The Google Map Invasion: Nicaragua Blames Internet Giant for Costa Rican Land Grab

Nicaragua, Costa Rica urged to pull back in Google map spat
Costa Rica accused Nicaragua of deploying Troops inside its territory last month in a dredging operation around a island in the San Juan River that has been the source of friction for more than a century. In a resolution approved early on Saturday in Washington, the OAS hemispheric forum called for the countries to remove their Armed Forces from the area and begin talks to resolve their differences. Costa Rica has no army but allegedly mobilized Police Forces to the border and asked the OAS to ...

Clinton seeks revamp of State, USAID
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to reorganize the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to better respond to global threats and emergencies. In a proposal presented to members of Congress on Wednesday, Clinton outlined plans to add several new offices to each agency and consolidate others under a revised leadership structure. The plan would create bureaus for International energy affairs and crisis and conflict operations at State as ...

Clinton seeks revamp of State, USAID
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to reorganize the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to better respond to global threats and emergencies. In a proposal presented to members of Congress on Wednesday, Clinton outlined plans to add several new offices to each agency and consolidate others under a revised leadership structure. The plan would create bureaus for International energy affairs and crisis and conflict operations at State as ...

Clinton seeks revamp of State, USAID
WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to reorganize the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to better respond to global threats and emergencies. In a proposal presented to members of Congress on Wednesday, Clinton outlined plans to add several new offices to each agency and consolidate others under a revised leadership structure. The plan would create bureaus for International energy affairs and crisis and conflict operations at State as wel...

Google Maps Dispute May Go to Court
(NewsCore) - Officials from the Organization of American States (OAS) will meet Wednesday in an attempt to stop a border dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica ending up before the International Court of Justice. The dispute between the two Central American nations began last month when Nicaraguan security forces moved into disputed territory on the northern bank of the San Juan River. An official in charge of the Troops told a local newspaper at the time that he used Google Maps to determine ...

Clinton seeks revamp of State, USAID
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to reorganize the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to better coordinate American Diplomacy and foreign aid. In a proposal presented to Congress on Wednesday, Clinton outlined plans to add several new offices to each agency and consolidate others under a revised leadership structure. The changes would create a bureau for International energy affairs at State and offices for policy planning and sc...

Clinton proposes reorganization of State Department, USAID to confront new challenges
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to reorganize the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to better coordinate American Diplomacy and foreign aid. In a proposal presented to Congress on Wednesday, Clinton outlined plans to add several new offices to each agency and consolidate others under a revised leadership structure. The changes would create a bureau for International energy affairs at State and offices for policy planning and scie...

"Free Trade" By Any Other Name...
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF. "Free Trade" by any other name ... is still just a scam to pit workers against each other and evade the protections of Democracy. We, the People fought to build this Democracy with its laws and institutions and protections. This fight brought us a Middle Class with weekends off, good wages, worker protections and some degree of pro...

Costa Rica to seek OAS meeting in Nicaragua spat
San Jose, Costa Rica - Costa Rica says it will seek a meeting of the Organization of American States' commission of foreign ministers to discuss its border dispute with Nicaragua. The neigboring nations are fighting over a bit of territory along the San Juan border river. Nicaragua sent Troops to the area last month, angering Costa Rica. The permanent council of the OAS last week overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for Nicaragua to withdraw its forces and urging both countries t...

Costa Rica to seek OAS meeting in Nicaragua spat
SAN Jose, Costa Rica (AP) — Costa Rica says it will seek a meeting of the Organization of American States’ commission of Foreign Ministers to discuss its border dispute with Nicaragua. The neigboring nations are fighting over a bit of territory along the San Juan border river. Nicaragua sent Troops to the area last month, angering Costa Rica. The permanent council of the OAS last week overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for Nicaragua to withdraw its forces and urging both co...

Costa Rica to seek OAS meeting in Nicaragua spat
SAN Jose, Costa Rica -- Costa Rica says it will seek a meeting of the Organization of American States' commission of Foreign Ministers to discuss its border dispute with Nicaragua. The neigboring nations are fighting over a bit of territory along the San Juan border river. Nicaragua sent Troops to the area last month, angering Costa Rica. The permanent council of the OAS last week overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for Nicaragua to withdraw its forces and urging both countries to cont...

Bush on Nation Building and Afghanistan
President Bush famously campaigned against nation building in 2000.  Critics loved to point out the inconsistency between his campaign Rhetoric and the lofty ambitions of the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In his new memoir, Decision Points, Bush bluntly admits "After 9/11, I changed my mind." Bush said so as early as April 2002, in a Speech at the Virginia Military Institute.  He said that "We know that true peace will only be achieved when we give the Afghan ...

Italy Demands 3-Day Warning for Google Street View Trips - by PC Magazine
Life's about to get a bit more frustrating for Google's international Google Maps teams. That's because Regulators in Italy have mandated that Google take additional measures to warn local populaces when its Street View cars are out and about—and, more importantly, taking pictures of unsuspecting passersby and locations alike. According to Italian newspaper La Stampa, Google will now have to ensure that its Street View cars are clearly and obviously marked—as if the giant cameras on t...

Smartphones Eating Into Navigation Device Sales
Nearly all Smartphones ship with GPS and navigation services on board. If its not Google Maps, its Bing Maps, Nokia Maps, or BlackBerry Maps. These services are all free to use for basic navigation. Many mid-range feature phones also ship with GPS chips inside and navigation software from the likes of TeleNav or others. Berg Insight says that of the 200 million world wide users of turn-by-turn navigation services, fully 44 million (about 25%) are using those services on their cell phones. About...

Jon Stewart exposes the media distortion of President Obama's Asia trip (Video)
The media is certainly hard on any president, but Cable News has been especially unkind to President Obama over the past two weeks.  Following the Midterm losses for Democrats the networks were quick to blame President Obama even though the Exit Polls told a different story.  Republicans went on every network to claim that they could work with President Obama if he only acts like President Clinton and compromises with them.  The media criticized President Obama’s Asia trip b...

George Clooney: Peace in Sudan - It's down to US
Well, we're in it now. What we do best. Diplomacy. The White House has dispatched Senator John Kerry to Sudan with a proposal for peace between North and South. It's a giant step toward avoiding the kind of bloodshed that killed more than two million people in Sudan's previous 20-year North-South Civil War, which ended only in 2005 - and is threatening to erupt once again. In recent months, president Barack Obama has stepped up involvement in support of a peace strategy for Sudan. On his behal...

Hussain Abdul-Hussain: Why Lebanese Diplomacy Is Irrelevant in Washington
Beauty Pageants often arch an eyebrow in today's climate of Political Correctness. But, when it comes to Lebanese-American Rima Fakih, the current Miss USA, women's rights Activists have mostly looked the other way to not spoil Lebanon's bulging pride in her achievements. The Lebanese Embassy in Washington, however, has taken celebrating Fakih to a whole new level. Months after she was crowned, her pictures still dominate the home page of the Embassy's website. Lebanese-Americans have contacte...

"Free Trade" By Any Other Name...
"Free Trade" by any other name ... is still just a scam to pit workers against each other and evade the protections of Democracy. We, the People fought to build this Democracy with its laws and institutions and protections. This fight brought us a Middle Class with weekends off, good wages, worker protections and some degree of protection of our environment. "Free Trade" deals let companies move factories across a border to escape those protections and pit exploited workers with few rights an...

Ninety days in the Middle East
PERSISTENCE IN the face of setbacks is a necessity in Middle East peace Diplomacy. But the Obama Administration's efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks are less evocative of true grit than of desperate improvisation. According to reports in the Israeli press, the Administration has now offered the government of Binyamin Netanyahu a gold-plated menu of incentives, including $3 Billion worth of F-35 warplanes, in exchange for a 90-day renewal of a partial Moratorium on West Bank settlemen...

Was the India visit a "ringing success"? - By Peter Feaver
President Obama's Foreign Policy spinmeisters have received assistance from an unlikely corner. Ashley Tellis, one of our most knowledgeable South Asia experts, pushes back against critics who have pooh-poohed what the president accomplished in his recent trip to India. The article posted elsewhere on the FP site, calls the trip the exact opposite of a failure, a "ringing success." Since I also privately received pushback from another knowledgeable India hand for my own characterizati...

Iraq's Talabani says will not sign Aziz death order
Paris (Reuters) – Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said on Wednesday he will not sign an execution order for Tareq Aziz, the former deputy of dictator Saddam Hussein sentenced to death last month over the persecution of Islamic parties. "No, I will not sign the execution order for Tareq Aziz, because I am a Socialist," Talabani told French television France 24 in an interview. "I sympathize with Tareq Aziz because he is an Iraqi Christian. Moreover he is an old man who is ov...

Health insurers ran secret campaign to trash Michael Moores Sicko
Stumble This! Health Insurance Companies funneled thousands of dollars into fake Grassroots organizations to discredit Michael Moore's film Sicko, according to the former Vice President of corporate communications for the Insurance giant Cigna Corp. In an interview with Democracy Now, Wendell Potter says Health Insurance Companies set up front groups to criticize the film Sicko because they worried it would create support for a single-payer Health Care system in the United States. "We felt that...

Google Public Policy Blog: Promoting Free Trade for the Internet Economy
Today we’re releasing a white paper [PDF] that explores the ways that governments impose limits on the Free flow of information online. It’s pretty wonky stuff, but the premise is simple: In addition to infringing Human Rights, governments that block the Free flow of information on the Internet are also blocking Trade and Economic Growth. Over the last two decades, the Internet has delivered tremendous Economic and Trade benefits. It has driven record increases in Productivity, spurr...

Analysis: Obamas bid for Mideast peace is risky
WASHINGTON (AP) — Trying to coax Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a peace deal always has been a political high-wire act for U.S. presidents, but President Barack Obama is performing without a net. Stretching back decades, all U.S. intervention has failed, but the collapse of those efforts was always blamed on one side or the other or both, not the American leader — even when he was directly involved in negotiations. The deal that’s developing now, however, could backfir...

Analysis: Obama's bid for Mideast peace is risky (AP)
Washington – Trying to coax Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a peace deal always has been a political high-wire act for U.S. presidents, but President Barack Obama is performing without a net. Stretching back decades, all U.S. intervention has failed, but the collapse of those efforts was always blamed on one side or the other or both, not the American leader — even when he was directly involved in negotiations. The deal that's developing now, however, could backfire on Obam...