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| Congressmen discuss
electronic betting By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Four U.S. congressmen urged Costa Rican legislators to put more restrictions on electronic betting during a meeting Monday. The four, identified as Bob Goodlatte, Devin Nunes, Frank Lucas and Rick Boucher, are members of a larger group of U.S. congressmen who are visiting the country. They met with Mario Rodondo, president of the Costa Rican Asamblea Nacional and other legislators to discuss matters of mutual interest. The Costa Rican sportsbook and Internet casino businesses are illegal in the United States where most of the gamblers are located. The existence of such operations here is a continual point of friction with the United States. Also on the table was the proposed free trade treaty between the United States and five Central American nations. Redondo was quick to point out that Costa Rica is limited in what it can do to open up the telecommunications sector to outside competition. He was referring to the monopoly held by the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad for Internet, telephone and other forms of communications. Deputies also stressed what they saw as an imbalance between U.S. agriculture and the Costa Rican agricultural sector that fears a free trade treaty that eliminates duties on locally grown products. Deputies said they were interested in seeing the United States reduce its own subsidy to it agricultural producers. New computer virus
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Another sneaky computer virus has found its way into Costa Rica. This one pretends to be a message from the administrator of your e-mail service. Included is a compressed zip file that contains an HTML document and a virus. The idea is that you, yourself, participate in infecting your computer by opening the zip file. A.M. Costa Rica has gotten about a half dozen messages over the last three days. The e-mail message reads: "Hello there, "I would like to inform you about important information regarding your e-mail address. This e-mail address will be expiring. Please read attachment for details. ---
The attachment that accompanies the e-mail usually is labeled "message." Eye disease comes
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Visitors from Nicaragua sometimes are carrying conjunctivitis, an eye infection that is epidemic there. Several tourists have shown up in San José with the problem after touring the country to the north. Conjunctivitis is also called ‘pink eye’ because of the redness associated with the disease. Although such problems can be caused by irritation or allergies, the highly contagious form in Nicaragua is either bacterial or viral. More than 800 new cases a day have been reported in Nicaragua. A good countermeasure is not touching the eyes and hand-washing and other normal sanitary practices, particularly when exposed to persons with infected eyes. Neighbor arrested
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Investigators have arrested a neighbor in the death of a finca owner who was killed last June 10 in Santo Tomás de Santo Domingo de Heredia. The dead man is Bernardo Ocampo Arce, 62, who was found on a farm road inside his torched pickup. Arrested is Luis Alvarez Mora, 48, said a spokesperson for the Judicial Investigating Organization. Investigators said they were exploring possible personal differences as the motive for the killing. Ocampo died from a bullet to the head. He worked nights as the guard at a kindergarten in Desamparados, said agents at the time. Vagrant slashed
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff A group of men slashed a 17-year-old street dweller with knives shortly before midnight Monday, according to police. The youth was sleeping when he was assaulted, he told police. The incident happened in Los Cuadros, Purral, Goicoechea, north of San José. The youth went to Hospital Calderón Guardia for treatment. There have been a series of murders of vagrants in the downtown San José area, but this is the first case of such an assault in the northern part of the metropolitan area. |
Drug police harvest
tons of marijuana By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Anti-drug officers and other police units had a big day when they went into the mountains near Siquirres early Tuesday and ended up chopping down 136,000 marijuana plants. The marijuana production was in an area bounded by the Río Madre de Dios, about an hour by vehicle south of Siquirres, said officials. These officers located the plantings that were in four areas. Other officers had to make the three-hour trek to reach the locations. Policía de Control de Drogas said they had been tipped by nearby
residents three weeks ago.
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Record breaking temperatures and drought have hit vast areas of Europe in recent weeks, causing transportation and power problems, decimating agricultural production and sparking massive forest fires. The weather tops the news in France these days. Temperatures sizzled at 35 or more degrees (95 Fahrenheit) across the country Tuesday, and more hot weather is forecast for at least the next several days. More than half of France's 95 departments, or regions, are rationing water. The country's nuclear power plants also may start cutting electricity production for lack of water. France hasn't seen such high temperatures since 1949 and so little rain in 25 years. The hot, dry weather is searing a path of devastation across much of southern and eastern Europe. Temperatures have soared above 40 degrees in parts of Spain and Germany, and fires continue to blaze across swathes of Portuguese forests. That’s 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Serbia is witnessing its most serious drought in a century, and Croatia its biggest dry spell in 50 years. Other countries like Romania and the Czech Republic predict agricultural production will plummet this summer for lack of rain. Switzerland's hottest summer in 250 years helped melt the permafrost on the Matterhorn mountain last month, sparking avalanches and rock falls. The weather has sparked power and water shortages in parts of the continent and crippled shipping and train transport, causing millions of dollars in losses. |
And hard-hit European farmers like
Pierre Reveillac, have only begun to assess the devastation.
Reveillac raises goats in central France. He said he has already lost 90 percent of his summer fodder crop. If there's no rain in the next two weeks, he said, he won't be able to plant a fall crop either, forcing him to buy hundreds of kilos of grain to feed his animals. Reveillac, who is 48, said, he has never seen a drought like this one. In southwestern France, one of the regions most affected by the drought, farmer Jean-Pierre Verleaguet says growers have also given up on their summer harvest. Like Reveillac, Verleaguet raises goats, some for meat, but others to produce France's famous Roquefort cheese. Because of the drought, he says, the country's normally tight Roquefort production restrictions have been eased somewhat. But, he vows, the taste will be the same. The weather is also endangering France's most precious commodity, wine, as grapes wither on the vine from searing heat. Elsewhere in Europe, parts of Germany have lost up to 80 percent of their grain production. Whether Europe's heat and drought wave is due to global warming is a matter of debate. French Environment Minister Roselyne Bachelot says the drought could be a sign of profound climatic change caused by global warming. If that's the case, Greenpeace spokesman Michel Luze has a dire prediction. He said, Europeans and others may well have to start getting used to more extreme climatic conditions, like this one, in the years to come. |
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Bush administration is preparing to resume U.S.-backed drug-interdiction flights over Colombia after a two-year suspension because of a mistaken shoot-down of a missionary plane. An announcement of the decision is expected later this week. Officials here say Secretary of State Colin Powell has recommended to President Bush that the anti-drug flights be restarted and that an announcement could come as early as Thursday, the one-year anniversary of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe taking office. Colombian officials view the flights as a critical way to fight the vast cocaine trade in the region and have been frustrated by the lengthy U.S. policy review which has delayed their resumption. The flights, in which the United States provided Colombia and Peru with radar and other support to track and interdict illegal drug shipments, were halted in April 2001 after a Peruvian fighter mistakenly shot down a civilian plane, killing U.S. missionary Veronica Bowers and her infant daughter. The incident set in motion an official investigation and painstaking review of the program, especially on how U.S. radar controllers on surveillance flights communicate with fighter pilots. At a news briefing, State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said a resumption of the "Airbridge Denial" program is imminent. "We want to make sure that this is done safely, get it right," he said. "You recall the program had been suspended pending a full review following the tragic shooting down of a missionary aircraft. And so that process has been going forward. I can't give you any final determination on that. I would expect actually that this is something the White House would make any announcement on in the very near future." Officials say Secretary Powell recommended the |
resumption of the Colombia flights
after the conclusion of negotiations with Colombian officials on new safeguards
to prevent accidents and rules for the use of U.S. radar intelligence.
The program with Peru remains suspended but U.S. officials say they
hope to have an interdiction operation with that country going again by
the end of the year.
Right-wing rebel
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services BOGOTA, Colombia — A Colombian paramilitary leader says he wants to meet with U.S. officials to talk about drug-trafficking charges against him and another militia leader. Salvatore Mancuso, a commander in the rightist United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC, made the comments Monday in an interview. Mancuso also said he wants to invite the U.S. State Department to send a commission to Colombia to clear up the cases of commanders such as himself who face extradition requests. Last September, Mancuso said he would not turn himself in to U.S. authorities to face charges of drug trafficking. A U.S. indictment charges him and fellow leader Carlos Castano with smuggling more than 17 tons of drugs into the United States and Europe since 1997. Mancuso has said the paramilitaries are not drug traffickers. He says leftist rebels are the ones involved in the cocaine trade and responsible for pushing Colombia to the brink of catastrophe. Colombia has been mired in a 39-year civil war involving the outlawed groups and the government. The conflict leaves thousands dead each year. |
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John Dawson, the U.S. ambassador to Peru and a former U.S. foreign service official in Costa Rica, has died in Long Island. The U.S. Embassy in Lima said that death was due to pancreatic cancer. The embassy said in a formal statement that Dawson, 52, died Friday at Mercy Hospital in Long Island, N. Y. Dawson, who was born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1950, lived in Latin America for most of his childhood. During his long career in the U.S. foreign service, Dawson served as the State Department's director of the Office of Mexican Affairs, and before that as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador. He also served as country director for Panama, office director for Andean affairs, and as economic counselor in both Panama and Costa Rica. |
Early in his career, he held positions
as financial economist at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New
York, at the U.S. Mission to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and
Development in Paris, and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil.
He received a master of arts degree in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1975, after achieving a bachelor of arts degree with honors from the University of Michigan in 1973, where he majored in economics and Latin American studies. Dawson "faced a difficult struggle against pancreatic cancer with courage and dignity," the U.S. Embassy in Lima said. "Despite the ravages of this cruel disease, the ambassador kept his characteristic good humor." The embassy said a small private family funeral will be held for Dawson in Long Island, followed by a memorial service in Washington. |
| Martin case hearing
scheduled for Sept. 3 By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Court officials in Golfito have set Sept. 3 as the day for a preliminary hearing for three persons implicated in the murder of Shannon Martin, the University of Kansas senior killed there. Miss Martin died of at least 15 stab wounds May 13, 2001. She was there completing a senior thesis. The Juzgado Penal de Golfito also said that Jeanette Stauffer of Topeka, Kan., the girl’s mother, may participate in the case. Investigators arrested a woman with the last name of Cruz Nov. 21, 2001, as a suspect in the case. She implicated two men with surnames Castro, then-38, and Zumbado, then-47, when they were arrested July 16. The preliminary hearing will allow judicial officials to better determine if the two men, both local individuals, really had a role in the killing. Venezuelan jurists
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services CARACAS, Venezuela — The Venezuelan Supreme Court has given national lawmakers another 10 days to select an electoral council to organize a referendum on President Hugo Chavez's rule. The court said Monday that if the National Assembly cannot select an electoral authority within the 10-day period, the court will make the selection. Venezuelan law requires an electoral council before any election can be held. Chavez supporters and opponents have been haggling over the composition of the council. Under Venezuela's Constitution, a referendum on the president's rule can be held at the midpoint of his term. In Chavez's case, that would be Aug. 19. A May 29 agreement negotiated by the Organization of American States set out the framework for the recall referendum. The accord was negotiated with support from a six-nation "Group of Friends of Venezuela," which includes Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and the United States. |
Shining Path duo
end hunger strike By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services CALLOA, Peru — The jailed founder of Peru's Shining Path guerrilla group and his imprisoned lover have ended a hunger strike which protested an isolation order keeping them apart. Abimael Guzman and Elena Iparraguirre broke their fast Monday, three days after refusing food to protest solitary confinement here. Prison authorities say the 15-day isolation order, which took effect Friday, will remain in effect. Solitary confinement restricts prisoner visitors to lawyers, removes radios from the cell, and bans meeting with other inmates. News reports say prison officials imposed the disciplinary measure after Guzman and Ms. Iparraguirre refused to re-enter their cells following free time in the prison courtyard in late July. The two prisoners claim guards stole Ms. Iparraguirre's diary, which reports say indicated Guzman continues to lead the Shining Path from his cell. Ms. Iparraguirre had been the rebel group's second-in-command. She and Guzman were captured together in 1992. The Maoist-inspired Shining Path had up to 10,000 fighters at its peak in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it tried to topple Peru's government with a terror campaign of bombings, assassinations and peasant massacres. The group was weakened considerably after Guzman's capture. New telephone scam
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff The telephone company is warning users with telephone cards to beware of a scam from callers who seek to steal your pin numbers. The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad said that persons have been calling telephone users who have a Colibrí 197 or Viajera 199 type of calling card. The caller says that the user has won a raffle and simply has to provide the pin number of the calling card to verify their winnings. Of course, once the caller has the pin number, he or she also can use the card number to make unauthorized telephone calls. The Institute did not say how the crooks got the telephone numbers of cardholders in the first place. |
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