Nicaragua is interested in the exports of dairy products, light products, tiles for construction, plastic pipes, sacks for agricultural use, and cooking oil, among other products, told the expert to El 19 Digital television channel.

In its visit to Cuba on May 13 to 16, the Cadin delegation could observe a wide range of good quality offers and competitive prices for possible imports.

Aleman also expressed interest for promoting investments, including joint projects, as well as the use of the Unitarian System of Regional Payment Compensations (Sucre).

Nicaragua y Cuba are among the Sucre signatories, a mechanism to facilitate economic-trade operations, established by the Bolivarian Alliance for the People�s of Our America (Alba).

Under the theme “Reaffirming our Drug Free Nicaragua”, the educational campaign presented in the last hours aims to reach neighborhoods and rural communities across the country, said Najar.

With low rates of incidence of this scourge, Nicaragua is subjected to the dangers of illegal drug trafficking due to its geographical location, as Central America is a usual route for traffic from south to north of the continent, he added.

Institutional reports indicate that in 2012 the Army seized 6, 870 kilos of cocaine and 52 boats used by drug traffickers, and also destroyed more than 35,000 marijuana plants and arrested 143 people involved in these crimes.

Through the work of containment, military forces annually prevent the movement of some 300 tons of drugs throughout the country, notified General Julio Cesar Aviles, head of the institution.

Of the 153 municipalities, 72 are drug-free, reported the General Commissioner in statements to the press.

“This is a fight for which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has recognized our country. We feel not happy, not completely pleased, but we know that little by little, we are beating poverty,” said Murillo to television reporters Monday.

The systematic distribution of the school snacks in the frame of the 2013 school course started in February, in its first stage, by the Nicaraguan Education Ministry (Mined), involving the delivery of food that the childrenâ�Ös parents should prepare for their children.

The benefited children with the measure are the ones registered in kindergarten and primary level.

Teachers said this distribution has a very important impact in the teaching-learning process, since the students well fed are showing a greater disposition and assimilation of the classes and homework.

It also influenced the increase of school student retention, which reached more than 91 percent in Nicaragua in 2012.

The distribution of free snacks assured at least one meal a day for 1.05 million children in Nicaragua.

FAO said this is an example of the effort of the Nicaraguan government to improve the nutrition index in the nation.

Besides, during this school course, the Nicaraguan government delivered 400,000 free packages containing school items and instruments to students coming from families with critical social emergency.

President Ortega has accepted an invitation to travel to Ramallah and coordination are ongoing, said Malki, who described the visits as evidence that Palestine is acting in a dynamic way in the international arena.

Last November the General Assembly overwhelmingly approved granting Palestine the status of non-member observer state, despite the aggressive campaign of the United States (U.S.) and Israel to prevent it.

Malki also announced that a mission from the United Nations Organization for Science and Culture will travel on May 20 to Jerusalem, which the Arabs call Al Quds, to investigate the actions of the Israeli occupiers aimed at changing the Arab character of that city.

One day later, May 21, is expected the arrival of U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, who has not provided many details of the purpose of his visit, foreign minister added.

Kerry is scheduled to attend the next day’s a lecture of the self called Friends of Syria, convened to Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The budget for presidential trips abroad is 868.900 cordobas, according to the Presupuesto General de la República de 2013.

This figure is less than what President Daniel Ortega been spent in just one round trip back to Costa Rica in a large private jet to attend the summit of presidents of the Central American Integration System (SICA) and meet with US President Obama, held in the Costa Rica.

Ortega this year, at least publicly, has taken six trips abroad, four of which were to Venezuela.

The funding source of travel is unknown, what is clear is that Ortega travels in a large plane with several of his relatives and close associates.

Nicaraguans were struck to see their president in Costa Rica get off a plane so big, surpassed only by that of the uS president.

The aircraft was an Air Panama airliner.

Although the cost of the trips to Costa Rica and then to Venezuela to attend a Petrocaribe summit, Air Panama confirmed that their rate for a trip from Managua to San José, Costa Rica, is US$42.370 dollars or more than 1 million cordobas, must greater than the presidents annual travel budget.

With the rental of such aircraft, opposition legislator Carlos Langrand, says “Ortega gives an example of social insensitivity “.

Langrand said Ortega’s behavior is offensive, since Nicaragua is the country with the lowest wages in Central America and that a reduction in these costs would give an example of austerity.

Source: La Prensa

The high rate of indiscipline, violent behavior and poor academic performance of many students of the Instituto Nacional de Segovia Leonardo Matute urgently motivated the school management, the board of parents and the police to launch a campaign to address this problem.

The campaign prohibits the use of cell phones and other electronic devices within the study centre, which currently has an enrollment of 1,528 students. The reviewing backpacks at the entry doors will help prevent students carrying sharp instruments or drugs into the school.

At the meeting called on Wednesday for parents of ninth grade students, the director of the Institute, Professor Dilcia Toledo, said that precisely at this grade level is when students have runaway with acts of indiscipline, ranging from ridicule, disrespect and disobedience to teachers, they leave classes without permission, cause property damage, make threats and are abusive towards younger students, among other things.

“Using cell phones and social networks they threaten each other with death, and send vile and vulgar messages and upload photos of girls without their permission to promote mockery”, said the school director.

“We do not want to fill the streets with expelled students, but we already have a notebook full of admonitions and ask for the firm commitment of the student and parent and after exhausting all that we will process expulsion”, added  Toledo.

Source: La Prensa

The information was sent to Costa Rican Foreign Minister Rene Castro by Nicaraguan Deputy Foreign Minister Orlando Gomez Wednesday. Gomez cited a technical study by the Chinese-funder HK Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Co. Ltd.

Gomez sent all the Central American nations the news, promising details later. Just two weeks ago, during the visit of U.S. President Barak Obama, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega reiterated to Obama and the presidents of other Central American nations his determination to build the canal.

Although Deputy Minister of Foreign Relations Carlos Roverssi had noted the resistance of the Costa Rican government as an obstacle for Ortega to complete his project (see previous article) Roverssi still was skeptical. “We still can’t believe it,” he said, “We’re satisfied with the decision of the Nicaraguan government.”

Roverssi said he had information that potential investors would not get on board the project if Costa Rica opposed the plan. After problems encountered during the preparatory dredging of the river that provoked the Costa Rican government to protest environmental damage, Chinchilla’s Administration would not approve.

“This has been a difficult struggle the government of the republic, headed by the President,” he said, “to try of avoid using the San Juan for a canal due to the devastating effects it would cause in both Costa Rican and Nicaraguan territory.”

Analysis: Some of our sources tell us that Eden Pastora, who was authorized by Ortega to dredge the canal, told Costa Rican television that the main factor in the withdrawal from the canal plan was the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

But not even oil-rich Venezuela could have financed the canal alone. It was no doubt that this was a contributing factor but not the deciding one. No doubt the “technical reasons” cited by the Nicaraguan Deputy Foreign Minister has to do with the cold diplomatic climate between the nations and economic factors.

Ortega will probably blame Costa Rica–that is standard with most Nicaraguan governments when they have egg on their faces. But make no mistake–Ortega has only himself to blame for the collapse of the project.

From the very beginning, Ortega’s attitude toward the spirited little republic to his south generally has been contemptuous and high handed. In nearly any other country he would be in deep political doo-doo for having either proposed such a grandiose plan or having failed.

But not in Nicaragua.

Globeleq has fired up its 44MW Eolo de Nicaragua wind farm in Rivas, on the shores of Lake Nicaragua.

The project features 22 Gamesa G90 2MW turbines and is selling all the power it produces to a pair of national privately owned distribution companies through two 20-year agreements.

Some 400 jobs were created during construction at the site and approximately 40 full time positions are required for ongoing operations.

Globeleq said the Eolo wind farm was completed ahead of schedule and within budget.

Chief executive Mikael Karlsson said: “We congratulate the government of Nicaragua and the energy sector participants for committing to the renewable energy program which will have significant and long term economic and environmental benefits for the people of Nicaragua.”

Interior Minister Ana Morales said Lawrence Hartman was sent to Florida, where he was expected to appear in court Thursday.

The 47-year-old lawyer was detained April 25 when he tried to get a Nicaraguan passport using a fraudulent birth certificate, Morales said.

U.S. prosecutors say Hartman is one of seven people charged in Tampa, Florida, with operating an investment fraud scheme that bilked investors out of at least $137 million.

Federal court papers allege the group hijacked names of more than 50 companies and sold bogus stock in them to investors in Britain and elsewhere.

Hartman was not the scheme’s leader, but was key in creating the structure for the promotion and sale of the fake stocks and transmission of worthless stock certificates to investors, the documents say.

Three people convicted in the case earlier this year are scheduled to be sentenced in July. Two others charged separately were also convicted and sent to prison last year.

Logging is one of the main threats in the southern area of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve. Credit: José Garth Medina/IPS

(IPS) – Mayangna indigenous communities in northern Nicaragua are caught up in a life-and-death battle to defend their ancestral territory in the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve from the destruction wrought by invading settlers and illegal logging.

The president of the Mayangna indigenous nation, Aricio Genaro, told Tierramérica that their struggle to protect this reserve, which is still the largest forested area in Central America, was stepped up in 2010, due to the increased numbers of farmers from eastern and central Nicaragua moving in.

In addition to the destruction of natural resources, this invasion has turned violent and poses a serious threat to the biosphere reserve’s indigenous population, estimated at roughly 30,000. Since 2009, 13 indigenous people have been killed while defending their territory, said Genaro.

The latest victim of this violent confrontation was Elías Charly Taylor, who died from gunshot wounds he received in the community of Sulún on Apr. 24, when returning from a protest demonstration against the destruction of the forest.

This protest, initiated in February, has drawn the attention of the government of leftist President Daniel Ortega and publicly exposed the destruction of Bosawas, which encompassed more than two million hectares of tropical forest when it was designated a Biosphere Reserve and World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1997.

According to a study published in 2012 by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), the Nicaraguan National Union of Farmers and Ranchers, the European Union and Oxfam, if deforestation were to continue at its current rate, all of the reserve’s forests would be wiped out in 25 years.

Vanishing wildlife

The Mayangna live from hunting and fishing, domestic livestock raising and subsistence agriculture, growing crops like corn, beans and tubers with traditional methods. But their way of life has been severely impacted by the invading farmers.

“They shoot everything, burn everything, poison the water in the rivers, and chop down the giant trees that have given us shade and protection for years, and then they continue their advance, and nothing stops them,” said Genaro.

“You don’t see tapirs anymore, the pumas and oncillas (tiger cats) have fled the area, you no longer hear the singing of the thousands of birds that used to tell us when it was going to rain. Even the big fish in the rivers are gone. Everything is disappearing,” he said.

According to Kamilo Lara of the National Recycling Forum, a network of non-governmental environmental organisations, more than 96,500 hectares of forest have already been destroyed within the protected core of the Bosawas Biosphere Reserve.

Lara added that “55 percent of the forests in the so-called buffer zone, where some 20,000 mestizo farmers (of mixed indigenous and Spanish ancestry) have settled, have been cleared to sell the timber, to create pastures for cattle grazing, and to grow crops for commercial purposes.”

He further estimated that some 12,000 of the 19,896 square kilometres initially set aside as the original reserve have been damaged due to the expansion of the buffer zone, which was initially less than 5,500 square kilometres in area.

Jaime Incer Barquero, a presidential advisor on environmental affairs, told Tierramérica that the national authorities need to speed up protective measures “before the reserve loses its status (as a UNESCO biosphere reserve) and the world loses the reserve.”

This view is shared by the UNESCO representative in Nicaragua, Juan Bautista Arríen, who believes that “urgent and firm action” must be taken to protect both the indigenous population and the natural environment.

Official response

In response to the denunciations from indigenous communities and environmentalists, the Ortega administration has begun to implement a number of measures to deal with the destruction of the reserve. It has authorised the use of force, sending in 700 members of the Nicaraguan army’s newly formed Ecological Battalion along with a roughly equal number of police officers, for the initial purpose of controlling the violence between the settlers and the indigenous inhabitants of the reserve.

A commission of national authorities was also formed to coordinate actions and implement an “iron fist” policy against individuals and organisations responsible for damaging the environment.

After visiting the area early this month and observing the damage first hand, the authorities issued Decree 15-2013, which created a permanent Inter-Institutional Commission for the Defence of Mother Earth in Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Territories of the Caribbean Coast.

The main function of this commission, created to “strengthen the regime of autonomy of the Caribbean coast,” will be to enforce ancestral land rights in indigenous territories in conjunction with the corresponding agencies, as well as to promote the joint adoption and implementation of measures with local and regional authorities to protect the reserve’s biodiversity.

In addition, a series of criminal, administrative and civil court proceedings will be initiated against all individuals charged with destroying or threatening the environment and the rights of indigenous communities.

In accordance with the law that established the North Atlantic and South Atlantic Autonomous Regions, indigenous territories may only be occupied and used productively by members of native communities.

The director of the Centre for Environmental Policy Initiatives, sociologist Cirilo Otero, endorsed the protective measures, but warned that the implementation of coercive measures to protect the environment, unless they are accompanied by policies to support the small farmers who are moving into the reserve as a way of escaping poverty, could give rise to a socio-economic conflict and more violence.

The government has approached the general director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, to present the problem and request assistance, while the country struggles to halt the destruction of the last major forested area in Central America through its own means.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.