Free Republic

Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal, in a step that looks set to have profound geopolitical ramifications. The president of the country's national assembly, Rene Nuñez, announced the $40bn (£26bn) project, which will reinforce Beijing's growing influence on global trade and weaken US dominance over the key shipping route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The name of the company and other details have yet to be released, but the opposition congressman Luis Callejas said the government planned to grant a 100-year lease to the Chinese operator. The national...

Nicaragua's parliament is due to vote on Thursday on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Latin America's history – a trans-oceanic canal that is to be built and run by a Chinese company. If it goes ahead, the $40bn (£26bn) scheme, which is twice as expensive as Brazil's Belo Monte dam and likely to be three times longer than the Panama canal, looks set to transform global shipping and jump start the economy of this Central American nation. As well as the waterway, the draft agreement between Nicaragua and a Hong Kong registered firm — Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment...

Nicaragua has approved plans for a mysterious Hong Kong-based company to build an estimated $40 billion canal across the middle of the country, Luis Manuel Galeano and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press report. The waterway, which would have to be roughly three times as long as the 50-mile Panama Canal, would be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever. The plan has some serious detractors: Environmentalists say it would devastate Lake Nicaragua, the country's primary source of fresh water, while shipping experts say that it may be an economically unfeasible power play by China. The company, HK Nicaragua Canal...

THE TICO TIMES, SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA | CHRISSIE LONG | Tue, Sep 29, 7:08 AM Sep. 29--Three months of intense dialogue between the feuding parties in Honduras finds the chief mediator in the crisis watching from the sidelines. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, a longtime champion of peace in the Central American region, has chosen to remain in his home country as the conflict becomes more torrid in Honduras. "I want to be available ... if I am needed," he said at a news conference from his home on Monday, "but I won't go unless my presence is necessary."...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. — Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias on Tuesday commended the interim president of Honduras for saying he will reverse an emergency decree suspending civil liberties in his country. But he warned that the results of the Nov. 29 presidential election in Honduras would not be internationally recognized if it is held while interim President Robert Micheletti's government is in charge. Arias said Micheletti's government "has not moved an inch" in negotiations to return ousted President Manuel Zelaya with limited authority. snip Also to blame was the Honduran constitution, he said. He called it "the worst in the...

Central American migrants who are lured by the U.S. open border policy are getting exploited by Mexican cartels which are expanding their rackets from the drug trade to human trafficking as reported by Isabella Cota for The Guardian: "'Why? Because a dose of drugs can be bought and consumed only once, but the same human being can be exploited in many forms over and over again throughout a lifetime,' says Marcela Chacón, Costa Rica's deputy minister of interior and police." Inexplicably, the so-called immigration reform bill proposed by U.S. lawmakers contains no provisions by which intelligence data could be obtained...

•EU watchdog reveals approval for GM foods fails to identify poisonous gene •54 of the 86 GM plants approved contain the dangerous gene •Gene found in food for farm animals producing meat, milk and eggs •Biotech supporters argue there is no evidence that GM foods are harmful A virus gene that could be poisonous to humans has been missed when GM food crops have been assessed for safety. GM crops such as corn and soya, which are being grown around the world for both human and farm animal consumption, include the gene. A new study by the EU’s official food...

Anyone know anything about retiring in Costa Rica?

Tsunami alert.

With U.S. policymakers distracted by the situation in Honduras, Nicaragua continues to move toward authoritarianism. On October 19, a Nicaraguan Supreme Court panel overturned a constitutional provision limiting presidents to two non-consecutive terms in office. The ruling will allow incumbent Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega--the Sandinista party leader, former Soviet client, vociferous critic of the United States, and current Hugo Chávez acolyte--to run for another term in 2011. If there were any doubts that Nicaraguan democracy is slowly being extinguished, this latest development should remove them. The Nicaraguan Supreme Court is composed of 16 members. Thanks to a political deal made...

Face of evil: MOHSEN RABBANI The Islamic Shiite cleric active in Latin America since the early 1990s. Responsible for the 1992 and 1994 anti-Jewish massacres in Argentina. Wanted in that country and by the Interpol for the crimes. Called for Israel to be "wiped off," in 1994. 'Chief' Islamic operator of Hezbollah - Quds activities of: Islamizaton --including 'recruting converts for Islam'-- and terror networks in Latin America, resides in Brazil. Lightning Out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil - Pages 122-3Tom Diaz, Barbara Newman - Random House Digital, Inc., 2006 - History - 272 pagesThe man directly responsible for this cell-building...

Senator Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today calling for “increased scrutiny” of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in light of potential terrorist attacks against New York City. Pointing to NYPD’s director of intelligence warning that Iran is “essentially” the number one threat, Mr. Schumer argued these diplomats must ”be vigorously monitored.” “With Iran’s increasingly bellicose and threatening behavior, it’s imperative that agents of the Iranian government in the United States receive additional scrutiny to ensure that they pose no threat to New York or the rest of the country,” Mr. Schumer said...

SNIPPET - quote: Dissemination *_is_* collection I always get a kick out of people who tell me I give away intelligence for free. What I do is watch how information moves. Keep in mind that the subject covered on this site are pretty darn esoteric by most standards. What kind of people, for example, even know who Oussama Salhab is? Answers include: Oussama Salhab, his family, friends, associates in and out of Hizballah, people he does business with, spies of various nations, etc. Yep. The barn is free, and so is the food.

For months, Lori Berenson, New York's most notorious revolutionary tourist, has had her fingers crossed, counting on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to overturn her 20-year sentence for terrorist activities in Peru. The Lima government also clearly expected a ruling in Berenson's favor — it announced last week that it would defy any order by the Costa Rica-based court that the MIT dropout-turned-sandalista be set free. But guess what? The court has upheld her sentence, imposed after a three-month civilian trial after her first conviction, by a military tribunal, was overturned following pressure from the Clinton administration. The...

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi still has a few friends left in Latin America. We know that Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's charismatic president, supports him because he can't stop talking about it. With the Libyan rebels firing celebration guns in Tripoli, Chavez came out with a second statement that said he refused to acknowledge any government in Libya but that of his friend. "Without a doubt, we're facing imperal madness," Chavez said in his televised address, according to the Associated Press. And now, Nicaragua has chimed in. President Daniel Ortega has been a longtime ally of Gaddafi. In February, he said he...

Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba continue to be the staunchest supporters of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega have both declared that they will not abandon Gaddafi in this time of crisis. Chavez has actually stated that he will continue to recognize only his friend Gaddafi as the legitimate leader of Libya, whereas Ortega has already offered him asylum... According to the Venezuelan paper, El Universal, the fall of Gaddafi's mean the defeat of Chavez. "At a time when even the Arab League has expressed its full support to the Libyan Transitional National...

Apple Inc. has built up a $76.2 billion cash hoard. Now the question is what the company intends to do with the money pile. On Tuesday, the Cupertino, Calif., company disclosed cash, including short-term and long-term marketable securities, for the quarter ended June 25 increased 15.8% since March to $76.2 billion. That's more than the gross domestic product of 126 countries, including nations such as Ecuador, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka and Costa Rica, according to data from the World Bank. The gigantic sum on Wednesday prompted some investors to call for it to use some of the cash for dividend payouts....

Today at approximately 2:11pm in the afternoon, Upala was rattled by a 5.3 magnitude earthquake that shook products off store shelves and rattled off home furnishings. No immediate damages were reported however later in the afternoon something strange was discovered as a result. While reporting on the earthquake in Upala today, a local news station discovered that a district near the epicenter was missing a river. That’s right…A RIVER. Apparently in the moments following the earthquake, a community stood watch as their river disappeared in to the Earth. As of this writing it is still unknown exactly which community this...

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) – A U.S. high school student was shot dead by a hotel security guard in Costa Rica on Thursday after being mistaken for a thief, police said. Sixteen-year-old Justin Johnston was shot in the chest in the early hours of Thursday as he tried to sneak back into his room, breaking a night curfew on a school trip. "It appears the hotel guard thought the guest was a thief," police said in a statement.

The Washington Post recently reported on the successful Palestinian drive to achieve statehood recognition from South American countries. Over the past few months, several countries—including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay—have endorsed the existence of an independent Palestinian country. (In years past, Palestine had garnered official recognition from Costa Rica, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.) To a casual observer, the wave of recognition may seem like a spontaneous outburst. In fact, there was nothing spontaneous about it. The flurry of diplomatic activity represents the culmination of a robust Palestinian lobbying push that was blessed and encouraged by former...