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| A.M. Costa Rica Second newspage |
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by 2 percent in a month By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The U.S. dollar continues to put on muscle. The currency has gained about 2 percent against the colon since June 16, according to the reference rates of the Banco Central de Costa Rica. The dollar gains about five colons just since Monday, according to figures available early today on the central bank's Web site. Today's reference rate is 533.65 colons for those who seek to purchase dollars. Those selling a dollars will get 526.73 colons. On April 16, the rate was 523.07 and 516.68. The rate during the business day of Monday was 521.20 and 528.08 per U.S. dollar. The reference rate is a number computed by the central bank that reflects the various rates set by public banks, private banks and money exchange houses. Individual entities can set their own rates within a certain range. When the dollar gets too strong, the central bank frequently enters into the market and sells dollars to hold the exchange rate. A stronger dollar is great for exporters but not good for those who have to import goods or products such as petroleum. The dollar had been as low as 490 colons during the high tourist season when many dollars were flowing into the country. Three-day weekend still on tap for next holiday By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Although Friday, July 25, is the official day of the Anexión del Partido de Nicoya, the national holiday again will be celebrated Monday, July 28. Lawmakers of the Movimiento Libertario launched 67 motions Monday in an effort to keep a 2005 law that is supposed to generate tourism by pushing legal holidays to the following Monday. That way lawmakers reasoned at the time, citizens will have a three-day holiday to enjoy the country. The action Monday took place in the Comisión con Potestad Legislativa Plena Tercera. As a result of the parliamentary maneuvers, there is no time to make any changes in the date of the holiday this year. The Anexión del Partido de Nicoya commemorates the vote in 1824 in which Guanacaste citizens voted to join Costa Rica instead of Nicaragua. Celebrity minister visits with cooperation plans By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Celebrity politician Rubén Blades met with Costa Rican tourism officials Monday, and a statement afterwards said that both countries would explore the possibility of cooperating in joint tourism. Blades is the tourism minister of Panamá, but he is widely known as a Latin jazz legend as well as a former presidential candidate in his country. He met with Carlos Ricardo Benavides. The ministers also discussed air flights, border issues and other ways the two countries could cooperate to advance tourism, the statement said. Elderly rape suspect jailed for three months By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A judge has ordered a 77-year-old man be jailed for investigation for three months. The man, identified by the Poder Judicial by the last names Fernández Corsino, is accused of luring women to his home with offers of domestic work and then holding them hostage and raping them. He was arrested Thursday near the Catholic church in Coronado where investigators believe he was waiting to pick up a young woman who was answering the classified ad he had placed in a local newspaper. A 25-year-old woman said in a complaint to the Judicial Investigating Organization that is what happened to her.
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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| The school's prime location
downtown caused some parents to suspect that the closing was designed
to prepare the site for the local real estate market. |
 A.M. Costa Rica/Elise Sonray
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| Threatened downtown school will be ready for kids Monday |
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By Elise Sonray
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff The downtown Escuela Buenaventura Corrales or Edificio Metálico, as it's commonly called, should be open just in time for students after their midyear vacation, said the
After floods last year the Ministerio de Educación Pública had to spend money helping the small schools around the country that were flooded, said Ulate. There wasn't enough money left for Escuela Buenaventura Corrales, he said. Edificio Metálico was built in the same time period as the Eiffel Tower and is 112 years old. The building was constructed in Belgium in 1890 and assembled in Costa Rica in 1896. The biggest problem facing the school is almost fixed, said Ulate. The metal columns holding up the second floor are getting new welding jobs and reinforcement. The remaining beams, which have visible rust and are |
 A.M. Costa Rica/Elise Sonray
Workmen prepare to weld support to a columneroding, should be fixed by Wednesday, said Ulate. Vacation started July 7 and will end Friday. The school spent 4.5 million colons or about $8,600 on the project, said Ulate. All of the money was donated by the parents, he said. “Without the parents help, we wouldn't be in operation,” said Ulate. The education ministry should soon give an estimate on the total amount repairs will cost and then allocate money to the reconstruction, said the president. Right now estimates are at 150 million colons to 200 million colons (about $287,000 to $383,000), said Ulate. |
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| Name of Acción Ciudadana president turns up on adviser list |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The surprise Monday was the revelation that the planning ministry has hired Epsy Campbell Barr, president of an opposition political party, to be an adviser for $9,000. This fact came out in a committee meeting Monday as the Comisión de Ingreso y Gasto Público seems more
The Campbell case was unexpected because her political party, Acción Ciudadana, has been the strongest opposition voice against the free trade treaty with the United States and other Arias administration projects. Her contract appears to run for four months, until October. The committee voted to ask Ms. Campbell to appear and explain what she would do in her capacity as an adviser. The committee also agreed to call a litany of other political figures, most of them on the list of 82 individuals who are being paid outside the national budget from some international grants. |
The story broke in La Nación June 30 when that newspaper revealed that
a secret fund of some $2 million existed and that the Arias
administration was using the money to hire individuals who were called
advisers. Some of those getting the money already had government jobs,
and the cash payments were extra. Eventually 82 persons or corporate entities were linked to the payments. Arias has defended the process as a way to get people to work in government at competitive salaries. The committee voted to call Alfredo Ortuño Victory, one of Costa Rica's representatives at the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica, and Rodrigo Arias Sánchez, the president's brother and minister of the Presidencia. The Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica was the source of a $2 million slush fund. Then there is the $1.5 million donation by the government of Taiwan that was supposed to help poor flood victims in Rincón Grande de Pavas. It turns out that this money, also being held by the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica, was used by the housing ministry for advisers. The committee wants to hear from Fernando Zumbado, who just resigned as minister of Vivienda, Federico Sosto López, a substitute magistrate of the Corte Suprema de Justicia, and Jorge Nowalsky, president of the Centro Internacional para el Desarrollo Humano. Sosto is under fire for serving as an Arias adviser while on the court. Nowalsky heads an private organization that was founded by Zumbado and received a significant part of the Taiwanese donation. The committee also wants a list from the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales of those who have served as advisers there for the last five years. The international organization is set up to promote the social sciences in Latin America. It is believed to have received a substantial amount of the Taiwanese donation. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page |
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Dog death of Nicaraguan intruder is focus of murder trial
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Ten persons, including two police officers, went on trial Monday in the case of the burglary who was killed by guard dogs. This is the murder trial resulting from the death of Natividad Canda Mairena in La Lima de Cartago. Nov. 10, 2005. Canda, a Nicaraguan, was caught by two Rottweiler guard dogs, and officers are accused of murder by neglect for not doing enough to save his life. The case was a high-profile one and caused Nicaraguan diplomats to visit the security minister here. Canda was a known burglar and drug addict, and it is his mother from Nicaragua is seeking compensation. At the time the case also tapped some Costa Rican prejudices and generated Nicaraguan jokes and even led to the unrelated killing of a |
Nicaraguan
during and argument about the case. The court adjourned early Monday to give judges time to consider some procedural objections raised by the defense. The Canda death was caught on video, particularly the part where it took firemen and a high pressure hose to get the dogs away from the victim. The scene was a junk yard where Canda was trying to steal items. Some 48 persons are expected to testify at the trial. The parties involved attempted to reach an out-of-court settlement a year ago, but the negotiations failed. The case is in the Tribunal de Juicio de Cartago. The defendants, who include the junk yard owner, were identified by the last names of Sánchez Torres, Luna Zamora, Sandoval Moya, Sánchez Díaz, Madriz Ramírez, Ruiz Carazo, Obando Masís, Rosales Vásquez, Zúñiga Mora and Hernández Quesada. |
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Ingrid Betancourt urges French president to remember hostages in Colombia
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Rescued hostage Ingrid Betancourt is urging French President Nicolas Sarkozy to help win the release of hundreds of other captives still held by Colombian rebels. President Sarkozy gave Betancourt France's highest award, the Legion of Honor, in Paris Monday, during celebrations of Bastille Day, the French national holiday. Ms. Betancourt, who has both French and Colombian citizenship, was seized by Colombia's rebels six years ago. She and 14 other hostages were rescued July 2 by Colombian soldiers masquerading as rebel commanders. During Monday's ceremony at the Elysee Palace, Ms. |
Betancourt said
France's campaign for her freedom provided hope for her and her fellow
hostages during the years they spent in chains in the jungle camps. She
told Sarkozy she is counting on him to continue working for the release
of the Colombian rebels' remaining captives. Ms. Betancourt's captors from the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia are thought to have more than 700 hostages still under their control — people who were either kidnapped for ransom or seized for political reasons. Ms. Betancourt, a former candidate for Colombia's presidency, says she will return to Colombia, but no date has been set. She has discussed few details of the harsh and brutal treatment she received beyond saying that the time spent in captivity was hell for the body, mind and soul. |
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Planed loaded with cocaine ends up in West Africa By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Sierra Leone police say they are questioning several suspects, including airport officials and people identified as South Americans in connection with a small plane loaded with cocaine that landed Sunday in the country's capital, freetown. Police say they found a cargo of about 700 kilograms of cocaine worth $30 million. Police spokesman Karefa Daboh says authorities have arrested several foreign nationals. "They are white people, that is all I really can say," Daboh said. "Some of them have accents which are very queer. We suspect some of them to be from the Americas, or South America, or what have you." Daboh said police had also taken a number of airport officials in for questioning. He said the police are investigating the possibility the airport workers were collaborating with the suspects. "There have been lapses at the airport, and that is why we are investigating some police who were at the airport, the airport personnel, and some people who were involved in operations at the airport," Daboh explained. "If we actually find the lapses we suspect we will find, we want immediately to go forward to find out whether those lapses were a result of connivance with the other criminals to do what they did." A reporter in Freetown, Kelvin Lewis, says the suspects are believed to be Colombians. He says the suspected pilot was captured late Sunday in the north of the country, at a checkpoint near a busy crossroads. The other foreign nationals in custody were captured in Freetown. Lewis says along with the foreigners, the chief of airport police, the airport manager, and the control tower operator were among those taken in for questioning. He says the airport workers are suspected to have known about the pending arrival of the plane, but did nothing to alert the national police. He says there was a truck waiting for the plane when it landed. "The pilots are believed to have come down to the waiting vehicle and fled," Lewis said. "The vehicle had apparently crashed through the gates. We went out to look at it. Close to the gate five guns were found. Four of them AK-47s and one AK-58, and about 300 rounds of ammunition was found on the ground there. " Lewis says Sierra Leone's president visited the scene Sunday and took the guns and ammunition with him to Freetown in his presidential car. Lewis and other reporters say the cocaine has been turned over to U.N. security forces. But police spokesman Daboh says the police still have the illicit cargo in their protection. The incident is the latest in a series involving suspected South American drug traffic through West Africa. Last week, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said traffickers have learned the region is in his words "very weak and very vulnerable" to drug shipments. |
| A.M. Costa Rica Sports news local and from the wires |
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