Central American coffee farmers have struggled with a ravenous fungus, drought and low prices for the last several years, but it looks like the 2014/2015 harvest might start to turn the corner, according to reports from governments across the isthmus. Higher potential production and buoying coffee prices might be the jolt the region needs to kick off its recovery.
To help us prepare for the day, Costa Rica’s National Metereological Institute (IMN) recently released its own app - a valiant effort to interpret the local troposphere for everyday people, but too full of flaws and bugs to be a worthy option.
"Anti-drug policies in Central America have not had their desired effect,” Public Security Minister Celso Gamboa said. "I can say that after 20 years experience fighting drug trafficking, ... the cases where white collar criminals are caught, those who never touch the drugs, these cases are scarce.”
Last week as I was driving through the sweltering Nicaraguan countryside in the southwestern department of Rivas, a convoy of soldiers traveling at midday on the Inter-American Highway caught my eye.
Women arguably have been hit hardest by Alzheimer's disease: Two-thirds of those with the dementia-causing disease are women, and women serve more often than men as their caregivers.
Five current and one former member of the Ferguson police force face pending federal lawsuits claiming they used excessive force. The lawsuits, as well as more than a half-dozen internal investigations, include claims that individual officers separately hog-tied a 12-year-old boy who was checking his family mailbox, pistol-whipped children and used a stun gun on a mentally ill man who died as a result.
