|
|
|
|
|||
|
| |||
newsBe well informed --- try these online news and talk radio alternatives:
Also in this section: Panama News Briefs Cerro Punta - Boquete road coming Recall that one key event in the collapse of public support for Mireya Moscoso was her effort to build a road through Volcan Baru National Park, past properties that she and her relatives own there. Though the former president’s proxies organized a goon squad that suppressed protests and went on a tree felling rampage through the park, she lost that battle on all fronts and the road project was abandoned. At the time, however, environmentalists posed as an alternative the construction of a road between the two towns that runs mainly through cow pastures south of the park. There are, after all, legitimate reasons to link the towns on the eastern and western flanks of the dormant volcano and several thousand small farmers along the southern route who do need a way to get their produce to the market. Thus the Torrijos administration has announced that it will build a 42-kilometer road that will pass through Palmira to link Boquete and Cerro Punta, at a cost of about $20 million. A date for the work to begin has not been set, as environmental impact studies have yet to be done. Taiwan paper reports secret RP-PRC talks The China News, a Taiwanese newspaper, reports that Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro recently held secret meetings in Madrid with representatives of the People’s Republic of China Foreign Ministry, the aim of which was an agreement to drop Panama’s relations with Taiwan and establish formal diplomatic relations with China. The paper said that the meetings failed to result in an agreement. Another try at removing Alba The National Liberal Party’s Honor Tribunal has begun new proceedings to remove party member Rogelio Alba, a deputy from Kuna Yala, from his seat in the National Assembly. Alba has been caught smuggling liquor and cigarettes out of the Colon Free Zone without paying the duty and abusing his right to import duty free cars by effectively assigning that right to third parties. He has also been accused of drug money laundering and diverting government aid to students in Kuna Yala, and the party is angry with him for breaking ranks with them and voting for the Torrijos administration’s Seguro Social reforms. Under Panamanian law a political party can remove a legislator elected on its ticket for violating party rules. RP consul in LA fired Fernando Daly, who was the Panamanian consul in Los Angeles, has been fired by the Ministry of Foreign Relations. This country’s consulates are essentially run as private businesses, which are for the most part bought from the ruling party or issued as political favors. Panamanian consuls get a percentage of the proceeds from the visas, passports, ship registries and other official documents they sell. But the government alleges that Daly was keeping more than his share, and owed it more than $44,000. With his firing the LA consulate’s business was taken over by the consulate in Vancouver, Canada. Tapir escapes from Summit Zoo If you are driving out to
Gamboa or in the forest preserve, take care that you don’t hit a large but
gentle animal. A fallen tree knocked down the fence enclosing the Summit
Zoo’s tapir exhibit and the animal took off. Tapirs are shy vegetarians,
but will damage to a car that hits them. The zoo is asking anyone who sees
the tapir to call 232-4850, 315-0855 or 276-6256. Arosemena’s guru? Between February 17 and 20, some 2.5 million people gathered on an airfield near the Indian city of Bangalore to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of Hindu guru Sri Sri Ravishankar’s Art of Living Foundation. Although he is a traditional Vedic scholar, Ravishankar’s following goes well beyond the Hindu religious community and far from India’s borders, and his teachings are aimed at people of all faiths. In fact his foundation runs some charitable and educational projects in Panama, and his occasional appearances here draw large audiences. Among the dignitaries on hand for the celebration were a number of heads of state and former heads of state, including the presidents of Mongolia, Fiji and Mauritius and former US President Bill Clinton and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the vice presidents of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Croatia and Taiwan. Also in attendance was the second vice president of Panama, Rubén Arosemena. The latter is a leader of a party with roots in the Catholic Church that used to call itself the Christian Democratic Party. He was in Asia mainly for the purpose of signing a free trade agreement with Singapore on Panama’s behalf. Panama’s Hindu community, which dates back to canal construction days, mostly traces its roots back to Gujarat and Sind, states in India and Pakistan respectively, often by way of the Caribbean countries of Trinidad-Tobago and Guyana. Fire devastates Kuna village at Bayano Bridge Children playing with matches started a February 16 fire that destroyed 14 homes and left about 65 people homeless in the Kuna village of Akuayala at the western edge of the Bayano Bridge. The village, composed of wooden squatters’ shacks, is in eastern Panama province’s Chepo district and is home to one of the National Police checkpoints on the way into and out of Darien, but there are few public services there. The nearest fire station is about 40 miles away and the bomberos didn’t arrive for more than a half-hour after they were called. US forces seize more than a ton of coke in RP waters The USS Ford, a Navy frigate with a Coast Guard detachment aboard, arrested a ”fishing” vessel without fishing gear 40 miles off of Panama’s Caribbean coast, in Panamanian territorial waters, on February 6. Bales containing a metric ton of cocaine were found stashed in a bulkhead and a four-man Colombian crew was arrested. An anti-drug treaty allows US ships to make arrests in Panamanian waters, and in this case the Americans claim that the 40-foot launch Victoria was sailing without a national flag and tried to ram the Ford when it was intercepted. St. Valentine’s Day massacre of sorts On the evening of February 14 police staged a raid on a house in the Panama City neighborhood of El Bosque that resulted in an eight-hour shootout which left neighbors cowering in their homes, one police officer seriously wounded, a Colombian man dead of a shot fired from a pistol pressed against his head, three men under arrest and more than 15 gallons of cocaine seized. Police claim that the Colombian man killed himself rather than surrender, but the PTJ forensics lab is investigating that version of the story. Suspect in child’s disappearance released Wheelchair-bound Jorge Tiziano Jaén has been released from prison and placed under house arrest. He was jailed three years ago on suspicion that he might have had something to do with the disappearance of the toddler Mónica Serrano, a neighbor of his in Arraijan. But he has never been tried, the girl has never been found and there are a number of theories about what happened. And meanwhile Tiziano has served the time that he would have served had he been tried and convicted. Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez is pressuring the nation’s prosecutors to get busier and reduce the backlog of cases that lead to situations like this, but here a bigger problem seems to be that there wasn’t enough evidence to get a conviction but at the same time there was reason enough for suspicion that nobody wanted to be blamed for releasing Tiziano. One of the procedural nightmares in Panamanian justice is that it’s very difficult to get a weak case dismissed. IDAAN warns about use of hydrants during Carnival Over the years there have been a number of cases of houses and businesses burning down during Carnival because the bomberos lacked sufficient water pressure to fight fires when people turned on other hydrants to play in the water. The private use of fire hydrants is illegal and the IDAAN water and sewer utility is warning that there will be a special watch for those who make recreational use of them during Carnival, and that those responsible will be arrested and fined. Danilo Pérez gets another Grammy Three times earlier Panamanian jazz pianist Danilo Pérez has been nominated for Grammy awards as a solo performer, but he tends to win them as a member of a band, the Wayne Shorter Quartet. That group is composed of saxophonist Wayne Shorter, Pérez, bassist John Patitucci and drummer Brian Blade. On February 8 the quartet won the award for best jazz album for “Beyond the sound barrier,” the second year in a row that the quartet has taken home the honors in that category.
Also in this section:
News |
Business
|
Editorial
|
Opinion
|
Letters
|
Arts
|
Review
|
Community
|
Fun
|
Travel
Make the
Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com Find the boat of your dreams through Evermarine --- http://www.evermarine.com |
||||||||
|
