Jamaican soul singer Dobby Dobson arrived in Belize today. Dobson will perform for a Valentine?s Special at Club Honey Beez on Saturday night, and will be backed by the New Messengers Band.
Belize police are today questioning a distraught driver, Myrna Willoughby, coordinator of the Belize Family Court, after she reported that she was driving her red Rodeo from Belize City, heading to her home in Ladyville, when she accidentally hit an elderly lady attempting to cross the road between Miles 3 and 4 on the Northern Highway.
Myrna reported that sometime around 7:30 last night, as she was making her way out of the city and was approaching the offices of United Services Limited, she saw a person walking across the road, and tried to avoid hitting the victim, Francisca Vera, 73, of a Partridge Street Extension address.
A new poetry book authored by Amandala journalist, Adele Ramos, will be released on Friday, February 18, in Belize City. The 30-poem anthology titled PHASES includes a variety of love poems that tell of real-life experiences, but also address the issues of domestic violence and HIV/AIDS.
Amandala has been reliably informed that the Belize Customs Department has impounded 25 late-model vehicles, 2000 and newer, that are presently parked behind the department?s main building in Belize City.
To date, Government has made no formal announcement on the seizures.
Yesterday morning, Wednesday, sometime around 10:00, the Provident Bank, located on Barrack Road, was robbed.
Apparently two of the bank?s employees were in the process of transporting money from the bank and were making their way through the parking lot when two armed men robbed them of an undisclosed amount of cash.
?Watchman was beaten in head with blunt object, locked in and left to die? ? Police
Belmopan police are trying to ascertain the motive for the gruesome murder of a Belizean watchman, Wilford Reque?a, 68, whose lifeless and bloody body was discovered by police and his employer at about 1:45 p.m. yesterday, Wednesday, February 9, locked inside a storeroom in the Frank Eddy?s Layout of St. Matthew?s, a village located at Mile 38 on the Western Highway.
Latest information from Belmopan police today is that they have detained three Hispanic men of the village - two Guatemalans and a Salvadoran, but no one has been charged yet for the caretaker?s death.
King Solomon of the Old Testament is revered as a sage for the manner in which he settled the claims of two women over a baby boy in the book of 1stKings. There were two mothers who both had sons. While the two women were together and alone, one of their sons had died.
Both women claimed the living boy. One woman claimed that the other had switched her living son with his dead son. The dispute was taken to Solomon for judgment.
The family of mechanic Lloyd ?Pappy? Bodden, Jr., also known as ?Sheep,? 37, of #29 Ebony Street, is today mourning his death. That Bodden was gunned down in a drain while trying to escape from his executioner has saddened the family, said his sister, Elizabeth Parkinson.
Police reported that sometime around 10:30 this morning, they were called to Ebony Street, where they were told a shooting incident had taken place.
Today, Marconi Leal, 41, a landlord and tour guide, is at home recovering from a gunshot wound he sustained when a bullet missed his heart by inches and then exited his body. The shooting occurred around 11:00 p.m. on Monday, January 31.
Leal, who is the landlord of two adjacent two-story concrete buildings located on Cemetery Road (building #108 houses the International Church of Christ downstairs and a tenant upstairs, and building #110 houses Auto Zone), told Amandala that he was shot while he was trying to collect rent.
This afternoon, sometime around 2:00 p.m., police responded to a shooting reported on the Southside of Belize City, which left one man in a critical condition and another man, now under police guard at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital, with a wounded leg.
Police said they visited the area of Gibnut and Welch Streets, where they saw Stanley Coleman, whose particulars are still unknown, lying on the ground and suffering from a gunshot wound to the left side of his neck.
Marlon Fisher, 25, a resident of #12 Berkeley Street, who was shot once in the left side of his chest at about 11:00 this morning, at the corner of Prince Street and West Street, was able to run and get help from police at the Mesopotamia Police Station before he collapsed due to his injury.
A police officer at the Mesopotamia Police Station told Amandala that Fisher gripped his chest as he bled profusely and begged for help when he arrived at the station. Soon after, he collapsed, and was rushed to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital (KHMH).
According to a confidential placement memorandum issued by Belize last week to secure US$65.4 million in new bond financing on the U.S. and European markets, the country?s total foreign debt repayments due between 2005 and 2013 (2005 inclusive) total almost BZ$2 billion.
This means that average payments for foreign debt for the next 9 years would be roughly BZ$215 million. According to Government data, external (foreign) debt service payments averaged roughly BZ$54 million between 1998 and 2003.
The new Government of Belize negotiators - Minister of National Development, Senator Assad Shoman, and Financial Secretary, Dr. Carla Barnett, this morning offered the National Trade Union Congress of Belize (NTUCB) the full salary increases (8% for junior officers and 5% for the seniors) for public officers and teachers on April 1, 2005, and a suspension for one month of the higher taxes introduced on Tuesday, February 1. The concessions were desperate, GOB no doubt believing that a congregation/demonstration in Belize City of union protestors from all six districts scheduled for tomorrow morning, may have disastrous results for the administration. The desperate, but generous, proposals, divided the teachers who have been carrying the torch of protest, but the NTUCB, the umbrella organization for eight trade unions, essentially has decided to reject the GOB offer.
