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House of Culture reopens on Saturday

On Saturday afternoon the public is invited to the official reopening of a building that, from its stately perch on the Belize City foreshore, has witnessed many of the major events in Belize’s colourful history. News 5’s Patrick Jones managed to beat the crowd with an advanced tour. Patrick Jones, Reporting Walking through Government House […]

Cemetery Road slasher gets 4 years

He attacked an innocent woman at her Cemetery Road home and took a bullet in the stomach from a neighbourhood Good Samaritan. Today, twenty-two year old Leo Grant was hit by another projectile, this one fired in Magistrate’s Court, where he received a four-year prison sentence for assault. Grant was also charged with burglary, but […]

Asst. Commissioner meets with community

Since taking over command of Eastern Division on August first, Assistant Commissioner Maureen Leslie has wasted no time in establishing her bona fides with the public she is sworn to serve and protect. Last night she met with seventy-five residents of the Kings Park area to hear their concerns about crime. This was the fourth […]

B.T.L. email woes leave screens empty

“We are fixing the problem.” That’s the word from Belize Telecommunications Limited as the company is faced with another outage of email service. According to Public Relations Manager Suzette Tillett, B.T.L. is in the process of installing anti-spam and anti-virus software. This, she says, is in response to customer’s complaints of too many unsolicited emails, […]

New software tracks social indicators

The United Nations Children’s Fund, UNICEF, today donated computers and special software to a number of agencies for use in monitoring the country’s progress on social issues. First created in 1994 by an N.G.O. in India, UNICEF has since adopted the ChildInfo computer program to monitor the situation of children worldwide. UNICEF Country Representative Nadya […]

Dinner/concert raises funds for Mercy Kitchen

It is definitely not your usual Friday night happy hour, but the evening of fine dining and music at the Biltmore Hotel will certainly be entertaining. Guatemalan concert Pianist Rolando Ortega and singer Nelita Castillo, who is also Belize’s Consul in Cancun, will pool their talents in a show to raise funds for the Mercy […]

Couples will waltz against cancer

If you were shut out of Friday’s serenade at the Biltmore, take heart, an event on Saturday night might be just your ticket. The Belize Cancer Society is sponsoring a unique fundraiser built around a dance competition. No, not salsa, meringue, tango or punta… we’re talking waltz. Lizbeth Castillo, Vice President, Belize Cancer Society “We […]

Nearly killed by diabetes, survivor helps others

It’s Diabetes Week, and while for years health officials have been telling Belizeans how to avoid and treat this pervasive disease, one look at our overweight and out of shape population tells us that there is a lot of work to be done. This week I’ve been looking at the relationship between diabetes and the […]

Man electrocuted at Ladyville work site

Three days of rain have been an irritant to many Belizeans, but today all that water was a key factor in a man’s death, as a worker toiling in a flooded ditch was electrocuted in Ladyville. Details are sketchy, but we are informed that Marlon Smith, an employee of Jones Cooling and Power, was installing […]

Child injured in Crooked Tree cattle stampede

All those contented cows wandering around the bucolic village of Crooked Tree look quaint and harmless… but today one family found out that looks can be dangerously deceiving. Clarita Russell, Mother “It went too far. My child could have been killed and we don’t need anyone to be killed now. It has to be stopped […]

Cop arrested for conning woman

On last night’s newscast we reported on a Belize City woman’s complaint that she was bilked out of fourteen hundred dollars by a cop who took her down payment for a boat and failed to deliver. Today police caught up with the missing constable and put him in bangles and a pickup truck in a […]

Businessman donates computers to police

In other police news, the department today received a computer upgrade for the press office and records keeping section. At brief ceremonies at the Raccoon Street station, Assistant Commissioner of Police Maureen Leslie this morning accepted the donation from General Manager of Fultec Systems Dean Fuller, who says the gift is part of his company’s […]

Cabinet: Chalillo Act will be repealed

It was described on our newscast of June thirteenth as “the worst piece of legislation ever passed by the House of Representatives”, and nothing done since then has caused the news editor to alter his opinion of the Macal River Hydroelectric Bill. With that in mind, we should be gleeful then that today Cabinet announced […]

B.E.L.: electric rates among lowest in Caribbean

In related news, Belize Electricity Limited today release figures showing that out of twenty Caribbean countries, Belize’s electricity rates are among the lowest, with only Trinidad and Jamaica charging consumers less. The release was meant to counter advertising put out by opponents of the Chalillo project that showed Belize having the highest rates in comparison […]

4 ships mark opening of high cruise season

If the streets of Belize City looked a bit more crowded than usual today, it was because there were four cruise ships in the harbour. That event, the first of many such days between now and next April, marks the unofficial opening of the high cruise season. This morning at the Tourism Village there were […]

Lotto winner finally claims his prize

This morning, Saturday’s Lotto Jackpot winner finally walked into the offices of Tropical Gaming Company to claim his prize money. Mark Carcamo of Corozal Town may not have wanted to talk about his good luck on television but he went ahead and played by the rules of the game. Carcamo, who works as a bartender […]

Court martial of Gurkhas opens in U.K.

The court martial of three British soldiers implicated in the May 2001 death of fourteen-year-old David Zabaneh opened today in the United Kingdom. The three Gurkhas, riflemen Durgahang Limbu, twenty-seven; Yograj Rai, twenty-three; and twenty-four year old Ramesh Rai were originally charged with murder, but today pled not guilty to reduced charges of violent disorder. […]

Central American police chiefs visit Belize

If crime takes a nosedive this week it may be due to the presence of the region’s top police brass. The two-day tour by the Central American Commission of Chiefs of Police is the first leg of a junket that includes Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Costa Rica. The focus of the trip […]

Cops look for shady police constable

A police officer is accused of pulling a costly whap on a Belize City woman. Forty-one year old Brenda Maheia told cops that last Thursday she negotiated with Police Constable Marvin Locke to purchase a boat from him for a price of two thousand, eight hundred dollars. Maheia alleges that she gave Locke fourteen hundred […]

Belize elected to U.N. body

It has been fourteen years since Belize last served on a major United Nations body, but today the country was elected to sit on ECOSOC, the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council. Belize earned one hundred and eighty of the one hundred and eighty-five votes to fill one of three open positions reserved for Latin America […]

Latest Lotto winner comes forward

We can’t give the name of the lucky winner, but tonight we’re a little closer to solving the mystery of Saturday’s fifty-two thousand, five hundred dollar Lotto jackpot. We have been informed by Tropical Gaming Company that the winning ticket holder has indeed come forward and will appear tomorrow to claim his or her cheque. […]

NOPCAN seeks funding to survive

It’s birth and rise to prominence in the world of Belizean NGOs coincided in the early 1990’s with the rapid growth of the nation’s privately owned media. With its articulate spokeswoman and righteous cause, the organisation now known as NOPCAN, the National Organisation for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, quickly gained a high […]

New play opens on Wednesday

With a new state of the art performing arts centre due to open early in the new year, there were concerns that Belize might not be able to generate enough entertainment for the high quality venue. Not to worry; as News 5’s Patrick Jones discovered, reports of the death of theatre in Belize have been […]

Gun toting Good Samaritan foils burglary

For the second time in less than a week, a citizen armed with a licensed handgun has stepped forward to thwart a crime. The latest incident involving a gun toting Good Samaritan occurred on Friday in Belize City. Lorraine Broaster, Victim of Break-in “He violated my privacy, and at the early, early, early hours of […]

Two prohibited weapons confiscated

In other police news, two very lethal weapons have been taken off the streets. On Friday night in Belize City a young man fled on seeing a police patrol and was seen throwing an object away. It turned out to be a Tech nine automatic with eight bullets. Eighteen-year-old Emerson Young of Mahogany Street has […]