatives at the convention, Smith told reporters, “that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a duck.” While Palacio seconds […]
Minister of Education Patrick Faber told reporters on Monday that a final figure and number of teachers who would qualify for the honorarium being offered by the Ministry of Education for work done during the eleven-day strike period last October and the four days allocated for make up in January has not been determined. But […]
So how will Faber be able to access monies from government’s coffers? It’s a question or a notion that Palacio scoffs at, since he’s all too familiar with how that financial system works. Luke Palacio, President, Belize National Teachers Union “It is so unfortunate, those of us who are aware, have some knowledge of […]
