Today police completed the installation process of surveillance cameras around the old capital. Six cameras were put in place and the software drivers installed at central monitoring command at Racoon Street.

Today, the village of Hattieville, sixteen miles from the metropolis, Belize City, and home to some 1,500 hardy souls, both transplants and descendants of those who first settled here thanks to the village’s namesake, Hurricane Hattie of 1961, seemed quiet, as usual.

Does the recent agreement that Government signed with the new owners of Universal Health Services (UHS) amount to another breach of the Finance and Audit (Reform) Act, 2005? That’s the question we posed to Financial Secretary Joe Waight today when we queried the details of the still undisclosed agreement.

How is the PUP rated at the end of its second term of office? According to a poll released today by the Society for the Promotion of Education and Research (SPEAR), the ruling Musa administration gets a “D” as its grade point average (GPA).

Motorcades of red, blue and yellow rolled in the streets of Belize City this morning and this afternoon, as the political parties brought their candidates to Mahogany Street for nomination for General Elections 2008, scheduled for Thursday, February 7, 2008. This is the day, Nomination Day, when everybody is still a winner, in his/her mind. The energy and the excitement were high.

Belizean music icon Andy Palacio is being flown to the University of Chicago Medical Center this evening via air ambulance for urgent medical attention, after medics and the Universal Health Services determined that he has to be transferred for further diagnostic tests not available in Belize.

The Bowen empire-owned Riverside Tavern, perched on the old BEC property overlooking the Haulover Creek where Mapp and North Front Streets intersect in the old capital, is a club where the high rollers go. The Tavern’s prices serve as a barrier to the hoi polloi. The Riverside Tavern’s New Year’s Eve party, just as an example, cost $300 a couple.

With the date for General Elections 2008 set for February 7, the nation’s capital, Belmopan, has been abuzz this week with late applicants trying to get their papers in order so that they can exercise the sacred franchise on our Super Thursday. Belmopan citizens are quite acquainted with the late flurry of activity. But never before has there been such a rush of applicants to become brand new Belizeans as the group that poured down on the capital this week.

At a breakfast meeting attended by his Cabinet and members of the clergy at the Princess Hotel and Casino this morning, the Prime Minister of Belize, Rt. Hon. Said Musa, announced that he will advise the Governor-General, Sir Colville Young, to dissolve the National Assembly today, Monday, 7th January, 2008, and set Thursday, February 7th as Election Day 2008. The Prime Minister also announced that the question of an elected Senate will be put to the electorate on that same day, on a separate ballot.

Speculations are rife this evening that the House will be dissolved next week and general election day 2008 will be upon us in early February. The ruling People’s United Party has been in high gear for weeks, trotting out full-page glossy pictures of all its candidates in the party newspaper, The Belize Times, just as it did for City and Town Council elections 2003. Along with other initiatives, the governing party has contracted Channel 5 to air its Positive Vibes morning talk show, 5 days a week, and on Wednesday nights for its “Believe in Belize” feature, a show designed to sing its own virtues and put down its traditional and main rival - the UDP.

A bitter personal quarrel between two high-profile cycling personalities, Gerald Garbutt, president of the Belize Cycling Association, and Santino “The Chief” Castillo, business magnate and owner of Belize’s most successful cycling team - Team Santino’s, erupted into public warfare today when Garbutt suspended four of Santino’s best cyclists, three for one year and one for two years.

Businessman Santino Castillo, owner and manager of Team Santino’s, which is considered probably the dominant team in Belize cycling, called Amandala late this evening to say that he has instructed his lawyer, of the firm of Pitts and Elrington, to institute legal proceedings against the president of the Belize Cycling Association, Gerald Garbutt, and cyclist Ray Cattouse for allegedly defaming him on the KREM Wake Up Belize (WUB) show.

Reggae singer Louis “Louie Ganzie” Gentle, 30, who was found guilty of the murder of his ex-common law wife, Takeisha Sutherland, 28, was sentenced to life imprisonment today by Justice Troadio John Gonzalez.

The Universal Health Services (UHS) debacle has taken a new and shocking turn with news that the Government of Belize has advanced a proposal for the hospital to be taken over with public funds from the coffers of the very liquid Social Security Board.