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Maya City in 3-D Airborne lasers have "stripped" away thick rain forests to reveal new images of an ancient Maya metropolis that's far bigger than anyone had thought. An April 2009 flyover of the Maya city of Caracol used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) equipment—which bounces laser beams off the ground—to help scientists construct a 3-D map of the settlement in western Belize. The survey revealed previously unknown buildings, roads, and other features in just four days, scientists announced earlier this month at the International Symposium on Archaeometry in Tampa, Florida. University of Central Florida anthropologists Arlen and Diane Chase...

For a quarter of a century, two archaeologists and their team slogged through wild tropical vegetation to investigate and map the remains of one of the largest Maya cities, in Central America. Slow, sweaty hacking with machetes seemed to be the only way to discover the breadth of an ancient urban landscape now hidden beneath a dense forest canopy. Even the new remote-sensing technologies, so effective in recent decades at surveying other archaeological sites, were no help. Imaging radar and multispectral surveys by air and from space could not “see” through the trees. Then, in the dry spring season a...

For hundreds of years the Mayans dominated large parts of the Americas until, mysteriously in the 8th and 9th century AD, a large chunk of the Mayan civilisation collapsed. The reason for this collapse has been hotly debated, but now scientists say they might have an answer - an intense drought that lasted a century. Studies of sediments in the Great Blue Hole in Belize suggest a lack of rains caused the disintegration of the Mayan civilisation, and a second dry spell forced them to relocate elsewhere.

Reports tonight are that two individuals possibly infected with the Ebola virus are in Belizean waters. Local TV station Channel 7 monitored in the capital City Of Belmopan tonight, reported having credible reports that a couple from a Texas-based cruise ship presently anchored off Belize City, is on a ship tender, unable to return to the cruise ship, while being refused entry to Belize City to catch an air ambulance awaiting at the International Airport to take them to the their country of origin, the U.S.A. The television station in its broadcast tonight said Belize health authorities contacted tonight have...

A Dallas hospital nurse exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms and her husband, travelling on board Carnival Magic, have been denied entry to Belize. The couple has been prevented from entering Belize City to be airlifted to the U.S.A., and is currently on a ship tender unable to return to the cruise ship, according to the Belizean media reports.

The Belize coast guard is refusing to allow passengers from a cruise ship to come ashore because it’s carrying a Texas hospital worker who handled a lab specimen from the man who died of Ebola in Dallas, according to news reports from Belize. A White House official confirmed to the Associated Press early Friday morning that that the unnamed Dallas health care worker is on the ship and is “self-quarantined.” But the White House did not identify the country.

The number of careers and professions available to practicing Christians is shrinking by the day. You can add a career in public health to that list. Dr. Brendan Bain, one of the leading AIDS experts in the Caribbean, has been unceremoniously cashiered from his post for having the temerity to tell the truth about the cause of AIDS. A long-time and highly respected professor at the University of West Indies until his retirement in 2012, Dr. Bain was praised by all as a "pioneer” in the effort to combat HIV/AIDS, which is at epidemic proportions in Caribbean nations. Since his...

The State Department through the U.S. Mission to Belize is planning to spend $500,000 to create jobs for youth in Belize. “Marginalized youth are empowered when given a voice and opportunities. Equipping marginalized youth and their communities with economic opportunities and/or business training can help them reach their true potential as entrepreneurs and improve citizen security,” the grant announcement said. The grant proposal seeks to “confront the root causes of violence and crime” in Belize “in a creative and effective way” and “to create positive cultural and social conditions, which are the foundations of a peaceful and orderly society.”

Bulldozers and backhoes have essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids, which survived millennia of storms, rain and wind only to succumb to a construction company seeking gravel for road fill. The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology says the destruction was detected late last week, and only a small portion of the center of the pyramid mound was left standing, according to the Associated Press. 7Newsbelize.com, the website for TV channel 7 in the small Caribbean country, accompanied a handful of archaeologists to the site recent.

Officials in Belize say a construction company has destroyed one of the country's largest Mayan pyramids, reports. Head of the Belizean Institute of Archaeology Jaime Awe said the Noh Mul temple was leveled by a road-building company seeking gravel for road filler.

Hezbollah in Yucatán Posted on January 30, 2013 by Baron Bodissey As mentioned here many times in the past, the southern border of the United States is porous not just to Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans, but also to Islamic terrorists. Operatives from Al Qaeda and Hezbollah acquire a Latin American passport and enough Spanish to allow their swarthiness to pass as Latino.This latest report concerns the arrival of a Hezbollah associate in Mexico. Many thanks to Iz-M (via Vlad) for the translation from Diario de Yucatán: More signs of the presence of HezbollahLabboun Rafic Mohammed, the Muslim cleric allegedly linked...

Archaeologist suing makers of Indiana Jones, claiming their Crystal Skull is too accurate Can a fantastical movie be too historically accurate? Dr. Jaime Awe, director of the Institute of Archeology of Belize, has filed suit against Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures claiming that the prop skull from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bears a striking resemblance to one of the "real" Crystal Skulls originally discovered in Belize. So why is that a problem? Well, according to Awe, the skull was stolen, and the filmmakers are profitting off of ill-gotten goods. The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of...

A Belize archaeologist is suing the makers of a blockbuster ‘Indiana Jones’ film for using a likeness of a so-called Crystal Skull, which he says is a stolen national treasure. Dr. Jaime Awe claims the skull was stolen from Belize 88 years ago, and that filmmakers had no right to use a model of it in 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, according to the Hollywood Reporter. In a lawsuit filed in Illinois this week, Awe is demanding the return of the Crystal Skull, which he says is a national treasure, from a treasure-hunting family who...

Computer security industry pioneer John McAfee says he has gone into hiding in Belize because he believes authorities there are trying to frame him for the murder of a neighbor, a crime he says he did not commit, according to Wired magazine. Belize police are searching for McAfee as "a person of interest" in a murder investigation. "You can say I'm paranoid about it, but they will kill me, there is no question. They've been trying to get me for months. They want to silence me," Wired quoted McAfee as saying on its website. "I am not well liked by...

Antivirus pioneer John McAfee is on the run from murder charges, Belize police say. According to Marco Vidal, head of the national police force's Gang Suppression Unit, McAfee is a prime suspect in the murder of American expatriate Gregory Faull, who was gunned down Saturday night at his home in San Pedro Town on the island of Ambergris Caye. Details remain sketchy so far, but residents say that Faull was a well-liked builder who hailed originally from California. The two men had been at odds for some time. Last Wednesday, Faull filed a formal complaint against McAfee with the mayor's...

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

American national wanted by US government among alleged terror group members detained in Merida. An alleged terrorist belonging to the radical Islamic movement Hezbollah has been arrested in Mexico and handed over to US authorities, Mexican media reported Sunday...

Earlier this month, I decided to see how hard it would be to set up my own offshore bank account. I figured it would be pretty difficult, because I’m not rich and don’t have a team of tax lawyers to oversee my money and because the E.U. and U.S. governments have been cracking down on tax havens by imposing stricter tax-sharing requirements. So I proceeded with some caution. First, I Googled “company registration tax haven” and randomly picked three firms that set up accounts in offshore jurisdictions. Then I called each and explained that I was hoping to minimize my...

Some 1,600 years ago, the Temple of the Night Sun was a blood-red beacon visible for miles and adorned with giant masks of the Maya sun god as a shark, blood drinker, and jaguar. Long since lost to the Guatemalan jungle, the temple is finally showing its faces to archaeologists, and revealing new clues about the rivalrous kingdoms of the Maya. Unlike the relatively centralized Aztec and Inca empires, the Maya civilization -- which spanned much of what are now Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico's Yucatán region (Maya map) -- was a loose aggregation of city-states. "This has been a growing...

John McAfee was reportedly arrested in Belize for having a firearm without a license. His story sounds just as unbelievable as the false arrest itself. ZoomLocal news channel News 5 in Belize reports that McAfee founder John McAfee was arrested at his research facility in Orange Walk for having a firearm without a license. McAfee calls the arrest bogus, claiming that it was an intentional move because he failed to bribe a local political boss in the local district. "On Monday at six o’clock, I was awakened by the sound of a bullhorn, a megaphone," McAfee explains. "I went outside...