Some 32.3 percent of the Costa Ricans said they expected corruption to increase a lot over the next three years.

In all, 41.4 percent of the people said they think corruption would increase. Some 16.2 percent thought corruption would stay the same, and 39.4 percent thought corruption would decrease. That put the country somewhere in the middle of the responses from 47 countries. 

These opinions were the result of a survey commissioned by Transparency International in which 40,838 individuals took part. Gallup International did the work.

Some 64.6 percent of the Costa Rican respondents said that corruption has a very significant impact on their personal and family life.

The survey sought the answer to a variety of questions, including where would citizens eliminate corruption if they had a magic wand and could do so in one of the many institutions in daily life. Most respondents said they would eliminate corruption from political parties.

Some 29 percent of the Costa Ricans named political parties, just about the average of the 47 countries. Some 14 percent of the Costa Ricans named customs as a highly corrupt organization, somewhat higher than most countries. Only 4.2 percent of the people in the 47countires said customers.

Costa Ricans also cited immigration (12.9 percent), again a higher percentage than the 3.3 percent among all the countries. The judicial system (8.6 percent) and the tax system (15.1 percent) were cited as institutions where corruption could be eliminated.

The findings are consistent with other surveys done here which showed that customs or aduana ranked high as a source of corruption.

Strangely, although many Costa Ricans complain 

about the government telecommunications monopoly, only 1.1 percent said that is where they would choose to eliminate corruption.

Transparency International describes itself as the only international non-governmental organization devoted to combating corruption and says it brings civil society, business, and governments together in a powerful global coalition. The organization, which has local chapters, supports free access to government information.

The full report is at www.transparency.org.

The girl is Katia Vanesa González Juárez, 8. She disappeared after leaving her condominium to visit a friend nearby, said police. This happened about 1 p.m. Friday.

Anyone who may have seen the child is asked to contact the Fuerza Pública Delegación in Zapote and San Francisco at 280-4880 or 286-4336.

The girl lives in a condominium in Barrio Quesada Durán in Zapote, an eastern section of San José. Police rolled out six or more units to search for the girl up to 6 p.m. Friday. The nature of the police response and the immediate request for public aid suggests that investigators suspect that a crime has been committed.

A Costa Rican court blocked access to a Web site because it used the word "banco" in part of its Internet address.

The Internet domain was set up on speculation by an Alajuela man who thought he could sell the site to the Banco de San José. The man, identified as Mariano Castillo, registered the site via the Tucows, Inc., a U.S.-based internet and computer service firm.

The Web site is www.bancodesanjose.com

Instead of buying the site, the bank complained and brought the issue into court where Judge Zoila Rosa Soto Morice of the Juzgado Penal del Primer Circuito Judicial of San José ordered Radiográphica Costarricense S.A, to block the site. It is unclear if Castillo was notified of the action.

A spokesman for the government Internet monopoly also revealed that the firm routinely blocks sites that it doesn’t like. For example, Internet sites that are named in mass mailings that pass through the Internet monopoly may be blocked to frustrate the purpose of the mass mailings, the spokesman said.

The bancodesanjose site is not available on computers in Costa Rica, but a reader in the United States checked the site and found that it contained an ad for cellular telephones.

Another reader contacted A.M. Costa Rica to ask "What happens if they decided to block my site?"

The blocking appears to be of particular Internet servers rather than simply of a Web page, so many more sites are blocked in addition to the single site that may irk Radiográphica Costarricense S.A.

The prosecutor in the Banco de San José case, Luis Rodríguez Cruz, asked the judge to order the blocking because he said the site violated Costa Rican law by suggesting that it was a bank.

However, the actual contents of the site does not do that, and the servers holding the Internet pages may actually be in another country. That could not be determined Thursday night.

Purchasing Internet domains for resale is a recognized business, and many major companies purchase a number of domains that are variations of their main Web pages to protect themselves.

The use of corporate names in so-called "suck" sites (as in "Microsoft sucks!") has been well established as freedom of speech as long as the Web designer does not mimic the site. Duplicating a site to cause Internet users to send money by mistake is fraud.

Today and tomorrow
are independence days

Today is Independence Day in the United States. And tomorrow is Independence day in Venezuela.

The U.S. holiday marks the publication of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1776. That was the document that said the 13 colonies no longer were subject to the British king. What followed was the U.S. Revolutionary War.

U.S. citizens will gather this morning in a recreational area just off the General Cañas Autopista to celebrate from 8 a.m. to noon. The high point will be the raising of the colors by the U.S. Marine detachment at the U.S. Embassy here. The event is free but only U.S. citizens may attend.

Residents in Guanancaste are invited to a multicultural celebration the road to Playas del Coco in Guanacaste from noon to 7 p.m. Saturday. Citizens of all countries are invited to this event for which an admission will be charged. It is being held for the Association of Residents of Costa Rica.

The Venezuelan holiday marks a similar event in Caracas in 1811 when representatives from the various cities declared absolute freedom for the country. That decision, too, triggered a war with a European power, in this case Spain, and led to the eventual military victories by Simon Bolivar after years of hardship. 

Diplomatic post set
for nation of Latvia

Costa Rica will name a non-resident ambassador to Latvia. That was the major development from a visit by Peteris Vaivars, the undersecretary of state in the Latvian Foreign Ministry.

Costa Rica has maintained diplomatic relations with the Baltic nation since 1924, except for the period when Latvia was swallowed up by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during World War II.

The role of Costa Rican ambassador will be given an envoy in a nearby country. 

July 4 is Independence Day in the United States, but the Indians of Costa Rica celebrate another freedom fighter today.

This is the 293rd anniversary of the execution of Pablo Presbere, a Talamancan Indian who fought the Spanish until he was captured.

Talamanca is one of the few areas of the Americas not conquered by invading Europeans. The Spanish arrived in 1540, but by 1699 they still were trying to figure out how to subdue the Indians of southeastern Costa Rica near what is today the border with Panamá.

The Spanish hit on the idea also used later against the Cherokee in the United States. They began to shift populations of Indians from the Sixaola area to the Pacific coast along the banks of what is 

At this time the Indians named Presbere high chief, and he began organizing the Indians for war.

In 1709 Indians put to death two priests, 10 solders and a Spanish woman. The Spanish, based in Guatemala, retaliated the next year by sending 80 soldiers to pacify the area. Some 505 prisoners were captured and brought to Cartago, then the administrative center. Among the captured was Presbere, who faced trial and was executed by the garrote on July 4 of that year.

When Costa Rica won its independence in 1821, the Spanish still had not conquered the Talamanca area. Presbere was declared a "defender of the liberty of the Indian people" by the Asamblea Nacional in 1997.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. and Venezuelan legislators have announced that they will work to create a new television channel in the Venezuelan National Assembly, similar to the C-Span cable network in the United States, which — among its programming — televises live debates in the U.S. Congress.

The announcement was made following the meeting this week of the U.S.-Venezuela Interparliamentary Forum, informally known as the "Boston Group"). The forum was held in Nantucket, Mass.

Regarding the proposed new cable channel, the legislators discussed the need to strengthen the relationship between legislative bodies and the media.

Rep. Cass Ballenger (a Republican of North Carolina), who chairs the U.S. House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, said he is committed to finding private funds to create a television channel in the Venezuelan assembly.

Venezuelan Congressman Nicolas Maduro, of the political party Movimiento V Republica, said he will help secure the television frequency necessary to make the new channel a reality.

C-SPAN was created by the U.S. cable television industry to air live gavel-to-gavel proceedings of the U.S. Congress, and to provide coverage of other forums where public policy is discussed, debated, and decided — all without editing, commentary or analysis, and with a balanced presentation of points of view.

More than 30 legislators from the United States and Venezuela participated in the Nantucket event. This was the second annual meeting of the Boston Group, which was created in 2002 to forge a stronger relationship between the Congresses of Venezuela and the United States.