The death of pedestrians in Costa Rica increased 42 percent in 2003 when compared to 2001, according to President Abel Pacheco.

He inaugurated the 16th annual road security week Monday at a point in Hatillo 6 near the Circumvalación highway and a pedestrian overpass. The area is well-known for being a deathtrap for pedestrians who try to race across the four-lane road at night.

Pacheco said his government is working hard to stem the slaughter on the highways. He said transit police have been increased and that millions of colons have gone to improve the condition of the nation’s highways.

The president urged what amounts to defensive driving and avoidance of alcohol by drivers. He said that much of the responsibility is on the individuals.

The situation was ironic because Pacheco and his government are under fire by citizens for the deteriorating condition of the roads. A court-ordered pedestrian overpass at another deathtrap, north of Multiplaza on the Autopista Prospero Fernandez, has not been started.
 

U.S. coach of Sele
gets walking papers

Steven Sampson, the coach of the Selección Nacional, the national soccer team, lost his job Monday because his team had a lackluster showing in two games with what was considered a lesser Cuban team.

In two games, the Sele, as the Costa Rican team is called, only managed 2 -2 and 1-1 ties against Cuba. The games were critical contests on the path to the 2006 World Cup competition.

Monday morning quarterbacks among the rabid Costa Rican fans were second guessing him for weeks. Sampson, a U.S. citizen, had a winning 12-8 record with the national team. There were three ties, including the two with Cuba.

Costa Rica managed to qualify for future World Cup preliminaries despite the ties. A new coach will be announced this week.
 
 

Another reply on roads
in the Arenal vicinity

EDITOR’S NOTE; The letter is a response to one Monday from resident Roger Herrera.

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

I am a resident of the Arenal area, so I am aware of the terrible and dangerous conditions of the roads in this area. 

Sir, the reality of this situation is tragic, dangerous, and no laughing matter, as the potholes (or I should say caves) are life threatening. A few of us are trying our best to get the government to fix this road. 

May I ask you sir: What have you done outside of your response letter to some tourists that expressed their concern? You say that residents drive slow and carefully, as if this should be an acceptable solution. 

The fact is, that there are many places where there is no pavement left on the road, and being a native of the area as you claim to be, you must be aware that there are sections of this road that are ready to collapse because of unseen erosion under the pavement. 

Evidently you missed the part of the Ginger and friends letter, where they also expressed their positive feelings about the beauty of Costa Rica and its people (and well deserved) and instead of being offended, you should be glad that they care enough to take the time to contact A.M. Costa Rica to express their feelings and concern. 

We need more like them, and may God bless them. Tourism is perhaps the biggest contributor to the local economy, and if enough tourists complain publicly perhaps CONAVI will start repairing these terrible roads. 

I sincerely hope so; before we lose more lives. 

About 500 vendors won a stay of a municipal order to vacate the streets Monday when a court issued a temporary restraining order.

The Municipalidad de San José wants to get vendors off Avenida 4 and 6 as well as Avenida 1 and 3 in the area around the Mercado Central and Parque Central plus sidestreets.

Most of the vendors had dismantled their stands by the time the judicial order was announced. Monday was the earlier deadline. Vendors lost two attempts to get a Sala IV constitutional court stay, but this new stay is from the Secundo Circuito Judicial trial court.

Mayor Johnny Araya and municipal councilmen want to clear the streets of the informal businesses. They offered older vendors locations elsewhere in the city by means of a lottery last week. Fuerza Pública officers turned out Monday in anticipation of violence by the vendors. Such violence was threatened but never developed.

Araya said that the city will increase the number of farmers markets where produce is sold to compensate for the loss in locations for the vendors, but such events usually are just once a week.
 

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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
 

President Abel Pacheco received more than 10,000 postcards and copies of some 8,000 e-mails from all over the world Monday asking that Costa Rica forbid sports hunting.

The man who delivered the messages was Luis Diego Solís Schumacher, president of the Asociación Preservacionista de Flora y Fauna Silvestre.

The group wants Pacheco to present this modification of the existing law during the extraordinary period of the Asamblea Nacional when only matters proposed by the Poder Ejecutivo, the presidency, can be acted upon.

The organization said that the majority of Costa Ricans opposed sports hunting. The group cited surveys it had taken. The thousands of postcards and letters from Costa Rica and the rest of the world backed up the group’s position. 

The association also said in a statement that the killing of certain animals, like deer, cause those animals that prey on this species, such as jaguar and puma, to seek out domestic animals, such as cows, for food. Hunting also diminishes the animals tourists come to Costa Rica to see, they said.

Also present Monday at Casa Presidencial was Carlos Luis Rodríguez, the minister of Ambiente y Energía.

Pacheco stopped short of promising to introduce the legislation. 

Rodríquez said that the idea should be taken seriously and studied.

In the last year, in the south, the northern zone and Guanacaste have seen the increase in illegal hunting. Commercial hunters from Nicaragua, for 

example, hunted and killed many caiman in a biological corridor in the north for their skins.

Pacheco said that he thought the solution was not to forbid but to guard and protect the wildlife. That is difficult because the government is now short of money. 

Schumacher said that he thought that in the eyes of the president everything depended on passage of the proposed fiscal plan. That plan would raise taxes of nearly $500 million a year, according to official figures. The measure is in the legislature.

Costa Rica already prohibits hunting out of season, without a license or commercial hunting. Also, certain species are protected and certain weapons are prohibited. Protected areas are off-limits to hunters. Fines can range from just 5,000 colons (less than $12) to several years in jail.

A Texas newspaper says a Catholic cardinal in Honduras who may become the next pope gave sanctuary to an admitted child molester from Costa Rica.

The newspaper is the Dallas Morning News which had published a multi-part series on the way Catholic and Anglican church officials handle wayward priests.

The Costa Rican priest is Enrique Vásquez Vargas, who fled this country in 1998, according to the newspaper, after a former altar boy claimed he had been molested repeatedly.

According to the newspaper, the priest ended up in 

The newspaper credited Casa Alianza here for generating official action in a languishing case. The newspaper said no arrest warrant had been issued for the priest. Casa Alianza took credit in a separate release for getting a warrant approved this March.

The priest worked in two places in the United States after he left Costa Rica. Vásquez was a priest in the Santa Rosa de Lima Parish in Buenos Aires de Pocosol, according to the newspaper. That parish is supervised by the bishop in Ciudad Quesada, Ángel San Casimiro, according to Casa Alianza.

Experts from the United States, Costa Rica and the Americas will gather here Thursday through Saturday for the fifth annual University of Florida Levin College of Law conference on "Legal & Policy Issues in the Americas."

Hosted by the University of Costa Rica Faculty of Law at the Marriott Hotel, the event is organized by the University of Florida’s law school's Center for Governmental Responsibility and will feature three general sessions and six workshops on such issues as economic integration in the hemisphere, proportional response under rule of law to organized crime and terrorism, human right to property and sustainable development, conflict resolution and legal education and professionalism.

Keynote speaker Friday evening will be Sonia Picado Sotela, president of InterAmerican Human Rights Institute and former InterAmerican Human Rights Court judge and past dean of the University of Costa Rica law school. Others presenting remarks that day will include Douglas Barnes, deputy chief of mission, U.S. Embassy; Hermann L. Faith, executive director, Costa Rica-U.S. Foundation for Cooperation; and Yamileth Gonzalez, rector, and Rafael Gonzalez Ballar, law school dean, University of Costa Rica.

Presentation of the Jon Mills Award for "Significant Contributions to Relations Between Florida and the Americas" will be made at the Friday banquet. 

In addition to the University of Florida law school and the University for Costa Rica Faculty of Law, others sponsoring this week's event are Costa Rica-USA Foundation, Center for International Business Education and Research of the UF Warrington College of Business, Upchurch Watson White & Max with offices in Florida and Alabama, and the Florida Journal of International Law.

They really do use the bandstand in Parque Morazán for music. The Symphonic Orchestra of the University of Costa Rica was there Sunday for a music festival sponsored by the Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y  Deportes. However, few people showed up to enjoy the free event.
 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Senate has passed a bill to authorize U.S. spending of up to $5 million a year to support foreign governments' programs to protect endangered sea turtles.

The Senate passed the bill without debate Friday just days after the House of Representatives' passage June 14. For the bill to become law, it still requires the president's signature.

All seven species of marine turtles have been included in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna. The turtles' populations have 
been devastated by fishing; destruction of nesting habitat; poaching of turtle eggs, meat and shells; and pollution.

The bill passed by Congress was modeled after earlier legislation aimed at conserving elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, great apes and migratory birds.

Under the bill, the U.S. secretary of the interior would decide where to spend the money — up to $5 million a year in the fiscal years 2005 to 2009 — based on applications by foreign governments. Those governments might use such a grant to pay for monitoring of trade in turtle products, tracking the movement of sea turtles by satellite, protecting nesting beaches, or trying to stop poaching.

A California team has achieved the first manned space flight by a commercial venture, an event being hailed as an aviation milestone. Pilot Mike Melvill completed the flight Monday, becoming the world's first commercial astronaut.

His ship, called SpaceShipOne, took off into the glare of the sun rising over the desert. It was perched below a jet aircraft.

Then the spacecraft fired its engine, and soared straight up. It entered the blackness of space for just a few minutes.

However, the pilot said the craft suffered a failure in its stabilization system, which put it slightly off course for a time in the upper atmosphere. "We had a backup for that system. I went to the backup and the backup saved the day," he said.

Pilot and craft broke the limit of 100 kms. (62 miles) that determines the edge of space, traveling past it by just 124 meters.

In the weightless environment, pilot Mike Melvill took a short break from his arduous flight tasks. "I 

He described the view from the cabin. "The sky was jet black above, and it gets very light blue along the horizon. The earth is so beautiful, the colors of the earth, the colors of the high desert, and along the coastline. And all that fog or low stratus that's over L.A. looked exactly like snow. The glinting and gleaming of the sun on that low cloud looked to me exactly like snow. And it was really an awesome sight," he said.

The pilot, 63, already held speed and altitude records. After the flight, a U.S. aviation official handed him the first commercial astronaut wings ever awarded.

SpaceShipOne was designed by Burt Rutan and funded by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who spent more than $20 million on the project. Both say the flight is a milestone in commercial space travel. Rutan says he envisions an orbiting space hotel, with suborbital crafts like his offering paying passengers the thrill of space travel.