Florida Bebidas, S.A,. the company that makes most of the beer in Costa Rica, is embarking on a new campaign to stimulate the use of a designated driver when friends go out drinking.

The company, owner of Cervercería Costa Rica, said it will kick off the new campaign Wednesday. A similar campaign in 1999 was successful, said the company, but officials have noticed a continued reluctance of vehicle owners to turn their keys over to a designated driver.

So new television commercials will stress this point in both a positive and negative way, the company said. Additionally, taxi drivers will be presented as professional designated drivers in publicity material.

The Instituto Nacional de Seguros, the national insurance monopoly, is participating in the campaign as is a local ad agency.

Venezuela praised,
and activist rejected

Costa Rica has praised Venezuela for the expression of democracy showed by the referendum on President Hugo Chavez Sunday in that South American country.

Then the foreign ministry announced that it has revoked the political asylum status of long-time Chavez foe Carlos Ortega Carvajal, who sought protection here two years ago. The action against Ortega took place Friday before the Venezuelan vote in which Chavez has claimed victory.

Ortega, a leading Venezuelan labor activist, continued working against the Chavez government while he was in Costa Rica. This generated complaints from Venezuela. Finally Ortega left the country last month. He was believed to have returned to Venezuela for the Sunday vote.

Roberto Tovar Faja, the foreign minister, has said Ortega’s actions here were inconsistent with his status as a political exile.

Ortega was one of the leaders behind a general strike two years ago in Venezuela that was designed to drive Chavez from power.

Invitation from south
seeks free trade deal

President Abel Pacheco is expecting an invitation today from the Mercado Común del Sur to begin negotiating a free trade treaty.

The invitation will be extended by Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, the president of Brazil, acting in his capacity as the rotating president of the trade group.

The common market includes Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay and includes several other countries as associates. Da Silva seeks to include Central America and the Caribbean in the free trade organization.

Pacheco does not know the terms of the invitation, according to a spokesperson from Casa Presidencial, but he will turn the proposal over to the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior for study.
 

Claudia Poll out of finals

ATHENS, Greece — Claudia Poll, the Costa Rican Olympic swimming hopeful, failed to qualify for the finals in the 200-meter women’s freestyle event Monday.

She captured 10th place based on her time (1:59.79) in the qualifying heat. Only the top eight are in the final. She also failed to qualify during the weekend in the women’s 400-meter freestyle.
Ms. Poll is a former Olympic gold medalist.

A.M. Costa Rica
Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.

James J. Brodell.........................editor
Saray Ramírez Vindas.... associate editor

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Did you ever go to Banco Nacional hoping to cash a check only to be told that the signature on the check does not match the one in the bank’s computer? At least that’s the guess of the 21-year-old teller who may or may not have training in graphic analysis.

Or how about the legislative debate over the new contralor general de la República, Alex Solís. Did he or did he not forge names on important legal papers in his capacity as lawyer and notary?

Inquiring legislators would like to know. However, up until now validating a signature was a two-dimensional exercise that approached an art form. Reasonable people and experts could disagree.

But now, a team of physicists in Rome, Italy, have created a system that makes forgery nearly impossible. They use a three-dimensional technique.

Writing in the latest issue of the Institute of Physics journal, Journal of Optics A, the scientists announce their technique that can detect forged handwriting better than ever before. 

Professor Giuseppe Schirripa Spagnolo, Carla Simonetti and Lorenzo Cozzella from the Università degli Studi "Roma Tre," have devised a forgery detection method that creates a 3D hologram of a piece of handwriting and analyses tiny variations and bumps along its path using two common scientific techniques: virtual reality and image processing.

Until now, detecting forged signatures or handwriting has generally been done by experts who analyze the sequence of individual strokes in a piece of handwriting using two-dimensional

Schirripa Spagnolo’s team create 3D holograms of the path of a piece of writing, generating an image on a computer that looks like a ditch or furrow. This makes it easy to analyze variations or "bumps" generated by the writer’s pressure on the paper at crossover points, for example the mid-point of the figure eight. 

The most common technique used by forgers is tracing, although in real life no two signatures are ever identical. A more sophisticated method is known as the freehand technique, and here the forger copies the general style and characteristics of the handwriting they are trying to copy. However, in both cases it is almost impossible for the forger to reproduce the exact variation of pressure used by the original writer.

Schirripa Spagnolo said: "Using image processing and virtual reality makes it easy to detect the presence of bumps at crossover points. Finding these bumps allows experts to easily determine the sequence of strokes in a piece of handwriting and the tell tale signs of a forgery or original. Another benefit of this technique is that it doesn’t damage the sample."

The Rome team used their technique, known as "3D Micro-Profilometry" to analyze hundreds of different handwriting samples made using a variety of different paper types and pens. They have also applied their technique to wills and checks and successfully detected forgeries in both.

Schirripa Spagnolo said: "We believe this type of 3D micro-profilometry is one of the most promising ways of detecting forged handwriting, and it will be a powerful tool for forensic experts around the world."

WASHINGTON, D.C. —  Visitors entering the United States under the Visa Waiver Program must have machine-readable passports by Oct. 26, or the traveler must apply for a visa to enter the country, according to the U.S. Department of State.

"This means that if you are from one of the 27 countries in the Visa Waiver Program and want to travel for basic tourism or business without a visa, you must have a passport that has two typeface lines at the bottom of the passport that contains, in a machine readable form, the information on your biographic page, that is, the photo page," said State Department Consular Affairs Spokeswoman Kelly Shannon. 

Citizens of visa-waiver countries have been able to travel to the United States without visas.

The rules also would apply to citizens of visa-waiver countries living in Costa Rica who seek to visit the United States or simply change planes at an airport there.

Asked how travelers can know whether their passports are machine-readable, Ms.  Shannon said, "They should look at the bottom of their passport [the photo page] for two lines that are typeface lines, that have letters, numbers and hatch marks." The two lines at the bottom of a machine-readable passport, for example, would look like the following:

LINE 1: P COUNTRY LAST NAME << FIRST NAME < MIDDLE NAME <<<<< 
LINE 2: PASSPORT NUMBER COUNTRY DOB<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

With this technology, the lines include the 

"If it does not, then there is obviously going to be concerns that it has been fraudulently altered," she said. 

The U.S. government first issued a machine-
readable passport in 1981. According to Ms. Shannon, "Machine-readable passports enhance security on several fronts. They are scanned at entry and exit points to verify integrity of the data. Lost or stolen machine-readable passports are easier to track. They also enable faster processing of travelers at ports of entry."

Persons traveling from countries where obtaining a visa is standard practice will not be required to have machine-readable passports.

In addition to the Oct. 26 deadline for the machine-readable travel documents, by September 30, 2004, all visa-waiver travelers arriving at a U.S. port of entry will be required to enroll in US-VISIT, a program in which the traveler is photographed and digitally fingerprinted at the immigration checkpoint. 

Countries currently participating in the Visa Waiver Program are: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Thousands of Guatemalans marched on the capital's central park Friday to demand the government address the crime and violence that plagues the country. 

The march extended for over 10 city blocks. The protest is a sign of the growing sense of desperation in Guatemala because of runaway crime and sky high murder rates. 

Last year, in this nation of 11 million people, over 4,000 people were murdered, and this year's death toll could be even higher. In the first six months, nearly 2,500 people were murdered. 

Javier Contreras, 9, carried a poster during the march with the photo of a woman on it. Below the photo were the words: "Mommy we miss you." His 

In recent weeks the government has stationed soldiers on the streets of the capital to assist the police and has passed a law that will force bars to close at one o'clock in the morning. But analysts predict these measures won't make much of a dent in crime rates. Guatemala has a serious gang problem, as well as powerful organized crime syndicates and many illegal weapons. What's more, analysts say the judicial is ineffective, starting with a deeply corrupt police force that is unable to apprehend those who commit crimes.  In past years, on average, 90 percent of the cases that prosecutors received were never resolved. 

CARACAS, Venezuela — Tensions remain high in Venezuela after Sunday's recall referendum in which President Hugo Chavez claimed victory. An opposition rally to protest the outcome was disrupted by gunfire Monday, leaving one person dead and four wounded. 

Witnesses say gunmen riding motorcycles fired into the protest rally. However, in a televised speech shortly after the incident, President Chavez said there is no proof his supporters perpetrated the violence. He said he has ordered an investigation.

The opposition protesters had gathered in the plaza in the Altamira section of Caracas to condemn the results of the recall referendum, which they call fraudulent. Opposition leaders plan to present evidence of irregularities in a meeting with international observers, including representatives of the Organization of American States, or OAS, on Tuesday. Observers from the OAS and the U.S.-based Carter Center followed the entire process Sunday and into the early morning hours Monday. OAS Secretary General Cesar Gaviria says he is confident in the results announced by the Venezuelan Electoral Council.

He says the observers did not find any evidence of fraud nor has anyone presented them with specific allegations of fraud. 

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who headed the delegation of the Atlanta-based center that bears his name, says close observation of the vote counting in the early morning hours provided proof that the process was carried out properly.

"This was done at the actual voting places and we have found that our information from that quick count was almost exactly the same as the results obtained from the consejo (the electoral council.)"

Carter and Gaviria said there are still discrepancies between the joint OAS-Carter Center quick count, the count produced by the opposition organization called Sumate and the official results. However, they said these differences of a few points one way or the other are not enough to change the election council's outcome.

Gaviria called on all elements of Venezuelan society to overcome differences through peaceful dialogue. But various opposition leaders continue to call for protests, claiming that President Chavez stole the election.

An opposition Web site on Monday provided results based on exit polls showing 59-percent in favor of removing President Chavez and 41-percent in favor of his remaining in power. The official results were almost exactly the opposite. 

In Washington, State Department spokesmen say the United States is withholding judgment on the contested results of the recall referendum and that allegations of fraud by Chavez opponents should be fully investigated.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States is withholding judgment on the contested results of the recall referendum for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The State Department says allegations of fraud by Chavez opponents should be fully investigated. 

The State Department congratulated the people of Venezuela for what it said was their extraordinary civic spirit in turning out in such large numbers and waiting in lines, in many cases for hours, to cast their votes in the referendum. 

But it is withholding judgment on the results and the conduct of the voting until final official figures are announced by the country's National Election Commission and verdicts are heard from international monitors from the Organization of American States and the U.S.-based Carter Center. 

President Chavez is celebrating victory based on figures he said showed 58-percent of those voting opposing his recall. But opposition leaders claim they won the referendum by about the same margin and are alleging widespread fraud. 

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Thomas Casey said the idea behind the referendum was to provide a solution to Venezuela' long-running political crisis, and he said it is important that any allegations of fraud be investigated fully and transparently: 

"Certainly, though, it is essential for this process to 

Diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas also observed the recall election but not as official monitors. Casey said the voting process was relatively calm and peaceful. 

The spokesman said that all along, in the controversy-ridden petition process leading up to the referendum, the United States had urged the sides in Venezuela to refrain from violence. He said it certainly would not want to see, and would not support, any kind of violent reaction to the referendum itself. 

The Bush administration has had a difficult relationship with Chavez, who has close ties with Cuban President Fidel Castro and has been a strong critic of U.S. policy in Iraq and elsewhere. 

Chavez claims the United States orchestrated a coup that ousted him briefly two years ago.

The United States had raised concern about incidents of harassment and intimidation of Chavez opponents in the run-up to the voting and said last week the Chavez government had a special responsibility to ensure a free and fair election.