Panama News
When the call came into the police precinct in Panama City, Prosecutor Rafael Baloyes groaned: another group of indigenous, newly wandered across the Costa Rica-Panama border, and already in trouble. What his men discovered once they hacked their way through the jungle to the tribe’s encampment was nothing like any of them had ever seen. They found an outdoor torture chamber, within the chapel gro...
SKYWAY Costa Rica annouced its new flights to Bocas del Toro, Panama. "A short 45-minute flight from San Jose Costa Rica, Panama’s popular destination offers white sand beaches, clear water and a fun party atmosphere. It is a great add-on to a vacation to Costa Rica or a stand-alone getaway", states the press release. Flights are available Thursday through Monday each week. Located on the north...
The bridge connecting Panama and Costa Rica known as the “Sixaola Binational Bridge” was supposed to be ready in May this year, this did not happen, but the bridge shows an advance of 56%. The move of border posts of each country was already completed, migration, customs, police and supervision of vegetables and animals commerce as well as the dismantling of the old train structure. The new ...
During a conversation with my good buddy and fellow competitor Merv Low last night, he mentioned how I 'fished blind' because I don’t use any electronics. I jokingly replied "on the contrary Merv, it’s the lack of electronics that makes me fish with my eyes wide open". When you are fishing with no gps and no depth finder you are forced to use every bit of available data such as birds, visible l...
After five days of intense kayak fishing Jaco Beach resident Lance Clinton claimed 3rd place out of a field of 12 finalists selected worldwide to compete in the annual “winner-take-all” Los Buzos Panama International Kayak Fishing World Championship 2019. The 1st place winner – James McBeath of Canada -- took home $10,000. “The tournament was great. Caught some great fish and finished in third,...
Jaco Beach resident and super kayaker Lance Clinton leaves New Year’s Day for Panama as one of 12 finalists selected worldwide to compete in the annual “winner-take-all” Los Buzos Panama Kayak Fishing World Championship 2019. Clinton, 49, a former stock broker from Seattle, was chosen by the event’s organizers as Costa Rica’s top kayak fisherman. He turned professional four years ago and is spo...
Costa Rican authorities carried out 40 searches this Tuesday morning in different areas of the country in relation to an international human smuggling case, an investigation that was carried out for over 2 years and involved the different entities of the Ministry of Security, the Judiciary Investigative Police (OIJ), the General Directorate of Migration and the Public Ministry as well as Panamania...
Gustavo Him, Panama’s Minister of Tourism recently announced the Panamanian’s government interest in boosting the tourism sector through a $20 million international promotion fund, and is seeking an alliance with Costa Rica to create a multi-destination tourism zone that will be more attractive to tourists, specially those that travel long distances. "Panama has had a lack of vision due to diff...
Mimo International Exports and Imports Inc. a Panama based company pleaded guilty to bribing Costa Rican soccer official Eduardo Li. According to the statement read in a Brooklyn court by attorney Barry Kingham, back in 2014 Mimo paid Eduardo Li, who was then the head of the Costa Rican Soccer Federation, the sum of U.S. $500,000.00 so that he would agree to sign a deal for a U.S. apparel compa...
The First Encounter of World Marine Heritage Sites of the East Pacific took place from Wednesday to Friday this week in the Guanacaste Conservation Area in Costa Rica. Representatives from the different Marine World Heritage Sites gathered in the country in the event organized by the Pacifico Foundation, the Ministry of Environment and Energy and the UNESCO field office in Costa Rica in respons...
Panama's ex-dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega died Monday night at age of 83 at the Santo Tomas hospital in Panama City, the hospital announced on Tuesday. Noriega, who ruled Panama from 1983 until he was toppled by a US invasion in December 1989, was extradited to the Central American country on Dec. 11, 2011, after serving more than 20 years in American and French prisons on drug trafficking an...
Surgeons have performed an operation to remove a brain tumor from former Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, his daughter, Sandra, said on Tuesday without providing details on her father's condition. "It's over, but we don't know anything yet about his condition," Sandra Noriega Sieiro said. The 83-year-old Noriega is in "stable condition" after the nearly four-hour operation a...
An earthquake measuring 5 on the Richter Scale hit the Panamanian capital on Monday causing hundreds of people to evacuate their offices and other tall buildings, but no injuries or material damage were reported. The director of the Geosciences Institute at the University of Panama, Luis Eduardo Camacho, confirmed the magnitude of the quake, saying that it caused a "strong vibration" that was fel...
The two founders of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca were arrested on Saturday, the attorney general's office said, after both were indicted on charges of money-laundering in a case allegedly tied to a wide-ranging corruption scandal in Brazil. Firm founders Jurgen Mossack and Ramon Fonseca were detained because of the risk they might try to flee the country. Attorney General Kenia Porcel...
By Wendy Anders A search for a missing young woman from the U.S. in Panama ended Sunday when police found her body on a hiking trail near Bocas del Toro, an archipelago along Panama’s northern Caribbean coast. No information has been forthcoming regarding the possible cause of her death, said local media. Friends and family posted messages on social media late Thursday, February 2 after C...
Panama City, Dec. 20 — The opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) said Tuesday that Dec. 20 should be a "day of national mourning" to mark the U.S. invasion of Panama, which began on Dec. 20, 1989. U.S. military invasion of Panama on Dec. 20, 1989; source Newsroom Panama. "The death of an undetermined number of Panamanians, the destruction of property representing thousands of mill...
Dentons to be first global law firm with offices in Central America PRESS RELEASE : Proposed combination with Muñoz Global would unite world’s largest law firm and regional leader with offices in Costa Rica, Panama and Nicaragua November 15, 2016: Dentons, the world’s largest law firm, announced it would become the first global law firm with offices in Central America if a proposed combin...
Panama City, Oct. 12 — Hundreds of turtles lay their eggs every year on beaches along Panama's Pacific coast but their hatchlings face numerous threats to survival, both at sea and from stray dogs and poachers. Hawksbill turtle hatchlings in Central America. All along the coast of the small Punta Chame peninsula in central Panama, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) southwest of this capital,...
Next time you travel to Panama, you might want to stop any make a visit to the Baha'i temple. EFE-Amid smoky and beat-up buses, street vendors and hillsides crammed with rickety shacks, the only temple of the Baha'i faith in Latin America rises like a stalagmite on the summit of a leafy green hill. "People who come to visit us can't believe that this place exists in such a difficult and chao...
Police officers stand guard at the entrance of the Mossack Fonseca law firm office in Panama City April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso American Joseph Stiglitz, co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, has quit an expert commission the Panamanian government created on April 30 to evaluate the country's financial system in the wake of the Panama Papers leak, officials said. Swiss e...
The more than 2,000 Cuban migrants who have congregated in the northwestern Colombian border town of Turbo near the Panamanian border and who want to continue their journeys to the United States, will be deported to their home country or to the country they came from to illegally enter Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos said Monday. According to what Santos told local media, Colombian autho...
(CRS Archive) Panama Canal administrator Jorge Quijano said Tuesday that authorities are studying "prohibiting" the use of cell phones while vessels are transiting the waterway to increase safety. "The excessive use of cell phones concerns us because they are becoming elements of distraction and that cannot be permitted here," said Quijano after presenting to the accredited press in Panama ...
Wikimedia CommonsFormer Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega was taken Friday to the Legal Medicine Institute for the physical and psychiatric exams ordered by the court hearing the case against him for the death of union leader Heliodoro Portugal back in the 1970s. The defense attorney for Panama's one-time strongman, Ezra Angel, told EFE briefly this Friday that Noriega's examinations ...
from caribbeannewsnow.com By Kenneth Rijock MIAMI, USA -- José Ayú Prado, the chief justice of the Panama Supreme Court of Justice, has publicly refused to take any action against an allegedly corrupt auxiliary member of the judiciary, Yoideth Chirú Manrique, who is under investigation after she ordered the immediate release of 25 defendants charged with narcotics trafficking. Observers ...
Wikimedia Commons EFE BOQUETE, PANAMA – A fine coffee grown and processed in the mountains of western Panama, a new product that was a hit in a recent Panamanian international auction, has a secret ingredient: the tropical aroma and taste of mango. The Gallardo family's Nuguo Signature was ranked the most innovative coffee in its debut at The Best of Panama international tasting event,...
Wikimedia Commons To be able to celebrate the Panama Canal expansion is, for many Panamanians, experiencing a milestone of their ancestors, who witnessed the first transit through the waterway 102 years ago, so they went out today to dance, which is how they express themselves best. The afternoon of Jun. 26, when the Chinese container ship Cosco Shipping Panama made the inaugural transit th...
Panama City, Jun 21 (EFE).- Security at the inauguration of the Panama Canal expansion next Sunday will be assured by more than 11,000 agents along with special measures like closing the airspace over the waterway beginning the day before, the authorities announced Tuesday. Eleven heads of state and government, the king emeritus of Spain and delegations of some 50 countries have confirmed their...
By Elisa Vasquez Panama, Jun 15 (EFE).- In Panama, "the first to disrespect nature are the officials appointed to defend it," according to Ligia Arreaga, an environmentalist engaged in activism for a decade on behalf of the rainforest of Darien that spreads across Panama's border with Colombia. The Central American country has "extraordinarily good" laws, what is lacking are decent officials...
Wikimedia Commons Panama City, Jun 11 (EFE).- The container ship Cosco Shipping Panama, which on June 26 will be the first to pass through the expanded Panama Canal, set sail Saturday from the port of Piraeus, Greece, on its way to this Central American country, official sources said. Canal administrator Jorge Luis Quijano, currently in Greece with a delegation of the Panama Canal Authority...
Star Breeze SEATTLE, WA (PRWEB) June 02, 2016 - Luxury cruise line Windstar Cruises announces its 2017 Voyage Collection. Known for in-depth cultural exploration, the line’s broad spectrum of worldwide cruise vacations includes two new cruises added to dozens of itineraries visiting more than 150 ports of call — including 13 new ports for 2017 — in 50 countries. The luxury cruise operator d...
Flickr Commons DOJ Press Release - SAN DIEGO – Just a few hours after murdering his girlfriend in Panama and chopping up her body with a machete, retired Marine Brian Karl Brimager sent an email to a friend: “Hey bro, whatcha up to? I got stories for days. I’m living on an island off the coast of Panama loving life and living semper free!!!!!!” A few days later, after he’d disposed of Y...
(CRS Archive) Panama City, May 30 (EFE).- The Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, said Monday that the repairs to a wall in the southern section of the Miraflores lock that collapsed over the weekend is progressing at a steady pace, but will take at least five weeks to complete. "All the canal's operations are continuing in an absolutely normal way. It is estimated that the first phase of the w...
David, Panama, May 21 (EFE).- Panamanian authorities have stopped selling tickets for Mexico-bound flights to transfer nearly 4,000 Cubans stranded in the Central American country since last December, an immigration official told EFE. Dozens of Cubans trying to make their way to the United States have been waiting in line in this western city, capital of Chiriqui province, to purchase the $575 ...
Police officers stand guard next to a company list showing the Mossack Fonseca law firm outside their office in Panama City April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Jasso Montevideo, May 20 (EFE).- The Panama Papers are "the tip of the iceberg" with respect to offshore companies, according to Panamanian financial expert Julio Aguirre, who said Friday that the massive leak of Mossack Fonseca's documents ...
FARC guerrilla unit marching in 1998. Wikimedia Commons Geneva, May 13 (EFE).- The UN Refugee Agency, or ACNUR, reported Friday that more than 6,000 people have fled their homes and another 7,000 are trapped by armed clashes in the Colombian region of Choco, one of the most violent in the country. The battles, according to UNHCR, are between illegal armed groups seeking control of this terr...
Source: Red Cross Costa Rica The livelihood of foreigners who choose to live as perpetual tourists in Costa Rica is highly dependent on the stability of the land borders. It so happens that in recent months both the northern and southern borders of Costa Rica have been afflicted by the global migrant crisis; how is this affecting the lives of perpetual tourists? "Visa runs" are those trips ...
(CRS Archive) Panama City, May 11 (EFE).- Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and several Latin American leaders will attend the June 26 inauguration of the expanded Panama Canal, the government of that Central American nation confirmed Wednesday. "President (Michelle) Bachelet of Chile, the presidents of Honduras (Juan Orlando Hernandez) and El Salvador (Salvador Sanchez Ceren), former Pres...
Source: Alfredo Guzman Twitter Mexico City, Apr 4 (EFE).- A Mexican government contractor, a former CEO of state-owned oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, and an associate of notorious drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman are some of the individuals whose names appear in the Panama Papers. Mexican media outlets Aristegui Noticias and Proceso magazine, part of the International ...
EFE/File Washington, Apr 3 (EFE).- The largest journalistic leak in history, which came to light on Sunday with the participation of the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, suggests that 140 politicians and officials from around the globe, including 72 former and current world leaders, have connections with secret "offshore" companies to escape tax scrutiny ...
Panama Canal Panama City, Mar 23 (EFE).- The long-delayed inauguration of the expanded Panama Canal will take place on June 26, the administrator of the interoceanic waterway said Wednesday. "After passing some critical tests this past weekend, we concluded that the inauguration date would be June 26 of this year," Panama Canal Authority, or ACP, Administrator Jorge Quijano said. Panaman...