The tiny village on the Old Northern Highway hit the headlines last week when media reports highlighted the death of a child due to malnutrition. This week News Five’s Jacqueline Woods took a trip up the road to Santa Martha to see the situation for herself… and what she found is a type of poverty […]
His name is synonymous with rebellion, but tonight Odinga Lumumba, the man who led the civil unrest against the 1981 Heads of Agreement, is dead. Lumumba, born Wilhelm Buller in Dangriga in 1942, suffered a stroke several weeks ago and died Saturday at the K.H.M.H. He was a political activist, both in Belize and his […]
Belize Water Services received some good news today, courtesy of the Court of Appeal. That body reversed a ruling of Chief Justice Abdulai Conteh who on February second issued an interim injunction barring B.W.S. from enforcing a clause in its contract with Government calling for the settlement of disputes by an outside arbitrator. The controversy […]
And in a ruling just issued, the Court of Appeal has upheld the conviction and sentencing of Mark Vega, Omar Vellos, and Luis Urbina. The three had been successfully prosecuted for rape, kidnapping and commission of an unnatural crime stemming from a series of incidents in Corozal and Orange Walk in June of 2002. Their […]
It may have occurred on Friday, but the reverberations from the bizarre conclusion of the House meeting are still being felt. That legislative session ended in chaos, featuring loud verbal protests and a plastic cup of water being flung to the floor by the Leader of the Opposition. The problems began when representative for Mesopotamia, […]
This morning a calm but obviously seething Barrow told News Five that while the prospect of a new speaker being appointed is highly unlikely given the P.U.P.’s majority in the House, his United Democratic Party will launch a public relations campaign against Zabaneh’s “acts of lunacy”. Barrow contends that there are no Standing Orders–standing orders […]
While he may be launching a campaign against the Speaker, Opposition Leader Barrow is more focussed on his party’s campaign to form the next government. Over the weekend, the U.D.P. held conventions in two constituencies: Collet and Cayo North. While the incumbent Patrick Faber’s affair in Collet was an endorsement event, the results in Cayo […]
Good evening, I?m James Adderley with this fresh dish of Sports Monday. Game one of the Regent?s Cup three-game championship series got off to a roaring start yesterday inside the People?s Stadium where Juventus of Orange Walk played host to the defending champion, Sagitun of Independence. The visitors managed to rouse Charlie Slusher in the […]
It came as no surprise that today at the sitting of the House of Representatives, the Musa administration announced tax increases for locally produced beer, cigarettes, and rum, as well as rate hikes in Stamp Duties for certain land transactions. And with tensions running high over the state of the country’s finances, Belmopan had prepared […]
The first member of the House to rise and object to the B.T.L. motion was in fact, not the Leader of the Opposition, but rather P.U.P. backbencher and representative for the Albert constituency, Mark Espat. First, Espat complained that he had only been given a few hours to review the motion… but that time proved […]
In his presentation to the House, Leader of the Opposition Dean Barrow spoke of the about face the Musa administration appeared to be taking regarding Michael Ashcroft and his Ecom. Dean Barrow, Leader of the Opposition ?Can the Prime Minister, Madam Speaker, seriously think that it is okay to come to us today and without […]
The only member to speak on the amendments to the brewery act was the representative for Lake Independence, Cordel Hyde, who maintained that the taxes should be increased to a much higher level than the government proposed today. Cordel Hyde, Area Rep., Lake Independence ?Raise the excise tax on beer to twelve dollars, tax the […]
Another hot issue that has been bubbling on the streets of Belize City this week were allegations that the Government of Belize had done business transactions on the derivatives market. As we understand it, what G.O.B. did was to use millions of U.S. dollars it borrowed from Solomon Smith and Barney and convert it to […]
Viewers may recall that in September of 2004, Prime Minister Said Musa and Leader of the Opposition Dean Barrow both endorsed the National Plan of Action for Children and Adolescents 2004-2015. Today, the N.C.F.C. hosted a social sector coordination meeting to discuss how the N.P.A. will be put into effect over the next five years. […]
A man who was given twenty years for attacking his spouse with a machete in 2003 had part of his sentence lifted by the Court of Appeal today. Thirty-year-old Kenrick Nunez contended that the sentence handed down by Justice Troadio Gonzalez in October of last year was excessive. Nunez had been given ten years for […]
A former member of the B.D.F. who was convicted of raping a ten-year-old girl, escaping from prison and fleeing to the United States, has appealed his conviction. Jason Flores, who was sentenced to ten years in jail by Justice Simeon Sampson in 2004 appeared before the Court of Appeal today and argued he did not […]
The Prevention of HIV/AIDS among Youth in Especially Difficult Circumstances is an initiative that seeks to do just that, stop the spread of the disease among Belize’s most vulnerable population. These include commercial sex workers, adolescents, out of school young people, homosexuals, and prisoners. But how much progress has been made towards that goal? A […]
A new anthology of Belizean literature featuring fourteen women writers was launched today by Cubola Productions. “Memories, Dreams and Nightmares, Volume 2” is a collection of fourteen short stories and includes such established writers as Zee Edgell, Kathy Esquivel, Zoila Ellis, and Myrna Manzanares as well as introduces the work of up and coming new […]
At Friday’s House meeting the government, under the terms of the new Finance and Audit Act, will disclose its plans to sell its thirty-seven point five percent stake in B.T.L. It is understood that a portion of those shares will be sold to Michael Ashcroft for U.S. currency and a portion will be made available […]
The Commission of Inquiry into the Development Finance Corporation appears to be making some progress at last. The Chairman of the Commission, David Price, announced today that they have begun to receive the documents and records it requested from Troy Gabb, Chief Executive Officer of the D.F.C. Price says once the relevant documents have been […]
Tonight Belize City police are actively seeking a suspect they believe can assist in their investigation of the murder of a taxi driver early Wednesday morning. According to authorities, around ten o’clock Wednesday night, an anonymous tip led officers to an area near Neal’s Pen Road where they discovered the grey Chevy Caprice that the […]
A Caye Caulker resident has been remanded to jail after being accused of biting off a piece of another man’s finger. Water taxi employee Marlon Arnold, otherwise known as “Popcorn”, appeared before Magistrate Dorothy Flowers on Wednesday and was charged with maim. He was unable to meet the five thousand dollar bail and was sent […]
Two Belize City robbers who stole an empty knapsack got some hefty jail time for their trouble today in Belize City Magistrate’s Court. Chief Magistrate Herbert Lord sentenced eighteen-year-old Kirk Anderson of Faber’s Road to six years in prison for robbery and fined him ten thousand dollars for possession of an unlicensed firearm and ten […]
The Belize Port Authority will be cracking down on unregistered, unlicensed boats and commercial pilots who do not have a captain’s license, beginning July first. It is an attempt to reinforce laws already on the books, which are designed not only to help keep track of boats, but to increase passenger safety. News Five spoke […]
The question of hunting whales will probably never dominate any local talk shows, after all, the only whales we have in Belize are actually sharks. But when it comes to whether or not whales should be hunted in the rest of the world, Belize does have a say. After severe drops in the number of […]
