AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Belize Life News Daily news prior to today Today's Belize News: January 3, 2017

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Specials and Events

Last night's TV news on Channel 7, Channel 5, LOVETV, PGTV, West Vision (Cayo) and CTV 3. Also with the most recent Open Your Eyes, and other specials

Misc Belizean Sources

Caye Caulker: 6 free evening classes in Conversational English and also 6 free classes of Basic Computer Skills!
6 free evening classes in Conversational English and also 6 free classes of Basic Computer Skills! Tuesday January 3rd, 7:30-8:30pm in the upstairs Village Council room. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week and also next week. Instructors are students enrolled in a Technology and Education course at Miami University of Ohio. Just show up to register, or contact Joni Miller of Ocean Academy at 615-0408, FB or [email protected]

BELIZE'S WONDER WOMEN! The Women Who Help Make Belize Great!
For the month of January we are proud to announce that Ofelia Novelo is our Belize Wonder Woman! We feature one such individual, one that through her gallant efforts has worked hard to better the lives of women in Orange Walk. We feature Mrs. Ophelia Novelo nee Campos, founder and integral part of the group MAMAS ( Mujeres Ayudando a Mujeres A Superarse (Women helping women to excel) ). Mrs. Novelo is an artisan and instructor born in Orange Walk Town. Possessing the natural ability to care and nurture others, at the tender age of 15, she put her skills to the test and joined the medical field as a nurse at the old Orange Walk Hospital, where she assisted in birth deliveries.

The Reporter

2017 sees first murder
Continuing along the trend of rising gun violence that ended 2016, Belize has already seen its first murder for the new year. Colin Sutherland, a resident of the Conch Shell Bay area, was gunned down after 6 p.m., on New Year's Day on Youth for the Future Drive, near the Traffic Department. Initial reports had named one Felix Sutherland, Colin's older brother, as the murder victim; however, police confirmed this morning that it was, in fact, Colin that got shot. Police are investigating the incident.

Breaking Belize News

Third murder in second day of 2017
Reports reaching our newsroom is that a man was shot shortly before 9:00 p.m. Details are sketchy but preliminary information indicates that the murder occurred on the Raccoon Street extension. The victim has been identified but BBN will withhold the name as details are [�]

Vega-Pitts land saga stalled by latest Cabinet re-shuffle
It has now been 63 days since Andre Vega and Sharon Pitts were ordered to return the $400,000 they each had received from the Government of Belize in suspicious land transactions. Resigned Attorney General Vanessa Retreage had written Pitts and Vega in October ordering [�]

Belize City sees second murder on second day of the year
Reports reaching our newsroom is that a man was shot to the head around lunch time today at the corner of Mapp and North Front Street. Details are sketchy but preliminary information indicates that the victim, identified as 28-year-old Robert Gillett, died on the spot. [�]

Miss Belize Universe ranks 18th by pageant experts
The 65th edition of the Miss Universe pageant will be held on January 30, 2017 at the Mall of Asia Arena, Manila, Philippines. Rebecca Rath will be representing Belize at the distinguished event. Rath has gained more popularity after winning the Miss Belize Universe pageant [�]

Fair weather conditions to prevail
The 24-hour forecast is for mostly fair and warm weather to continue with sunny skies today and partly cloudy tonight. The wind will blow from the east to southeast at 10-20 knots. The sea state will be moderate. High temperatures are expected as follows: [�]

Man stabbed in San Pedro last night
San Pedro police are investigating an incident that left one man with multiple stab injuries last night.As of this morning, the victim is alive and is being transported to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital while the suspected attacker is in police custody awaiting charges. BBN [�]

Blogs

Tropical New Years and a World Resolution
This year was a first in that I would say my friends and I ran into very few people we knew while ringing in the New Year. Due to our foursome being a bit like a fast moving Goldilocks (this bar is to crowded, that one too loud) we had our friends Jules and Rosemary sprinting after us. We ended up finding the perfect spot on the beach and of course Murphy's law kicked in they were already doing last call at Nook so we enjoyed a relaxing drink and had to find a different spot to enjoy the show. I was glad we did as it gave me a chance to check out the fireworks barge up close before we picked our watching spot - a nice relatively uncrowded dock. I was also glad we had detoured back to my house along the way for my pashmena. It was quite chilly that night and I would have been shivering without it. As we waited for them to start and listened to Mayor Danny's speech, I enjoyed hearing him give accolades to Raise Me Up, San Pedro Red Cross and other charities as well as some good reality TV, watching boats go by on the water.

New Years Day in San Pedro: A Crowded Beach, A Party at Estel's and a Flotilla of BucketLusters
Yesterday was a gorgeous way to start 2017. 1. We are in sunny San Pedro. 2. The beach was busy with kids, families and visitors swimming and just relaxing and 3. My favorite breakfast spot, Estel's by the Sea was celebrating her 25th birthday. And�for a little added interest - a flotilla of catamarans had just arrived after an all night New Years party at the Lazy Lizard on Caye Caulker. A group of about 150 people from all over the world - I will call them the Bucket Lusters. You can find out more about them online. But not quite enough�it leaves you wanting WAY more information. Estel's was working EXTRA hard�not exactly taking time to rest on their laurels for the 25th anniversary. They had been open until 3am on New Years Eve and then opened an hour later for breakfast. The crew had been working since then.

This is Belize: Last sunrise of 2016, first sunset of 2017 and stuff in between - some fake, some real
The last sunrise on Ambergris Caye for 2016 was a real beauty. A diaphanous gold, like spun cotton candy, filled the air out to the reef as an early morning sun shower cleansed us, washed away this most unusual year. Happy New Year to you all! May your every dream find its path to fulfillment in 2017. Thanks to the recent addition of Moppit to the household, sunrises are becoming a daily thing. In pre-Moppit days, I would awaken at a civilized hour and think, "Wow. That must have been a nice sunrise. Maybe tomorrow." My specialty is the sweet spot between mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Either side of that you most likely will find me napping, thinking terribly deep thoughts, meditating or, uh, napping - sometimes all at once. Now we discover that Moppit has a penchant for early morning walks. Early morning. I am also discovering that Rose is already up at that hour, getting ready for her day at Island Pilates by Rose, planning out routines, selecting music, drinking coffee, reviewing her schedule, making lists, responding to e-mails.

International Sources

Technology students help provide computers in Belize
Computer networking and repair students at Eastern Oklahoma Technology Center took the skills they acquired in class and used them to benefit students and teachers in Central America. The Eagle Mountain-Saginaw independent school district's instructional technology and curriculum departments in Fort Worth, Texas, worked with the nonprofit organization Teachers Reaching Teachers Globally to provide computers for principal teachers in the Toledo district of Belize. EOC Tech students installed operating systems on the desktop computers and laptops that were donated. EOC Tech computer networking and repair instructor Josh Davis worked for the Texas school district for 10 years, and his brother-in-law currently works there. "My brother-in-law's office got involved with this nonprofit that provides tech to poor teachers in rural Belize," Davis said. "They gathered up a bunch of laptops and took them to Belize, where they conducted a day or two of training with these teachers."

An Ancient City Emerges in a Remote Rain Forest
Most of the important archaeological sites in Central America were "discovered" by archaeologists who, in fact, didn't discover them at all but were led to the ruins by local people. I've known several Maya archaeologists who routinely started fieldwork in a new area by heading into a dive bar and hoisting beers with the locals while listening to various bullshitters spin tales about ruins they'd seen in the jungle; once in a while, a story would turn out to be true. But, because these sites were long known to local people, they had invariably been disturbed, if not badly looted. The revelation of an ancient city in a valley in the Mosquitia mountains, of Honduras, one of the last scientifically unexplored regions on Earth, was a different story. This was the first time a large archaeological site had been discovered in a purely speculative search using a technology called lidar, or "light detection and ranging," which can map terrain through the thickest jungle foliage, an event I chronicled in a story for the magazine in 2013. As a result, this discovery revealed something vanishingly rare: a city in an absolutely intact, undisturbed, pristine state, buried in a rain forest so remote and untouched that the animals there appeared never to have seen people before. After the piece came out in The New Yorker, I returned to the region with a joint Honduran-American archaeological expedition to explore the city on the ground. On February 17, 2015, our helicopter landed in a slotlike zone macheted out of a stand of heliconia, next to an unnamed river in the valley scientists had nicknamed Target One, or T1. There were five of us, along with three British ex-S.A.S. jungle-warfare specialists, whose job was to keep us alive for the next nine days.

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