A new fiscal year will be ushered in on Saturday, minus the celebration that usually accompanies the ringing in of a new calendar year. In fact, the 2017 financial calendar is one of austerity, with budgetary cutbacks in various government departments. One particular office that won’t be singing the Auld Lange Syne come April first […]
The Fisheries Department is tightening up on persons who violate fisheries regulations. A group of fishermen from Ranchito, Copper Bank and San Joaquin villages up north were taken to court this morning for possession of undersized conch found in their possession. Their arraignment lasted two hours and they all took a guilty plea before Magistrate […]
Is the Guatemalan Government stepping up its aggressive campaign against Belize, even before a referendum to take the unfounded territorial claim to the I.C.J. is held? Reports surfaced today that the Guatemalan government proposes to annex the Sarstoon Island as part of Guatemalan territory. The report states that the Government of Guatemala is preparing to […]
A series of murders over the weekend has shocked a nation long since used to hearing about wanton, senseless violence. The past weekend was grim with bloodshed in the Belize, Cayo and Stann Creek Districts. Eight persons were murdered, setting a new record for the number of persons killed in less than two days. Of […]
The senseless string of murders in the city, however, started early on Saturday morning in an area heavily-trafficked. Just after two o’clock, an elderly resident accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old were murdered execution-style not far from Cinderalla Plaza and near the popular Chon Saan Palace restaurant. A single gunman is said to have carried out the […]
Kelly Street is located off a busy intersection in the city; it was the venue of yet another murder in broad daylight on Saturday afternoon. Randy Green, who was recently freed of the 2011 of young Joshua Abraham, was executed at three-thirty in the afternoon while he sat inside a carpentry shop. But was Green’s […]
As the weekend came to a close, the fifth murder for the Old Capital occurred on Jones Street where a forty-year-old was gunned down in front of his gate. Selvin Bahadur was executed, shot to the forehead at the same spot his younger brother had been murdered months ago. News Five’s Isani Cayetano reports. […]
Aside from the five murders in Belize City, there were two others in Santa Cruz, Stann Creek and one in Cristo Rey, Cayo District. In the south, Guatemalan farmer Roberto De Leon was robbed and beaten to death after delivering oranges at the factory in Pomona. And then this morning, also in Santa Cruz, Austin […]
On Friday evening, a fire destroyed four buildings in the congested Majestic Alley including the signature “long barracks,” which has eight units and houses as many as thirty people. When all the numbers were tallied, eighteen families were left homeless and majority lost everything they owned. While a number of issues contributed to the fast […]
So, what caused the fire that wiped out the Barracks and left more than fifty people without a roof over their heads? There is plenty speculation as to what caused the fire, but today the National Fire Service says there are no answers; that it is likely that they may never know what caused the […]
More than ten families are without homes tonight after a fire took down their houses and properties in the Majestic Alley in Belize City late this afternoon. At news time reports are that up to fourteen families may have been displaced as the inferno blazed for at least two hours before it was brought under […]
The budget debate proceeded today at the House in Belmopan. We will have all the highlights coming up, but we go to the Supreme Court which this morning delivered a stunning judgement in a murder case. Calaney Flowers was accused of deliberately ramming the motorcycle of her former boyfriend Lyndon Morrison and killing him in […]
Turning to the Budget Debate in the House of Representatives this morning…. After being seemingly overwhelmed and nettled by the force and ferocity of the Opposition People’s United Party’s response on the opening day of the debate, the governing United Democratic Party’s speakers tempered their responses. They focused on what people want to see – […]
But the Opposition P.U.P. proved intractable, convinced that two Belizes exist and that they are further apart than ever before. Leading off the Budget Debate this morning, former Opposition Leader Francis Fonseca said the United Democratic Party has been exposed on all fronts and that they have no record to show for their time in […]
Later, it was the turn of Albert area representative and Minister of State for Investment, Trade and Commerce, Tracey Taegar-Panton, to deliver a presentation marked mostly by technical numbers about the work her Ministry has done and plans to do in the coming year. According to Taegar-Panton, Belize did not lack for investment in the […]
First-term area representative for Caribbean Shores, Kareem Musa, has become a noted debater in the House of Representatives. Today’s Budget presentation was no different as he touched on multiple topics while going through what the Budget means for his constituents and Belize generally. The younger Musa went after Prime Minister Dean Barrow as cold, callous, […]
In his usual inimitable style, Mesopotamia area representative Michael Finnegan hit back at the Opposition’s defense of the loans they made under their administration which have become the Superbond. Referencing an old Supreme Court case, Finnegan described the other side as being “giddy-a-giddy” – or crazy for power – and hoping the Belizean people will […]
The House of Representatives met in Belmopan today with passions running high for the second reading of the General Revenue and Appropriation Bill, otherwise known as the Budget, which is typically debated for two days. Though slightly less antagonistic than usual, members of the lower chamber held nothing back, especially the Opposition, which has been […]
If the Leader of the Opposition’s statements were broad and presented the macro picture of the so dubbed Barrow’s bogus budget, then his deputy, Lake Independence’s Cordel Hyde, was more surgical and precise. Hyde leads a division where many feel the day-to-day effects of Belize’s economic malaise, and he led off the P.U.P.’s response by […]
After castigating the Government for not providing less vague assurances about how it will address the repayment of the Superbond and Belize’s other debts, Hyde turned his attention to the contemplation of the selling of shares in the nationalized utility companies Belize Electricity Limited and Belize Telemedia Limited to the Social Security Board. S.S.B. is […]
Hyde also went after what he called cuts to significant portions of the “pro-poor” programs initiated by the Barrow administration, including the food pantry, school feeding program and Apprenticeship Training. The figures, he claimed, were drastically slashed for no apparent reason. But Minister of Education Patrick Faber rose later in reply to say that with […]
Former Prime Minister Said Musa stood to make his contribution to the debate this afternoon. As he said at the outset, he wanted to defend his Government’s decision to make the loans that would come to form the Superbond, and disprove the current administration’s claims that there is nothing to show for the one point […]
“It is just like you are on a piece of land all your life, but you are a squatter. You can’t do anything with that land until you get it surveyed and get the survey agreed upon and you have a title to it.” This is how Minister of Foreign Affairs Wilfred Elrington described Belize’s […]
Bahamians Ron Knowles and Kelvin Leach were back in court today where a second round of litigation concluded this afternoon in an appeal filed by the Government of Belize. The principals of the now defunct Titan International Securities were awarded almost nine million dollars in damages after it was determined that a raid on their […]
More body parts were found this morning in the Belize River in Blackman Eddy, Cayo District. On Tuesday afternoon, the hands and feet of a man were found stuffed in a sack. Around eight o’clock this morning, a search party found a torso also in a sack submerged in the water about three hundred feet […]
