With consistently gaudy figures for arrivals and awards here, there and everywhere, Belize’s tourism industry has much to smile about. This past Saturday at the Princess Hotel, the top service providers were honored at the fifteenth annual Belize Tourism Board’s national tourism awards. The selected theme was “Rainforest Meets Reef.” Tourism Minister Manuel Heredia Junior […]
The Christian youth organization Belize Camping Experience annually raises funds for its programs through a novel means. They recruit rural farmers to plant and nurture crops of corn, rice and in past years, soybeans. At the time of harvest, youths from disadvantaged areas, especially in Belize City, take a day trip to the site and […]
The Almendarez family has been hit by a string of tragedies; it is heartbreaking to lose a family member to the ongoing urban gun violence but to lose three, the grief is debilitating. Jason Almendarez was the first to be killed on October eleventh and this weekend, Shaqwuan Almendarez, his older brother was murdered in […]
Police say that eighty-two-year-old Ricardo Vasquez was murdered. On Friday we reported that Vasquez had succumbed after spending almost a week in the Intensive Care Unit of the K.H.M.H. He was found beaten up on the corner of Water Lane and West Street on October fourteenth. Up to then, it was not clear what happened […]
Friday’s revelation that Commissioner of Police Allen Whylie failed a lie detector test apparently administered through U.S. authorities sometime around 2008 has raised eyebrows. Whylie was one of eight senior cops revealed to have shown significant reactions to particular questions, which is taken as evidence of untruthfulness. In his case, Whylie displayed significant reactions to […]
In a candid interview this morning, career police officer Inspector Fitzroy Yearwood exposed the police department for his abrupt transfer earlier this year. Yearwood was performing the duties of Public Officer for years, but back on August tenth, his sudden transfer was made known casually in a whatsapp group between the police and the media, […]
Yearwood is adamant that he did not disseminate false information to the media when he shared details of a police situation report involving the Castro brothers in an altercation in San Pedro a few months ago. According to the inspector, the information was provided to his office by the formation commander who he refers to […]
Amid his own professional differences with the Belize Police Department, the media has found an ally in Inspector Yearwood who stands firmly in our corner when it comes to the ongoing boycott. Yearwood, as a member of the Media Relations Unit for several months, was instrumental in sharing information with the press. While his transfer […]
With this weekend’s murders, the count for 2017 according to News Five’s unofficial statistics now stands at one hundred and twenty, just twenty-five off the count for 2012, the most murderous year in Belize’s existence. As many as twenty-seven of those murders have taken place in Belize City, many on the southside. In the House […]
April twenty-second, 2015, was a historic day for the Maya peoples of the South. In the Supreme Court of Belize, the Caribbean Court of Justice presided over a consent order agreed between the Government of Belize and the Maya Leaders Alliance and Toledo Alcaldes Association, respectively. Among other things, the government agreed to develop a […]
It was made official today: the Guatemalan Congress has approved Sunday, March eighteenth, 2018, as the official date when their referendum on the Belize/Guatemala territorial dispute will be held. President Jimmy Morales, whose administration has taken a tougher stance on the Belize question, and the judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal made the announcement earlier […]
Guatemalan vessel ‘AMADOR’ ran aground Belize’s Reef on Saturday night. There were ten occupants on board including Carlos Pena – a well-known Guatemalan artist – who put out an SOS message on Facebook asking for coastguard or police to rescue them. The sixty-foot pleasure yacht captained by Gustavo Aleojos Andres Jansa was in the southern […]
A twenty-one-year-old man says police brutalized him over the weekend. Shirlene Mai of Blackman Eddy says her son, Tray Ara, was picked up by four cops when he was walking home from a party on Saturday night. She says that Tray was with his brother heading from Unitedville to Blackman Eddy but because they have […]
Aside from the murders, there were two other shootings over the weekend in the city. Both occurred within two hours of each other on Friday night. Around eight o’clock shots rang out at the corner of Banak and Partridge Streets. Thirty-two-year-old Alrick Gotoy was hit once to the chin and rushed to the Karl Heusner […]
While it may have gone under the radar during the news last week, News Five has confirmed that the Belize Sugar Cane Farmers’ Association and American Sugar Refining/Belize Sugar Industries Limited have signed an agreement on amendments to their commercial agreement. Back on September eighteenth, A.S.R./B.S.I. broke ground for an upgrade to the Tower Hill […]
Is intervention the key to addressing criminal activities and gangs in Belize? The response differs depending on who you are talking to. But can youths and gangsters caught up in the criminal justice system turn away from that lifestyle? The U.S. Embassy in Belize, in partnership with the Bureau of International Information Programs, is embarking […]
Homebody Industries is a nonprofit organization that assists gang members and convicted felons to change their lives to become contributing members of the community through education, healing, tattoo removal and job placement. Also invited to speak at the event today was Dianne Finnegan, Coordinator of the Youth Apprenticeship Program, who says both organizations provide similar […]
In the House of Representatives last Friday, a total of twelve bills were dealt with over the course of the sitting, several of which were held over from the last sitting in August. One was an amendment to the Immigration Act in respect of temporary residency. It seeks to add the C.E.O. in the Ministry […]
Last week Prime Minister Dean Barrow secured a twelve-million U.S. dollar loan from the OPEC Fund for International Development on a visit to Washington, D.C. It’s intended to replace one of Belize’s longest standing bridges, the Haulover Bridge crossing the creek and joining Belize City with Ladyville on the Philip Goldson Highway. In short order, […]
Over fourteen million U.S. dollars will be invested in underprivileged communities in Belize. It was officially announced today at a launch of two projects that are set to improve the lives of the poor. The Government of Belize, through the Social Investment Fund, and the Caribbean Development Bank launched the Basic Needs Trust Fund and […]
Good evening, I’m James Adderley and this is Sports Monday. [Highlights of the weekend sporting activities…]
Today’s session of the House of Representatives had a loaded agenda. Several bills were returned for second reading, including the Misuse of Drugs (Amendment) Bill decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana. There were also new bills introduced, including the Petroleum Operations (Maritime Zone Moratorium) Bill imposing the moratorium on exploration for petroleum and other […]
Later, when the bill was brought up for debate on the second reading, Opposition Leader Briceño landed a telling blow when he brought up the extensive salary and benefit package for C.E.O. of Belize Telemedia Limited Rochus Schreiber. With the departures of top senior Belizean officials from the company in recent years – former C.E.O. […]
It was revealed at today’s House of Representatives that in 2008, the U.S. Embassy passed on the results of polygraph or lie detector tests to Belizean authorities for thirty-four senior officers in the Police Department, Coast Guard and Belize Defence Force. It is not clear who authorized or asked for the tests, but a majority […]
Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Elrington rose in reply to defend the senior command of the Police Department. Though his speech was in context of the greater crime problem, Elrington put his head on the block for the current team, stating that they have a handle on the greater crime problem and that they are […]
