By Jane Sutton GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba | Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:39pm EDT GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - - The alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks told the Guantanamo courtroom on Wednesday that the U.S. government had killed many more people in the name of national security than he is accused of killing. Khal...

By Barbara Liston ORLANDO, Florida | Wed Oct 17, 2012 11:33am EDT ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A Florida judge set a tentative date of June 10 next year for the second-degree murder trial of George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch captain who killed unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in a gated subdivision near Orlando. Judge Debra Nel...

By Edith Honan NEW YORK | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:33pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - In Maryland, Maine and Washington, voters appear to be warming to the idea of legal marriage of same sex couples, raising the likelihood that come Election Day at least one of those states will join six others that have approved gay marriage. That is, if the polls are to b...

MADRID | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:31pm EDT MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish unions are considering launching a general strike against austerity measures on November 14, union sources said, eight months after the last walk-out and coinciding with strike action in neighboring Portugal. Workers in both Spain and Portugal are...

By Balazs Koranyi and Helen Murphy OSLO/BOGOTA | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:29pm EDT OSLO/BOGOTA (Reuters) - Historic closed-door talks between Colombia and Marxist rebels began on Wednesday in Norway after FARC rebel and government negotiators arrived secretly in Oslo in a bid to end almost half a centur...

ISTANBUL | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:29pm EDT ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's armed forces fired back over the border into Syria on Wednesday after a mortar shell shot from Syria landed just inside Turkey's Hatay border province, the provincial governor's office said. Nobody was killed or wounded by the mortar shell, t...

By Sam Cage BUCHAREST | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:29pm EDT BUCHAREST (Reuters) - A bitter dispute between Romania's president and prime minister resurfaced on Wednesday, raising doubts over the running of the country with an election due in December. Leftist Prime Minister Victor Ponta tried to remove Tr...

JERUSALEM | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:24pm EDT JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States and Israel will hold a major missile defense exercise in Israel this month, sending a message of close cooperation as both countries weigh their options over Iran's nuclear program. The three-week exercise, the largest the allies h...

By Dominic Evans BEIRUT | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:36pm EDT BEIRUT (Reuters) - The international mediator on Syria said on Wednesday its civil war risks spilling across borders to engulf the Middle East and appealed for a temporary truce he said could mark a small step towards defusing 19 months of conf...

By Maria Golovnina LONDON | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:03pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear chief said on Wednesday that Iran's allegation his agency may have been infiltrated by saboteurs was baseless and voiced concern about "intensive activities" at the Parchin military installation that his in...

By Thomas Grove MOSCOW | Wed Oct 17, 2012 1:00pm EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian investigators began criminal proceedings against a prominent leader of protests against President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, saying a documentary on a pro-Kremlin TV channel showed evidence Sergei Udaltsov had plotte...

By Paul Sandle and Mohammed Abbas LONDON | Wed Oct 17, 2012 12:59pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - David Cameron's friendship with Rupert Murdoch's former British newspaper chief was thrust back into the spotlight on Wednesday when the prime minister refused to answer a question about potentially embarras...

By Basil Katz NEW YORK | Wed Oct 17, 2012 11:23am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - A man charged last year in a suspected Iranian-backed plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington was expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to terrorism-related charges, a person familiar with the matter said. U.S. auth...

Few political leaders have benefited more from Hugo Chavez’s largesse than Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Consequently, few foreign leaders will be watching the Venezuelan polls on Sunday closer than the Sandinista strongman. Ortega and his party’s politburo, recipients of more than $2.2 billion in Venezuelan petrodollars since 2007, insist they are confident their Venezuelan benefacto...

Panama, the home of the greatest closer of all time. Yankee’s Mariano Rivera, and the first country in the region to play baseball, is the subject of a ground breaking sports documentary by a New York filmmaker. US filmmaker Eric Soussan lamented that Panama, which pioneered baseball now lags behind other Latin- American countries in its exports of players to the major leagues. When he obta...

In a blog post by Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein, two announcements were made that were direct results of passenger feedback. First up was the request by Royal Caribbean fans for more Panama Canal cruises. Goldstein announced that Vision of the Seas was slated to originally offer Caribbean cruises will instead sail a set of Panama Canal cruises in the fall and spring. The new Panama ca...

Russia’s Interior Ministry has signed an agreement with Nicaragua on supplying the "Tiger" armored vehicles to that country. “These vehicles will be used in operations on fighting the organized crime in our country”, Nicaragua's Minister of Interior Ana Isabel Morales Mazún said at a meeting in Moscow on Thursday. She said the "Tigers" would be used by the units of the Nicaraguan special...

The death of nearly 300 people from medicine provided by Panama’s Social Security Fund (CSS) reverberated around the world, but no one has taken the blame. Now the Committee of Relatives for the Right to Health and Life (Cofadesavi) is calling for the head of the current CSS director. "The president and the board of the Social Security Fund should take action on the matter and call for t...

The proposed project seeks to enhance the climate resilience of investments in Nicaragua's rural water supply sector. The project is closely aligned with relevant national policies, strategies, plans and legislation. In particular, the project would support the implementation of the National Environment and Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan for 2010-15. The SCCF grant ($6 million, ex...

Retiring to Nicaragua does not have to mean that people’s healthcare will suffer, especially if they are going to be moving close to the capital city Managua and other major cities. Healthcare is very good in Nicaragua and it is also less expensive than it is in the United States. Therefore, people have the opportunities to maintain their health even if they move out of the States and retire i...

Last week, the Worldwatch Institute’s Central America team – together with our partners from the INCAE Business School – convened a working group of nearly 40 renewable energy experts and decision-makers in Managua, Nicaragua. The emphasis: access to energy for marginalized communities through sustainable energy options. With presentations and participation from the government’s renewable ener...

Attacks on Panama’s electoral tribunal (TE) and the appointing of a new judge are part of a government plan to take over the institution and seek the immediate re-election of President Ricardo Martinelli says a leading constitutionalist. Law professor Miguel Antonio Bernal, said on RPC Radio on Tuesday, September 25, that Panama has a dictatorship and everything regarding the appointment of...

Following the exchange of notes of ratification, the Free Trade Agreement between the two nations will become effective on 19 October 2012. A press release from the Foreign Ministry of Nicaragua reads: An exchange of letters on the bilateral Nicaragua-Chile protocol, a Free Trade Agreement between Chile and Central America, was held this morning between the foreign minister, Samuel Santo...

In a Rogue’s Gallery of copyright legislation, many efforts deserve mention. The DMCA is surely there, together with Japan’s new copyright law, the Digital Economy Act, and Ley Sinde. But a new Panamanian copyright bill is giving those laws a run for their money. The excellent project at Infojustice.org have directed our attention to a new bill that has been sent to the Panamanian legislatu...

Cuban experts who will collaborate with Nicaragua in seismological and volcanological research are ready to start their work with experts from the Territorial Study Institute (Ineter) and other bodies. Upon arriving in Nicaragua, the four scientists expressed their willingness to cooperate in the complex situation the country is going through since late August, with quakes registered in coa...

Mexico’s President-elect Enrique Peña Nieto has embarked on a diplomatic tour of six countries in Central and South America in an effort to reset rocky relationships and reestablish Mexico's position in the region. Top talking points include the region’s shared security concerns, especially with Guatemala and Colombia, and smoothing trade relations with Argentina and Brazil, both of which h...

The first official meeting of the EMPRETEC Latin America Forum was hosted by EMPRETEC Panama in Panama City last week, following a regional training workshop that brought together EMPRETEC directors and trainers from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Peru and Venezuela to share experiences and discuss new developments. Participants reviewed the Empretec + material...

While scientists increasingly name new species after celebrities in order to gain much-needed attention for the world's vanishing biodiversity, researchers describing a new snake species from Panama have taken a different route. Dubbing the new serpent, Sibon noalamina ('no to the mine!' in Spanish), the scientists are hoping the multicolored snake's unusual name will draw attention to mining ...

On September 7, 2012 the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released a report that tracks the deterioration of coral reefs in the Caribbean over the past 39 years. The report indicates that live coral cover over some reefs in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Florida Keys and the US Virgin Islands has dropped to less than 10%. These losses are thought to be driven by a combination o...

60% of the world's population have no access to banking services, although 85% have a mobile phone. Brett King, founder of the first mobile banking service in the U.S. and the UK, and specialist in innovation in financial services, was at the XII Latin American Congress on banking automation, which is being held in Panama. He states that the key "to popularize and expand banking services ...

Panama’s national soccer team took a big step forward towards its dream of playing in the Rio World Cup in 2014 when it defeated Canada for the first time on Tuesday September 12. For fans, reaching the holy grail of soccer would overshadow the opening of the Panama Canal expansion and the election of new president, both scheduled for the year in which the country marks the 100th anniversar...

Fifteen Panamanian truckers claimed they were assaulted while driving in Costa Rica from January through August, five more than all of 2011, according to the Panamanian National Cargo Transportation Chamber (CANATRACA). The most recent case involved Nicolás Araúz, a father of four who was shot twice in the head by unknown gunmen on Costa Rica’s Peñas Blancas highway while transporting a tru...

The Panamanian government has presented for review at the National Land Council a draft bill which changes current land titling legislation. The bill gives more power to the National Land Authority (Anati), such as a period of seven years for the role of administrator and the elimination of free titling in any of its forms. Through these changes, the government seeks to plug loopholes ...

The Costa Rica Star previously reported on the Albinos of Kuna Panama. Megan Leavitt, 29, is a self-described nomad. “I’ve been traveling for the last 12 years,” she said. Her travels have taken her from Glenburn, where she grew up; to Santa Cruz and the University of California where she earned a degree, on full scholarship, in Latin American and Latino studies; to Haiti; Mexico; Centra...

Quijano pledged to continue the management model that had made the operation of the canal successful. He also vowed to redouble efforts to train operating personnel and to face new challenges, such as the current expansion project, which will double the capacity of the 80-km canal, built between 1904 and 1914 by the U.S. Quijano also highlighted the importance of expanding the capacity o...

The tiny Central American country of Belize is making plans to offer more than Maya Ruins, sun and sand to visitors as it prepares to launch a medical tourism infrastructure a release today from the Belize Trade and Investment Development Service says. In early August 2012, a workshop on medical tourism was coordinated, with the objective to create awareness of the new industry and to deter...

As the boat carried our group from a coastal airstrip in eastern Panama to the Yandup Island Lodge, in the autonomous territory of the Guna Indians, I admired the timeless beauty of my surroundings. A woman in colorful traditional dress glided slowly across the glistening sea in a dugout canoe powered by a lateen sail. The shore of nearby Playón Chico island was lined with Guna huts, their can...

Young Cuban artists Jeosviel Abstengo Chaviano, Liesther Amador González, and Fernando Caluff, will represent Cuba on the first edition of Hispanoamericanos, Traveling Souls exhibition, scheduled to be held at the Albernathy Arts Center, in the US city of Georgia. The exhibition will open on October 5 and will be open to the public until the 31st. The event will be attended by some one hund...

Source: Casa Presidencial On the first day of her visit to the People's Republic of China, President Laura Chinchilla initiated an agreement that will allow GeSolar, a Chinese utility company work with a counterpart from Costa Rica in the development of a solar power plant. Our President was witness to the signing of the agreement between GeSolar and GreenerSys, and as the documents were execute...

Reaching out to the community in San Ramon. Source: Fuerza Publica Officials from the Ministry of Public Safety and Fuerza Publica are seeking assistance from law enforcement experts in Brazil and the Embassy of the United States of America to improve community police efforts and to combat corruption among their ranks. Costa Rica has been working towards the improvement and modernization of Fuer...