from the oops dept
You would think that military professionals would rely
on something other than Google Maps
in determining where countries have their borders.
However, down in Central America,
there's apparently been something of an international incident,
after a Nicaraguan military commander,
using Google Maps as his guide,
brought his troops into Costa Rica.
He insists that he was just following what Google Maps said,
and that he never intended to go into the neighboring country.
Yet... the report also notes that there was a Costa Rican flag there,
which the Nicaraguans took down and replaced with their own flag.
You would think, at that point,
that everyone involved might double check
to make sure they were on the right side of the border.
After raising their own flag,
the Nicaraguans apparently set up camp,
cleaned up a nearby river
(nice of them)
and then dumped sediment into Costa Rican territory
(not so nice of them).
If this truly is an honest mistake,
then hopefully nothing more is made of it,
but it sounds like Costa Rican citizens
are quite upset about the whole thing,
leading Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla
to go on TV to ask citizens to
"be calm...
amid the outrage that these events provoke within us."
VIA
TechDirt.com
