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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-9393 |
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Go home HERE! |
| Pacheco stresses theme
of sexual exploitation By the A.M. Costa Rica staff President Abel Pacheco told tourism professionals Tuesday night that they better not come to Costa Rica if they plan on exploiting boys and girls. The president was speaking at the inauguration of Expotur, the tourism exposition for foreign travel executives. Pacheco, as happened Sunday night in his weekly television talk, made a reference to Arthur Kanev, a 56-year-old former U.S. dentist, brought back to Costa Rica Thursday from Florida to answer 1999 charges of impairing the morals of underage Quepos women. Pacheco described the country as offering natural beauty, culture, peace, diversity and comfort. But he said "for those who come believing that this is nobody’s land where boys and girls of this country can be abused with impunity, we have the doors closed. For sexual exploiters, "if they enter Costa Rica, the only destination that we offer is jail." Pacheco urged local tourism operators to adhere to the code of conduct that professional tourism organizations have put forth. He called the code an instrument of the first order to combat and eradicate tourism exploiting minors in Costa Rica. The inauguration was held in the Teatro National. Pacheco said that some 530 sellers of tourism products were represented at the event and that 210 buyers had come to set up some 8,000 appointments to learn about Costa Rican tourism. The event, which will be Wednesday and Thursday at the Herradura Hotel on the General Cañas Autopista in Heredia, is put on by the Asociación Costarricense de Profesionales en Turismo. For his part, Rodrigo A. Castro Fonseca, minister of Turismo, noted that Costa Rican tourism had grown since the 1970s when some 300,000 tourists visited the country and there were just 2,845 hotel rooms available. Thanks to laws that provide incentives, now there are 35,000 hotel rooms, he said and a $1.3 billion industry that saw 1.25 million tourists last year. However, Castro said that Expotur was hosting just 220 delegates from some 150 companies in the United States, Europe and Latin America and that 250 Costa Rican firms were participating as exhibitors. Storms go away
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Tuesday resulted in no measurable rain in the Central Valley, the first time in more than a week that there was not a downpour. The skies clouded over in the afternoon and threatened. But what little rain that fell in the mid-afternoon was hardly enough to wet the pavements. This situation will not last. The Instituto Meteorológico National said that yet another tropical storm system is moving in on the country. The prediction is for rain starting in the afternoon and continuing into the night. Costa Rica just endured a week-long period of almost continual rain due to a low pressure area parked over the country. That began to clear Monday, but the weather bureau employees still measured about 9.5 mms. of rain, about four-tenths of an inch, from 7 a.m. Monday to 7 a.m. Tuesday. Winds helped to blow away the rain. A gust of 34 kms. was measured at the Barrio Aranjuez weather station Tuesday. That’s 21 mph. Despite the clearing weather, two more persons have been added to the toll from the recent spate of storms. In Liverpool de Limón, José Antonio Herrera Rodríguez, 50, was found Monday night in a pool of the Río Blanco. The man was trying to cross the river about 3 p.m. Monday when he was swept away, the Judicial Investigating Organization reported. In Puntarenas, a man identified by the Fuerza Pública as Juan de Dios Solano Coto, 50, died when he fell into an estuary near the local municipal building. Two other persons died earlier as a result of swollen rivers and drains. |
Cops will be clowning
around
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff To mark the 40th anniversary of the Hospital Nacional de Niños, the Fuerza Pública will be at the hospital this morning to cheer up the youngsters there with clowns, music, books and marionettes. Master of ceremonies for the 9:30 a.m. even will be Comisario Walter
Navarro, director general of the Fuerza Pública.
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Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. James J. Brodell......................................editor
Avenida 11 bis, Barrio Otoya, San José
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In Costa Rica: From elsewhere: A.M. Costa Rica
Consultantes Río Colo.
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Authorities and witnesses say nearly 200 people have died in severe flooding in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Rescuers and relatives continue searching for survivors Tuesday near the border between the two countries, where the Solie River overflowed after several days of torrential downpours. The death toll has risen to at least 100 on the Dominican side, where most of the farming village |
of Jimani was wiped out from the
floods. Dozens of people are still missing there.
Local authorities in Haiti say about 60 are dead on the Haitian side of the border in the town of Fonds-Verette. Meanwhile, a local priest in the town of Thiotte in southeastern Haiti says flooding there has killed another 30 people. Forecasters are predicting more rain for the remainder of the week in Hispaniola, the Caribbean island shared by the two countries. The storm is the same one that hung over Costa Rica for a week. |
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LA PAZ, Bolivia — The battle over whether to nationalize Bolivia's natural gas industry continues to heat up. The country's energy minister, Xavier Nogales, has announced he will resign less than two months after taking the job. Nogales reportedly disagreed with some parts of a referendum scheduled for July 18 on what Bolivia should do with its natural gas reserves. |
Former president Gonzalo Sanchez
de Lozada was forced to resign in October after the issue sparked weeks
of deadly protests.
Indigenous and labor groups have opposed a plan to export the commodity through Chile to the United States. They say the plan would benefit foreign companies instead of Bolivia's poor. In November, the U.S. State Department said the United States is committed to helping the country export its natural gas. |
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MEXICO CITY, México — President Vicente Fox has called for calm one day after three small bombs exploded outside banks in central Morelos State. Fox said he would assure stability in the country and that he hopes Sunday's incident was localized to Morelos, which borders Mexico City. The three small blasts in the town of Jiutepec caused no injuries or deaths, but damaged some property. Police found and deactivated a fourth. |
A note found on the scene was signed
by a group calling itself the "Comando Jaramillista Morelense Veinte-Tres
(23) de Mayo."
The note accused President Fox of not keeping his campaign promises, and called for the resignation of the Morelos State governor. Sunday's explosions coincided with the 42nd anniversary of the death of Mexican peasant leader Ruben Jaramillo, who was murdered in the 1960s in Morelos State. Morelos also is the birthplace of Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata. |
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — An organization in Brazil that seeks to improve the literacy of four million people in that South American country has been awarded a $15,000 literacy prize by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. The U.N. agency said the literacy prize went to the organization known as AlfaSol, which is said to use an "innovative, simple, and cost-effective model" to improve literacy in Brazil. Two other literacy prizes went to educational organizations in Mauritius and China. The Brazilian program covers both urban and rural populations, encourages the participation of women, and reaches the poorest and most isolated people, the U.N. agency said. The U. N. Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, which launched a 10-year campaign to increase literacy around the world in February 2003, said the world has about 860 million illiterates. This includes one out of every five adults over age 15. Two-thirds of those people are women. In addition, more than 113 million children do not |
attend school and are failing to
learn to read and write, the agency said.
Brazil's AlfaSol won the honor because the group succeeded in "mobilizing a large number of citizens, contributing to the sense of local ownership of the program, and creating a large group of educators within the country." the agency said, adding that the AlfaSol model used in Brazil has been successfully exported to other countries. AlfaSol is short for Alfabetizacao Solidaria, which refers to teaching people the alphabet. AlfaSol says it operates in 21 states of Brazil, in which the great majority of its previously illiterate pupils finish the program being able to read and write to a sufficient degree that they can further their education. The $15,000 King Sejong prize to AlfaSol was provided by the government of South Korea. King Sejong, a 15th-century ruler of Korea, was a noted Confucian scholar who placed great emphasis on scholarship and education. Lliterary prizes also went to the International Reading Association in Mauritius and to the Steering Group of Literacy Education in Qinghai, China. |
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BEIJING, China — Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has called on the world to make fighting poverty a top priority. Speaking at China's Peking University here, the Brazilian leader said the international community should not treat poverty and food shortages as issues that can be ignored. He said it is necessary to balance the international agenda, which is currently focused on security issues. The Brazilian president also called for Brazil and China to join forces to promote what he called a "new agreement" within the United Nations to place |
the world body at the center of debate
for peace and security. He did not elaborate.
The Brazilian leader met Monday in Beijing with Chinese President Hu Jintao. The two leaders agreed to boost cooperation in a number of areas, including science and commerce, while officials from both countries signed cooperation agreements in health, agriculture, sports and other fields. The Brazilian president is expected to remain in China for the next few days with an entourage of government officials and businessmen. Brazil and China are among each other's biggest trading partners. On Sunday, Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras, opened a Beijing branch. |
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HAVANA, Cuba — The Cuban government has re-opened its dollar-denominated stores with new, higher prices on most items. The government re-opened the stores Monday after abruptly closing them two weeks ago following new U.S. policies aimed at tightening Washington's 43-year economic embargo against the Communist-ruled island. Cuba's official newspaper Granma says prices at the |
so-called "dollar stores" are about
15 percent higher. Officials also raised food and gasoline prices.
Cuba's dollar-only stores sell staples, such as cooking oil and soap, as well as luxury goods such as household appliances that are difficult or impossible to obtain with local currency. Havana blames the new higher prices on new Bush administration policies, which include revised limits on the amount of dollars that can be sent from the United States to Cuba. |
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