Welcome to the Panama Weekly News Roundup! Here’s the latest.
Panama creates special gender violence police squad.
Panama’s police service said on Thursday it has created a new unit dedicated to tackling violence against women across the country, which has recorded tens of thousands of cases of domestic violence in recent years.
The 200-officer squad is specially trained to respond “promptly” to gender-based crimes and to write up reports to avoid perpetrators escaping punishment through legal technicalities, said the deputy director of the national police, Jacinto Gomez.
The country’s National Women’s Institute (INAMU) said two years of training had gone into the program.
The head of INAMU, Liriola Leoteau, said the new squad will also provide protection for social workers who sometimes get assaulted when they try to assist women suffering gender violence.
Source: Vietnam News
A group of monkeys just entered the stone age in Panama.
A gang of monkeys in Panama have become the fourth non-human primates to be spotted using stone tools to break nuts and shellfish.
The group of males capuchins were spotted on Jicarón island, a small island off the coast of the country.
Not all the capuchins on the island have begun using tools yet, Jicarón island is one of three islands that make up the Coiba National Park and only a small group of monkeys on that specific island have so far begun displaying the behaviour.
“We were surprised that this behaviour appears to be geographically localised,” Brendan Barrett at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology told New Scientist.
Source: Joe.co.ukf
W Hotels launches Panama hat collection with Gigi Burris Millinery.
Luxury hotel chain W Hotels is launching a capsule collection with three Panama hats to celebrate the launch of its new hotel in Panama City. The hats were created in collaboration with New York-based fashion designer Gigi Burris Millinery, recommended to W Hotels by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
The first hat style, called “Canal”, is a flat-brimmed fedora trimmed with papaya cotton grosgrain and covered by papaya-hued paint treatment, reminiscent of the city’s spray-painted facades along the canal route. The second one, called “Mangrove”, features a short brim, adorned with neon, peacock feather work. It was inspired by the Spanish architecture one finds at the capital of Panama. The third style is perhaps the most unusual of all: “Quera” features a heart-shaped crown with nearly-neon, patterned fabric, with a bandana draped across the hat.
Source: Fashion United
Veraguas Highway Undergoing Major Upgrade
Panama has been planning, and executing major national highway upgrades for quite some time now, in an attempt to modernize the interior’s infrastructure. Currently, there are eleven of these projects underway on a national level, with the largest being the “Corredor Atalaya” which is the principal road transportation source for the province of Veraguas.
Veraguas is a province that covers a huge swath of land, going from the Caribbean all the way down through the Azuero Peninsula, with Panama’s 4th largest city (Santiago) in the middle. The total planned construction is to span just over 100 total km of highway, which is relatively large by Panama standards, especially in that area.
Source: International Relocation Firm Blog
