The publisher of two sexy magazines rejects the idea that they are pornography, so he has refused to submit them to a censorship board.

He also refused to pay a fine levied by the censorship board. So judicial officials showed up at the magazine’s offices Wednesday and closed them down.

The judicial action was not expected because the publisher, Jorge Chaves, has an appeal pending with the Sala IV constitutional court.

The magazines are Chavespectáculos and Sexxxo Caliente, which are widely sold on newsstands. Although the magazines feature photos of unclothed women, the presentation is hardly pornographic.

In Costa Rica even the general circulation daily newspapers feature scantily clad women on their pages.

The agency involved is called the Comisión de Control y Calificación de Espectáculos Públicos. The judicial agency ordering the closure is the Juzgado Contravencional del Primer Circuito Judicial de San José.

The little-known 1994 law regulates movies, live performances, radio, television and all forms of satellite and wireless transmissions, video games, video rentals and written material of a pornographic character. Nowhere in the 33-section law is pornographic defined.

The commission is under the jurisdiction of the Ministerio de Justicia y Gracia but representatives of a number of ministries serve on the commission.

The commission has been inactive regarding nearly all types of activities it is supposed to regulate, and Chaves suggests that it is the content of his magazine rather than photos that has brought officials down on him.

The law gives the commission the authority to close up the offices for a month for a first offense. Further offenses result in longer closures and eventually permanent suspension.

As a result of a 2003 decision the commission seeks to levy a $2,300 fine which Chaves refuses to pay. The Chavespectáculos magazine is much more than just photos. It includes political satire, jokes and even sports. The magazine is a best-seller handled by newspaper street vendors in most cases. However some Web sites offer it for sale internationally.
 

New research net
due for Latin America

A research and educational network will connect Latin America with Europe. The project, the ALICE Initiative, was outlined Wednesday in a news release.

Startup date is set for Aug. 1. Initially Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Panamá and México will be connected directly with Madrid, Spain, and Venezuela will be connected indirectly through Brazil.

The ALICE project was set up in 2003 to develop a research network within the Latin American region and towards Europe, according to the project’s  Web site. The network aims to promote the Information Society and fight the digital divide throughout Latin America, it said.

The European Commission is actively supporting ALICE and invested 10 million Euros. 

In Costa Rica:                    From elsewhere:

A.M. Costa Rica                  Consultantes Río Colo.
Apartado 12909-1000          SB 11 
San José, Costa Rica           P.O. Box 025292
(506) 223-1327                   Miami, FL 33102-5292

BRUSSELS, Belgium — INTERPOL, the international police network, is warning that terrorists are turning to the lucrative trade in counterfeit goods to finance their operations. The agency says governments are only beginning to wake up to the threat. 

At a two-day conference here, law enforcement officials and international business leaders sought to form a common front against counterfeiting, which is estimated to yield $600 billion a year for criminal organizations. That is equivalent to 6 percent of total global trade last year. 

Counterfeiting does not just involve compact discs, clothes or cosmetics. Fake medicines and baby food are also a growing problem, as are counterfeit auto parts and even aircraft parts, said officials at the meeting.

Despite the threat counterfeiting represents for safety and health, most governments overlook the problem, said INTERPOL. 

INTERPOL chief Ronald Noble told the conference that counterfeiting is now being used to finance terrorist activities. He cited the seizure last year in Lebanon of $1.2 million dollars worth of counterfeit brake pads and shock absorbers. The profits, he said, were destined for supporters of Hezbollah, 

Noble told the gathering that paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland and Colombian Marxist rebels also benefit from sales of fake CDs and cigarettes.

INTERPOL calls counterfeiting a low-risk, high profit crime that is not a high priority for most governments and police forces. Counterfeiters, says the agency, face a low risk of prosecution if caught and relatively light penalties if convicted. 

The main goal of the Brussels conference was to spur greater cooperation between law enforcement and business in the fight against counterfeiting. But William Dobson, who heads a private sector anti-counterfeiting alliance, says it will not be easy. 

"This is a unique area of enforcement, where the legislation and the controls are all in public hands but the knowledge of the products and so on is largely in private ownership, and that's why we need this partnership to come together," he said. 

Dobson says even though companies are the main victims of counterfeiting, they have often been reluctant to publicize their losses. He says clothing and footwear companies lose $9 billion a year in Europe alone due to counterfeiting. The illegal trade is also responsible for the loss of up to 100,000 European jobs a year. 

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia's armed forces have gone on a heightened state of alert, ahead of today’s 40th anniversary of the nation's largest and most notorious rebel group.

A senior army official made the announcement in Bogota Tuesday.

Colombian officials say the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, was formed on 

The officials say the rebel group has used the lucrative cocaine trade to finance its growth. They say the group has some 17,000 fighters and has been responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. 

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe came into office in 2002 pledging to wage war on the rebel group. He has worked to increase military spending and cut off the drug trade. 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An international group will meet with members of the government of Honduras June 10 and 11 in Tegucigalpa to discuss the country's plan for economic progress, a debt-relief initiative, and efforts to decrease poverty.

The Inter-American Development Bank, whose representative will chair the meeting, said that the gathering will offer the Honduran government an opportunity to discuss pressing issues facing the country.  The group, the Consultative Group for the Reconstruction and Transformation of Honduras, includes representatives from the United States, Canada, Japan, and several European nations.

The development bank said that during the meeting the Honduran government will present its 2004-2006 plan for carrying out a national poverty-reduction strategy.

The U.S. Agency for International Development provided assistance in developing that strategy and is also playing a role in financing key elements of its implementation.

In addition, the agency is helping Honduras in such areas as improved management of the country's watersheds, sustainable improvements in family health, strengthened rule of law and respect for human rights, improved opportunities to obtain basic education and vocational skills, and more 

The Development Bank said the Tegucigalpa meeting will help Honduras "advance towards a new phase of development, in which the continuous implementation" of the poverty-reduction strategy "will make improvements in economic growth and poverty abatement possible."

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have included Honduras in the program for Highly Indebted Poor Countries in order to relieve the Central American nation of some of its foreign debt. The goal is to redirect the money that would have gone to pay the foreign debt, targeting it to the funds for social investment instead.

In a statement issued this week finance ministers from the world's seven major industrial nations reaffirmed what they said was their strong commitment to ease the foreign debt burden of Honduras and other nations with dramatically high poverty rates.

The statement was issued following a meeting of the finance ministers in New York.

The program for poor countries, conceived in 1996, was the first comprehensive approach to reducing the external debt of the world's poorest, most heavily indebted countries, and represents what its founders said was an important step forward in placing debt relief while reducing poverty. 

Search teams in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are continuing to dig through mud and debris in hopes of finding victims of the devastating floods that have claimed at least 610 lives.

Hundreds of people remain unaccounted for as a result of the flooding. It started Monday after days of torrential rains caused a river to burst its banks, washing away hundreds of homes and people. 

On the Dominican side, officials said the death toll had climbed to at least 250, with many of the victims coming from the town of Jimani. Across the border, at least 360 Haitians in the agricultural town of Fonds-Verrettes were killed.

In response, helicopters from the U.S.-led multinational force in Haiti flew emergency 

The World Food Program has also released $200,000 in food aid to help the victims in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which form the island of Hispaniola. 

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan offered condolences, saying he is saddened by the heavy loss of life. He said U.N. teams in Haiti and the Dominican Republic are currently assessing the extent of needs created by the flooding.

Pope John Paul, meanwhile, has offered prayers for the families and the victims of the disaster. He sent sympathy telegrams to authorities in both Caribbean countries, assuring the homeless and other survivors that he is with them spiritually.

WASHINGTON. D.C. — The U.S. Agency for International Development has contributed $50,000 to its mission in the Dominican Republic to help that nation deal with heavy rain and persistent flooding that has already displaced more than 13,000 people, according to a press release issued Wednesday.

Due to the extent of the flood damage, the U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Hans H. Hertell, issued a disaster declaration.

The agency mission will provide $40,000 to the humanitarian organization World Vision to purchase and distribute emergency non-food relief supplies. The mission will also provide $10,000 to the government of the Dominican Republic to purchase fuel needed to repair roads and improve humanitarian access to affected areas in the southwest of the country.