Prime Minister-elect Dean Barrow will be sworn in at 10:00 this morning, Friday, in Belmopan, as he prepares to reconstitute a new administration with a maximum of 15 Cabinet ministers, limited by the Constitution to two-thirds of the elected representatives of the ruling party, and four appointed senators who can also act as ministers of government.

In the last few hours before polls open on Wednesday, March 7, 2012, five political parties and associations are working hard to convince 178,054 registered electors—among them 97,979 registered to also vote in simultaneous municipal elections—to cast “x’s” in their favor, as 170 municipal candidates and 75 general election candidates try to make it down the last stretch of the mile in this year’s electoral race.

At around 9:00 a.m. four men armed with 9 millimetre pistols loaded with ammunition walked into the First Caribbean International Bank at the San Cas Plaza, which extends from the north side of the BelCan Bridge up to the beginning of the Northern Highway, held up the tellers, walked to the vault and then stashed about $230,000 contained in the vault into two bags - a knapsack and a plastic bag.

“Overheated equipment” causes Magazine Road substation fire... Just before five this evening, Monday, a sudden fire outbreak at the Belize Electricity Limited (BEL) substation on Magazine Road that powers Belize City led to an outage that paralyzed the Old Capital for six hours, from 4:52 to 10:56 p.m.

Valencia was fatally wounded after he was shot multiple times last night around 9:30 while driving a car on Queen Charlotte Street. The attack took place not far from his home on Caesar Ridge Road, and both streets are in the vicinity of Cumberbatch Field.

The CEO was terminated by the SSB board, but reports are that she nevertheless returned to work on Monday... At press time tonight, the board of directors of the Social Security Board (SSB) was meeting at its Belize City office, amid reports that Chief Executive Officer Merlene Bailey-Martinez, who had been put on administrative leave last month, had returned to work today, despite a board decision last week that she should be terminated.

Carlos Diaz says he will run as an independent, but if Yolanda Schakron fails, will Carlos run in Lake I for the PUP? Lake I’s People’s United Party standard bearer Yolanda Schakron—the replacement candidate for the current area representative Cordel Hyde, who resigned last week—is under fire, as a formal move has been made to block her nomination for general elections, because she is a US national born in Guatemala, although she is Belizean by descent, having described herself to be “as Belizean as rice and beans.”

Belizeans from near and far spread the shocking news, through different mediums, that Stephen Alex Hall, 35, also known due to his profession as a disc jockey as “DJ Scorpio,” had died as a result of a horrific 4-man motorcycle crash on the Boom Road, on Saturday, February 11, 2012, shortly after 8:00 a.m.

4 residents admitted sighting unknown object on “clear night.” One resident told Amandala that object “moved at the speed of lightning,” and had “bright light radiating underneath; another resident “wondered if he was seeing a comet;” yet another said the object “made no sound.”

The PUP Lake I (Cordel Hyde) and Albert (Mark Espat) resignations follow that of Caribbean Shores (Anthony Mahler)... “The PUP has been in preparation for an early election, and a March 7 election, since December, and with the replacement of Anthony Mahler in Caribbean Shores by Dr. David Hoy now complete, no further shockwaves should hit Independence Hall.” (From headline story, “Barrow rolls the dice March 7!” in Amandala #2585, Sunday, February 5, 2012).

235 candidates face the people - 71 general, 164 municipal... General, city and municipal elections will be held on the same day... “We have achieved much …despite the super bond!” – PM Barrow... PUP, Unity Alliance call for change

Judge says decision in UNIBAM’s constitutional challenge will be delivered at a later date... Amidst high and mixed emotions in the Belizean community, a constitutional challenge filed by the United Belize Advocacy Movement (UNIBAM) and its president, Caleb Orozco, against the Government of Belize, returned to the Supreme Court for the preliminary hearing.

5-member panel of CCJ judges concurred that they would not permit the “leapfrogging” of the lower courts in Belize. The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), via video conferencing this afternoon, announced that it would stay hearings on the constitutional challenge by the Ashcroft Alliance, specifically Dean Boyce, former chairman of the executive committee of Belize Telemedia Limited (BTL), and British Caribbean Bank (BCB), who had separately filed suits against the Attorney General and the Minister of Public Utilities, challenging first the 2009 nationalization of BTL, and subsequently, the 2011 nationalization, which Government had effected to correct perceived flaws in the first nationalization.

Director of the Institute of Archaeology in Belize, Dr. Jaime Awe, told Amandala today that he and a team of university and high school students, citizens, visitors and his staff have been working to excavate and document a significant archaeological find right in the heart of San Ignacio.