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President Obama on Wednesday embarks on a trip to Jamaica and to Panama where the formal agenda is summitry with Caribbean and Latin American leaders. But the powerful subtext will be the body language between him and President Raúl Castro of Cuba. Four months after Mr. Obama ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba, he and Mr. Castro are likely to share a stage, a conference table, a “family photo” with attendees and potentially even a one-on-one meeting.

"No Ugly or Fat People on the Rope Line!" Remembering a Visit by Hillary Clinton The Place: Panama. The Date: 1997. The Event: Visit by First Lady Hillary Clinton to attend the Conference of Spouses of Heads of State and Government in the Americas (AKA, First Ladies of the Americas Summit). Holding the Bag: The Diplomad I was reminded of the above event in Panama by a news story out a couple of days ago reporting on a Hillary Clinton event in Miami. It seems that her security personnel seized the camera from a member of audience and deleted a...

VENICE, Italy — President Reagan, who less than two years ago signed the most expensive farm aid bill in history, called Friday for the elimination of agricultural subsidies worldwide by the year 2000 as a way of promoting better world economic health.At the same time, Reagan said that the United States has made "real progress" in trimming its budget deficit, despite ongoing spending battles with Congress, thereby freeing for private investment abroad some of the foreign capital that has been tied up financing the U.S. debt.Reagan's remarks, made in a speech televised by Worldnet and provided to networks around the...

The Obama administration’s new excuse to explain why Vice-President Joe Biden will be “out of the country” when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addresses Congress next month is that he has to attend a Panama government inauguration – that occurred last July. The vice president of the United States normally attends joint sessions of Congress, but National Security Council Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan stated last month, “As a matter of long-standing practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections…. The President has been clear about his opposition to Congress passing new legislation...

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’...

Mr. Nadhmi Auchi is a business partner of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has supported US Presidential candidate Barack Obama financially since his first run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.

The crisis on our southern border has many searching for reasons why thousands of immigrants are seeking to live in the United states.  The influx of illegals has been attributed to poverty and crime in Latin America, but that isn't the only reason.  Panama has the highest per capita income of any country in Latin America. It's also the farthest from the southern U.S. border. But its citizens are heading to the United States as well. Only it isn't the kind of people you might think.Sarah is a well-educated business owner in Panama.  "I have two businesses...a bar and an...

The consortium building the third set of locks for the Panama Canal is making fresh claims for cost overruns totaling $737 million ... Work began in 2007 to expand the canal with a third set of locks to enable it to handle the modern mega-freighters that global shipping companies prefer. But the $5.25 billion project has been plagued by delays, strikes and a bitter dispute over $1.6 billion in cost overruns with the consortium carrying out the upgrade, led by Spanish construction firm Sacyr. Initially scheduled for completion in 2014, the project's due date has been pushed back to early...

As a conscripted soldier during the Contra War of the 1980s, Esteban Ruiz used to flee from battles because he didn't want to have to kill anyone. But now, as the 47-year-old farmer prepares to fight for his land, Ruiz insists, "I'm not going to run." Ruiz's property on the banks of Nicaragua's Rio Grande sits in the path of a $50 billion transoceanic waterway set to break ground on Monday. Nicaraguan officials will start building access roads on state-owned land as the first step in creating a canal expected to rival that of Panama - a project supporters say...

ANSWER's Steering CommitteeBy Ryan Anderson O’DonnellFrontPageMagazine.com | March 12, 2003 The group at the forefront of the recent anti-war rallies, International A.N.S.W.E.R (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) is in reality a front organization designed to further the radical agenda of several extremist movements from the political Left. Despite the media’s assertions to the contrary, present incarnation of the peace movement, led by ANSWER, is anything but representative of mainstream America. ANSWER’s steering committee reads like a "Who’s Who" of radical political organizations. The most influential member of ANSWER’s steering committee, Ramsey Clark’s pet project known as the...

M 6.7 - 20km ESE of Punta de Burica, Panama PAGER - GREEN ShakeMap - VIDYFI? - VTsunami Warning Center Time: 2014-12-08 03:54:52 UTC-05:00 Location: 7.967°N 82.689°W Depth: 10.0km

Rising Turkish Menace: U.S. and NATO Ally Wants Islamic Advance in Latin America By Julio Severo The president of Turkey has re-written history by claiming Muslim explorers, not Christopher Columbus, discovered America. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chief of America’s NATO ally, said November 15 that Islamic sailors found the New World in 1178. He said, “Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus.” Turkey is the only Islamic nation in the NATO. His theory — which is supported only by Islamic historians — came to light in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of...

If I were advising the White House right now, I would encourage President Obama to take advantage of the end of this year's election cycle—the next fifty or so days—to immediately try to change the subject, in a big way. The Obama administration should act right away to use its executive powers to take steps to deal with long-ignored issues that need to be dealt with for the good of the nation. This cannot be done quietly. To change the media narrative, issues acted upon will have to be controversial enough to dominate the news. President Obama should embrace good...

The guy wearing the red bandanna didn’t mess around. Measuring, cutting and hammering away, he made sure the siding was just right for the new house in Oak Cliff. Nothing like having a seasoned leader on the job. Former President Jimmy Carter didn’t let a little heat and his age (90) get in the way Wednesday morning at the house on Exeter Avenue.

I spent nearly five years in Panama, working for the Army.   It was a formative experience that forever shaped my life.   I intend to visit Panama again someday.  While there, I met and became friends with Dr. Nickolas D. Smythe.   We had a number of conversations about science, biology, and research.   I always have appreciated being around exceptionally smart people, and Dr. Smythe was one.   I have lost track of him, and I hope that he is doing well. His research was centered around the domestication of the agouti.   It was a very ambitious project, as the number of...

A joint investigation by the Washington Examiner and the nonprofit watchdog group Judicial Watch found that former President Clinton gave 215 speeches and earned $48 million while his wife presided over U.S. foreign policy, raising questions about whether the Clintons fulfilled ethics agreements related to the Clinton Foundation during Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state. According to documents obtained by Judicial Watch and released Wednesday in an ongoing Freedom of Information Act case, State Department officials charged with reviewing Bill Clinton's proposed speeches did not object to a single one. Some of the speeches were delivered in global hotspots...

Sunwing Flight 772 took off for Panama City on this morning, but was turned around after 45 minutes in the air for an emergency landing at Toronto's Pearson International Airport because of an "unruly passenger." Sunwing officials say a passenger was making threats, some of which concerned the security of the plane. Pilots activated their emergency response plan and returned to Toronto. Two U.S. F-16 fighter jets from Toledo, Ohio, were dispatched to escort the plane back to Toronto, North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) confirmed. The F-16s flew with the commercial plane out of U.S. airspace to Toronto as...

Latin America: Defying polls, conservative Juan Carlos Varela won Panama's election Sunday, showing that five years of free-market policies merit another five. If he holds course, it's the best possible outcome.Nobody thought the openly conservative Juan Carlos Varela could pull off a five-year term in Panama. The former vice president had been been running third in the polls and faced the negative headwinds of Ricardo Martinelli's five-year conservative rule. It especially didn't help that Panama's incumbent parties almost always do poorly in successive votes.But Varela, who is believed to be at least as conservative as his predecessor, managed to distinguish...

Inside the long-awaited package, six pages of government paperwork dryly affirmed Carol Tapanila's anxious request. But when Tapanila slipped the contents from the brown envelope, she saw there was something more. "We the people...." declared the script inside her U.S. passport — now with four holes punched through it from cover to cover. Her departure from life as an American was stamped final on the same page: "Bearer Expatriated Self." With the envelope's arrival, Tapanila, a native of upstate New York who has lived in Canada since 1969, joined a largely overlooked surge of Americans rejecting what is, to millions,...