Newsroom Panama - Panama News and Events in English

French president Nicolas Sarkozy will be coming to Panama on November 18, and may be get a warmer  welcome than he anticipated after pointing the finger at a Panama “tax haven”  at the closing of the G20 meeting.

Julian Assange has lost his  British High Court appeal against extradition to Sweden, where prosecutors want the WikiLeaks boss to answer accusations of rape, two counts of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion made by two women in Stockholm last year. 

CHENEY PRAISES BLAIR. Britain’s former Prime Minister, already under the spotlight for questionable answers to an inquiry into misinformation that led Britain into the war in Iraq, may not be thrilled to know that President Bush's hard-line VP Dick Cheney has lavished praise on him. In his new book, In My Time, Cheney  says he has "tremendous respect" for Blair whose speeches on the Iraq war were "some of the most eloquent I have been privileged to hear". Cheney reveals that he lobbied Tories including Iain Duncan Smith to support Blair on Iraq. Blair has been widely reviled for his role in going to war and was during the lead up to the war during the debate on WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction)  was widely referred to as Bush’s poodle.

Dick Cheney

EQUAL PAY FOR WOMEN EXECS STILL 100 YEARS AWAY. It will take another 98 years for women executives to reach equal pay with men at the current rate, the Chartered Management Institute reports. Men are paid on average an extra £10,546, although women saw pay rises of 2.8 per cent this year compared to men's 2.3 per cent, and women are now securing equal or higher starting salaries.

LIBYA CAMPAIGN vets  FACE SACK. Almost 1,000 RAF personnel and a further 1,000 Army soldiers will get their marching orders  Thursday in the first wave of redundancies to meet Ministry of Defence budget cuts. The RAF sackings could include ground crew and technicians currently supporting the flights over Libya, despite ministers praising their "immense contribution".

POLICE SEND REPORT  on cabinet minister TO PROSECUTORS. Police  in Essex County have submitted a second report to the Crown Prosecution Service on claims that Lib-Dem energy secretary Chris Huhne tried to evade punishment for speeding in 2003 by asking his estranged wife to take penalty points for him. Prosecutors had asked for further investigation after police offered an initial report in July. The Liberal Democrats are part of Britain’s ruling coalition government.

The fast moving phone hacking  scandal in Britain is accelerating by the hour with another top man at Scotland Yard resigning hours after the Commissioner stepped down.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which owns Fox TV the Wall Street Journal, and more, has suffered a humiliating blow at the end of a week with  hourly revelations of new scandals linked to its newspaper empire.

Driving with a cell phone glued to your ear may  not only be against the law and  a threat to other road users, but also a possible cancer risk.

From Newsroom reader
Marie Martin
I recently visited a British born friend who proudly displayed her latest baking of what looked like an empanada but was, she said, a Cornish pasty (pastie in the US)). 

Here’s an idea for Panama to increase the city’s income and clear clogged streets of illegally parked vehicles.

A small plane that crashed in the Democratic Republic of Congo this summer, killing 20 passengers and crew including a British co-pilot, came down after a crocodile smuggled aboard in a sports bag escaped and started a panic. The Filair plane crashed as it approached Bandundu on August 25. The cause has been revealed during testimony from the sole survivor.

By Our Man in Panama

Italy’s beleaguered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi should be looking forward to his two day visit to Panama, if only to get a respite from media attacks.