An early morning fire in Belize City on Monday has left several persons homeless. Sometime around six o’clock, personnel from the National Fire Service were called out to Handyside Street where they met a towering inferno. According to a resident who lived in one of three houses destroyed during the blaze, he was alerted by […]
Alan Gotoy, who has lived in one of the homes since childhood, told News Five today that there was very little he could have done to save his belongings. Everything he owned was destroyed by fire. Alan Gotoy, Fire Victim “I was sleeping, alright, and the girl that stayed next door with me called […]
Twenty-five-year-old Ervin Franklyn was stabbed and killed in Lord’s Bank Village over the weekend. The fatal incident happened sometime around two o‘clock on Saturday morning. According to Ladyville police, they responded to an area off Edwin Park Street where they saw the young man suffering from multiple stab wounds to various parts of the body, […]
A B.D.F. soldier was killed over the weekend in Orange Walk Town. By all accounts, Rafael Rivas was socializing at Panda’s Bar next to the Central Park when he got into an altercation which resulted in him being viciously stabbed. Today, Superintendent Selvyn Tillett told us via phone that officers got the call at about […]
A terrible traffic accident on the Placencia road early this morning claimed the life of nineteen-year-old Kyria Krystelle Campos, mother of three-month-old twins. News Five has confirmed that at around one forty this morning, twenty-year-old Giancarlo Vega was driving a PT Cruiser, heading home to Placencia from Orange Walk when he lost control of the […]
As promised, News Five has been taking you out on the campaign trail where candidates from the two mass parties, the newly formed Belize Progressive Party and independents are working to get your vote on November fourth. Tonight, we take you to Orange Walk Central, the stronghold of the PUP’s John Briceno for more than […]
Briceño is confident of victory at the polls, and as a veteran of consecutive successful battles there is some justification for that confidence. Still, there are issues which certainly must come up on the campaign trail…like the G-eleven, for example. That body of Standard Bearers agitated for change within the P.U.P. before coming back into […]
Election fever has brought with it a flurry of activities, including a ramping up of door-to-door campaigning by the mass parties, as well as their respective candidates. At the elections and Boundaries offices, public officers are reportedly burning the midnight oil tightening up all the nuts and bolts that make the election machinery run smoothly. […]
That female officer, we are told, has recorded a statement with Benque Viejo Police. Meanwhile, in Belize City, a similar incident occurred two hours earlier. According to the Chief Elections Officer, they also came under attack sometime around eight o’clock when their Lumber Yard office was reportedly egged. She also claims that a suspected grenade […]
Where the Ministry of Finance is concerned, the buck stops at Financial Secretary Joe Waight. So when we got the opportunity on Thursday, we asked him about a variety of issues including the status of Petrocaribe monies. The Fin Sec revealed that three hundred million has been spent, and only forty million is left. […]
Waight also spoke on the matter of the settlement for B.T.L….particularly the arbitration ruling. The PM has said that it was his hope that the sixty million dollars paid based on the Nera evaluation remains as such. The Financial Secretary says that the arbitration decision is due within the next three months, and it is […]
And since we had the Fin Sec there, we also asked about the legal fees paid for certain select attorneys including the brother of the Prime Minister. Waight didn’t have the details, but did reveal with fees have been sectioned out between Denys Barrow and the PM’s own law firm, Barrow and Company. Joseph […]
COLA, for some time, has been calling for the head of the Foreign Minister Wilfred “Sedi” Elrington. Their campaign started when an effigy of the Minister was burnt in front of the offices of the O.A.S. off Coney Drive. The advocacy organization has consistently said that Elrington has not represented the best interests of Belize. […]
Gabriel Salazar has beaten a third murder charge, the latest one from the Court of Appeal this week. On July fifteenth, 2013, more than two years ago, Salazar was acquitted of the murder of Francis Johnston, a businessman and store owner of Big Falls, Punta Gorda. Johnston was fatally shot and killed during a robbery […]
Today, members of the private and public sectors converged on the city for the Prime Minister’s business forum at the Biltmore Plaza. We’ll have a comprehensive look at that event in a later newscast. But tonight, we have what the Prime Minister Dean Barrow says was his last media interview before elections. There are a […]
Barrow says that in the years since the nationalization, G.O.B. and the people have collected eighty million dollars in dividends, so we should all be happy to relieve B.T.L. of the additional burden. Prime Minister Dean Barrow “They make a lot of money which is shared in terms of dividends, in terms of the […]
The PM also spoke on the operation of the Public Accounts Committee…which actually isn’t operational. Months ago there was a push for the inclusion of the social partners in the PAC, to the extent that neither the government nor the opposition would form a majority. That never panned out because the government refused to accept […]
That stance doesn’t go down well with PAC Chairman Julius Espat. He told News Five today that the reason the Public Accounts Committee doesn’t work, and hasn’t for a long time is because the government is a majority on that committee, and it is over those ministers that the PAC is designed to provide oversight. […]
Governments of the P.U.P. and the U.D.P. have both been accused, rightly or wrongly, of rampant corruption and unchecked abuse of public monies. For that reason, many believe that this next general election will hinge largely on which party is willing to limit its own power and allow for real oversight. The body which theoretically […]
We’re not sure what that means where the fate of the Integrity Commission is concerned under this administration. As to PAC, well…that’s not going to happen, a fact for which the PM, interestingly, blames the Opposition. Reporter “If that is the situation, does that mean that you will not have an Integrity Commission since […]
We note that all that’s being said on all these issues is subject to a decision which will be made on November fourth. Which brings us to Petrocaribe. Will those many millions at the U.D.P.’s disposal be used to affect the result at the polls? According to Prime Minister Dean Barrow….while there is no direct […]
If you weren’t looking for it, you probably wouldn’t have seen it; but at three p.m. today employees in the Social Security Board offices countrywide walked out. We are informed that they told their supervisors that they were not feeling well and left, quietly and without any fanfare. The employees are listed under essential services […]
Today the People’s United Party launched its Manifesto on Health at Independence Hall in Belize City. The P.U.P., on an intensive run to elections in less than a month, says it plans to revitalize and rescue a health system in crisis after almost eight years of U.D.P. neglect, incompetence, inefficiency and corruption. Mike Rudon was […]
While health is a major platform of the Party, Fonseca says that there are other core issues which his party is addressing – issues which he feels voters will be looking at when they go to the polls on November fourth. Francis Fonseca, PUP Leader “People are very concerned about the economy there is […]
Fonseca also gave us a sneak peek into the governance platform of the party which will be launched soon. That plan will speak to issues like the thirteenth senator and the Integrity Commission. That’s important, he says, because that is what the people of Belize are demanding from their leaders. Francis Fonseca, P.U.P. Leader […]
