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Second news page |
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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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visits Limón this week By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The four-masted training ship of the Spanish navy, the "Juan Sebastián de Elcano," will be putting into Limón Tuesday on its 77th instructional trip. The ship is named after the Spanish sailor Juan Sebastián de Elcano who traveled with Magellan and took over command when Magellan was killed by natives in the Philippines. He is the first European to circumnavigate the globe. The instructional boat was constructed in 1927 and has traveled 1.5 million miles, said the embassy. Future officers serve on the boat for six months. Among those who served are Spanish king Juan Carlos and his son Felipe, the prince of Asturias, said the embassy. The sailing ship visited Limón in 1974 and stopped at Puntarenas in 1983, according to the Spanish Embassy here. The ship will be in port until May 21 and visitors may board from Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., the embassy said. Documentary crew seeks Costa Ricans in New Jersey By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
While many Costa Ricans are headed to Germany for the World Cup soccer championships next month, a filming crew will be headed to New Jersey to document the Ticos living there. The film company is Latica de Película, which is seeking to round out its documentary "Mal del Patria." The documentary seeks to explore the elements of Costa Rican identity present among those who have migrated to the United States, the company said. They are principally interested in migrants from the Pérez Zeledón and Los Santos areas. The inaugural game between the Costa Rican national team and that of Germany is likely to bring many Costa Ricans there together to cheer, the company said. Before they go, the documentary crew said they would like to talk to the families of migrants who still live here. They gave this e-mail address: laticadepelicula.produccion@gmail.com A recent estimate said there were about 50,000 to 80,000 immigrants from Costa Rica in the United States and about 10,000 to 25,000 are undocumented. Costa Rican mailing fees have been increased By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Costa Rican postal service has raised mailing rates. A typical letter of from 21 to 100 grams mailed to a Costa Rican address used to cost 130 colons. Now the rate is 175 colons. A letter weighing from 51 to 100 grams mailed priority to a U.S. or Canadian address used to cost 315 colons. Now the cost is 410. The same letter to Europe that had cost 380 colons will now cost 495. The rate increases were approved by the Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos. Similar increases have been made in all the Correo de Costa Rica services. The increases were published in the La Gaceta official newspaper Friday. Trial starts today in case of murdered journalist By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Six men will go to court today facing murder and conspiracy charges in the death of journalist Ivannia Mora Rodríguez. One of the six is her former employer. Two men on a motorcycle gunned down Ms. Mora, 33, while she sat behind the wheel of her vehicle at a traffic light in Curridabat two days before Christmas 2003. The trial will be in the Tribunal de Juicio de Goicoechea, and the Poder Judicial estimates that 96 witnesses will be called. One of the men on trial is Eugenio Millot, the former colleague of the murdered economic journalist. Millot became a suspect because Ms. Mora had recently left his Red Castle Publishing group and began working at a competing magazine. Millot was detained a few days after the murder when he was boarding a plane for his native Uruguay. Two years ago agents detailed four Colombians. They have been identified by their last names of Serna, Cortés, López and Nieves. A man identified by the last name of Martínez also has been detained and will stand trial. |
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on our real estate page HERE! |
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Third news page |
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| San José,
Costa Rica, Monday, May 15, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 95 |
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| Whale shark has its day with Junta lottery ticket |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Environmentalists say they are happy that Costa Rica lottery officials put a whale shark on the tickets that were sold last week. The illustration shows a whale shark and a scuba diver. The reverse includes a paragraph about the endangered fish, Rhincodon typus, including the fact that such fish, the largest in the world, are visitors to the Isla de Cocos, a national park in the Pacific. The whale shark measures up to 15 meters (about 50 feet) and weighs up to 10 tons. Despite its bulk the fish feeds on plankton. The Programa Restauración de Tortugas Marinas and the U.S. Institute for Shark Research will be tracking the big creatures via satellite around Isla de Cocos, Drake Bay and the entire Osa Peninsula, said a release from the turtle program. The idea is to learn more about whale shark migration, which may be 12,000 kilometers (about 7,500 miles). The organization, Vida Marina of Costa Rica and the British Peoples Trust for Endangered Species are trying to put together a network to keep track of all the whale sharks in the nearby Pacific. They said they are looking for scuba volunteers. The giant fish is not without political implications. Taiwan still allows the fishing for the creatures even though the whale shark is one of three species of shark protected internationally, the turtle program said. The lottery is run by the Junta de Proteccion Social de San José and funds go to a number of organizations and causes. The winning number Sunday night was 067 in series 612. |
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| Folk medicine works its way into common speech |
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| Más eficiente
que cogollito de palo seco “Works better then a tea of cogollito de palo seco.” To understand this dicho you need to know that in Costa Rica many people still use home remedies that have been passed down for generations. Most of these remedies originated with the indigenous people who were living in the isthmus when the Spanish arrived. These indigenous medicines often come from plants, either the flower, or the seed, or the root, and from these a tea or potion is usually prepared that is believed to cure your headache, or your heart trouble, or your lumbago, the common cold, or what have you. In any case, cogollito is the first sprout of new leaves that appears on a tree after the first rain following a long dry season during which the palo, or tree, has lost its leaves. You may notice many short trees along the road to Jacó that are used to make fencerows. Some call those trees coyol or jocote. They lose their leaves during the dry season, but after the first rains they seem to come back to life much like trees in North America do in the springtime. It is believed that the first green of these — and many other — trees have special curative powers. So, if something is más eficiente que cogollito de palo seco, then it is very powerful medicine indeed! My grandmother, who was an indigenous woman, was always prescribing these kinds of medicines. If you had a stomach ache, she would make you a tea of cogollito de coyol. She believed a tea made from corteza, or the bark, of the mango tree could cure diabetes. I never knew of any diabetics whom she convinced to abandon their insulin in favor of corteza de mango, but grandmother swore by her remedies like an hechicera, or sorceress. That is, with the exception of arthritis. She could never seem to cure this malady in herself, and was always complaining of the pain it caused her. Arthritis was the only ailment that I ever knew to send her to a “Spanish” physician. She would complain and complain for days, and I was usually the one elected to accompany her to the clinic. Of course, as soon as we arrived at the doctor’s office, her pain would have miraculously vanished. At first this annoyed me, but then I came to realize that the mere mention of a trip to the doctor had amazing curative powers in and of itself. Whenever she began complaining about any of her manifold aches and pains all I had to do was suggest that perhaps she needed to visit the doctor in order to affect an amazing, and immediate, cure. I began to feel like something of an hechicero myself. |
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| Agents raid location they think is source of fake bills being passed here |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Agents have detained a men and confiscated 800,000 colons in fake 2,000-, 5,000- and 10,000-colon banknotes, they said. The arrests stemmed from the capture last March 17 of two men in Atenas who were passing 300,000 in |
fake money. A week earlier police arrested five persons in Zacero and confiscated 130,000 in fake bills. Agents of the Judicial Investigating Organization made a raid Friday on a workshop on Calle 8 between avenidas 6 and 8. Also confiscated was a laser printer and paper cutters. |
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Fourth news page |
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| San José,
Costa Rica, Monday, May 15, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 95 |
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U.S. president to give
major speech tonight
Bush aide says guard at
border will be in support role
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
If President George Bush decides to use the National Guard for border security duties, its role would be limited to supporting civilian border patrol personnel, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said in a television interview Sunday. "It's not about militarization of the border. It's about assisting the civilian border patrol in doing their job, providing intelligence, providing support, logistics support and training and these sorts of things," he said. Bush is scheduled to discuss immigration policy proposals in a nationally televised address tonight. Hadley termed border security an important element of immigration reform. The national security advisor said Bush believes the proper approach to immigration reform involves securing borders, increasing internal enforcement and establishing a temporary-worker program "so that willing employers in the United States can have access to willing workers, particularly from Mexico, and to do it in a way that is lawful." These steps "will take some of the pressure off on the border and will allow the border patrol to focus on the things we're really worried about, which is crime and narcotics and the like," he said. Hadley said that a temporary-worker program is not the same thing as amnesty for those who have entered the United States illegally. Some in Washington say the illegal immigrants are criminals and border security is the only answer. Others say there is no way to deport so many people, many of whom have already put down roots in communities across the nation, and steps should be taken to give them some sort of legal status. President Bush has been urging a middle ground. In his speech tonight he is expected to urge members of Congress to adopt a comprehensive approach that secures America's borders, while presenting illegal |
immigrants already in
the country with a way to remain as guest workers. White House officials say the president has been looking at some new ideas and one is to bring in National Guard units to help with border security. The National Guard is the only branch of the military organized on the state level. Guard members usually serve part-time, and their traditional role has been to help their states cope with emergencies. But in recent years, Guard units have been called up for extended duty in the war on terrorism. A few Guard members are already working to support the Border Patrol in some parts of the country, and Hadley said that support role could be expanded. Hadley said several lawmakers are enthusiastic about the idea of deploying thousands of National Guard troops along the border with Mexico. Among them is the top Republican in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist. He also appeared on television. "I think that is the least we can do," said Frist. "Securing our borders is a federal responsibility. We need to act. We have failed miserably in the past." But Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he is concerned the guard is already overextended with its commitments in Iraq. He told a television interviewer more border agents should be in place, and the Guard should not be used. Senator Leahy praised President Bush for advocating a comprehensive approach to the problem. Senate leaders say they hope to have an immigration reform bill acceptable to the White House completed in the next few weeks. They acknowledge the most difficult part of the legislative process will still lie ahead: reconciling their version of the legislation with the tough border security bill that cleared the House of Representatives last year that makes being an illegal alien a felony. |
| Insulza asks for a strong commitment to fight drugs in
hemisphere |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A strengthened commitment from the governments of the Western Hemisphere is needed to fight illicit drugs and crime in the region, the Organization of American States has reiterated. In a statement Thursday, José Miguel Insulza, the organization's secretary-general, emphasized that cooperation among all nations in the region is vital to confront the dangers of illegal drugs in the hemisphere. |
Insulza
said the illegal drug trade is a "regional and global
enterprise supported by multiple sources, and it is imperative to join
resources and tackle it with a multifaceted, regional strategy." The
official spoke at the Washington headquarters during a meeting of
that organization's Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission. The statement comes when some officials fear that countries such as Bolivia where a coca grower was elected president might wage a less vigorous war against drugs. |
| Brazilian criminal gang attacks 100 police stations in Sao
Paulo State |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Brazilian officials say at least 52 people have been killed, including 35 police and prison guards, during a series of attacks by an organized crime group. Authorities blamed the gang (called First Command of the Capital) for ordering the attacks in response to the transfer of several imprisoned gang leaders to maximum security facilities. They say gang members used machine guns, grenades and home-made bombs in 100 attacks on police |
stations and
other sites across Sao Paulo State beginning Friday. Police say
they detained 16 suspected
attackers and killed 14 others. Meanwhile, inmates took hostages in 36
prisons in the state to protest the prisoner transfer. Officials said late Saturday that they had regained control of several prisons, but new disturbances were reported Sunday at 18 facilities. Brazilian authorities say jailed gang leaders often direct gang activity, including arms and drug trafficking and prison rebellions. |
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