The illegal occupation of 134 Guatemalans at Santa Rosa—on Belizean territory—has been a major point of contention in the OAS-mediated negotiations to settle Guatemala’s unfounded territorial claim on Belize, and for the past three days all attempts by our newspaper to get clarification from both OAS officials in Belize and the Belize Ministry of Foreign Affairs on this highly sensitive and nationally important issue have proved utterly futile.

Mrs. Narda Garcia has officially been replaced as the Chief Executive Officer of the Belize Social Security Board (SSB), and her replacement, announced on Friday, August 31, is University of Belize board of trustees chairman, Dr. Louis Zabaneh, effective this week

Police have confirmed that Jerrie Devon Jones, 33, was shot and killed about 7:40 tonight at Mike’s Club, located on Regent Street West next to Bolton Bridge.

Vista Del Mar resident Maurice Johnson, 59, spent almost the entire weekend in lockdown in the Ladyville Police Station. He claims that he was the victim of police brutality, having been beaten, he said, by policemen for two of the three days he spent in lockdown.

Two days after northern Belize was assaulted by Hurricane Dean, an estimated 1,000 people flocked to the Corozal Civic Center to get free rice, beans, flour, milk, sugar and other basic food supplies from the Government of Belize, only to find out that they had to leave empty-handed. Some are blaming the fiasco on greedy opportunists, while others are blaming party politics.

Hurricane Dean picked up strength this afternoon as it swirled closer to the Caribbean islands of Dominica, Martinique, Guadeloupe and St. Lucia in the Lesser Antilles. Even though it is days away from the Western Caribbean, many Belizeans will be keeping watchful eyes on Dean over the weekend, since some hurricane tracking models predict that it could become a major threat to Belize by early next week.

This morning at about 11:00, police charged Lionel Peter Castillo, 33, popularly known as “Cas,” who is employed as an investigator for the office of the Ombudsman, Paul Rodriguez, with extorting $1,500 from Kelvin Reneau, 31, an ex-prisoner of the Kolbe Foundation.

Tourism Minister Godfrey Smith set the table last week with his Hugo Chavez column in THE BELIZE TIMES, and today, pretty much on cue, Prime Minister Said Musa and Home Affairs Minister Ralph Fonseca (the ruling PUP’s national campaign manager) flew to Caracas, Venezuela, looking for a “meal.” They are expected to lobby Venezuela’s socialist leader, Hugo Chavez, for money to bolster the Belizean economy (and the ruling party?) before imminent general elections here.

Marvin “Bip” Echeverria, 17, a Santa Elena student, is dead tonight. His two brothers, Ruben and Myro, were detained at the Santa Elena Police Station, Ruben after being shot and Myro after being stabbed; Justin Gordon, 18, was stabbed; and three policemen in civilian clothing - Filiberto Pott, PC #292 Roland Augustine and Sergeant Enrique Aldana, were later shot as they were processing the scene of the violence in Santa Elena, Cayo, between the Echeverria and Galindo families.

It was the most sensational hit in the city without pity since Therese Blake, heiress to the James Blake fortune, was gunned down at Newtown Barracks the early afternoon of October 12, 2000. Richard Arthur Nigel Hoare, 34, the young-man-about-town heir to the Arthur and Marie Hoare estate, was killed with a single gunshot to the back of his head on Vasquez Avenue around 9:30 last night.

The Supreme Court case challenging a move by the Government of Belize to pay the $33.5 million debt for Universal Health Services (UHS) was put on hold for at least two months last week Friday, but the Belize Bank is moving full steam ahead to try to collect its money via an arbitration tribunal initiated earlier this month in the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA).

The Christian Workers Union (CWU) has called an executive meeting for Friday, July 27, to discuss, among other things, a recent discovery that as many as 40 forged cheques valuing about $18,000 have been cashed against the CWU’s account.

United Democratic Party (UDP) City Councilor, Dean Samuels, 34, appeared in Magistrate’s Court #2 this afternoon, where he was read charges of aggravated assault with a firearm and threatening behavior. He is alleged to have threatened a former press office employee, Reese Rudon, 28, a resident of the Kings Park area, with a 9mm pistol.

Derrick Sampson, 22, and Michael Trapp, 21, showed no remorse this evening when a jury of 8 - 7 women and one man, after deliberating for about two hours unanimously found them guilty in connection with a violent crime in which a couple were robbed and the young woman, 19 at the time, was raped on the seawall near the roundabout on Marine Parade, shortly after 12:30 a.m. on May 13, 2006