But back to Orange Walk…The murder of fifty-one-year-old Miguel Medina was the start of a rash of violence in that municipality. Just after midday on New Year’s Day, police were called to the residence of Orlando Baiza on Baker’s Street in Orange Walk town. Baiza had reportedly took out his licensed firearm and fired a […]
There was also a second stabbing incident in Orange Walk Town; it occurred in the wee hours of this morning. Three young men were stabbed at a wedding reception around twelve-twenty-three a.m. and rushed to the Northern Regional Hospital. Twenty-two year old Levy Bennett was stabbed once to the center of his chest and twice […]
While the police started 2015 with a homicide in Teakettle Village, the National Fire Service also had its hands full for the start of the New Year. There were three fires – in Orange Walk, Benque Viejo Del Carmen and Punta Gorda; two were cases of arson. The most recent occurred this morning, in Orange […]
The first fire, which investigators have revealed had a similar M.O. as that of the Orange Walk inferno, occurred in Punta Gorda. Firefighters responded to a fire at a concrete house located on Front Street in that southern town. After the blaze was extinguished, investigation would reveal that the house belonging to Victoria Ogaldez, who […]
The fire in Punta Gorda was around four-thirty on Thursday morning. And seven hours later, there would be yet another fire – this time on Elizabeth Street in Benque Viejo del Carmen. The wooden house belonging to Orfelina Valdez was gutted by the blaze, which also damaged an adjacent house belonging to Leticia Vaca. Valdez’s […]
The membership of the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers Association is scheduled to convene a special meeting on Sunday in Orange Walk where a vote on the start of the crop season will be taken. Once the result of the exercise is favorable work can get underway at Tower Hill by next week. That, however, depends […]
The choices, according to Carballo, are rather straightforward. In essence, the committee of management for B.S.C.F.A. can be instructed to move ahead with the finalization of the agreement which can be ratified as early as Monday. The C.F.O. also reiterated that the crop cannot be opened without first having a commercial agreement in place. […]
Carballo says the consequence of a delayed crop, as well as the indefinite timeframe the process of litigation may take can certainly jeopardize the potential harvest which is estimated to be roughly one point three-five million tons of cane. Via Phone: Belizario Carballo, Chief Financial Officer, B.S.I. “In terms of the impact that it […]
On Sunday cane-farmers will meet in Corozal to decide the fate of the 2014-2015 sugar-cane crop. Well actually, it’ll be the 2015 crop since 2014 is pretty much done. We’ve heard from the B.S.C.F.A….both factions…and regardless of what happens on Sunday, not everyone in that Association is going to be pleased. But where Government is […]
Despite all the complications besieging the industry at this point, all parties can agree on one thing – they need the crop to get started. But they disagree on how that should happen. The more militant faction of the B.S.C.F.A., supported by the N.T.U.C.B., says that the government, through the SICB, can declare a start […]
And so, as we end off the year, that is where we are in the sugar industry. Throughout the latter months of the year we’ve brought you every aspect of the tangled story from ASR/B.S.I., the B.S.C.F.A. and the government. And we end our coverage of this issue for 2014 with an interview done with […]
On Tuesday night, we aired New Year’s messages from Prime Minister Dean Barrow and Leader of the Opposition, Francis Fonseca. Both leaders spoke of positive strides and looked to a successful future for the country. According to P.M. Barrow, the economy grew in the first three-quarters by four point two percent exceeding the forecast of […]
Sunday will be a pivotal day in the future of this year’s sugar-cane crop. This morning the B.S.C.F.A. met in heated session, and agreed to go back to cane-farmers on that day. The plan is to break down the proposed agreement to farmers in detail, and there are two possible outcomes – one, a majority […]
And if you thought the situation in the sugar cane industry was complicated, an announcement late this evening makes that an understatement. At around five today Audrey Matura Shepherd, flanked by cane farmer Lucilo Teck and Finance committee chairman Javier Keme, broke the news that they had filed an application for mandamus in the court. […]
And while the application for the order of mandamus is one thing, there’s also the matter of the application for an interim injunction to prevent the B.S.C.F.A. from signing any agreement with ASR/B.S.I. The court has set Friday as the date for a hearing on that injunction. But the B.S.C.F.A. has agreed to go to […]
On Monday, firebrand attorney Audrey Matura-Shepherd filed an injunction to stop the signing of an agreement between the two parties. But tonight, where does she fit into the equation? As you’ve noted, there are two distinct factions in the B.S.C.F.A. – one which wants to sign now, and one which doesn’t. The group which wants […]
And our question for tonight is: Do you believe farmers should start sugar crop without an agreement with ASR/B.S.I.? Send your comments and responses using your SMART phones to 8686 or post your vote on our e-poll at channel5belize.com. You can also send an email with your comments to questions@channel5belize.com.
The 2015 Cayo North bye-election is less than a week away and candidates for both major parties are hitting the pavement during the final days of a rather brief political campaign. The six thousand plus voters will vote at Sacred Heart School and in Bullet Tree on January fifth immediately after the New Year’s celebrations. […]
P.U.P. Secretary General and former Chief Elections Officer, Myrtle Palacio, says Bruce’s untimely transfer is questionable since it precedes very closely the upcoming bye-election. The move, she says, is contrary to good governance and only serves to further politicize the election process. Myrtle Palacio, Former Chief Elections Officer “We find it very suspicious, as […]
The constant story for this year remained about murder, which according to the statistics, continued on a constant upward trend in 2014. Tonight, there is one more to add and it happened in southern Belize. On Saturday, a minor made a gruesome discovery in a house in the Lakeland Area of Dangriga, where the body […]
In Belize City, just after midday today, police visited a house on Eve Street in the vicinity of the Ice Cream Shoppe. In the upper flat of the concrete and wooden structure, the decomposing body of Walter Humberto Melendez was discovered face up on his bed. The Guatemalan construction worker had been living alone and […]
Tonight, the outspoken chairman of the Stann Creek Fishermen Association, Mark McKenzie, stands accused of embezzling thousands of dollars from an associate in what is being described as an unsuccessful fisheries venture. According to NeNe Abraham, a Nigerian businesswoman, she was approached in early November to partner with McKenzie as an investor in Carib Prince, […]
The New Year may yet turn out to be a good one for cane-farmers in the north, as there is word tonight that the signing of the agreement is likely, sooner rather than later. It’s been a complicated back and forth between the B.S.C.F.A. and ASR/B.S.I., but last word to News Five is that the […]
Like we said, the industry and players are volatile. That interview with Chairman Cansino was done this afternoon, and about an hour after, we got word that parties had filed for an interim injunction to halt the signing of the agreement. It gets pretty complicated, but in a nutshell, cane-farmer Lucilo Teck is claiming that […]
Four of the eighteen directors under the B.S.C.F.A. signed a petition last week to go back to the general assembly. They were outvoted by the majority. So now those directors, and the cane-farmers who support them, made the decision to take the fight into another arena. They feel that the farmers have not benefitted from […]
