2008 – Page 65

The Administrative Chamber of the Central Electoral Board (JCE) issued a new set of regulations and dress codes for its employees yesterday, including a ban on the use of blue jeans, polo shirts, Capri pants, Bermuda shorts, sport shoes and tennis shoes. The administrative Chamber, according to Hoy, has also banned the use of music …

Read more…

Business leader Julio Virgilio Brache says that business people need to join forces in order to save the Dominican forest cover. He said that forests have been deteriorating and the efforts will prevent the country’s water supply from drying up altogether. Brache, the president of the National Network of Business Support for the Protection of …

Read more…

Esperanza Marte Victoriano is an everyday heroine. With her hands, her ideas and her sweat, she has fought the worst type of tyrrany: Poverty. Together with other women from Los Calabazos in Jarabacoa, she planted the seeds of a project, and little by little, built an eco-tourism venture, a hydroelectric plant and an aqueduct that …

Read more…

President Leonel Fernandez launched the Strategic Science and Technology Innovation Plan 2008-2018 (PECyT+I) during a special panel discussion held at the Global Democracy and Development Foundation (FunGlode)yesterday. The RD$50 billion program will be managed by the Higher Education Ministry (SEECYT). Fernandez said that the initiative represents true innovation for the country and that development cannot …

Read more…

Dr. Cristobal Rodriguez, a constitutional specialist with the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), says the proposed constitutional reform would give the Dominican President “unlimited power” adding that the personal management of the state’s resources by the President, as stipulated by the reform, could create a bureaucracy and a culture of potent clientilism. Rodriguez said that …

Read more…

Listin Diario reports that the government’s decision not to lower gasoline prices is illegal and violates Hydro-Carbides Law 112-00. The assertion comes after Economy, Planning and Development Minister Temistocles Montas announced that although international fuel prices are dropping, the government wouldn’t follow suit. Montas stated that the government would not lower prices because it had …

Read more…

Environment Minister Jamie David Fernandez said that he would meet with the sand and gravel extraction companies next week in order to propose a deal aimed at regulating their operations. This is a much softer stance compared to the Minister’s recent uncompromising statements on the issue of sand and gravel extraction from riverbeds. Fernandez didn’t …

Read more…

Transport Reorganization Office (OPRET) director Diandino Pena has announced that the Santo Domingo Metro will finally open to the public on 15 December 2008. Fares will be between RD$20 and RD$25. Pena says the system is in its final stages of preparation, noting that it is difficult to get all 19 trains moving together, arriving …

Read more…

More details about the Paya drug massacre have surfaced as officials continue searching for the gun that was used during the killings. Hoy reports that a 9mm Taurus pistol belonging to former Navy Lieutenant Jorge Luis Chalas, which has since been recovered, was used during the murders orchestrated by Edward Mayobanex Rodriguez. Search teams have …

Read more…

The Supreme Court has ruled that a 1954 agreement between the Vatican and the Dominican State, known as the Concordat, doesn’t violate the freedom to practice religion. Judges argued that the agreement doesn’t curtail the freedom of practice of religion, yet doesn’t hold another religion to privileged status. The judges agreed that all religions have …

Read more…