Burglars in the Mercado Municipal of Alajuela shot and wounded two reserve police officers late Saturday and then fled.

The two officers were among members of the Fuerza Pública who came to the market after security guards said they believed that one of the stores inside was being ransacked.

The wounded men were identified by officials as Alexánder Sánchez Contreras and Marcos Múñoz Rojas. Sánchez suffered a wound in the chest and Múñoz suffered two bullet wounds in the pelvis, said officers. Both were hospitalized.

Police barricaded the market until dawn when tactical police entered and searched each storefront. But the attackers had vanished.

They’re back to scam
with customized pleas 

Nigerian Internet scammers have a couple of new ploys.

One reader received the traditional message saying that some wealthy foreign engineer died in Nigeria and that the dead man had the same last name as the reader.

A.M. Costa Rica later received a request to place a classified ad for a petroleum engineer to work in Nigeria. 

In both cases the messages appeared to be the beginnings of efforts to steal money by creating a lure for the unsuspecting.

The changes in approach suggest that the scammers are becoming more sophisticated and are customizing their messages.

Although the messages mention Nigeria and this type of scam in general is called a Nigerian Scam, the scammers could be anywhere. Recent arrests have taken place in The Netherlands, and the messages are routed through Yahoo e-mail accounts.

Main Coco pot source
said to be woman there

A  woman who police believe is a principal source of marijuana to tourists in Playas del Coco have been arrested along with two men.

Investigators said the woman, identified by the last name of López, was arrested in the center of the Pacific coast town and that she was a major supplier. Confiscated at the same time was about a kilo (2.2 pounds) of compressed marijuana, officers said.

The arrests were made by the Policía de Control de Drogas. The two men jailed were identified by the last names of Salazar Madrigal and Hurtado Jiménez, said police.

Meanwhile, Saturday at Juan Santamaría Airport, a Costa Rican with the last names of Acuña Hernández was detained with more than two kilos (4.4 pounds) of what anti drug agents said was cocaine. He was headed to London, England.

The 49-year-old man had a suitcase with a double bottom, agents said.

Roadblock nets trio

Three men stuck up persons in the public right-of-way near the Cubujuqui sector of Heredia late Thursday and fled. Minutes later, three suspects were captured at a Fuerza Pública roadblock in Sabana Norte in San José.

The men, identified by the last names of Chavarría García, Sauletti López and Méndez Mendieta, were in a vehicle that a 911 caller had identified as being involved in the robberies, officers said. Police confiscated 280,000 colons, some $645.
 

Vehicle thefts alleged

Fuerza Pública officers arrested a man with the name of Santamaría Friday and said he was a suspect in thefts from a number of vehicles near the Macarena Condominiums in Rohmorser.

A.M. Costa Rica
Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.

James J. Brodell.........................editor
Saray Ramírez Vindas.... associate editor

Avenida 11 bis, Barrio Otoya, San José

 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
 

A hotel security guard in Santa Barbara de Heredia raided his place of employment Saturday night and took a shotgun. Then he went out and killed two persons and turned the gun on himself.

The man was Cristian Alvarez Bejarano, said police. The crime was considered to be one of passion, although Alvarez failed to kill his former companion.

Dead were the woman’s father, José Luis Chavarria Segura, and Magali Duran Porras, the wife of a man the killer thought was involved with his former companion, said officers.

According to the Fuerza Pública, Alvarez showed 

Alvarez then went to the home of the man he thought was involved with his former companion, but the man was not home. This was in Birrí de Santa Barbara de Heredia about 11 p.m.

Instead, Ms. Duran answered the door, and Alvarez shot her dead. Then he went to the home of the former companion, but she fled. Her father, Chavarria, faced him and died from a shotgun blast.

Alvarez then returned to the scene of the first murder and confronted neighbors who had gathered near the woman’s body. He threatened them but finally turned the weapon on himself.

The Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas and the Fuerza Pública closed down the Flamingo marina Friday, the latest in the continuing drama of the facility.

The Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública said the officers were working under the order of the Tribunal Ambiental Administrativo de San José, an environmental body.

Many of the owners who had boats in the facility had been forewarned, but coast guard officers had to tow some boats into the coast guard docks for safekeeping.

For years, environmental officials have claimed that

The Municipality of Santa Cruz had taken over the marina from private operators but fared no better with the environmental agencies. In the works was a plan to issue a new concession for the facility.

Fuerza Pública officers on land and coast guardsmen on the water will keep an eye on the facility to prevent continued use, officials said.

Environmental officials also have expressed concern about waste from boats entering the water.

The proposed concession is on hold until the municipality can bring the marina up to standards, official said.

A baker in Barrio Cuba is under investigation of allegations that he was involved in having paid sexual relations with minors.

The Costa Rican man, 49, is being held for three months of preventative detention, said officials. He was arrested by the Unidad Contra la Explotación Sexual del Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública Friday.

Investigators said the man had been under surveillance since the beginning of the year due to a telephone tip from a neighbor.

The man, identified by the last name of Jiménez, 

Investigators said the arrested man would show the minor girls pornographic material or offer them money for relations with adults.

About 10 girls, all 14 or under, are involved in the case, said officials, and they are expected to give statements.

When officers raided the bakery, they said they found pornographic magazines and videos.

Barrio Cuba is known as one of the poorer in the San José area.

Fabio Garnier Fernández, 35, the son of a well-known sports figure, vanished on his way home from work Jan. 16, 2002.

He had left the automobile rental agency where he worked on Paseo Colón en route to the western suburb of Rohrmoser. The last clue investigators have is his car, which turned up in the parking lot of Multiplaza in Escazú.

But thanks to some computer detective work, investigators continue to hold a man they believe was involved in the Garnier kidnapping. He is a 

The Tribunal de Casación Penal last week ordered that he be continued to be held in preventative detention. Investigators said they traced him because he left a floppy disk at a public telephone near the home of the family. Computer experts analyzed the disk and were able to determine that it was used at a certain Internet cafe. This information led to the arrest.

A company in the northeastern state of Connecticut and its employees have airlifted more than 50,000 pounds of emergency supplies to flood victims in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The humanitarian effort grew out of the company's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. 

International relief groups have helped to organize emergency supplies for the victims of floods and landslides in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. As many as 2,000 people may have died on Hispaniola, the Caribbean island the two small nations share. Hundreds more are missing.

A private company, Diageo, airlifted 56,000 pounds of rice, beans, cooking oil and powdered infant formula to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Diageo executive vice president Guy Smith traveled on the cargo plane and made sure the supplies reached local Diageo employees and aid groups in both nations for distribution. 

"As we speak, our employees in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti are working with Catholic Relief Services in Haiti and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in the Dominican Republic, both of whom have a network of clinics through the countries," said Smith. "We are guaranteed that way that the right material gets to the people who need it the most immediately. We leave nothing to chance, particularly in a disaster situation."

Smith says Diageo's humanitarian aid program is aimed at filling in gaps while large relief groups get organized. 

"One of the important things about this type of disaster relief, what we call triage disaster relief, it gets material that is desperately needed in the immediate aftermath of a terrible calamity such as 

Diageo showed videotapes of the airlift to members of New York's large Dominican and Haitian communities. 

The company began its humanitarian program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks when Diageo employees set up a committee to raise money for the victims, which the company then matched, but afterward, Smith says, Diageo employees wanted to do more.

"So we did what we called a Ground Zero to Ground Zero airlift to Kabul, Afghanistan, where we had as part of the team members Diageo employees and New York City firefighters and cops who had worked at Ground Zero. We flew a cargo plane into Bagram Air Base just outside of Kabul within hours after the coalition forces had liberated it from the Taleban and we delivered 100,000 pounds of food to an orphanage in Kabul and then we did the same thing to a children's hospital in Baghdad," he said.

Smith says the humanitarian efforts are a way for the company's employees to reach out to people in need. Diageo markets premium drinks such as Smirnoff vodka, Tanqueray gin, Johnny Walker scotch and Guinness beer. The company has 30,000 employees working in operations around the globe, including a Guinness brewery in Haiti. Its international headquarters is in London, but the North American operation runs out of the state of Connecticut.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil —  The Olympic flame has made a visit to Brazil as it continues its journey around the world before returning to Greece for the Athens Olympics in August. 

Soccer legend Pele had tears in his eyes Sunday as he carried the Olympic flame out of Maracana Stadium here before a cheering crowd in its first ever South American visit. 

The global relay continues until July 8. The torch will visit 33 cities in 26 countries and cover about 78,000 kms., some 47,000 miles. The torch will next visit Mexico City.

HAVANA, Cuba — Cuba celebrated a "toast to the world" this week at its first International Rum Festival.

The island country introduced eight new rums at the event, held at the famous Morro Castle overlooking the Bay of Havana. 

Cuba's food minister said he thinks all of the new brands could conquer the lucrative U.S. market if the 40-year-old economic blockade is lifted. 

Alarming numbers and a giant mural by children from different schools in Desamparados were the highlights of World Day Against Child Labor at Villa Olimpica de Desamparados Friday.

Officials were there, including Rosalía Gil, director of the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia; Christian Ramos of the International Labor Organization; Jeremías Vargas Chavarría, minister of Trabajo, and José Manuel Echandi, defensor de los habitantes.

But the most important particpants were the children and teenagers from Los Guidos, Las Letras and Liceo José Alvertasi, all schools of the Canton of Desamparados. These are the youngsters who painted a giant mural depicting child labor and the theme that education and play are what children should be doing.

According to Vargas, just in Costa Rica every day children are working, most of them girls and most of them invisible to the average citizen because they are in homes doing domestic labors.

The estimate of girls in domestic labor is about 12,000.

Their education suffers, said Vargas, adding that some 137,000 children are not enrolled in school when they should be and some 25,000 children between 12 and 17 are clearly working instead of studying.

And in some cases these children are subjected to additional abuse.

Millions of children in the world work in exploitive conditions exposed to dangerous labor conditions and abuse, said Ramos. He said his International Labor Organization has the difficult job of trying to halt these exploitive practices, mainly in Guatemala, Brazil and Costa Rica.

The main idea is to prepare youngsters for future national elections and create faith and confidence in the electronic voting system, according to Cristina Vinocour Vargas, program coordinator of the Tribuno Supreme de Elecciones.

She was at St. Anthony’s School in Guadalupe Friday as part of a new iniciative that involves just 15 schools this year.

At St. Anthony’s, the election was a real one. Two candiates sought the school presidency. But the system provided by the national election commission appeared to be a winner, too.

Saint Anthony students called the effort successful and showed they had enough grounding in technology so that the voting went smoothly. The voting was done on traditional computers using the election tribunal software. After the first electroic votes two year ago, the tribunal made a commitment to the school program.

For  Marianela Castro, professor of educación cuidadana or civics, the most important factor was that the electroic system will make the voting process clean and faster.  It also is the system the 

country will used, so that’s why she said it is important to prepare her students. The election tribunal will be increasing the number of school programs. The next national vote will be held in 2006. 

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Regardless of Jo's feelings, I am wholeheartedly in support of seat belts. They honestly do save lives. Almost every fatal we saw in the year and a half I was at WYDOT involved a young, unseatbelted male. They are almost always ejected from the vehicle. And most did not die immediately on impact with the ground or fence or other car or guardrail. Some are pinned under their own cars or between their car and an object or another car and an object, where they die slowly while awaiting the EMTs. One lady was actually thrown over a guardrail, but her clothing caught on the rail, so she slowly strangled to death.

It's much more tragic when the person ejected from the vehicle is a child, who is then run over by his or her own family.

People who don't wear seatbelts are truly unaware of the potential consequences. And anyone who voices a fear of being trapped in a car, or whatever it is people say about why they won't wear a seatbelt, has certainly never reviewed seat belt statistics.

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Once again, Jo has let her propensity for liberal vitriol get in the way of the truth. She states that Mr. Reagan passed away on "the anniversary of D-Day" and then proceeds with her screed. The man who is arguably the greatest president to have served in the 20th Century passed away on June 5, 2004. The last time I checked, D-Day occurred on June 6.

Quite a long way around to slam a man whose policies brought us out of a Jimmy Carter-induced recession and who effectively caused the end of the Soviet Union. 

I think it’s a good thing Jo lives in Costa Rica with it’s socialistic and paternalistic leanings. She can WHINE and take pot shots at her mother country and our conservative icons all she wants. We’re presently in a war, and really don’t need sympathizers of her ilk.