And tonight’s question is: Do you support the cabinet decision for the brother of the D.P.M. to be the sole exporter of confiscated rosewood? Yes or no. 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 […]
At the last O.A.S. General Assembly in Bolivia and at a meeting in February in Washington, Guatemala presented a video that annexed Belize to Guatemala. Belize Ambassador to the O.A.S. Nestor Mendez protested the video for the offensive image. The next General Assembly is to be held in Antigua, Guatemala on June sixth and the […]
Another date that is on the collective minds of the two countries is October sixth, the scheduled date for a dual referendum on whether or not the dispute should be forwarded to the International Court of Justice. Reports from Guatemala’s Prensa Libre newspaper have quoted both President Otto Perez Molina and Foreign Minister Fernando Carrera […]
Forestry Minister Lisel Alamilla took the hot seat this morning to explain the recent rosewood scandal. It includes a decision by Cabinet to declare an amnesty for those in possession of the precious hardwood, and to approve the sale and export of rosewood with government splitting the profits from sales. We’ll have that explanation in […]
And from the rosewood which was under government lock and key, to all those countless board feet which were in hiding because of the moratorium and are now coming to light under amnesty. With the decision becoming public while Minister Alamilla was out of the country, many speculated that it was a case of ‘while […]
The Maya Leaders Alliance and the Toledo Alcalde’s Association have issued a joint statement saying that they are deeply disturbed and utterly outraged by the actions of government. Spokesperson of the Maya Leaders Alliance, Cristina Coc, told News five that it was an insult and a slap in the face of the Maya people. Well […]
The second highest ranking man in the Organization of American States is visiting. Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin is in Belize regarding relations among Belize, Guatemala and the O.A.S. Ramdin will oversee the upcoming General Assembly that will be held in Antigua, Guatemala from the fourth to the sixth of June. That holds significance for […]
The Caribbean is also weighing in on the territorial dispute. An article in the Trinidad Express calls on CARICOM and the Organization of American States to step into the fray to defuse political tension between Belize and Guatemala—political tension which has resulted, according to the author, from Guatemala’s surprisingly hostile act to circulate a new […]
The most recent homicide takes us south to Dangriga where a taxi driver was shot on Sunday afternoon. Twenty-three year old Charles Ariola was blasted on the chest with a nine millimeter pistol; he died minutes later at the Southern Regional Hospital. Two men and a minor with whom Ariola was engaged in an argument […]
There has not been a murder since April third when police constable Bertchel Ramirez was executed in Roaring Creek…but it got deadly in San Pedro on Thursday night. The community today is reeling from the murder of Rastafarian woodcarver, Eugene Lockwood also known as Ras Cobra, who was shot to death by masked men who […]
There was another violent incident at La Isla Bonita on Thursday night in which a teenager was injured and transported to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in a serious condition. Seventeen year old Jason Chan, a construction worker and resident of Ambergris Caye, was stabbed shortly before one-thirty this morning on Barrier Reef Drive. According […]
Forest Minister Lisel Alamilla returned to the country on Thursday from her trip to Turkey, but up to news-time there has been no official word from her Ministry on the controversial sale of harvested rosewood. But there is plenty of word coming in from other areas as public outrage continues to grow since the two-week […]
The joint release from the MLA and the TAA also states that, “the decision by government ranks among the worst of the many recent improprieties and injustices surrounding the rosewood and larger logging industry, and they call government’s conduct intolerable.” But notwithstanding that, the Mayan leaders are still committing their assistance with the possible fallout […]
There is big news to report tonight in anti-narcotics efforts. Law enforcement officers can proudly brag about locating and destroying drugs worth twelve and a half million dollars. That’s the estimated street value of the marijuana which was uprooted and burned earlier this week. A unit of the Belize Police Department with the support of […]
Basketball and soccer are the preeminent sports that can turn foes to friends for the length of a game and the celebration of a win. But there are other sports that don’t have national support. Cricket is celebrated in the Caribbean, but it doesn’t get the love afforded to basketball and soccer in Belize. Perhaps […]
It made the headlines on February fifteenth, when Good Samaritan Wallace Donald Matura was shot multiple times in Belize City while trying to intervene when somebody was harassing a child. Against all odds, Matura survived the initial assault, but succumbed to complications arising from his injuries nearly six weeks, on March twenty-seventh. Police say that […]
Shipments of Rosewood, which fetches top dollar in mainland China, were blocked by a moratorium by the Ministry of Forest, Fisheries and Sustainable Development. But on Monday, cameras caught the removal of flitches from the Forest Department in the Capital. Both the Minister, Lisel Alamilla and the Chief Forest Officer, Wilbur Sabido, are out of […]
So, finally there is an explanation of an official sort; even if delivered in a less than official fashion. But there are glaring points which the Minister of National Security brushed aside during his regularly scheduled appearance on the “Fus Ting Da Mawnin” show. In March, rosewood found in Belize and the rest of the […]
The rosewood crisis festered until February 2012, when the moratorium was introduced. Up to that time, one of the main exporters of timber, and a name frequently associated with illicit harvesting of rosewood, is Kambokin Enterprises Limited. That company is registered in Corozal, and when News Five went digging for answers, we found out that […]
Hopefully, rosewood extraction will not cause decades of dialogues and explanations as Guatemala’s unfounded claim against Belize. For years negotiations and discussions have failed. Earlier in the year, while both countries should have been preparing for an October sixth referendum on whether or not to forward the claim to the International Court of Justice, Guatemala […]
Guatemala’s President Otto Perez Molina is making it abundantly clear that if Belize does not change the October sixth referendum date, Guatemala will not proceed to hold the referendum. The president made the statement on Wednesday adding that he was not prepared to waste two hundred and sixty million quetzals or thirty-two million U.S. dollars […]
As we reported in Wednesday’s newscast, Minister of National Security John Saldivar has filed a lawsuit against Belmopan’s Plus TV and Patrick Andrews for libel and defamation. The claim arises from remarks, allegedly slanderous, that were made by Andrews during an installment of the station’s Rise and Shine morning show in late 2012. The comments, […]
Fifty thousand dollars is a lot to spend on turkey but Saldivar stands by his claim that he was defamed. Plus TV’s Managing Director Luis Wade, in an interview with News Five on Wednesday, said that he had been asked by Saldivar repeatedly to have Andrews removed as co-host of the talk show along the […]
Rosewood is once again in the media spotlight; that is, confiscated or harvested rosewood. The much sought after timber first got all this attention because millions of dollars worth of its flitches were seized from illegal loggers even when a moratorium was in place. Now, ironically, it is getting all this attention because government is […]
But while government is ominously silent on the rosewood issue, public outrage has been fast and furious and very loud. This morning on the airwaves, Belizeans called the decision to return the illegally harvested rosewood shameful and disgraceful. Today, News Five spoke to Toledo activist Wil Maheia, who has been involved in the fight to […]
