Your daily English-language news
source
Monday through Friday
|
|
|
Your daily English-language news
source
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Some expats in Costa Rica have begun to experience the backlash as the country continues to be an offshore center for spam. Spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail and ranges from personal and health products to promotions for offshore casinos. The material is sent in great numbers and sometimes triggers anti-spam reactions among the informal monitoring services. The Spamhaus Project maintains a list of Internet servers that are sources of spam. Another organization SPEWS, does the same thing. Traditionally, bulk mailers have found Radiográfica Costarricense S.A. (RACSA) to be slow acting in enforcing their anti-spam policies. The service, more or less a monopoly in Costa Rica, has been cut off by Internet servers elsewhere in the past to remind officials here to be more attentive. Since mid-June several spamming organizations have tried to place classified ads for employees with A.M. Costa Rica. One firm was very clear that they were seeking "spammers" to help with "massive e-mail campaigns." This newspaper does not accept that type of free employment ad. A check of spam sources on the anti-spam Web pages shows that Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) also has been hosting spam distributors at its ice.co.cr domain. The firm is the parent of RACSA and competes mostly with Internet connections for businesses. Spam operations have been set up in the La Sabana Oficentro and in San Pedro. A recent report |
from a monitoring organization said
that several of the Latin American spammers have sought connections in
China to avoid crackdowns.
Spam is not illegal. However, the use of the Internet to send massive amounts of messages is considered ill-mannered. Internet administrators claim the excessive traffic ties up the computer servers that link individual computers. The situation is further confused by some spam operators who actually are con men seeking to obtain credit card numbers and other personal identifications in order to steal money, goods and services. Several such bogus spams pretending to be from legitimate companies have been seen in Costa Rica in the last couple of months. Of course the most famous is the years-old Nigerian scam in which mass mailers seek help in moving vast sums of money and try to obtain upfront fees from people who respond. Some RACSA customers have noticed recurring periods of degraded service, presumably when spammers dump millions of messages on the local servers. The initial reports of blocking in North America cause concern because as more and more Internet administrators enforce blocks, Costa Rica can be cut off from most Internet contact. In the past two months A.M. Costa Rica’s daily digest has had periods where mailings were rejected by about 5 percent of the servers, but these rejections were as a result of spam messages from Internet servers in the United States, not Costa Rica. |
| Virgin Mary declared
Puntarenas patroness By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Some 90 years ago word spread in Puntarenas that a local fishing vessel, the "El Galileo," was sinking near the Isla de Caño with all aboard in danger of being lost. Catholics in this Pacific port town believe that the Virgen del Carmen, one of the many manifestations of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, personally interceded to save and feed the crew. That’s why President Abel Pacheco was in town this weekend to proclaim the Virgin del Mar as the official patroness of Puntarenas. He signed a decree to that effect. A traditional parade of boats followed. Pacheco also praised Msg. Oscar Fernández Guillén, who will be consecrated the new bishop of the diocese July 25. The president noted that the new bishop would be the youngest bishop in the country. Pacheco also asked the crowd to help him as he denounced situations
that put children at risk from pedophiles and other sexual exploiters.
Two face charges
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Police at Juan Santamaría Airport arrested a German and a Nicaraguan to face drug smuggling charges. Agents arrested the German Friday night and identified him by the last name of Peter. Policía de Control de Drogas said the man had more than a quarter of a kilo of cocaine (about a half pound) hidden in his underwear and shoes. Police said they arrested the Nicaragua, identified by the last names
of Ocho Cisneros, Saturday morning. The 43-year-old man was bound for Caracas,
Venezuela and then to Spain, said police. He had 2.3 kilos (about five
pounds) of cocaine in his briefcase, they said.
Bus bandits kill
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Passengers who were on a Tica Bus from Guatemala City to San José said that a gang of bandits tried to stick up the bus when it was passing through Honduras. A Costa Rican died when the bandits fired blindly into the large, luxury vehicle Saturday and hit him in the heart. He was identified as Jorge Monge Pineda, 33. The holdup happened on the InterAmerican Highway. The bus arrived in San José Sunday. Bus holdups are a fact of life in Latin America. For months investigators tried to catch a gang that was sticking up buses on the San José to Alajuela route, mostly at night. An off-duty investigator finally shot it out with robbers and killed one. Within the last two years, bandits have stuck up several buses filled with shoppers bound for the Golfito freeport. A bus full of tourists was stopped and passengers robbed just a half hour after they cleared customs at Juan Santamaría Airport. Pirate taxi drivers
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Angered by a police crackdown the night before, some 50 to 100 pirate taxi drivers blocked a street in Pavas Friday morning and then spent the afternoon throwing stones and fighting with police. Some 25 persons were detained and four policemen, including the regional director of the Fuerza Pública, suffered injuries. The taxi drivers are called pirates because they do not have licenses to transport the public. These licenses are difficult to get, and in low-class communities the pirates provide the transport licensed taxi drivers sometimes are reluctant to give. The outbreak Friday happened in a location called the Demasa heights in Pavas, and police used tear gas to break up a blockade. More than 200 officers, including the Unidad de Intervención Policial went into action. The protestors threw stones and one man, later identified by the last names of Torres Quesada waved a .38 caliber revolver from the barricade, said police. He was among those arrested. The regional director who was injured was Comisionado Luis Hernández, said police. The taxi drivers were joined in their protest by youth from the area, some of whom participated in a two-day standoff with police two years ago when gangs protested against police activities in the area. The operation in San José Thursday evening that caused the Friday demonstration was a crackdown on pirate taxi drivers. Transit officers checked papers and confiscated license plates of cars being used illegally. Pacheco formalizes
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff President Abel Pacheco has signed a decree giving public employees a 3.5 percent raise to compensate for inflation. The government estimates the inflation in the first six months of the year is 4.32 percent. Executives in public institutions making more than 1 million colons ($2,500) a month will not get a raise under terms of the decree. The actual amount of the raise depends on the base pay of each employee and is retroactive to July 1. The raise will be paid during second pay period of the month on or about July 31. |
Child, 2, is dumped
at Moravia business By the A.M. Costa Rica staff In a strange development Saturday, a woman stepped out of a red Hyundai near a plant nursery in Moravia and simply left a 2-year-old child on the sidewalk. Police said that the woman told another child near the Los Colegios nursery that she was delivering the child to a man who lived adjacent to the establishment and who happened to be the child’s grandfather. The operator of the nursery said that he had no knowledge of the child, and police were unable to locate the woman who fled. The child was turned over to the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia for care. Ex-president Rodríguez
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Costa Rica has formally put forward former president Miguel Angel Rodríguez, 63, as a candiate for secretary general of the Organization of American States. The position becomes open in 2004, and elections will be held during the oganization’s general assembly in Quito, Ecuador. The position typically is filled by a former Latin American president. The current secretary general, César Gaviria, is a former president of Colombia and began the first of two five-year terms in 1994. Pimping costs six years By the A.M. Costa Rica staff A woman who marketed her 12-year-old niece for sexual favors got six years in prison last week. The sentence was handed down against the woman with the last names of
Sáenz Fonseca in the Tribunal de Juicio de San José. The
woman was arrested July 8, 2002 in the barrio of Cristo Rey in western
San José. She was charging clients there 50,000 colons (then about
$130) to have relations with her niece when another relative told police.
|
|
|
||
|
Seas of ink and tons of paper have been expended around the world for years commenting on the fact that, though soccer is unquestionably the most popular sport in the world, Americans have for decades resisted its charms and paid it almost no heed. This neglect has usually extended even to their own national team. The consensus of these commentaries has been that Americans, their attention taken up by the big three of baseball, American football, and basketball, simply have no time or energy left for another major sport. Some writers have also detected a certain provincialism in the American sports community that did not allow it to warm to a sport imported from overseas. Many of the writers of these articles wondered if the United States would ever join the rest of the world regarding soccer. Wonder no longer. Soccer in the United States is booming. Though the older generation of Americans may remain clueless about this king of sports, younger Americans are flocking to it in numbers unimaginable only a few years ago. On schoolyards across the country, football fields and baseball diamonds now do double duty as soccer fields, or have been converted to soccer altogether. Youth soccer leagues that draw from the elementary and secondary schools around the country attracted more than three and a half million kids this year — more than Little League baseball — as well as more than a million adults in coaching, administrative, and other volunteer positions. At the lowest levels of play skills are rudimentary and both teams, with little sense of position, follow the ball up and down the field like a swarm of bees. The older kids, though, already show considerable promise for the future. This explosion of interest started a few years ago, quietly at first, then with increasing momentum. American international teams have begun to reap the benefit. As the first generation of players who have participated in the soccer craze percolate up through the various levels of play, the under-17 and under-19 teams have met with increasing success, becoming international powers. The U.S. national team, a consistent winner, is a young one, with stars such as Landon Donovan, and DeMarcus Beasly, both only 21 years old. The road to national prominence has been as long as it has been bumpy. Most Americans would be surprised to know that soccer first came to the United States in the mid-19th century, imported by British and Irish immigrants, and enjoyed immediate popularity. An international competition was held in the U.S. in 1885. The United States became an early member of the international federation in 1913. An American team participated in the first world cup in 1930. In so many ways soccer seemed to have established itself as one of the preeminent sports in the United States almost 100 years ago, and the country was an international force into the first third of the 20th century. So, what happened? Part of the problem was that even as soccer's popularity grew within some segments of the population, it retained its image as an immigrant's sport, something imported, but not entirely within the mainstream. While cricket and rounders had become thoroughly Americanized into baseball, and rugby evolved into American football, soccer stubbornly resisted assimilation. Even as the U.S. entered the first World Cup in 1930, soccer had lost much of its momentum as a popular sport, having always trailed baseball. Soccer began losing position to football and basketball. Its image as a sport dominated by immigrants also proved a hindrance in the years after World War I, when new waves of immigration and the aftermath of World War I, including the Russian Revolution, caused a popular backlash in the United States against things foreign. Soccer hit bottom and stayed there. Beginning in the late 1960s a few lone enthusiasts predicted from time to time an imminent boom in the sport's popularity. Each time they were proved wrong. Attempts to establish more vigorous school programs or professional soccer leagues fizzled like damp Fourth of July fireworks. Then soccer began to attract a little more attention in the United States. In the wake of increased interest in the World Cup in 1974, the professional North American Soccer League was inaugurated in 1975. The league's masterstroke was to lure the great Brazilian player Pele out of retirement. In the words of Phil Woosman, a former league commissioner, "Pele changed the face of soccer in the United States. He filled the major stadiums and was responsible for the soccer boom." The boom seemed within a few years to have become a bust. The league folded, and Pele returned to retirement. Other leagues were born and died. Sportswriters, at least those who cared to write about soccer, lamented its continued obscurity. Under the surface, however, things had begun to change. Maybe soccer fans, always wishing for and occasionally seeing the chimera of a boom, were looking in the wrong place. The boom didn't come at the professional or adult level, but from within the school sports system. Maybe Pele really had made a difference. The boom would not be a single surge of interest, but would come as a wave of little "boomlets," each one boosting soccer's popularity up another notch. Though Pele's league folded, he may have had an |
important influence on the increase in the game's popularity in grade schools and universities during the 1970s and 80s. A new professional league met with success, but it was the kids who answered soccer's call. Then the kids began to grow up. In 1990 the United States qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 40 years. Returning to old patterns, many of the team's members were recent immigrants, but immigrants were greeted with perhaps more tolerance in 1990 than they had been earlier in the century. Immigrants currently constitute about 10 percent of the U.S. population, and as they came into the American mainstream they were able, this time, to bring soccer into the mainstream with them. As Len Oliver, a writer on soccer in the United States has said, "Immigrants taught us how to talk about soccer, the nuances, the terminology, and soccer history, lore and colorful characters." International success, though a little uneven, gained increased attention for the sport. The U.S. Women's team won the first Women's World Cup Championship in 1991. In 1994, the U.S. for the first time played host to the World Cup, which enjoyed its highest fan attendance in history. Perhaps inspired by the friendly crowds, the American team advanced beyond the first round for the first time since 1930. Now things began to roll. Participation among American youth jumped dramatically. In 1996, the American women won the first Olympic soccer gold medal, and topped themselves by winning the World Cup in 1999. Soccer mania seemed to sweep up every little girl in the country, each one dreaming of becoming the next Mia Hamm, the women's foremost star. The men stuttered, losing to Iran in 1998, and finishing last in the World Cup that year. But they came back solidly in international competition and advanced to the quarterfinals in 2002, outplaying the powerhouse Germans, according to most analysts, before losing by a single goal. The real story, though, may not lie in the international success of recent American teams. It comes from the fact that so many Americans now see soccer as their sport. The first two stadiums in the country built expressly for soccer — both at universities — have been built in the last four years. Though recent immigrants still play a role, the great majority of players on the national teams are native-born. More than 98 percent of kids participating in youth leagues were born in the U.S. Newly naturalized Americans still find an important place in the sport, but their real success lies in bringing an increasingly large part of the American sports community with them. Soccer participation has not yet translated into large public audiences. Though growing, soccer crowds remain modest and the indoor and outdoor professional leagues are not yet robust. But, as with the players themselves, the spectators are young and enthusiastic, and their numbers growing. Buoyed by international success and growing youth participation, the future of American soccer looks bright. |
|
|
|
|
|
In Tuesday's annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game, nine of the starters are of Hispanic lineage, including six of the starting players on the American League squad. This statistic reflects a rising influence of Latino players in the Major Leagues. This year's American League starters include six Latino players. Among them are Puerto Rican catcher Jorge Posada of the New York Yankees, his countryman, first baseman Carlos Delgado of Toronto, and Dominican-born second baseman Alfonso Soriano of New York. Also starting for the American League are shortstop Alex Rodriguez of Texas, Dominican Republic outfielder Manny Ramirez of the Boston Red Sox and designated hitter Edgar Martinez of the Seattle Mariners. Manny Ramirez, last year's American League batting champion, says that making the All-Star team is one of his goals every time he starts the season. "I look forward to that every year," he said. "That's why every year I work hard and see if I make it. If not, long as I know I am trying my best, then if it happens, it happens. But if not, what else can I do?" The National League team has three Latino Starters: Puerto Rico native Javy Lopez of the Atlanta Braves at catcher, Colombian-born shortstop Edgar Renteria of the Saint Louis Cardinals, and one of the rising stars of the game, Saint Louis left fielder Albert Pujols of the Dominican Republic. Pujols, who leads the Major Leagues in batting average as of this writing with an average of .365, says making the All-Star team is awe inspiring. "It's great to be a starter, to start in the All Star Game," said Albert Pujols. "But, like I say, to be in there with so many guys, you are talking about the best players in the League going to the All Star Game. I mean you are in the same locker room with Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and some of the other future Hall of Famers and great players. I mean you just need to be grateful for that." The National League pitching staff also includes New York Mets right hander Armando Benitez and Russ Ortiz of the Atlanta Braves. Writer Tim Wendel has written a book entitled The New Face of Baseball, which chronicles the rise of Latinos in Major League Baseball. He says the rise in the number of Latino players is due to both passion for the game and political changes. "No. 1, it's really played with a passion in a lot of these countries," he said. "It is pretty much the only way off the island, at least that is the case in the Dominican Republic, which is the current hotbed of baseball. 10 percent of the Major League players are Dominican right now. And I think it's interesting that something as tumultuous as the Cuban revolution really helped, in a way, spread baseball throughout the Caribbean and even down to South America. When Fidel Castro took over the island shortly thereafter he declared that baseball was an amateur game and he would not allow his players to leave the island and go up and play in the U.S. Major Leagues. " |
Wendel says that the rise in Latino players is in contrast to a drop in the number of African Americans playing baseball. He says that part of the reason is that baseball requires bigger facilities than other games, like basketball. "I think it's much easier right now for kids to play basketball in the inner cities," said Tim Wendel. "You just need a ball and to find a court. And I think it is interesting that in a sense the baseball infrastructure in the United States has kind of crumbled whereas if you go to Cuba, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, you see kids playing baseball all over the place." Wendel says the success of Major Leaguers like Albert Pujols and Sammy Sosa has helped fuel the game in their home countries. Sammy Sosa, in particular, has started a foundation to help underprivileged children in his home country, the Dominican Republic. Wendel says that kind of action strengthens the game in Latin America. "If you want to find a great Latino ball player, you go to whatever town these guys are in — and this goes for Cuba, the Dominican Republic or Venezuela - you ask the kids," he said. "And the kids know where these guys live. And there is much more a tightly-wound thing between the star and the community. And you don't see that here [in the United States] any more and that's unfortunate. Because I think some of the magic of baseball has been lost because of that." But the magic of baseball has not been lost on Puerto Rico native and New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who says being voted into the All Star game by fans is a great honor. "There are some guys out there who have got a better average and better numbers than me," said Jorge Posada. "And I am really very happy that the fans have given me the chance to be there and I want to get back there. And you know, I always have a good time there and I want to get back there. And you know, you work hard and it does pay off." The payoff for Posada and the other Latino players in the All-Star game could be higher this year than in previous years. The winner of this year's All-Star game between the American and National Leagues gets home field advantage in the World Series. |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
