Headline

It is rare for young people who have been abused within the school system by teachers or administrators—forcing them to give sexual favors to get good grades or access to tests and answers—to come forward and tell their story. It is also rare for other co-workers who know of this type of injustice to step up and expose it. This is an extremely sensitive matter, and a matter that some refuse to address publicly because they fear losing their jobs and, in the most extreme cases, their lives.

The battle lines were already drawn across the pothole-stricken streets of Belize City and the forces positioned to war for a US$1 cut of the cruise tourist head tax for the City—money that the Belize City Council argues is needed to finance important City operations, the most prominent being the repair of the old capital’s horribly degraded streets.

Belize Ports Limited (BPL) chief executive Luke Espat gave interviews to both Channel 5’s Stewart Krohn and Channel 7’s Jules Vasquez this evening. Lucas was responding to a Godfrey Smith column in the issue of THE BELIZE TIMES published earlier today, a column which blew the whistle on a problem between BPL and the cruise shipping giant, Carnival, a problem which the Hon. Minister of Tourism (the said Smith) described as a “schism” which “appears to be irreconcilable.”

Jodie Myvett, 23, a receptionist/secretary at the Central Bank of Belize, is lucky to be alive tonight after being shot at by her boyfriend, Mark Medina, 22.

The last screams of Keisha Sutherland, 28, a badly abused woman, rang out from her home on Wednesday morning at the corner of Bocotora and Racoon Streets. She lay in a pool of her blood, fatally wounded after having been maniacally stabbed 20 times by the father of two of her four children - one two years old and the other just eleven months old.

Businessman Arun Hotchandani this morning moved to evict the Belize City Council from its Pound Yard location. Reports to Amandala are that at about 10:00 this morning four of Hotchandani’s workmen began dismantling a wooden shack that was being used as the carpentry shed. The Council knew that they were coming, and the materials from the shed were removed yesterday

Tonight, the Perez Family of South End Corozal is homeless after a tow-head truck, driven at the time by Elvin Conorquie, 32, and a Mitsubishi pick-up truck, driven at the time by, Hilario Alcoser, 45, collided with each other.

William “Cat” Usher, 30, a resident of Wagner’s Lane, around 9:00 p.m. last night was ambushed and gunned down in front of his common-law wife, 23-year-old Audra Andrews, who is presently five months pregnant with his second child. Usher was shot 19 times. Relatives we spoke with tonight said he was shot in the face and upper body area.

A look of disbelief appeared today on the face of David McKoy, Jr., 31, the son of former PUP Minister, the late David McKoy, Sr., when a jury of 5 men and 3 women found him guilty of attempted rape. (The late Mr. McKoy, Sr. won the Stann Creek Rural constituency in seven consecutive general elections – from 1957 to 1984.)

In May of this year Ricardo “Ricky” Aguilar, Taedron Bennett, and Joseph Kee - all from the north side - were charged for the sensational Mother’s Day double murder of brothers Phillip and Kevin Brannon from the Yabra area of Southside.