This past weekend, 22 journalists in the southern town of Jacmel received a certificate of completion for 36 hours of training in investigative journalism. The four women and 18 men who participated on a volunteer basis are, I hope, the first of many throughout the country who will benefit from this course thanks to a generous donation from a group of anonymous donors.

As if the journalists I'm working with haven't had enough distractions, a new curve ball was thrown last week- the unexpected arrival of former dictator Jean Claude Duvalier, who descended from an Air France flight after a near 25-year absence.

"Baby Doc's" appearance accelerated a tailspin that started with last year's earthquake. The disaster, which killed as many as 300,000, was then exacerbated by a hurricane, a cholera epidemic that has killed close to 4,000 people and a November 28 electoral dispute that is so mired in politicking that even the U.S.

Dozens of reports are being sent to Mi Panama Transparente, the online crowdsourcing platform to track incidents of crime and corruption in Panama.

PANAMA, PANAMA -- The individual and his family were getting into a truck, ready to leave the Sumit park. Everything seemed to be normal except for the fact that the truck was marked with the legend ANAM (National Authority of Environment) in a Sunday afternoon, when no official vehicle are supposed to be on the streets for personal purposes.

2010 hasn’t been kind to Haiti. Not that the past few decades – or even two centuries – have been generous, but an earthquake, hurricane and the introduction of cholera have made these past eleven months particularly challenging. It’s also why there has been so much hype about Sunday’s much-anticipated presidential and parliamentary elections.

As a part of the ICFJ's program in Panama, we are training correspondents who frequently work under risk covering not only community issues but also crime in cities affected by drug trafficking. Ethics, professionalism and methods of verification and bullet-proofing stories are crucial elements in the workshops.

Panama -- For a brief moment, I felt like being in a Mexico province, not in Colon, at the Caribbean port of entry of the Panama Canal.

PANAMA -- Journalists working from the Panama provinces are not quite fortunate in regard to training: they live and work to far away from the country's capital and don’t have the same opportunities to take seminars and workshops usually available for their colleagues in Panama City.

Reporters and editors working in the provinces are usually non-staffers, working as free-lancer correspondents for the main newspaper, national TV and radio companies; Unless they are willing to travel to Panama on their own to attend the workshops, they rarely receive training.

In some instances the m