SAN PEDRO DAILY, September 18, 2007,Belize,News,Features,Newspapers,Information,Resource,Caribbean,Ambergris Caye

Was Murder The Case in Death of Wilber Blanco?

A San Pedro man is dead, but tonight the cause of death has not been determined. Still, residents of that island town are sure that Wilber Blanco was murdered. The 22 year old was found dead on the edge of a swamp and what’s disturbing is that he had been dismembered: two of his arms were missing. More than that, he was in the San Pedrito area – on the opposite side of town, away from his home in the DFC area. It’s a shocking death of a well known waiter but police are warning islanders not to jump to conclusions too quickly: they say crocodiles – which are known to be in the area may have severed his arm. But his family doesn’t buy it. With his mother at his side, his brother, Edwin Blanco says Wilber died a horrible death.
Edwin Blanco, Brother of Deceased
“The sad part about the whole story is the fact of the way he was left. He was left without arms. He was left in a terrible condition and we, up until now, what we know is that it looks like he was taken in a taxi from Caliente, more or less, and from there he was taken in a red taxi. That is all we know and he was taken around a back area of San Pedrito, it’s a dark area where you can barely see anything. He was taken, according to what we have heard, he was beaten around the area. Supposedly it was inside the taxi, everything happened inside the taxi but it looks like the bruises, because his arms were cut off completely.
The police are saying that it’s probably the alligators which is a story that’s hard to believe because why would the alligator take only two hands. It is strange, it’s really hard. To be sincere, I am still in shock.
Really and truly we just want something to be done, at least let the person be found. All the authorities in San Pedro, everywhere, I ask that of somebody knows anything, to please call and give any information that could help us.”
The family notes that they were the ones who called police after he didn’t return home on Saturday night. Wilber Blanco was a waiter at Caliente Restaurant in San Pedro. Read More

PM Musa on Elected Senate

In today’s state of the nation address, the Prime Minister also floated the idea of an elected Senate. In fact, he did less than float it; he mentioned it, glancingly, in passing. And yes, like everything else in the speech, it was short on details but after, the Prime Minister elaborated.
Rt. Hon. Said Musa,
“We intend to take a bill to the parliament to propose an elected senate. We believe the Senate should be elected by the people as opposed to by interest groups or selected by interest groups and we feel that’s an advance over what we have at this time. As to when it will kick in, that’s a matter yet for discussion and debate by the Cabinet as well as by, we need to discuss it with the Leader of the Opposition as well. We are hoping to get some consensus on this but if not, we do intend to propose an elected senate, possibly say to take effect by 2010 or something like this.”
Jules Vasquez,
Sir while speaking about the elected Senate, one of your Senators resigned last week because of the Electricity Amendment Bill and what he felt were the odious terms of that overtaking the PUC. Is that an indictment of this Electricity Amendment Bill?
Rt. Hon. Said Musa,
“Not at all. I believe Senator Chanona was unduly concerned about the effect of what the bill was doing. In fact all the Bill is doing is asserting the right of Parliament to pass laws and sometimes it is done through Ministers by statutory instruments and sometimes through the National Assembly.” Read More

Climate change will impact
tourism industry

Tourism and Climate Change - two things we wouldn’t ordinarily talk about in the same sentence. But today personnel from the tourism industry and the Climate Change Centre are finding reasons why the two are more closely related than we may think. It is with this in mind that the groups sat down today to discuss how global warming may affect Belize’s biggest industry.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Doctor Robert Richardson is professor in Natural Resource Economics at Michigan State University and Galen University in Belize. He did a vulnerability assessment of Belize’s tourism industry to the effects of climate change. The findings are not encouraging.
Dr. Robert Richardson, Ecologist, Galen University
“The results of the study have basically concluded that since more than 70 % of tourists come to Belize to visit Coastal areas and the Cayes, because of sea level rise those areas are very vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of erosion, land loss, flooding, inundation, and salt water intrusion, so these affect the tourism industry and their ability to provide housing, clean water, and this sort of thing.”
Experts say climate change is the direct result of environmentally unfriendly lifestyle and practices.
Carlos Fuller, Nat’l Focal Point for Climate Change
“The warming that we’re seeing now is unprecedented in over 100,000 years of data. It shows that we have not seen this kind of warming ever before. The warming that we’re seeing is increasing. It is not steady. The past ten years were the ten warmest years on record. We’re seeing impacts on various sectors.”
“We were threatened two times this year by two category five hurricanes. That is something we have never seen before and that is a manifestation of climate change. When I talk about sea level rise, people say it’s only two centimetres, you know, it’s something I can live with. I tell them yes, but if you have a piece of land on reclaimed land that you just built, and you have a mortgage in twenty years time two centimetres will be forty centimetres. By the time you own your house it’s going to be under water. Do you want to be paying for a house that’s going to be under water in twenty years time?”
National Focal Point for Climate Change, Carlos Fuller says while we may not be able to control Mother Nature’s wrath, we can control the things that trigger it.
Carlos Fuller, National Focal Point for Climate Change
“Recognise that you need to be more efficient in the use of your energy because you are contributing to climate change and economically it’s good for you. So if you’re putting in light bulbs consider putting in the compact fluorescent bulbs. Yes, It’s gonna cost you a bit more in the short term but it’s gonna last seven years and you’re gonna burn 50 % less electricity. These are the sort of things you need to do in your own life. When you buy a vehicle you want to buy a 4-cylinder vehicle as opposed to an S.U.V with an 8-cylinder and how many of us use an S.U.V. to go into the bush. Do we really need to have a vehicle that is that high off the ground?”
Since we all share the same atmosphere, Fuller says smaller economies that don’t emit a lot of greenhouse gases can appeal to the bigger countries to do the right thing.
Carlos Fuller
“With all treaties there is no international police that will inflict any penalties on them, whether it’s the W.T.O., whether there are trade sanctions, those are the basic measures you’d have at the end to be able to impose it on them, but for small countries to impose a trade sanction on a large country you know won’t work; so we then need to try to address the moral fortitude of these countries. I believe we have opportunities in the tourism industry for example, where some countries have taught their tour operators about climate change. So when you get a boatload of tourists and you take them to the reef you say ‘Look you see the emissions that you’re causing to your reef?’ ”
Some of the ways the coastal tourism industry—and ordinary citizens—can mitigate rising sea levels is to locate buildings further back from the water’s edge, build higher off the ground and plant trees and shrubs in front of beachfront construction. Read More

NOTICES/LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
If I have seen farther than others,
it is because I was standing
on the shoulder of giants
Isaac Newton

THE SAN PEDRO DAILY ARCHIVES