The Internet is being flooded by another wave of virus messages, and some of these have the names of friends or colleagues in the sender space.

Even Radiográfica Costarricense S.A., the Internet monopoly known as RACSA, issued a warning Wednesday about the W32.Netsky.D@mm virus. RACSA usually is slow to respond, but not this time.

The Netsky virus seems to be an improved version of the MyDoom virus that besieged computer mailboxes for two weeks. Netsky, too, is a worm that enters a Window-based computer system when a user opens an e-mail attachment containing the virus, according to Semantec, a maker of computer security software.

The attachment comes as a .pif file, although the file suffix might be hidden or changes. The virus searches out e-mail addresses on the infected computer and mails copies of itself to any address it finds.

Some virus variants try to trick users by telling them that their e-mail accounts have been frozen and that they must follow the instructions in an attachment.

RACSA also said that Banco Popular, the issuer of the VISA card here, was concerned about Internet fraud because phony messages seek to steal the account numbers and passwords of users. This is similar to the Pay Pal frauds that began several weeks ago and continue to arrive daily.

The false message takes a user to a Web page that appears identical to VISA or Pay Pal or a number of other financial entities. Alternatively, the false message can implant a small program that copies passwords and sends them to crooks.

New inspection station
to catch smugglers 

Smugglers are going to be facing a new and more efficient vehicle inspection station at Peñas Blancas at the border with Nicaragua.

That is a border crossing point that has been plagued with drug and weapons shipments. 

But Friday or next week, law enforcement officials will inaugurate a $1 million inspection station, paid mostly by U.S. donations. The facility will allow detailed inspections of suspicious vehicles, according to Rogelio Ramos, minister of Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública.

Ramos said that not every vehicle will go through the stronger inspection process, but officials will be on the lookout for suspicious traffic.

Costa Rica is a major land bridge for drug traffickers, and Peñas Blancas on the northern frontier is a key crossing. Although most drug shipments are leaving Costa Rica for points north, the inspection station will allow agents to search for other types of illegal merchandise. For example, the border point is used by arms smugglers.

The Policía de Control de Drogas will be in charge of the inspections, according to Ramos. Officers have made several arrests in the last few months in which vehicles had to be partly dismantled to reveal drug shipments.

Quepos arrests dent
drug market, cops say

Two men who officials describe as major drug deals in Quepos have been arrested. 

Carlos Alberto Rodríguez, 32, came into the hands of agents Monday after they raided his rented room. Judicial Investigating Organization spokesmen said that agents found a kilo of cocaine and more than a kilo of pressed marijuana. After raiding the room, agents waited for Rodríguez to appear.

In Playa Bejuco in Quepos agents said they arrested a man who was a major marijuana supplier to tourists in the Pacific beach town. He is Juan Carlos Robles Zúñiga, 33.

Canadian minister visits

The Canadian minister for new and emerging markets was in Costa Rica Wednesday and paid a call at the foreign ministry and at Casa Presidencial.

The minister is Gar Knutson, and he met with acting President Lineth Saborío and Roberto Tovar, the chancellor.

Tovar and Knutson discussed the free trade treaty that Costa Rica has negotiated with Canada.

Trade between the two countries in 2003 was $363 million, said the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States and its partners in the Western Hemisphere are working together to curb the threat of international terrorism in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to U.S. officials.

There is no evidence of operational planning by international terrorist organizations in Latin America, but there are "many, many support activities" for such groups taking place throughout the region, said Maj. Gen. Rod Bishop, deputy commander of the U.S. Southern Command, in remarks Wednesday on Capitol Hill.

Speaking at a conference labelled "The Middle East Terrorist Connection in Latin America and the Caribbean," Bishop indicated that the tri-border area shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, in addition to Margarita Island off Venezuela, Colombia, and Trinidad & Tobago are among the places in the hemisphere where international terrorist groups are engaged in illicit activities.

Bishop said that international terrorist groups in these areas are engaged in laundering money, forging documents, and transporting drugs, arms and illegal aliens. These activities, he noted, generate millions of dollars for terrorists around the world.

To curb these activities and to carry out its global war on terrorism, the United States has established a Joint Inter-Agency Coordination Group among U.S. government entities that aims to enhance cooperation and improve information-sharing, Bishop said.

He added that the United States is also engaged with its hemispheric partners in combating international terrorism in the region.

"Many of our Latin American and Caribbean 

The United States is sharing techniques and intelligence with its hemispheric partners and working hard together to monitor the activities of radical Islamic groups in the region, Bishop explained. "This cooperative approach is at our frontline in the war on terrorism," he added.

William Pope, principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of State, concurred with this assessment. "The vast majority of countries in the hemisphere have been firm partners in the war on terrorism," he said.

Yet while the hemisphere has demonstrated political will to curb international terrorism, the capacity to thwart terrorist activity in the region is "sorely lacking," Pope said.

Efforts to bolster the region's ability to curb international terrorism focus, in part, on improving the basic security of hemispheric nations, Bishop observed. He said that terrorists seek out areas without basic security, ungoverned spaces where they can act with virtual impunity.

The United States Southern Command is working closely with its counterparts in Latin America and the Caribbean to minimize the ungoverned spaces that exist in the region, Bishop confirmed.

Another crucial component in the global campaign against terrorism, Bishop and Pope noted, is the targeting of terrorist resources. 

Pope said the United States is actively supporting several financial task forces in the region, and suggested that efforts to address the fundraising activities of radical Islamic groups in the region have already yielded results.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti— The prime minister late Wednesday declared a state of emergency, and the country's interim president named a new national police chief to combat lawlessness and violence in the Caribbean nation. 

Prime Minister Yvon Neptune declared a state of emergency to combat what he described as groups fomenting terror in the capital, and to restore calm to Haiti. Neptune said vandalism and looting have caused $300 million worth of damage in Haiti over the past few days.

A state of emergency gives Haiti's government authority to suspend constitutional protections. However Neptune gave no indication he plans to do so. Neptune said a state of emergency will allow the resumption of normal life in Haiti. Neptune called on all public employees to return to their jobs and says banks which have been closed for more than a week are expected to reopen today.

Opposition groups who have complained about political interference in Haiti's police force welcomed the appointment.

Following a meeting with the commander of U.S. Marines in Haiti, Col. Mark Garganus, the rebel commander and former regional police chief Guy Philippe called on his supporters to disarm.

Philippe said now that ex-president Jean Bertrand Aristide has left Haiti, and multinational troops are in the country, it was time for his forces to lay down their arms. U.S. officials say Philippe's pledge to disarm will greatly help stability in Haiti. There are now more than 1,000 U.S. Marines in Haiti. French commanders say they expect to have about 800 troops in the country by the end of Thursday.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Two days after the European Union began imposing retaliatory tariffs on imports from the United States, the U.S. Senate started debating a legislative proposal aimed at repealing the offending U.S. law that led to the sanctions.

The Bush administration has urged Congress to pass the repeal quickly although it has taken no position in favor of any of the three leading legislative proposals, one in the Senate and two in the House of Representatives.

At issue is a series of U.S. laws that the World Trade Organization has ruled as illegal export subsidies. The World Trade Organization first ruled illegal longstanding Foreign Sales Corporation tax breaks for certain U.S. exporters. Then in 2002 the World Trade Organization ruled illegal tax breaks made under the Extraterritorial Income Act, the successor law to the foreign corporation measure.

The World Trade Organization authorized the EU to impose sanctions amounting to $4 billion a year. After waiting for the United States to act, the EU finally began March 1 imposing tariffs worth 5 percent of the authorized level, prepared to increase the level by 1 percentage point a month up to 17 percent.

Before the full Senate Wednesday was a bill approved 19-2 in October by the Senate Finance Committee called the Jumpstart Our Business Strength (JOBS) Act. The main provision would over three years repeal the offending legislation and reduce the tax rate for all U.S.-based manufacturing companies, not just for certain exporting companies and not for offshore manufacturing, to 32 percent from 35 percent.

Other provisions aim at reforming the U.S. international tax regime, including ending double taxation of income and shutting down offshore tax shelters.

"Flaws in our international tax rules seriously undermine America's ability to compete in the global marketplace," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, Republican chairman of the Finance Committee. 

Several members are expected to challenge the bill by amendments.

Some Republicans, in line with administration criticism, want to amend the bill by reducing the top corporate tax rate for all corporations, not just for manufacturers. Grassley said he would oppose such an amendment, arguing that manufacturing, the sector that would be hurt by the repeal of the subsidies, should get any benefits from repeal legislation. He also argued that the proposed amendment would reduce taxes only for the biggest corporations, not for small family-held corporations or partnerships as the JOBS bill would.

Another amendment offered by Democrats aims to restrict foreign outsourcing of U.S. jobs paid for by U.S. federal government spending.

When the Senate would finish work on repeal legislation was uncertain.  Meanwhile, companion legislation in the House of Representatives has been stuck in a stalemate for months.

Rep. Bill Thomas, Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, told reporters Wednesday he was aiming to bring to the House floor in a few weeks a revised version of a repeal bill he pushed through committee in October.

The Ways and Means bill would have decreased tax revenue about $60 billion over 10 years while his revised version would cost only about $3 billion, he said. The Senate Finance bill is supposed to be revenue neutral.

Thomas failed to gain support for the Ways and Means bill, however, from about 25 House Republicans who opposed tax breaks for U.S. companies with overseas operations.

To become law a repeal bill would have to be passed in both the House and Senate and signed by the president.

International public health organizations say the outbreak of bird flu in eight Asian nations is the most widespread and serious occurrence of a disease that was once thought to be rare. With that knowledge, the World Health Organization has repeated its warning that only with diligence and difficulty will the disease be controlled.

The H5N1 avian influenza strain has struck widely in eight Asians nations since December 2003. Most of the countries involved are seeing the infectious and deadly disease in poultry flocks for the first time. So far, 100 million birds have either died from bird flu or been culled in containment efforts.

In a Tuesday avian influenza situation report, the World Health Organization cites disease-tracking data dating back to the 1950s to substantiate the severity and uniqueness of the current outbreak. The fact that the stricken birds are largely kept in small-scale farms located over wide areas increases the difficulty of controlling the current outbreak as contrasted with those of the past. It is 

"These unique features will make rapid control and long-term prevention of recurrence extremely difficult to achieve," said the World Health Organization situation report. 

Despite the severity of the outbreak and the serious economic losses to poultry producers in the affected countries, the worst fears of public health officials so far have not come true. The disease has infected some humans, but only two new, confirmed human cases have been reported in the last two weeks. Epidemiologists feared that the H5N1 virus might mutate into a strain that would become highly infectious in human-to-human contact. 

Currently communicable disease surveillance reports a total of 33 human cases and 22 deaths, all of those in Vietnam and Thailand.