2005 – Page 257

The Mexican Consulate in Santo Domingo granted twenty-five visas to Dominicans deported from the United States, who said that they were traveling to Mazatlan, Mexico to watch the Caribbean Baseball Series. Immigration officials questioned by Diario Libre reporters said that they did not think that the deportees had plans to return to the Dominican Republic. …

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Plantains, the Dominican foodstuff par excellence, have now reached the astronomical price of RD$12.00 per unit. This is a banana-like plant, whose fruit is eaten in a wide variety of ways. It is, perhaps, the only food that will be eaten by a normal Dominican family three times a day in different preparations without any …

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Diandino Pena, who heads the office in charge of the Santo Domingo Metro underground transport project, announced yesterday that preparatory work could start as soon as March. He described the project as an anti-poverty measure and an income-earner, for which reasons – he claimed – it would not be opposed by the International Monetary Fund. …

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Diario Libre reports on the reactions of urban planners to the proposed island off the Malecon. “We are not Miami, nor San Juan. These designer projects are not appropriate for a poor country,” said urban planner and landscape designer Amparo Chantada. Her views are shared by Joaquin Geronimo, president of the national council for urban …

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The United States ambassador in Santo Domingo, Hans Hertell expressed his confidence in Dominican justice yesterday. This follows Chief Justice Jorge Subero Isa’s comments, as reported in Tuesday’s DR1 news brief, that Dominican justice is “the best in Latin America”. Hertell also commended Subero Isa’s role in developing the Dominican justice system. He was seeking …

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Santo Domingo District Attorney Jose Manuel Hernandez Peguero revealed yesterday that the authorities have frozen bank accounts totaling over RD$116 million belonging to accused drug baron Quirino Paulino Castillo. Former army captain Quirino is in custody in a Dominican jail, after being caught in possession of 1,387 kilograms of cocaine last December. The US government …

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Santo Domingo DA named two more people sought in connection with the Quirino drug smuggling case. Jose Manuel Hernandez Peguero announced that the authorities have issued warrants for the arrest of businessmen Francisco Manuel Alburquerque Fortuna and Ernesto Bienvenido Guevara Diaz (known as “Maconi”). He described the two men as “active participants” in the alleged …

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Economist and Presidential Advisor Julio Ortega Tous blames the previous government for the economic crisis of 2003, according to Listin Diario newspaper. Ortega Tous says it was not banking fraud that led to the problem, but the government’s economic policies that created the banking crisis. “It was an economic crisis waiting to happen, and the …

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Hoy reports that several leading municipal government figures are calling for the abolition of the Municipal League, a much-criticized national coordinating body for local government. Gabriel Castro, who heads Santo Domingo’s municipal authority, accused the Municipal League president Amable Aristy Castro of distributing funds “at his discretion” and said that he would call for the …

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This morning’s press is critical of the lenient sentence passed on former air force officer Jose Nazario Jiminian who was found guilty of murdering his 19-year old wife. She was found shot dead, and it was established that her husband’s gun was used in the killing. The couple had two small children. Magistrate Katia Gomez …

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