Monday the U.S. government will begin collecting higher fees to issue passports. 

The U.S. State Department said this is what will happen: 

The fees for first-time adult passport issuance will increase from $60 to $85 and fees for minors under 16 will increase from $40 to $70. Adult renewal passport fees will increase from $40 to $55. The cost of expedited service will increase from $35 to $60. 

The fees were increased based on a study of costs, and the change was announced several months ago.

Residency rules still
need to be clarified

There is no need for panic because the Costa Rican government is making some changes in its residency rules, according to Ryan Piercy.

He is executive director of the Association of Residents of Costa Rica, and his group helps many North Americans obtain the legal right to stay in Costa Rica each year.

The Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería placed ads about two weeks ago saying that rules for residency would be changed. Specifically persons here on tourist visas would not be able to obtain any of the several forms of residency while here.

But Piercy said that this general statement has to be translated into actual rules, and so far that has not been done.

Typically, Latin countries require residency and work visas to be obtained outside the country. Costa Rica has been lax with these rules, but the new administration of Abel Pacheco is following the letter of the law.

The change in rules is not seen to be aimed at North Americans, but rather at the many Colombians and Nicaraguans in Costa Rica on tourist visas. Already Costa Rica has required Colombians to get an entry tourist visa from consulates in that war-ravaged land.

Other countries require persons seeking residency or a change in visa status to fly to the nearest consulate to pick up the appropriate stamp in their passport.

New diplomats get
training in jobs

Some 62 new Costa Rican diplomats began training Monday in San José to learn about the duties they will undertake overseas.

The diplomats include ambassador-designates, and each will be required to take tests at the conclusion of the three-week training session, according to Roberto Tovar, chancellor.

Tovar, who heads the foreign ministry is under instructions to weed out diplomats overseas who do not take their job seriously and do not work a reasonable amount of time each day. Casa Presidencial said that it has fielded some complaints about embassy staffers not working a full day.

Jacó woman dies
after yacht party

A weekend party on a yacht in the Los Sueños marina ended in tragedy for a young woman who is presumed to have died due to a drug and alcohol overdose.

She was identified only as Escoli, some 18 to 20 years. She died in a Puntarenas hospital after having been invited by someone described as a foreigner to the yacht from her place of employment in a Jacó bar, said investigators. She and two other women went to a party on the vessel in Herradura Bay, investigators said.

However, the yacht no longer is docked there, and investigators have little to go on. Results of an autopsy will not be known for about two weeks, agents said.

Scientist wins prize for
reducing world hunger

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Cuban-American soil scientist, has been named the 2002 winner of the $250,000 World Food Prize for his work to reduce hunger and malnutrition throughout the developing world.

The winner, Pedro Sanchez, was born in Havana in 1940 and currently teaches at the University of California. He won the honor for his groundbreaking work in transforming depleted tropical soils into productive agricultural land.

Sanchez is also being honored for having played a "critical role in establishing real alternatives to slash-and-burn farming, which has destroyed millions of hectares of rainforest," the foundation said. In addition, Sanchez led international efforts to establish agro-forestry "as a means of mitigating global warning, by removing millions of tons of [carbon dioxide] from the air."

Sanchez helped Peru to dramatically improve its national food security, achieving self-sufficiency in rice production within three years, and helping that country achieve among the highest rice yields in the world, according to the foundation.

Kofi Annan, U.N. secretary general, selected Sanchez to chair a special task force on hunger as part of the U.N. Millennium Development project, which is involved with tackling global problems of poverty, education, promoting democracy, and protecting human rights. 

Annan said in a statement Sunday that during his career, Sanchez developed ways to revitalize soils in Brazil, thus greatly expanding that country's agricultural output. In East Africa, Annan said Sanchez's "innovative approach" to restoring nutrients to severely depleted soils resulted in dramatic increases in crop yields, helping hundreds of thousands of small farmers.

Hondurans continue
to slay their young

A total of 43 children and youth under the age of 23 were murdered in Honduras in July. That brings the grand total of youngsters killed between January 1998 and July 2002 to 1,293, according to a report by Casa Alianza, a child rights organization that has an office in San José.

Of the 43 July, 2002 murders, 37 of the victims were boys and 6 were girls. The average age of those murdered is just 17 years old.

All of the victims in July were killed by fire arms compared with a significant number of deaths by knives in the past, which may indicate a move from "less professional murders" to more sophisticated killings, said Casa Alianza’s report.

According to the information collected by Casa Alianza's Legal Aid Program in Honduras, at least two of the killings are attributed to state security agents — one member of the military and one policeman. 

The killer or killers have not been identified in 24 of the murders (56 percent). Fifteen of the murders are reported to have been committed by gang members and two killings by the infamous red and gray cars that spew death upon young people as they drive around.

The fact that the Honduran police authorities have been unable or unwilling to identify the majority of the murderers has brought the country under significant international scrutiny.

"There has not been any concrete response from the Honduran authorities to our urgent calls to halt the murders of children in the country", said Bruce Harris, Casa Alianza's Regional Director for Latin American Programs. "The high level Commission named by the President met once and the killings continue to grow. The only sense of urgency seems to come from overseas".

U.S. busts Salvadoran
child smuggling ring

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. immigration agents have broken up a Salvadoran smuggling ring they say brought hundreds of Latin American youngsters into the United States illegally. 

Officials said in a statement Monday that three people linked to the ring were arrested in Houston, Texas late last week. The arrests bring to five the number of defendants in U.S. custody who face charges of conspiracy to commit alien smuggling. 

Authorities say the suspects took the children from countries such as Guatemala and El Salvador, transported them to Mexico, and then smuggled them into U.S. territory. They say parents paid the accused smugglers $5,000 per youth. 

Immigration officials say U.S., Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments cooperated in the investigation that helped dismantle the smuggling ring. The latest arrests come four months after Guatemalan authorities apprehended 12 people on smuggling charges after intercepting several public buses that had been carrying 53 children. The youngsters were between the ages of two and 17. 
 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States will increase the number of its anti-drug agents on the southwest border with Mexico and also in southwest Asia, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has announced.

The agency is deploying an additional 17 agents to interdict drugs on the border with Mexico, and about nine agents to an area that includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkey. That latter deployment is part of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's "Operation Containment," targeting the illicit opium and heroin trade in that part of Asia, DEA officials said.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said the drug threat at the U.S.-Mexico border has expanded from marijuana and heroin smuggling originally to Colombian cocaine trafficking.

Sandalio Gonzalez, a DEA official in El Paso, Texas, said in February testimony before the Texas legislature that Mexican drug groups have become the world's "pre-eminent traffickers, and they tend to be characterized by organizational complexity and a high propensity for violence."

To counter this threat, said Gonzalez, the United States has aggressively pursued trafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. strategy, he said, is to attack major Mexican-based trafficking organizations on both sides of the border "simultaneously by employing enhanced intelligence and enforcement initiatives and cooperative efforts with the Mexican government."

Gonzalez said Mexican-based drug trafficking organizations operating along the U.S.-Mexico border "continue to be one of the greatest threats" to the United States.

Meanwhile, Hutchinson said in March testimony before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives that "Operation Containment" is designed to disrupt and dismantle transnational drug trafficking organizations in central and southwest Asia.

Afghanistan, he said, is the primary source of illicit opium in the region, producing 70 percent of the world's opium supply and 80 percent of the opiate products destined for Europe in 2000.

Brazilian real dives
despite large loan

BRASILIA, Brazil — The value of the currency here has dropped against the dollar despite a massive new loan from the International Monetary Fund. Market uncertainty continues over Brazil's economic future. 

The Brazilian "real" fell against the U.S. dollar Monday on financial markets, losing the appreciation it had gained late last week following the announcement of a $30 billion loan for Brazil from the International Monetary Fund. 

The huge loan, the largest by the IMF, is designed to reverse a crisis of confidence in Brazil and ease investor fears that a new government will default on $250 billion in public debt. 

But analysts say the continuing decline of the currency is a sign that investors remain nervous over Brazil's future, as presidential elections approach in October. 

The latest public opinion poll, released Sunday, shows the government candidate, Jose Serra, is still a distant third. Investors consider Serra the candidate most likely to pursue the anti-inflation and austerity policies of the outgoing administration of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. 

Instead, two left wing candidates continue to lead the polls, Luiz Inacio "Lula" da Silva of the Workers Party and former governor Ciro Gomes of a Workers Front coalition. Even though the two candidates have endorsed the terms of the loan, they did so reluctantly and with much criticism of the government for having to seek a new bailout. 

Under the agreement, 80 percent of the loan, or $24 billion, will be disbursed next year only if the new government meets certain budgetary and inflationary targets. 

Pedro Malan, Brazilian finance minister, told reporters Monday the government is not planning to take any special measures to stop the slide of the Brazilian currency. He went on to express confidence that with the International Monetary Fund loan, the current problems will be overcome. 
 

Uribe declares state
of emergency

BOGOTA, Colombia — Just days after taking office, President Alvaro Uribe Velez has declared a "state of internal commotion" here. The emergency declaration allows him to raise new funds for fighting Marxist rebels at a critical time in his country's 38-year civil conflict. 

Government ministers made the announcement Sunday, saying they would levy a new tax on businesses and wealthy individuals. The tax will be worth 1.2 percent of their liquid assets, and will only be collected once.  The money raised will pay for 10,000 new policemen and two new army brigades. 

The emergency declaration also gives President Alvaro Uribe 90 days to sidestep Congress and make further decrees. He is expected to introduce travel restrictions, especially in the war-torn countryside. 

In particular, he will try to crack down on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, which has been chasing elected officials from rural areas. Most Colombians feel the rebel army has degenerated into a band of authoritarian outlaws. 

The president's decree comes just four days after he took office. During his inaugural ceremony, suspected rebels launched a round of homemade mortars at the presidential palace. One bomb caused superficial damage to the building. Another killed 20 civilians in a poor neighborhood nearby.
 

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