Many of the immigrants pouring into Costa Rica are from other Central America countries, Cuba and Haiti. Speaking at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C, [Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo] Solis pointed out that Costa Rica is also receiving a lot of “extra-continental” immigrants.
Primarily these immigrants are from African countries, but Solis mentioned that his country has received some as well from Pakistan. The nearly million dollars Costa Rica received from the U.S is going to be used to “install camps” in the northern part of Costa Rica. President Solis mentioned that at one point there were more Cuban immigrants in the northern Costa Rican town of La Cruz than Costa Rican residents.
In a bid to help curb organized crime and human trafficking, Obama, accompanied by Vice-president Joe Biden, agreed to donate around $30 million in military supplies to Costa Rica, which includes two cargo planes, two large patrol boats and two smaller interceptor boats, air surveillance equipment and biometric software to help identify illegal immigrants in the field.
The agreement also provides supplies for law enforcement, including three armored vehicles, the construction of virtual shooting ranges and communication equipment for the guards at Corcovado National Park.
In addition to the equipment, the U.S. will provide Costa Rica with extensive Coast Guard training and maintenance packages for the boats.
Solís had recently expressed concern over neighboring Nicaragua’s purchase of fifty T-72 Russian tanks, according to A.M. Costa Rica (no direct link).
Last month, Costa Rica announced that it would offer temporary refuge to people fleeing from the violence-plagued Central American countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala – a decision spurred by U.S. efforts to stem illegal entries along its southern border with Mexico.
As part of the program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will pre-screen people seeking protection and transfer them to Costa Rica for processing before resettlement in the U.S. or another country.
Last Sunday Jorge Lanata dedicated his show to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s money flow a.k.a. Cristileaks (video in Spanish),
In brief, Lanata’s investigation alleges that Fernandez and her late husband, Néstor Kirchner, transferred US$492million to 123 sham accounts registered in the state of Nevada during the years they were in office (Néstor from 2003-2010, Cristina from 2010-2015).
In 2014, Lanata had petitioned a Nevada court to release information regarding Kirchner’s companies in the US under a federal statute that allows a party to a legal proceeding outside the United States to ask an American court to obtain evidence for use in the non-US proceeding. The Sunday show calls #Cristileaks a trove of 3,500 pages of documents itemizing the transactions.
The transactions involved banks in the USA, Latvia, Paraguay, Hong Kong, Andorra, and Switzerland (among others) carried by Kirchner proxies, and were managed through Aldyne Ltd. in the Seychelles. The people who served as Kirchner proxies benefited through commissions, pensions, and government contracts.
Additionally, Lanata alleges that U.S. authorities provided Argentina with the information gathered through their money-laundering investigation, and the Argentinian government ignored it. The investigation came about when Argentina refused to honor $50billion worth of defaulting bonds, as bondholders requested the investigation.
“It’s such an important nutrient. Fidel now sends me Moringa pills,” said Evo Morales, president of Bolivia.
Evo just visited Fidel, to help him extend his 90th birthday celebrations.
El coma-andante Fidel has been promoting the cultivation of the Moringa plant for years, promoting it as a “miraculous tree” and urging its cultivation.
Carlos had added an illustration with the benefits, and a caption,
Moringa: the cure for everything, including original sin
Google is my friend, so I found moringa on WebMD. There are some side effects (emphasis added)
Moringa is POSSIBLY SAFE when taken by mouth and used appropriately. The leaves, fruit, and seeds might be safe when eaten as food. However, it’s important to avoid eating the root and its extracts. These parts of the plant may contain a toxic substance that can cause paralysis and death. Moringa has been used safely in doses up to 6 grams daily for up to 3 weeks.
There isn’t enough information to know if moringa is safe when used in medicinal amounts.
Regarding the “Nutrition for infants . . . and pregnant and nursing mothers,”
Special Precautions & Warnings:
Pregnancy and breast-feeding: It’s LIKELY UNSAFE to use the root, bark or flowers of moringa if you are pregnant. Chemicals in the root, bark, and flowers can make the uterus contract, and this might cause a miscarriage. There is not enough information available about the safety of using other parts of moringa during pregnancy. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.
Moringa is sometimes used to increase breast milk production. Some research suggests it might do this, however, there isn’t enough information to know if it is safe for the nursing infant. Therefore, it is best to avoid moringa if you are breast-feeding.
Back in the olden days, there were similar remedies with anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory properties,
So better check WebMD before you take advice from Evo and Fidel.
Some of the same reform-minded Catholics, however, also mentioned that Pope Francis’s undisguised skepticism about economic liberalization and markets in general—which they describe as having become more rhetorically-charged and even radicalized since his election to Peter’s Chair—is helping fuel populist opposition to long-overdue changes.
They—and I—doubt this is the pope’s intention. Nevertheless, they point to speeches such as Francis’s remarks to the World Meeting of Popular Movements in Bolivia last year, delivered while sitting next to Bolivia’s arch-populist president Evo Morales. Such remarks, they claim, provide cover for Argentina’s own career-populists: people who, for all their talk about defending el pueblo, oppose any meaningful change to a status-quo that maintains their power but which has steadily eroded the Argentine economy’s ability to lift the poor out of their misery.
The big all-over-the-world stupid story of the week: Ryan Lochte and three other swimmers got drunk and gave Brazilians an excuse to feign outrage over their country being embarrassed; I’m still waiting for the Brazilians to be embarrassed over the bodyparts washing on shore during the Olympics or over the six Brazilians a day who die at the hands of state security forces.
Meanwhile, a new word enters the lexicon, Iranophobia (emphasis added),
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will tour six Latin American countries next week to “foil the Iranophobia plots promoted by Israel,” the Islamic Republic’s semi-official state news agency Fars reported on Wednesday.
. . .
Zarif will be accompanied on his visit to Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela by a 60-member economic delegation.
Unlike Ali Baba, whose entourage was only forty-strong.
The Santa Cruz academy was initially inaugurated in 2011 as the “ALBA School” after the now-weakened regional alliance that includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Cuba.
Morales’s invitation to that event of then-Iranian defense minister Ahmad Vahidi provoked an uproar in neighboring Argentina, where judicial authorities have accused Vahidi of a role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people.
Brazil summoned Uruguay’s ambassador on Tuesday after the neighboring country’s foreign minister accused Brazil of trying to “buy” its vote to block Venezuela from taking the rotating presidency of the Mercosur trade bloc.
In comments to lawmakers last week that were made public on Tuesday, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa said his government was “angry” with Brazil’s attempt to prevent Caracas from leading the regional group that also includes Argentina and Paraguay.
. . .
Since Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff was suspended in May, her replacement Michel Temer has moved the country away from leftist allies such as Venezuela and toward traditional allies the United States and Europe.
Argentina and Paraguay, once close allies to Caracas, have also moved to undermine Venezuela as the OPEC nation’s socialist government struggles with economic and political crises.
agreed to pay 35,000 reais ($10,800) to a charitable institution in Brazil to avoid formal charges for giving a false account of a crime, a police official familiar with the case said.
The judge decides which charity gets the $11k. Good luck with that.
It’s not clear to me if the charges were for giving a false account of a crime, or for actually filing a false police report, or whether the two are considered the same under the country’s law.
Things to be learned: Don’t drink in excess, don’t go out late at night in a foreign country, be a grown-up.
