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Panama agrees to host two U.S. naval bases MEXICO, September 27 (RIA Novosti) - Panama will sign before October 2009 a treaty with the United States on the opening of two U.S. naval bases on its territory, a senior Panamanian government official said on Sunday. According to Panama's La Prensa newspaper, a preliminary agreement was reached between Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during recent talks in New York. "The U.S. and Panama will sign before October 30 an agreement on the deployment of two naval bases on the pacific coast of our country to...

A slimy, glob-like creature dubbed Gollum has terrified children after it slithered out of a lake and clambered over the rocks towards them. The young teenagers were playing by the waterfront in a Panama lake near Cerro Azul when the bald beast emerged from a cave behind a waterfall. They started screaming as it shuffled out "as if to attack them". Locals told Panama news the monster was like "Gollum from Lord of the Rings". One said: "I have only seen that creature once before - and it was in the Tolkien film." But in a "desperate bid to defend...

Doctors move to Panama from the states and abroad so they can truly practice medicine. Many of the doctors you find in Panama will have been top specialists who got tired of the bureaucracy and restrictions on their ability to truly offer the best care to their patients because they were always having to think about insurance and mal-practice law suits. As a result you can get the best medical care in the world in Panama. Every specialist you can imagine is here, and many new aspects of medicine are being offered here. for example the Stem Cell Institute of...

Richard Lehman sues Panama 03-11-2009 | BUSINESS WIRE The Lucom’s legacy would give the poor children of Panama $50 million Panama Star BOCA RATON, FLORIDA. Richard Lehman, a Florida attorney who was falsely charged with murder and over a dozen other crimes in Panama for his efforts to defend a $50 million food aid donation, has filed a human rights lawsuit against the country with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Organization of American States). “Panama continues to foster an atmosphere of corruption in the legal system which has caused it to be in violation of several human rights...

(English-language translation) MIAMI - Panamanian General Manuel Antonio Noriega appealed yesterday to the United States Supreme Court as a last legal recourse to avoid his extradition to France after an appeals court ruled that he may be sent to Paris, where he faces money-laundering charges. Seventy-three-year-old Noriega, who is serving a prison sentence in Miami for allowing cocaine shipments from the defunct Medellín Colombian drug cartel to Panama, went to the nation's highest court to argue that, being a prisoner of war, he must be sent back to Panama in accordance with the Geneva Convention.

Prospective retirees: Panama wants you. The pitch? A plane ride just 21/2 hours from Miami enables the newly poor to swap a wretched retirement in the U.S. for one befitting a royal in the balmy Central American nation. Cash out! Emigrate! Feel rich! Panama—the new Florida. Spin aside, Panama is increasingly popular among retirement-age types looking to hedge against—or skip out on—the recession. The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank that studies the movement of people around the world, says the chief factors prodding professional-class Americans to flock to Panama include its First World health care available at Third...

While President Obama partners with Hugo Chavez and the Castro Brothers to destroy Honduran democracy, all is not bad news in the region.Congratulations are in order to Panama and its new president, Ricardo Martinelli. BTW, despite what our state-run media says, Panama has not joined the Chavista countries in demanding Honduras restore it's dictator wannabe. On 1 July, The Republic of Panama will enjoy its fourth peaceful presidential transition since the overthrow of Noriega in 1989. I was there, but I didn't have anything to do with it. I did experience the pleasure of having a squad of Cubans...

Staff Half of Panama’s population of children under the age of five is in grave danger of death from malnutrition. The country’s staggering 40 percent poverty rate is one of the worst in Central America. The late Wilson Lucom reportedly left $50 million to a trust intended to aid these starving children according to a secret will revealed upon his death in 2006. Lucom’s Panamanian wife Hilda and her children from a previous marriage are contesting the will and over two years of legal haggling between the two parties has not resulted in the resolution of the case. So far...

Saturday, January 17, 2009 MINDBOGGLING CONSPIRACY BY McCAIN, OBAMA, McCASKILL, LEAHY, CLINTON AND COBURN TO CIRCUMVENT ARTICLE TWO, SECTION ONE OF THE US CONSTITUTION ********** In this article, originally posted in the blog of the same name, "Zapem" breaks a report of the history of sidestepping, skirting, and attempted Constitutional tinkering on behalf of unnatural born Citizen, John McCain -- thereby, an attempt to pave the way for Barack Obama.If one were to look at the activity on Capital Hill during the campaign, there would be no question in their minds that both McCain and Obama were sweating the “natural...

PANAMA CITY – Conservative supermarket magnate Ricardo Martinelli won Panama's presidential election in a landslide Sunday, promising to guide the country through the world economic crisis and an ambitious expansion of the Panama Canal. The win by Martinelli, of the opposition Alliance for Change, marked a rare center-right election triumph in a region that has seen a wave of leftist leaders. Electoral Tribunal President Erasmo Pinilla called Martinelli the "indisputable winner" after preliminary results showed him with 61 percent support and governing party candidate Balbina Herrera with 37 percent. Former President Guillermo Endara was a distant third. The winner was...

The excavation and dredging works to enlarge the Panama Canal are being carried out in different levels of execution, as part of a process that should conclude in 2014. The first dry excavation stage, has been fulfilled by almost 90 per cent. The second part of the contract, work has been executed by 60 per cent. The third is still in its initial stage. According to available reports the value of the already agreed contracts reached about 339.4 million dollars in December. The programme consists of the construction of two lock complexes, with three levels each, together with the widening...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/2009/nyc031909.html U.S. Announces Indictment of Heads of Colombia's D.M.G. Group for Money Laundering MAR 19 -- JOHN P. GILBRIDE, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s New York Field Division (“DEA”), LEV L. DASSIN, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, RAYMOND W. KELLY, Police Commissioner of the City of New York (“NYPD”) and HARRY J. CORBITT, Superintendent New York State Police (“NYPD”) announced today the unsealing of an Indictment against DAVID EDUARDO HELMUT MURCIA GUZMÁN, 28, MARGARITA LEONOR PABON CASTRO, a/k/a "Margarita Castro Pabon," 35, WILLIAM SUÁREZ‑SUÁREZ,...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/tg19.htm February 10, 2009 tg-19 Treasury Targets Financial Network of Fernando Zevallos Gonzales Washington, DC -- The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) today designated 26 companies and 14 individuals tied to Peruvian drug kingpin Fernando Zevallos Gonzales. This financial network, based in Peru, Panama and the British Virgin Islands, is now subject to financial sanctions pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act ("Kingpin Act"). "Our action demonstrates the importance of following the changing networks of major drug kingpins, like Fernando Zevallos," said OFAC Director Adam J....

A Russian warship was set Friday to sail through the Panama Canal for the first time since World War II in a symbolic challenge to US influence in the region. The large anti-submarine ship Admiral Chabanenko is scheduled to traverse the waterway from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean sometime between Friday night and Saturday morning, the Russian embassy in Panama said. "The only time such an event took place was in 1944 during the Second World War, when four Russian submarines passed through" the canal, said the embassy in a statement. At that time, when the waterway was under...

The enigmatic phrase “natural born citizen” poses a series of problems for contemporary originalism. New Originalists, like Justice Scalia, focus on the original public meaning of the constitutional text. The notion of a “natural born citizen” was likely a term of art derived from the idea of a “natural born subject” in English law—a category that most likely did not extend to persons, like Senator McCain, who were born outside sovereign territory. But the Constitution speaks of “citizens” and not “subjects,” introducing uncertainties and ambiguities that might (or might not) make McCain eligible for the presidency.

The 2008 election cycle has been a busy one for legal disputes over the qualifications of presidential candidates, with federal cases having been filed to challenge both major candidates’ eligibility under the “natural born Citizen” clause. These cases unquestionably present vital questions of constitutional law, touching on matters of self-evident national importance. It is doubtful, however, that they are justiciable in lower federal courts. Standing requirements and the political question doctrine make it unlikely that a federal court will reach the merits in cases of the type filed to date.

175 Alleged Gulf Cartel Members and Associates Arrested in Massive International Law Enforcement Operation "Project Reckoning" Leads to the Seizure of $60 Million and More Than 40 Tons of Illegal Drugs From One of Mexico's Largest Drug Trafficking Cartels NEW YORK - Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announced that 175 individuals were arrested on Sept. 16, 2008, on charges related to an international drug trafficking cartel in a coordinated enforcement action by hundreds of international, federal, state and local law enforcement officials throughout the United States and Italy. Including the operations announced today, a long-term investigation of one of Mexico's...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to remove John McCain from the California ballot because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.</p> <p>U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled late Tuesday that the law at the time of McCain's birth automatically granted citizenship to offspring of U.S. citizens.</p>