Some changes to announce
Just wanted to let everyone know about some changes here at the English language web site. We are sad to see Kari, half of the La Prensa English language team, head off to greener pastures.
She was a great co-worker, and she will be hard to replace.
For the time being, I have been reassigned to other duties within the La Prensa family. Which will leave us a little short-staffed until we find another person. I will be covering as much as I can, but there will definitely be some days when the English language edition is a little short of copy.
Hopefully, though, things will be back to normal pretty quickly. There are also more changes on the horizon, and I hope we can make our coverage more comprehensive.
I probably won’t be blogging for ...
Technical issues
There’s a slight glitch with the comment section on the English side of the prensa.com web site. I seem to be unable to access the comments, so I can’t scroll through them to allow them to be posted.
So if you made a comment and don’t know why it hasn’t appeared, that is the reason.
I am also heading out of town for a week or so, so there won’t be any quick fix to the problem. But once I return, I promise to get right on it.
Sorry for the inconvenience, but I am sure things will be back up and running in no time at all.
Good for Panama
The lead story in Wednesday’s business section of the paper is about a break down in negotiations between France and Panama over a tax treaty.
Now, this may seem like a pretty boring piece of news, but it is actually quite a cool story. In a nutshell, a group called the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, has been requiring countries like Panama to sign these tax treaties or face being put on a list of tax havens.
The OECD is based in France, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit that the French government would try to throw Panama a curveball in its tax treaty negotiations. But Panama seemed to be ready, and hit the pitch out of the park.
Panama not only cut off negotiations in light of the demand ...
Some questions answered
Recently there were a few questions asked in the comments section of news stories on the web site, and I thought I would take a few moments to answer them.
The first question was about the new traffic patterns on the Centenario Bridge, and specifically what those patterns are on Sundays. The answer, according to La Prensa’s story on Saturday, is that the bridge is open to traffic on those days in both directions.
The second question pertained to the Metro subway system. It asked what the route of the second line will be. The tentative answer is that it has yet to be determined. The first line will be from Albrook to Los Andes. There has been preliminary discussions about the second line extending to the community of 24th de Diciembre, ...
The secret service finally does some good
Panama’s Institutional Protection Service, basically the country’s equivalent of the secret service, has been getting a lot of bad press lately.
First, several members were implicated in the theft of a large statue from the grounds of Parque Omar a few years back. It seems the agency was supposed to guard the statue, which somehow managed to wander off and get itself melted down for scrap.
Then, two members were arrested for being involved in a plot to kidnap the president. Prosecutors later dropped the charges when it was determined that the plot was never seriously discussed, but one of the officers was kept in jail because he was facing prosecution for a completely different set of crimes.
Yes, the Institutional Protection Service has been making a lot of headlines for all the wrong reasons lately, but I am proud to ...
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