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Specials and Events

Last night's TV news on Channel 7, Channel 5 and CTV 3
Also with the most recent Open Your Eyes, and the Dickie Bradley Specials

The San Pedro Sun

Wolfe’s Woofer: Native of Australia
My telephone rang. When I picked it up Melody was already talking. “I need a favor,” she said. “Sure,” I said. “What’s up? What do you need?” “There are only two more days of school. Can you take Davin in the morning and pick him up when class is over?” “Sure.” “How are you doing, […]

Police Report
On Sunday, July 13th, 49-year-old Heidi Horan visited the San Pedro Police Station and reported that on the same date a person had entered her home with intention of burglary. According to Horan, while in her bedroom of her condo south of San Pedro Town, she saw someone coming up the stairs. She walked out and noticed a man standing in her kitchen. Horan asked the man what he wanted and he held up a coffee cup that was on the table and said “I want some water.” Horan gave him the water and then he left. Horan informed her husband, Ricky Horan what had happened as a result Mr. Horan followed the man and got the cup back. Mr. Horan informed the manager of the incident.

Doctor Love: Housing Issues
Readers, please send your letters. They can be emails, formal letters or handwritten notes. They are edited solely for grammar and spelling. Also, they are sometimes edited for length. Dear Doctor Love, My mom and I have always gotten along well. When I finished studying in another country and came back she suggested that I […]

Misc Belizean Sources

National Song Competition in Cayo
The Institute of Creative Arts had the National Song Competition for the Cayo District on Friday. 100's of people showed up for the wonderfully creative songs that were presented and sang. The winners go to the finals, which will be held on August 9th in Belize City.

CTV3

Corozal Resident Charged For Bike Theft
A man from the Corozal District is tonight facing the long arms of the law after he was detained for bike theft. is no other than 28 year old, Marlon Charlie Belizean unemployed of College Road, Corozal Town, who is accused of stealing a black and gold beach cruiser belonging to 28 year old Jair Aguilar, Belizean messenger of Corozal Town. Aguilar reported to police that between 10:00am and midday yesterday he parked his bicycle in front of the Corozal Town Hall and it was stolen stolen.

Flow Of Belizeans To Chetumal Quintana Roo, Mexico Drops Drastically
The flow of Belizeans traveling into Chetumal Quintana Roo, Mexico, has decreased by about 37% from 2008 to date, according to an analysis done at the Embassy of Mexico in Belize. That’s not good news for the neighboring countries economy. Well aware of the impact the drop of visitors from Belize could cause, President of the National Chamber of Commerce, Services and Tourism, Ligia Sierra Aguilar is already taking measures to restore the central business and tourism market between both countries.

New Taiwan Ambassador Arrives In Belize
Yesterday Taiwan’s new Ambassador to Belize arrived in the country. His Excellency Ambassador Benjamin Ho and his wife arrived at the PGIA yesterday morning where they were welcomed by a number of Taiwanese living in Belize. Here is what he told our colleagues of Seven News when he landed at the PGIA. Benjamin Ho, new Taiwanese Ambassador to Belize "My government decided to appoint me as ambassador here. I was very excited. Without hesitation, I accepted immediately. I have so many friends, old friends. As I come here I will make more new friends. I think myself as a Belizean, so since I am here I would like to work together with your people hand in hand so that we can work together and we can strengthen our policies in many respect like infrastructure development, like in medical cooperation, like human resource training, education - all kinds even in energy and the environment. These are issues of common concern that we can try to work together."

One Mile Of Road To Be Paved In Corozal
On Wednesday June 18th of this year, we reported on the 4.4 million dollars that was allocated to commence road works and to “concrete” parts of the Philip Goldson Highway in Corozal from in front Social Security Building right up to the Santa Rita Hill. When we first aired the report, BTL and BWS were carrying underground works thus seeing a delay in the infrastructural project. But with BTL’s and BWS’ work complete works on 7th Avenue have begun as one mile of road is being prepped to be cemented. Reliable sources tell us that the first portion of the road and the drainage being built to alleviate the flooding in the South End of Corozal Town will be cemented today.

Dr Alvaro Rosado clarifies
Since Thursday’s press conference at which Bruce Sanchez Sr., and his son, Bruce Jr., Accused Drs. Alvaro and Dorla Rosado of misappropriation, the wife and husband fired back. The conflict over the Ariel Rosado Memorial Education Foundation, formed in honor of Ariel Rosado, the couple’s son, has mainly to do with the Bruce’s perception of way the couple was handling the entity’s finances. The Sanchezes, who are co-founders with the Rosado’s of the foundation, have accused them of improperly using the funds and of inadequately providing receipts. On Friday, flanked by other members of the foundation’s executive, Dr. Alvaro Rosado explained that he never misused monies from his deceased son’s foundation. The board members denied any abuse of the monies and contend that the work of the foundation has basically halted because the Sanchezes have refused to sign cheques. The board members say that cheques made out to the Rosados were reimbursements for out-of-pockets they made on foundation work.

Powerful Colombian drug lord arrested in Spain
Hernan Alonso Villa, also known as “el Raton” is in Spanish police custody after he was arrested on a road in southern Spain following a month-long tracking operation. He is suspected of being head of a gang of 200 people linked to international drug trafficking and extortion. Villa is considered one of the main leaders of a group which operates around Medellin. The suspect was carrying $54,000 US in cash when he was arrested. The group to which Villa is connected was a part the 1980s Medellin Cartel, led by Pablo Escobar. It now reportedly has relations with members of the prominent Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.

Patrick Jones

Fatal road traffic accident on the Phillip Goldson Highway
A traffic accident early this morning on the Phillip Goldson Highway has left one man dead and two of his family members hospitalized. The victim has been identified as Remejio Botes, a resident of Cristo Rey village, Corozal. According to reports, Reyes was driving his SUV towards Cristo Rey early this morning when he reportedly lost control of the vehicle and ran off the road at the entrance to San Jose village in the Orange Walk district. Botes died on the spot while his wife and two young children were taken to the Northern Regional hospital for treatment.

Women’s Resource Centre opens in San Marcos village, Toledo
A women’s resource centre was inaugurated today in the San Marcos village, Toledo. The project was realized through the efforts of the leaders of the community and the Toledo Maya Women’s Council. Funding was provided through a United States-based organization called Rivers of the World, (ROW). Juanita Chi who is the Chairlady of the Toledo Maya Women’s Council says that the new resource centre is a much needed facility for her community, while Executive Director of the National’s Women’s Commission Pulcheria Teul says empowering women is a benefit to the entire country. Residents of San Marcos village came out in numbers today to witness the ribbon-cutting and inauguration of the new Women’s Resource Centre is equipped with four sewing machines and has space for other activities.

Warm weather conditions prevailing
Warm and mostly dry conditions will continue to dominate the weather over Belize the first half of the work week. The general forecast for Belize and her coastal waters is for partly cloudy skies tonight. Tomorrow will be mostly sunny with only isolated or showers of thunderstorms developing. Winds over the open sea and along the coast will be easterly at five to fifteen knots, producing choppy sea conditions. Low temperatures at dawn will be around 79 degrees Fahrenheit along the coast; 74 degrees Fahrenheit inland and a cool 70 degrees Fahrenheit up in the hills.

Cane farmers reject BSI/ASR offer of payment for bagasse
Cane farmers have rejected the offer of 51 cents per ton of fibre proposed by Belize Sugar Industries/ASR and negotiations for payment for bagasse will continue. Approximately 700 caneros are today attending a meeting at the auditorium of the Escuela Secundaria Mexico in San Roman village, Corozal. During the Sunday morning session, the farmers discussed a report on the ongoing negotiations and in the end farmers agreed that August 1 is too short deadline for reaching consensus on payment for bagasse. The farmers have rejected the offer of from BSI/ASR for payment of 51 cents per ton of fiber as opposed to a ton of sugar cane. While it might seem insignificant, the farmers are holding firm to their demand for payment based on the per ton of sugar cane and not per ton of bagasse.

How to Fix the Belize Economy
Belize is 31 years into Political Independence. It finds itself in a position where unemployment is over 18%, with an even higher unemployment among the young population….poverty is over 40%, as more and more the middle-class is being wiped out….GDP growth is below the Latin American average of 3-4% per annum….the weekly newspapers largest earnings from adverts come from notices selling off people’s hard-earned assets….many of the largest investors have gone into receivership, have closed down operations, or have been sold off at cents on the dollar to local and foreign sharks….a large percentage of working Belizeans are living from paycheck to paycheck, taking short-term loans at scalping interest rates from the many loan-shark services that have sprung up all over Belice….the municipal and central governments are having to take draconian measures to collect their tax revenues, including threat of jail time for hard working citizens….the Government of Belize can’t find the money to pay its debts and running all over the place to beg our foreign friends for debt forgiveness, lower interest rates and extended terms of payment….its budget hinges on life-support from Taiwan….the monopoly electricity distribution company has to resort to large debenture issues at relatively high interest rates to keep its operations going, while raising rates by almost 20% to pay for the expensive debenture credit ….the PM is running with palms open to beg Mexico for concessionary rates for its supply of electricity….the families take home less and less groceries every week, as the price of basic goods have been rising at an unprecedented pace, while real-income falls….the country broke its all-time record for violent crime in 2012, and the beginning of 2013 looks like it will be worse.

Blogs

Day Two in Placencia for the Belize International Film Festival at The Inn at Robert’s Grove
Friday was day two of the International Film Festival here at Robert’s Grove (and around the country of Belize) and there were things to do! I chose the cheapest mode of travel. Ritchie’s Bus. It only comes 4 times a day but you can not beat the price for the 4 mile ride. $1bzd. OH! You can beat the price and borrow a bicycle from the resort and ride to the village. 10 minute later I was in the village of Placencia, just across the street from this sign at someone’s house/Thai massage studio. I had received a tip earlier in the day that Siripohn does an AMAZING stir fry from her home on Friday’s ONLY.

The July 20th, 2014 issue of The STAR (Cayo) is online HERE

This Week's Stories:

• Bateman Alleges Brutal Police Treatment:
  Santa Elena resident, Simon Bateman Jr, 25, this week had another run in with the law; this time however, he has lodged a report against at least two policemen who allegedly brutalized him in the process of detaining him. In a report to the police, Bateman, Belizean laborer from the Hillview area in Santa Elena informed that at around 11:45pm on Saturday, July 12, he was socializing with his female partner, in the pool table area inside the Blue Angel’s Nightclub when he was approached by a team of four policemen dressed in camouflage combats. One of the policemen allegedly approached him and demanded to know: “da you di smoke di weed up yah?” He reportedly asked the policeman “what weed?” This he said was met by a swift punch to the mouth while another policeman held him in a choke hold from behind.
• 106 Years Of Age – Truly A Blessing:
  Wednesday, July 16, 2014: Very few are those who live to reach one hundred years of age. Even fewer are those who go beyond 100. One such person is Mrs. Camilla Espinoza blessed to be among relatives on the occasion of her 106 birthday. That’s right a century and six years. We were at the Octavia Waight Center today for this very special event. She has outlived all her children and so she was surrounded by nieces, nephews, grand children, great and great- great-grand children. Born in July 1908, Camilla could be the oldest woman living in Belize. She was born in Punta Gorda Town. She came to Cayo as a young girl, got married in the west and never went back to PG. Her husband passed away four years ago. She joined the center in February of 2005 and says that she loves the place. A broken hip has confined her to a wheel chair. She speaks mostly Spanish but understands English.
• Lesson #1 In Belizean Political History:
  The study of history is important because each generation needs to know about the people, events and actions of a former generation in order to make wise decisions in their time. With every five year general election cycle, a new cadre of voters is added to the national voters list. The voting population in Belize grows by about 9% every five years. It is therefore important for us to let them know from whence we came in order to afford them the opportunity to make informed and wise decisions in their time. Here now is lesson #1 in the political history of Belize: After five years in opposition, the People’s United Party (PUP) was reelected to office in 1998. Those18 year old voters who will be voting for the first time in the scheduled 2017 general elections were not yet born in 1998 when the PUP was elected. By the time the PUP term ended with their reelection for a second term in 2003, those who will be 18 in 2017 and voting for the first time would have just turned four and of kinder garden age. The real rape of the nation by the PUP began in their second term, between 2003 and 2008, by the time the PUP were booted out of office in 2008, they left the nation with the infamous two BILLION dollar SUPER bond choking the national economy. The new 2017 voters were only nine years of age and merely heading into Std III of their primary school education when the PUP was booted out of office in 2008. At that tender age they had very little, if any knowledge of what had politically taken place in the first nine years of their young lives.
• Visit Dibary Store:
  process of the old making way for the new. There was a time several years ago when the food we ate was sold from behind a counter. The customer would enter the store, stand in front of the counter and ask for the item. The store keeper would get the item and hand it to the customer. The customer would pay the bill and depart the store. In those days the customer dare not go behind the counter. Times have changed. Today the customer walks the isles, gets the merchandise, pays and walks out. Infrastructural development removes the old and ushers in the new. This change can be seen on Burns Avenue in San Ignacio, the upgraded lower section of Burns Avenue is already attracting the new. One such example is the recently opened Dibary Store, next to Venus Hotel.
• BTB Donates to San Pedro Fire Victims:
  Minister of Tourism, Culture and Civil Aviation, Hon. Manuel Heredia Jr, presented a cheque of five thousand dollars ($5,000) to the Belize Red Cross San Pedro Branch, in aid of the residents affected by the fire. The cheque, as a part of the Belize Tourism Board’s contribution, was presented along with boxes of clothing, food items and toiletries donated by the BTB staff. Hon.Manuel Heredia Jr saysthe BTB and staff were willing to assist, ‘We are very happy that we are able to provide some support to the families affected by this fire and while the donation in no way can compensate for their loss, we sincerely hope that it will ease their displacement and bring some semblance of comfort in their lives. As soon as we heard of the fire, we started looking into ways to help and I must say that the BTB staff gave generously to provide the families with in-kind donations.
• Obese Women 'Show Signs Of Food Learning Impairment:
  Obese women may have a "food learning impairment" that could explain their attitude to food, research from Yale School of Medicine suggests. Tests on groups of obese and healthy-weight people found that the obese women performed worst when asked to remember a sequence of food picture cards. Writing in Current Biology, Yale researchers tested 135 men and women. The findings could lead to new ways to tackle obesity, the study says. Study author Ifat Levy, assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine, said the difference in the performance of the obese women compared with the other groups was "really striking" and "significant". The tests looked at an individual's ability to learn and predict the appearance of pictures of food or money on coloured cards.
• Elect Your UDP Team:
  As the United Democratic Party (UDP) continues to prepare for the Sunday, July 29, 2014; convention for the election of the team to represent the party in the March 2015 municipal elections, a meeting was held today with the candidates offering themselves for election in the convention. The meeting, called by the UDP National Chairman Alberto August, was cordial and informative. All candidates in attendance candidly discussed and agreed upon the manner in which the July 29 convention will be conducted. Voting begins at 9:00 am at the Sacred Heart Primary School in San Ignacio. The polls will close at 6:00 pm. The counting will begin immediately after the last ballot is cast. Notorious for attracting a large number of persons offering themselves as candidates for the UDP, this time around is no different. Of the nine municipalities countrywide, this western municipality is the only one in which a convention will be held for the election of a mayoral candidate.
• Malaysia Jet Crashes In East Ukraine Conflict Zone:
  A Malaysia Airlines jet carrying 295 people has crashed in east Ukraine on a flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. There are no signs of survivors at the scene of the crash near the village of Grabovo, in rebel-held territory close to the border with Russia. Both sides in Ukraine's civil conflict accused each other of shooting down the plane with a missile. It is still not clear why the plane came down. It is the second disaster suffered by Malaysia Airlines this year.
• Alzheimer's Disease:
  Alzheimer's disease (AD), also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease, is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death. It was first described by German psychiatrist and neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906 and was named after him. Most often, AD is diagnosed in people over 65 years of age, although the less-prevalent early-onset Alzheimer's can occur much earlier. In 2006, there were 26.6 million people worldwide with AD. Alzheimer's is predicted to affect 1 in 85 people globally by 2050. Although Alzheimer's disease develops differently for every individual, there are many common symptoms. Early symptoms are often mistakenly thought to be 'age-related' concerns, or manifestations of stress. In the early stages, the most common symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events, known as short term memory loss.
• STAR Humor
• Your Weekly Horoscope and Lucky Numbers
• Letters to the Editor
• Public Notices

Videos

Video: Belize Blue Hole, 5min.
Great video of scuba diving the Great Blue Hole. With some textual explanations along the side

Video: Resource Centre Inauguration, 3min.
A new Resource Center has been inaugurated in San Marcos village, Toledo.

Video: MOTION BELIZE, 22min.
TV show about Belize… Well done...

Video: Ramon's Village, San Pedro, Belize, May 24th-29th, 2014, 4min.

Video: Upper Room Belize Mission Trip 2014, 16min.

Video: Meeting Marine Wildlife: Hawksbill turtle, Mexico Rocks, Belize, 2min.

Video: Meeting Marine Wildlife: Manatees at Turneffe Atoll, Belize, 1min.

Video: Belize!, 10min.
Scuba diving

Video: Sea Kayaking, Placencia, Belize, 2min.