Free Republic

p>MANAGUA, August 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Amnesty International (AI) has launched an international campaign against the government of Nicaragua, claiming that its law protecting the unborn from abortion is "cruel," and "cynical.""There is only one way to describe what we have seen in Nicaragua: a great horror," said Kate Gilmore, Deputy Secretary General of AI, in a press conference held recently in Mexico."The prohibition of therapeutic of abortion in Nicaragua is a shame.  It is a human rights scandal that ridicules medical science and distorts the law, being a weapon against the provision of essential medical services for pregnant girls...

(English-language translation) The government of Venezuela will purchase tanks from Russia to double its fleet and strengthen its armed forces. [Venezuelan] President Hugo Chávez made the announcement amid growing tensions with Colombia over its military agreement with the United States, which would allow troops from that country to operate from Colombian bases. "We are going to bring several new tank battalions in order to double the armored force we presently have....I am not going to pay attention to what the neighbors say, or up north, forget the Yankees," said Chávez in "Hello, Theoretical President", the new version of his Sunday...

The deposed leader of Honduras, Jose Zelaya, is right now standing on the Nicaraguan side of the border of Honduras and Nicaragua on his cell phone with a series of supporters presumably in preparation of re entering the nation. Estoy en la zona intermedia en la frontera de Nicaragua” declared ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, on video broadcast around the world, while speaking with someone reported to be from his family, whom he had hoped to meet at the border. Zelaya is, as of 15:55 EDT, today, about to re-enter Honduras from the territory of Nicaragua, amid a “caravan” of...

...ESTELI, Nicaragua (AP) — Honduras' interim government blocked border routes with troops, police and trucks on Friday as the president it deposed planned a risky return to his homeland that could lead to his arrest. President Manuel Zelaya has urged soldiers to ignore orders to arrest him and lower their weapons when they see him. He also shrugged off warnings from the international community that his return could provoke violence. Zelaya instead called on supporters to walk past military checkpoints in the name of democracy. "I am on my way to Honduras, and I hope most Hondurans can overcome the...

The ousted Honduran president has arrived at a Nicaraguan town just south of the border from where he plans a second attempt to return home. President Manuel Zelaya has been in exile for a little under a month. From Esteli, 25 miles (40km) from the border, he said he would try to enter the country as early as Saturday. The interim government has vowed to arrest him if he sets foot in Honduras, as mediation talks failed. Mr Zelaya urged soldiers to ignore orders. "Don't aim your rifles at the representatives of the people or at the people," he said...

The deposed president of Honduras has said that he will launch an attempt to return to his country after crisis talks with the de facto government failed. Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in a military-backed coup on June 28, made the announcement on Thursday from Managua, the capital of neighbouring Nicaragua. Mariana Sanchez, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Honduras, said: "Zelaya told me that he was leaving at 3pm local time towards the city of Esteli, which is north of Managua. Then he will go to Ocotal, which is 25km from the Nicaragua-Honduras border." But he did not say when he...

It's good, occasionally, to take a trip down memory lane. It helps to put things into perspective. Hugo Chavez ought never to have been elected president. By rights, he ought to be growing old in a jail cell somewhere. Well, it's been seventeen years, maybe he’d be in a half-way house by now. As an army officer in 1992, he led a military revolt against the legal, constitutional government of Venezuela, and attempted to overthrow the democratically elected president of the time, Carlos Andres Perez. He gambled that once the shooting started, the minister of defense and the rest of...

MANAGUA, July 19 (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter, said on Sunday his country should extend presidential term limits after neighboring Honduras toppled its leftist president in a coup over the same issue. Ortega, a U.S. foe during the Cold War, first ruled Nicaragua after taking power in a 1979 Marxist revolution.

Edén Pastora threatened to attack Honduras According to the former military, the Honduran conflict could only be resolved by guns. 18.07.09 - Updated: 18.07.09 06:56 pm - Writing: redaccion@elheraldo.hn Tegucigalpa, Honduras . Former Nicaraguan guerrilla Eden Pastora, threatened to take up arms if there is no agreement in Costa Rica on the return of Manuel Zelaya as president. Pastora, a former Sandinista commander, is known for having led the command that took the National Palace, in the late 70s, during the Somoza dictatorship. See the biography of Eden Pastora According to El Universal of Venezuela, "Commander Zero," he told the...

Ecuador aligns itself with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba In speeches against imperialism and neoliberalism, the presidents of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and Bolivia, Evo Morales, and the Ecuadoran President-Elect Rafael Correa, who should assume the government of his country Monday, expressed common ideological and political agreement Sunday. Chavez, Morales, and Correa, who also exalt the figure of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, met together in Zumbahua, an indigenous [Ecuadoran] locality 90 kilometers south of Quito, for a symbolic inauguration of Correa before the indigenous peoples [of Ecuador]. In a speech before a multitude congregated in the central plaza, Correa emphasized that "[Latin]...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, July 15, 2009 – I left the USNS Comfort July 13 after a little more than three days aboard the hospital ship. It was not long enough. I underestimated the time I would need to gather the stories I wanted to tell. It is truly an amazing ship, with a crew of physicians, dentists, optometrists, nurses and a host of other staff who perform incredible work in difficult conditions. Hundreds of health care professionals from around the world, many of them volunteers, gathered to deliver basic care that most of us in the United States take for granted....

Suddenly, size matters. That’s the central conclusion of a lengthy Washington Post article Monday that sought to assess the national security implications of Iran’s 2007 move into leftist Sandinista President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. The newspaper’s badly belated first weigh-in on the Islamic Republic’s most northern presence in the Americas wound up fixating on a curious detail: the physical size of the Iranian embassy there. Was it a huge mega-embassy, as some U.S. officials have said? A smallish embassy? Something mid-range but perhaps aspiring to be architecturally grandiose? The Post’s writers, offering no basis for such a wacky thesis, seem to...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- For months, the reports percolated in Washington and other capitals. Iran was constructing a major beachhead in Nicaragua as part of a diplomatic push into Latin America, featuring huge investment deals, new embassies and even TV programming from the Islamic republic. "The Iranians are building a huge embassy in Managua," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned in May. "And you can only imagine what that's for." But here in Nicaragua, no one can find any super-embassy. Nicaraguan reporters scoured the sprawling tropical city in search of the embassy construction site. Nothing. Nicaraguan Chamber of Commerce chief...

ABOARD THE USNS COMFORT OFF THE COAST OF CORINTO, NICARAGUA, July 13, 2009 – It was Beyker Maldonado’s birthday last week. Beyker Maldonado and his friend chase a toy car July 10, 2009, while waiting in the reception area of the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort off the coast of Corinto, Nicaragua. Maldonado turned 2 on the ship as he waited for eye surgery. DoD photo by Fred W. Baker III  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The toddler likes to run, chase bouncy balls, and run. Sporting a cloth diaper, a dirty T-shirt, socks and sandals, Beyker zips up...

NEW YORK — The head of the United Nations General Assembly signalled Friday a breakthrough is imminent in talks to resolve the political crisis in Honduras. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann spoke in New York as thousands of supporters of Honduras’s ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, held rallies in the Central American country. “I have a feeling that we are moving in that direction rather quickly,” the former Nicaraguan revolutionary, who is also a Catholic priest, told a news conference at the UN. Insiders suggested that a timetable had been laid out in which Zelaya, a rich landowner whose leftist policies led him...

Politics: Is anyone surprised that the would-be czarina of federal climate and energy policy has ties to a socialist group? The environmental movement's goal is to afflict the economy, not comfort the ecology.Carol Browner, who'll run the new White House office of climate and energy policies, isn't new to Washington. The public will recognize her name from the years she served as Environmental Protection Agency administrator under Bill Clinton. The public, however, knows little or nothing about her work with Socialist International, a group that describes itself as a worldwide organization of social democratic, socialist and labor parties that envisions...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), then based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, vigorously lobbied for Nicaragua's Sandinista regime, the Cuban-style Marxist regime that shot its way to power in 1979. Today, WOLA pretends it is concerned about the rule of law in Honduras after the Honduran Congress and Supreme Court supported removing the leftist president for defying its constitution. WOLA and Jim Wallis' publication Sojourners have teamed up to spin Honduras' defense of its democracy as another example of a U.S.-supported, imperialist military coup. The constitutional coup in Honduras was...

On the heels of yesterday's casting announcements, Latinoreview has exclusively learned that Tony Gilroy, the oscar nominated writer/director of Michael Clayton (and one of my top five favorite all time screenwriters) has come aboard to rewrite MGM/UA's remake of RED DAWN! Not surprising considering that Dan Bradley, the director of the remake, was the 2nd unit director of the Jason Bourne films which Gilroy penned. Gilroy has recently delivered a 107 page draft dated 06-01-09. The remake was penned by Carl Ellsworth and Jeremy Passmore and based on the 1984 Cold War-era film co-written and directed by John Milius. We...

Honduras says Nicaragua has troops moving on border 05 Jul 2009 20:20:26 GMT Source: Reuters TEGUCIGALPA, July 5 (Reuters) - Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti said on Sunday Nicaraguan troops were moving to the mutual frontier and urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to respect Honduran sovereignty. He gave no further details about troop movements in Nicaragua which shares a border with Honduras to the southeast of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Former boxing champion Alexis Arguello, considered one of the best lightweights to step in the ring, has been found dead. Presidential spokeswoman Rosario Murillo confirmed Arguello's death early Wednesday.