There was a changing of the guard today at City Hall, from the red to the blue. A new mayor and councillors for the country’s largest municipality took the oath this afternoon before a supportive crowd. The P.U.P.’s Bernard Wagner and his team of ten councillors, a week ago, won convincingly the trust of voters […]
In Belmopan, where the upper house met today, a group of students left their classrooms at the University of Belize and headed over to the national assembly building. For about an hour, they protested the spike in violence against children, which is ripping apart families and communities. From sexual abuse to the gun violence that […]
This evening, there was mass movement at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in Belize City. News Five understands that there were issues with the ceiling of the national referral hospital, necessitating urgent action. We are told that doctors and nurses had to be called back to the hospital to assist with the evacuation. Late this […]
A teacher of Independence Village is being accused of sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old girl. Lennox Mejia, known as “Namule,” was read the charge before Magistrate Deborah Rogers in the Independence Magistrate’s Court and remanded until June eighteenth. On March eighth, the minor reported that she caught a vehicle to go to school around seven-fifteen […]
During the budget presentation for the upcoming fiscal year, Prime Minister Barrow announced that a tax of twelve and a half percent will be added to the existing cost of data. The increase in the form of General Sales Tax takes effect on April first and comes at the expense of all internet users, with […]
While he stayed away from speaking on behalf of Speednet Communications, the parent company of Smart, Briceño says that the additional cost will be borne by consumers of data, potentially locking out a poorer class of citizens who won’t be able to afford the service. This, he says, flies in the face of efforts by […]
The debate for the 2018 Budget is set for next week Thursday and Friday. One of the key points will be how the government is managing the tax base for revenue in relation to its spending. Business Senator Mark Lizarraga, a watchdog for the business community, argues in advance of that debate that if the […]
According to Lizarraga, G.O.B. in 2017 had promised austerity measures to cut back on operational expenses. In the 2018 Budget, they’ve only been able to do so by two percent, as opposed to the proposed five percent. The Senator calls for the government to more seriously pursue being efficient in curtailing expenses and managing debt. […]
The Caribbean Court of Justice this morning heard dueling applications from the Belize Bank Limited and the Attorney General in Port of Spain concerning the still-outstanding U.H.S. matter. The C.C.J. ordered the forty-million dollar Belize Bank loan to be paid last November. The loan, made to the original owners of U.H.S. and guaranteed by Government, […]
The Belize Bank is tightening the screws. On Monday a U.S. district court judge ordered that the Bank can seize property owned by the government of Belize “in the jurisdictions where such attachment or execution is appropriate.” The ruling was mentioned by Senior Counsel Eamon Courtenay during arguments for the Bank’s case at the C.C.J. […]
When the new budget was presented to the House of Representatives last Friday, Prime Minister Dean Barrow made claims with respect to the value and cost of B.T.L. Tonight, we take a closer look at the facts, which when analyzed, appear to be quite outrageously positive, giving the appearance that the acquisition has been a […]
A loan to B.T.L. was also tabled before the Senate today. The loan from Taiwan is for of thirty-five million Belize dollars, for a commitment period of twelve years at a fixed rate of interest of five point five percent. The loan will be used to finance the installation of a state-of-the-art fiber optic network. […]
Thirty-seven-year-old Delford Slusher has been on trial for the past three weeks, accused of the murder of a police officer. Corporal Victor Lima was shot twice in the chest during an incident in Hattieville on July twenty-fourth, 2012, and died three days later. This evening, Supreme Court Justice Adolph Lucas reserved his ruling for March […]
The 1968 Stores Orders Regulations were last amended in 1992. They establish ceilings under which accounting officers may purchase stores both locally and internationally without first having written approval from the Financial Secretary and with no change to the tender procedure. The argument is that the low ceilings of three thousand for individual items of […]
A new U.D.P. town council was sworn-in on Tuesday in San Pedro, amid a pending legal challenge being mounted by the People’s United Party. Mayor Daniel Guerrero won by a very slim margin and was formally returned to office for another three-year term. But the fate of his current administration will be decided in a […]
Bernard Wagner enters office with an uncertain grasp of how well off the Council is. The Municipal Bond is tied to the City’s subvention from Central Government and other sources are not considered reliable. During Friday’s House meeting, Prime Minister Dean Barrow accused Caribbean Shores area rep Kareem Musa of preparing for the Council to […]
The Belize Movement for Peace and Reconciliation says that it is strategizing and implementing change to address the cycle of violence that seems to have a grip on the country – and they will check their report card after a hundred days. According to the organization’s leader, Cynthia Ellis-Topsey, the movement will bring together people […]
Belize and the European Union have reached agreement on nearly twenty-nine million dollars in financing for projects in the health and public finance management sectors. The agreements were signed in Belize City today between Prime Minister Dean Barrow and the E.U.’s Ambassador to Belize, Malgorzata Wasilewska. The majority, about twenty-five-point-six million dollars, is for upgrading […]
If you have a passion for acting or just want to see if you have what it takes, then you might want to head out and audition for a part in the “Life or Death” TV series. It is a show that will be filmed in Belize later this year as a fictional political thriller […]
Fifty-thousand dollars – that’s how much Cellular Plus Belize won in a raffle. The Rotary Club of Belize Sunrise played a willy-wonka golden ticket style raffle to raise funds for its projects. At the end of the raffle, fewer than eight hundred tickets were sold, which translates to some seventy to eighty thousand dollars. After […]
