Vote this week can make
free trade a done deal


President Óscar Arias Sánchez will leave office with the free trade treaty with the United States completed.

The Sala IV constitutional court has given the green light to the 14th and final measure in the free trade package. That opened the door for lawmakers to consider the matter sometime this week. The Asamblea Legislativa already passed the measure on the first reading, but action was frozen when opponents asked for a high court review.

The measure covers intellectual property rights, including songs and other types of creative works. Part of the law establishes criminal penalties for infringement. There also are stiff fines for violation.

Arias spent nearly all his four-year term engineering passage of the free trade treaty. The pact got the nation's approval in an October 2007 referendum after a bitter campaign.

The United States pushed for an intellectual property section in the treaty because of the wholesale counterfeiting of music and movie CDs. The law that got the approval Tuesday implemented the concepts outlined in the free trade treaty and brought national law into conformity.

The United States has frozen some sugar import quotas until the final law gets approval.
 

Wildlife abounds on bills
announced by Banco Central


The Banco Central de Costa Rica plans to introduce new currency in a few months. The new bills are dominated by graphics of a monkey, sloth, a bird, butterfly, a shark and a Guanacaste tree.

The brightly colored bills are different in width so that the blind can recognize a denomination. The smallest denomination is the narrowest.

The bank said that new denominations of 20,000 colons and 50,000 colons would be introduced.

The highest denomination now is 10,000 colons (almost $20), so a large amount of cash can be a big bundle.


Panamá to open a base
in Bocas del Toro


Panamá is opening a military base at Bocas del Toro to try to stop drug trafficking in the Caribbean.

In addition the country is setting up a base in the Darian province on the Pacific. Bocas del Toro is just south of Costa Rica's Limón province.

The country has set up a handful of such bases in the last few months with the goal of stemming the drug trade.

Some leftist leaders to the south suggest that the bases will be used by U.S. forces to reverse popular revolutions, but Panama denies this.

The action is another sign that the Caribbean is handling more of the drug traffic because the Pacific is so well watched.  Anti-drug agents have expressed concern about the possible presence of drug bases in the lightly guarded eastern Nicaragua. Honduras to the north also is known as a stopover point for traffickers who use the Caribbean routes.


Slide closes highway
on route to Limón


A hillside slide onto Route 32, the San José-Limón highway, Tuesday morning effectively closing the road in Parque Nacional Braulio Carillo north of San José. Workers for the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad said that the road probably would not be opened until this morning.

The slide, prompted by wet weather, was hundreds of cubic meters of dirt, rock and trees. There were no injuries because a smaller slide preceded the larger one and warned motorists.