Alexander Ross, who grew up in Colon province and graduated from Cristobal High School, was killed in an August 1 accident while working for the US-hired DynCorp military contractors in the southern Colombian town of Villa Garzon. Ross, a cartographer, signed on with DynCorp shortly after graduating from college two years ago and mapped drug-producing areas to be defoliated with chemical herbicides. According to wire service reports and what Ross's employers told his family, he walked into the propeller of a spray plane and was instantly killed. DynCorp, operating under a contract with the US State Department, performs a number of military and police functions for the Colombian government. Though the US Congress imposed a 300-person limit on DynCorp personnel who can be stationed in Colombia, that has been interpreted to apply only to US citizens and the actual size of the DynCorp force is more than 600. Ross, whose father is a British-Panmanian shipping executive and whose mother is Chilean, was born in Panama. He was thus not a US citizen --- though he resided in Hawaii when not working in Colombia --- so wasn't counted toward the congressional limit. In another incident later that same day, a Salvadoran helicopter pilot working for DynCorp died along with four Colombian soldiers and a Colombian civilian while trying to evacuate soldiers who had been wounded trying to suppress resistance to spraying operations.

Responding to an OAS complaint about Panama and Nicaragua's inadequate investigations of a large arms supply operation on behalf of the Colombian AUC paramilitary, wherein weapons belonging to the Nicaraguan police were purportedly sold to the Panamanian police and then transferred to the AUC through the port of Turbo with the cooperation of Colombian police and customs authorities, Panama's Ministry of Foreign Relations says that it has submitted proofs to the OAS that end the matter. It is claimed by the Foreign Ministry and the National Police that the stationery and signatures by which the Panamanian police allegedly bought the arms from their Nicaraguan counterparts were false. Meanwhile, however, Panamanian prosecutors say that more people still need to be questioned in relation to the case. Panamanian Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán, through his or his law firm's role as organizer or legal representative of suspect companies, his brother's business and social ties with suspect individuals, or his representation of a suspect administration, has played an incidental role in several high-profile arms scandals, including alleged gun running from Argentina to Croatia through dummy Panamanian companies; alleged gun running and money laundering by jailed former Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos; an alleged military helicopter purchase swindle in Ecuador; and the arms shipment to the AUC. Alemán has expressed ambitions to be Panama's next president, but the official denial to the OAS is unlikely to remove gun running as a campaign issue if he runs.

Renowned Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, who came to Panama to give a lecture on ethics at a seminar on journalism and international law, appeared downright annoyed when caught by news photographers conversing with Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán. Garzón, who is best known as the man who issued an international arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, advocated a depoliticized and impartial judiciary in his discourse and agreed to a private, unofficial meeting with Alemán during his visit. According to statements attributed by El Panama America to one of the seminar's sponsors, Latin American Journalism Center (CELAP) director Maribel Cuervo de Paredes, Garzón was surprised by the presence of photographers, reporters and ministry officials when he showed up to meet with Alemán. In the published photos, Garzón did not appear to be pleased.

President Moscoso, citing the similarity of a would-be Journalism Council to a Noriega-era body used to ban non-groveling reporters and editors of those times, has struck down a press law that was passed unanimously by the Legislative Assembly. She did so with encouragement from international human rights and journalists' groups, the Colegio Nacional de Periodistas, University of Panama law students, The Panama News and a number of journalists and small news media. The legislature could pass the measure over her veto, but the politics of that make it unlikely. Meanwhile, the partisan-slanted major corporate media's management and purported journalist's organizations that supported the law have set up a National Journalism Council as a private outfit, to headed by Sindicato de Periodistas president Garrit Geneteau. Geneteau's alleged union does not have a single contract by which it represents the interests of Panamanian journalists. In press photos of the group's creation, former Foreign Minister and La Prensa publisher Ricardo Alberto Arias led a line of corporate managers in signing a charter theoretically representing and setting standards for the nation's journalists.

Judge Dannys Avecilla has held that it isn't a crime to denigrate the director of the National Institute of Culture (INAC). La Prensa graphic design editor Lourdes de Obaldía García de Paredes had been charged with criminal defamation by INAC director Rafael Ruiloba for an opinion column that she wrote that questioned his judgment and performance in office. However, every allegation of fact that was made in the column was true, and every opinion that was asserted was debatable. Thus the judge threw out one of the dozens of bogus defamation charges brought by Moscoso administration officials against journalists. It is not certain whether Attorney General José Antonio Sossa will appeal the acquittal.

The Electoral Tribunal has convicted Panama's most successful independent candidate in the 1999 elections, Brenda De Icaza, of violating the law protecting public employees who take leaves of absence to run for political office. She was removed as mayor of La Chorrera, the office to which the voters elected her. The tribunal also banned from holding or running for office for two years and sentenced her to a year in prison. The former mayor refused to give David Toppin Chacón his city job back when he sought to return after an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the Legislative Assembly, saying that she suspected him of embezzlement and if not that then gross inefficiency. The prison term can be avoided by payment of a fine, but the ban on holding or running for office would keep her out of the 2004 elections. Defense lawyers say they'll appeal to the Supreme Court.

President Moscoso has called for a special legislative session beginning on August 12, to consider a number of changes to the nation's Organic Law on Education. The changes that the Cabinet Council is submitting to the legislature are for the most part decentralizing moves, which would create administrative subdivisions for all of the provinces. The president has been criticised by some of the teachers' unions and by opposition politicians for submitting relatively meaningless solutions for the nation's serious public education problems and wastin money by doing so through a special legislative session. However, one thing that will be accomplished by the special session is that multiple bribery investigations affecting the legislature will be put off until next year. Attorney General José Antonio Sossa says the investigations won't proceed while the legislators have immunity --- that is, during legislative sessions, plus five days before and afterward.

Francisco Ameglio has been chosen to head the Arnulfista legislative caucus for the 2002-2003 session, which begins in September. He replaces José Blandón Figueroa. It remains to be seen how powerful the post will be, as the dominant META alliance among the PRD, Partido Popular and two Solidaridad deputies has probably lost its majority due to PRD defections and purges related to the confirmation of President Moscoso's Supreme Court nominations. Unless the PRD-led faction can patch up its differences within its caucus or attract new allies, an Arnulfista-led coalition is likely to take control of the legislature in the next session.

Banker Alberto Vallarino, who left the ranks of the Arnulfista Party to become the unsuccessful "third force" candidate in the 1999 elections, wants to return to his old party and become its standard bearer in 2004. He may not be allowed that luxury. Former Health Minister José Terán, Foreign Minister José Miguel Alemán and Public Works Minister Victor Juliao have all expressed interest in gaining the nomination, though polls suggest that Vallarino has a good shot at winning and anybody associated with the Moscoso administration would be crushed in a landslide. President Moscoso says that the Arnulfista Party will begin to accept new members sometime before the next elections, but says that the time for Vallarino to join was in 1999 and won't say whether his membership application would be accepted when the party membership rolls open again.

The August 4 election for Arnulfista Party convention delegates will be held again in the Chiriqui district of Baru. That's because somebody stole the ballot box. Fingers are being pointed at followers of San Miguelito legislator Gloria Young, but she says that she had nothing to do with the theft.

The Electoral Tribunal has quashed MOLIRENA party boss Jesús Rosas's attempt to throw candidates supporting his intra-party rival, Vice-President Arturo Vallarino, off of the convention delegate election ballot in five municipalities. The tribunal panned Rosas's attempt to change election rules without notice and held that voting must be held with pro-Vallarino candidates on the ballot. It appears that neither Vallarino nor Rosas supporters will win a majority of delegates and that MOLIRENA's party leadership will be determined by deals with minor factions.

On July 28 Panama's National Police appealed at Catholic Church masses for public assistance in fighting what they say is an increase in violent crime. At a mass over which Archbishop José Dimas Cedeño presided, Deputy National Police Chief Bolívar Castillo called upon "people of God" to "join our effort to reach the goal of a safer and more peaceful society."

Smuggling along the Pacific side beaches in the Interior has become more brazen recently, sometimes with fishing trawlers dropping off packages in front of well-populated beaches and motorized cayucos moving out to retrieve them, all in broad daylight. The police have stepped up their response with a number of major drug busts in the beach communities of Panama Oeste and Cocle. On July 30 police made an unusually large seizure, finding four kilos of heroin, 279 kilos of cocaine, 230 bales of marijuana and 139 AK-47 assault rifles in a bunker under a beachfront house in Juan Hombron, Cocle. Two people were arrested. The contraband was most likely related to Colombia's civil conflict, in which both the government-allied AUC paramilitary and the leftist FARC rebels largely finance their operations with drugs and use Panama as a gun smuggling route.

Ramón Ernesto "Chingaló" González, a Noriega-era agent for Customs and the DENI and an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Agency, was found dead on May 5 near a religious group's camp on Cerro Azul. Reported missing by his family on July 23, he had been shot execution-style through the back of the head, most likely that same day.

PRD legislator and former San Miguelito Mayor Felipe Cano, with support from local businesses, plans to bring back the "arms for food" exchanges aimed at reducing the arms race on the streets of his community. The exchange, in which people can get vouchers that can be redeemed at supermarkets by turning in firearms without any questions asked, will take place at the Los Andes #1 sports field on August 29.

Mariano Trujillo Ruiz, an administrator at the Nicaraguan Embassy here who had been on the job for four years, was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head by fellow diplomats at the embassy on August 3. The wound may have been self-inflicted. So far the Nicaraguan government has not explained the death, which was investigated by Panamanian police at Nicaragua's request.

Panamamanian law enforcement authorities have forwarded to their Nicaraguan counterparts evidence of several bank accounts containing millions of dollars apparently deposited here by or on behalf of officials of the former Arnoldo Alemán administration. The current Nicaraguan president, Enrique Bolaños, is conducting a crackdown on members of the previous administration, who are accused of stealing more than $90 million and hiding it abroad. Alemán himself enjoys legislative immunity in Nicaragua, but the United States has cancelled his visa and more than a dozen members of his inner circle are either under arrest or in hiding.

On July 30 at 7:16 p.m. much of Panama felt an earthquake. The tremor, whose epicenter was just across the Costa Rican border at the tip of the Burica Peninsula at a depth of about 40 kilometers, registered 6.0 on the Richter scale. In the following hours and days there were several smaller aftershocks. Though no deaths were reported, three people were injured and a number of buildings were damaged. In Puerto Armuelles two houses collapsed. The bell tower of the Catholic Church in Alanje was cracked all the way through and will have to be replaced. The foundations of David's Rafael Hernández Regional Hospital were so badly damaged that the entire building may be condemned. The quake, which also caused minor damage in Bocas del Toro, was felt as far away as western Panama province.

As the western part of the country was shaking from a seismic event, strong winds and heavy rains swept across the Panama City metro area in the late afternoon and early evening of July 30. In Albrook at the capital's commuter and general aviation airport one private plane was tumbled over and destroyed by the winds and several other aircraft sustained minor damages. The storm caused some minor flooding in several Panama City neighborhoods, but as luck would have it the rains came while the Pacific was at low tide in the capital and this factor eased the drainage problem.

The fleet of Cadillacs that the Moscoso administration bought for the November 2000 Latin American summit made the news again recently, when one of them went to presidential secretary Ivonne de Fitzgerald. The car was raffled off at a fundraising dinner party hosted by the First Lady's office. Mrs. Fitzgerald's husband Mike Fitzgerald is a former US Navy SEAL and mercenary and is now President Moscoso's security advisor.

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