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Costa Rica Second news page |
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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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Our readers' opinions
Costa Rica, Cuba and U.S. have little in common Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I read with some amusement the articles by Jo Stuart wherein she compares the benefits of living in Costa Rica, Cuba, and the United States. I have been to all three and am not aware of anything they have in common. Costa Rica is a beautiful country with many positives but there is very little to compare to the U.S. and vice versa. My answer to Stuart and all the lefties that praise the living conditions in Cuba is this: Yes they have free medicine, education, housing, water, electric, etc, etc, but so do our prisoners in the United States. A possible method of comparing Cuba with anywhere else might be a measure of how many people are trying to get into the country and how many are trying to get out. A comment I heard years ago from a Cuban soldier sums it up well. "I hate Americans and would go anywhere to kill them, but if there was a bridge between Cuba and the U.S. there would be no one left in Cuba, including me". It is worth noting that none of the comments Stuart received about Cuba came from Cuban residents. Ken Orttel
Andover, MN, USA Info quickly as possible appreciated by reader Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I have been visiting Costa Rica several times a year since I purchased a small farm there in 1999. Fortunately, I discovered A.M. Costa Rica soon thereafter and have been a daily reader ever since. For the record, I must confess I do not read the daily news in the U.S. I do keep posted by checking “Breaking News” on the Internet and maybe catching a TV newscast occasionally. I tend to garner my in-depth reporting from Newsweek and The Economist. By the way thanks for the inclusion of the BBC news link. I discovered they have a great online English Course. I wish I could find something similar offering Spanish. I do not agree with the sentiments expressed by Ben Lazar (Woodstock, GA., Ojochal, Costa Rica, property owner) regarding the early or extra addition of A.M. Costa Rica to advise of the murder of Carl D. Brainard of Nosara. I think there are a lot of other readers outside Costa Rica who appreciate having that information as soon as possible, rather than wait for the next edition, often 18-24 hours away. It is quite likely Mr. Brainard had friends among the A.M Costa Rica readers who were able to respond more quickly, and perhaps more appropriately, to the tragic event because of your early publication. I, too, deplore the lack of factual in-depth information most often available. Those of us who have spent much time in Costa Rica understand that nothing, including, factual information, travels very fast in Costa Rica. Yes, gossip, innuendo and misinformation seem to travel with the speed of lightning, often making the truth even more difficult to come by. As long as A.M. Costa Rica continues to try to avoid printing speculation and unsupported facts as news, I will continue to look forward to my daily dose. Bess Herzog
Houston, TX and Rio Cuarto, Grecia Timely not sensational appreciated by residents Dear A.M. Costa Rica: We were attending a community dinner when Mr. Lazar’s response in "Our readers opinions" became the topic of conversation. We were all saddened by the death of Mr. Brainard as we are with any American in Costa Rica who meets with untimely death, whether by drowning or violence. On behalf of all other Georgia residents, we apologize for Mr. Lazar’s comments, those of us that live here year round, and are residents of Costa Rica, appreciate the efforts of A.M. Costa Rica and other English language news organizations to keep us informed. The reporting of items is not sensationalism but timely news in our language. We are not just property owners. We live here. We are residents !!! Ann Hill
Former Georgia Resident Ojochal, Costa Rica Another reader appreciates late-breaking information Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I failed to see any muckraking or sensationalism when rereading the Nosara murder notice. I did not know the victim. But had I known him personally, I would have appreciated knowing about his demise as soon as possible with as many facts as are available at that time. Though I have been visiting Costa Rica often over the past 10 years, only since being displaced by Hurricane Katrina and living here for the past several months have I come to rely on A.M. Costa Rica as another source of reliable information. Please continue to provide "early" or "late-breaking" news. David Johnson
formerly of New Orleans, LA currently of San Ramon, Alajuela Remarkable reporting noted by another reader Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Ben Lazar wants to be dumb and happy. He should read The Tico Times. I think A.M. Costa Rica's crime reporting is remarkable. E.g. your coverage of the Pat Dunn murder was timely and of surprising depth, given the distance of the crime from San José. For me, your "yellow" journalism is pure gold. If there's a Pulitzer Prize for cyber-rags, I think A.M. Costa Rica is on its way to winning an award. Keep up the good work. Jim Saxon
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on our real estate page HERE! |
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Third news page |
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| San José,
Costa Rica, Monday, July 17, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 140 |
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| The green mean replaces the golden mean |
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| Bueno es el culantro
pero no tanto “The cilantro is good but not too much.” This dicho has to do with tolerance. If you’ve ever cooked with the herb cilantro (culantro in Spanish), then you know that it is a very distinctive seasoning that can easily overpower the flavor of the dish you are preparing so that culantro is the only thing you taste. For this reason it¹s wise to use the herb with some restraint. Likewise with people; We should respectfully tolerate their words and deeds unless they threaten to overpower us. This is, of course, the basic tenet of a civil society. Recently I spent a week in London, England attending some business meetings. I went out to a bar late one afternoon to watch the World Cup soccer game between England and Portugal with some of my colleagues. After the game I needed to go to the friend’s house where I had been lodging to collect my bags and move to a hotel. My friend and I ventured out, but the streets were filled with Londoners many of them rather inebriated mourning the loss by their team to the Portuguese. We searched in vain for a taxi, but they all went whizzing past apparently occupied by drunken soccer fans. Finally, however, we managed to flag down a gypsy cab, what we call in Spanish a pirata. The driver agreed to take us to my friend¹s house. When we got there we were fairly astounded when he charged us £20, about $40! Well, what could we do at that point but pay!? In any case, I was very tired from a long day and asked the driver if he knew the location of my hotel. He replied enthusiastically in the affirmative and added that it wasn’t far. So I loaded my bags in the back seat of his car and off we went. After the first 20 minutes I began to have my suspicions about this fellow’s knowledge of London geography. We seemed to be driving around in circles. Eventually my driver did stop to ask a couple of fellows standing on a street corner if they knew where to find my hotel. They said yes, but they then engaged the driver in a lengthy debate as to where to find the best prostitutes in London! My tolerance began to wear thin, and if I’d known the city, and didn’t have two suitcases with me, I would have got out of the car right then and walked. |
He stopped a couple more times to ask directions until finally
our
odyssey came to its eventual conclusion before the door of my hotel an
hour and a half after leaving my friend’s home. It was a trip that I
was to learn the following day should have taken no more than 10 to 15
minutes! But the real clincher was yet to come. |
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Widening
Panama's canal seen as eco-threat here |
 U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency map
Gatun Lake at the Caribbean side of the canal is a mass
of fresh water that blocks the invasion of salt water species. Costa
Rica off the map to the left. |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A proposed wider Panamá Canal does not have the fresh water traps that exist in the present system, and its construction might allow unhindered passage for exotic and harmful creatures from one ocean to the other. This may result in an environmental disaster, according to a newspaper editor, Eric Jackson, who has raised the issue. Jackson is somewhat of a voice in the wilderness because nearly every opinion molder in Panamá and major international organizations support the plan to widen the canal. Citizens of Panamá have to vote on the measure in October. If Jackson is correct, the threat is a major one to both Costa Rican coasts. He said in an open letter to environmentalists worldwide: "Thanks to an expensive government propaganda campaign, an increasingly ironclad domination of the news media, corny but effective information control games and flat-out scientific fraud, one thing that relatively few Panamanians know is that they’re offering us a set of environmental problems of unknowable but almost certainly immense proportions. . . ." Jackson said that the artificial freshwater Gatun Lake is a barrier now to prevent most salt water creatures from traveling the length of the canal. But the new construction would allow salt water into the lake, "opening a gate whose width nobody has studied for Caribbean species to get into the Pacific or vice versa," he said. |
Jackson said that relevant
environmental studies have been suppressed
and that the $5.25 billion plan is being railroaded by the
Martín
Torrijos administration. The project would built a second canal lane
adjacent to the existing one. Jackson said that newspapers are being bribed by huge pro-referendum ad contracts and that backers of the canal expansion have quietly taken over most of the communications media, including the recent purchase of a television news channel by a leading figure in the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party. "Yes," said Jackson, "there are a few ragtag little publications, mostly on the Internet, and " . . . with the salinization of Gatun Lake there is a high chance of exotic species invasions," Jackson said. "The effects may just not be on Panama. Might the larvae of some small and unstudied Caribbean organism get over to the Pacific side, make its way to the waters around Coiba Island, then ride the current out to the Galapagos, along the way disrupting food chains in ways nobody ever considered and devastating fisheries. . .?" A few radio talk shows that give voice to the 'no' side, and especially because two former presidents — Guillermo Endara and Jorge Illueca — and former top canal administrator Fernando Manfredo are among the skeptics, opposing voices sometimes make it into little news reports or op-ed columns in some of the mainstream newspapers." But Jackson, editor of the English-language Panama News says that officials have even disregarded and misrepresented their own environmental studies. |
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Investigators locate body of
missing judicial worker
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Police located the body of a missing Zapote woman Sunday morning near Atenas. The woman, Maureen Gabriela Hidalgo Mora, 28, vanished Tuesday. She had been married for a year to a well known public defender. She, herself, was an employee of the Poder Judicial. By evening there was little doubt that the body was of the woman. Investigators had made the assumption when they viewed the body because it had the physical characteristics of the missing woman. Later at the Morgue Judicial workers said that a preliminary autopsy confirmed the fact to about 95 percent certainty. They said a full-scale autopsy would be conducted today in the presence of experts in bullet wounds. |
The condition of the
body suggests that the woman was murdered and
dumped not long after she vanished. The woman took off Tuesday to
attend to some personal errands, officials said. Her husband is Luis Fernando Burgos Barboza, who remained in the couple's Yoses Sur apartment Sunday. Even before the body had been discovered, officials were treating the case as a murder. With the permission of the husband, a search was made of the apartment. Officials said that a prosecutor in the judicial system had received a tip. It may have been this tip that brought the police to the outskirts of Atenas Sunday. The body was about 12 feet off the road in a ditch and encased in a plastic bag. |
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Fourth news page |
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| San José,
Costa Rica, Monday, July 17, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 140 |
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| Holiday ends but there is another on horizon |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Public school youngsters will be back at class today after a two-week mid-term vacation. That's why the highways were packed over the weekend as Central Valley families return from their holiday retreats. The weekend took a typical toll. A mother and her 3-month-old baby died when their car overturned near Pérez Zeledón. On the Interamerican highway, two men died when their passenger car crashed headon into a trailer. A public bus was the third vehicle involved in the collision. It was on the San Isidro-San José route. Tránsito officers were conducting vehicle checks on the main highways into the Central Valley Sunday. They were perhaps responding to an article Sunday in the Spanish-language La Nación that said few tickets for speeding and other moving violations are ever given out. |
The Instituto
Meteorológico Nacional says rain will be falling all over
the country today with the possible exception of the north Pacific. The
storms are supposed to be accompanied by lightning. The next holiday is July 31 for school children. This is the Monday following July 25, the usual date for celebrating the Annexation of the Partido de Nicoya. A new law moves the holiday to the next Monday to provide a three-day weekend. The holiday may be more than what officials anticipate. Aug. 2 is the feast day of La Virgen de los Angeles, and all roads lead to Cartago and the basilica there. July 31 and Aug. 1 will be days of foot pilgrimages from all over Costa Rica. Perhaps a million Costa Ricans will be on the roads walking. The holiday is likely to be a five-day one as entire school classes and social groups participate in the walk. |
| National Guard troops in the U.S. are taking their places at
border |
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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The United States has dispatched more than 3,500 National Guardsmen to its southwestern border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas where they will support the work of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency, according to the chief of the National Guard Lt. Gen. Steven Blum. Blum said Friday that the United States has 3,500 National Guardsmen dispatched to the southwest border, a number that will grow to 6,000 by Aug. 1. |
As part of Operation
Jump Start, these guardsmen will provide military
capability in support of civilian law enforcement. Blum said that
the
National Guard troops are not replacing the Border Patrol, but rather
will enhance tactical infrastructure for the agency, including building
and maintaining roads, fences, lighting, sensors, and towers with
cameras. In addition to tactical infrastructure support, the National Guard will also provide aviation support. These efforts will include aerial reconnaissance as well as transportation. |
| News from the BBC up to the minute |
BBC sports news up to the minute |
| BBC news and sports feeds are disabled on archive pages |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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