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| A.M. Costa Rica Second newspage |
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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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prepare for hurricane By Elise Sonray
and the A.M. Costa Rica wire services Airlines are geared up for what the mayor of New Orleans predicted to be the storm of the century Sunday. Airlines like Delta and Continental encouraged travelers to change their plans and added flights to help evacuate New Orleans, Louisiana, in what some predicted would be a hurricane more devastating than Katrina. So far flights into and out of Costa Rica have not been affected, although some gulf airports have been closed. But as Hurricane Gustav comes ashore today there is a good chance the operations at major airports will be curtailed. Continental has one of its three hubs at Houston International Airport, and the center of the storm is expected to enter Texas from Louisiana by 5 p.m. Tuesday. None of the five major airlines servicing Costa Rica have direct flights to New Orleans. At midnight Gustav was 170 miles (275 kms) south southeast of New Orleans. It seemed almost certain that the storm would come ashore on the Louisiana coast, although warnings extended into Texas and eastward into Mississippi and Alabama. Hurricane Gustav killed dozens of people with estimates as high as 100, in the Caribbean as of Sunday, according to reports. The storm crashed into Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic last week. Delta added three additional flights Sunday to evacuate New Orleans, according to an airline release. Continental said that on Saturday it began to add larger aircraft, extra employees, and additional flights into and out of New Orleans to assist with evacuation efforts. The effort was supposed to make room for 1,200 additional customers through Sunday, according to Continental. The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport announced that it would close at 6 p.m. Sunday and that only ticketed passengers could approach the terminal. Some airlines chose to cancel other flights through towns on the gulf like Pensacola, Florida. Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport in Mississippi closed at 8 p.m. Sunday and was expected to reopen Tuesday, according to its Web site. American Airlines advised customers that tourists were not allowed to enter the Cayman islands because of a hurricane restriction from the immigration office there. Continental announced that today flights in specific Gulf Coast cities will be canceled or delayed through next week. Closures include Louisiana cities New Orleans, Lafayette, Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and Lake Charles as well as Gulfport, Mississippi and Beaumont, Texas. For an updated list of affected cities, travelers should visit continental.com. Delta, American, and Continental all said they would offer customers a limited time chance to change their tickets for free if traveling through certain airports. Delta's list included Panama City, Florida, and Pensacola, Florida, as well as the entire state of Louisiana, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic. Over the weekend the Costa Rican emergency institute announced heavy rainfalls had caused some damages. At least 42 communities in Guanacaste, Puntarenas, Cartago, Puntarenas, Alajuela and San José received rainfalls since Wednesday, according to the institution. Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, was hit the hardest when rivers overflowed. The emergency institution provided two temporary shelters for 62 people in Santa Cruz and in Grecía, Alajuela, according to a release. Officials lifted a formal alert Saturday afternoon. But they are keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Hanna, which is following Gustav at a slightly higher latitude. The U.S. Hurricane Center said this storm was about 100 miles (160 kms) northeast of the southeastern Bahamas Sunday night. Hurricane Katrina three years ago flooded much of New Orleans and adjacent areas and left at least 1,400 people dead. By Sunday evening, city and state officials were pleased with the pace of the mandatory evacuation. Mayor Ray Nagin warned that looters will go straight to prison. Rodríguez hearing halted for constitutional appeal By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A judge has suspended again a preliminary hearing for former president Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría because lawyers have filed two constitutional challenges against technical aspects of the penal code, according to the Poder Judicial. Rodríguez is facing four allegations of illegal enrichment and corruption stemming from the award of a cell telephone contract during his administration, which ended in 2002. The prosecutor from Delitos Económicos, Tributarios y Corrupción opposed the new delay. The first hearing that was suspended was more than a year ago, Aug. 27, 2007. Rodríguez has made much of the delays that he has faced in his criminal trial. He even has written a book about the long ordeal. That is why the Poder Judicial was so quick to issue a press release over this new delay. The release blamed defense lawyers and said the Poder Judicial was blameless.
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High
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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Police raid four more
entertainment locations over access
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Police raided and closed four nightclubs this weekend because they didn't have improvements like wheelchair ramps, said a security spokeswoman. The security spokeswoman, Patricia Meléndez, said the four clubs were all in downtown San José but that she could not release the names. During the raids, immigration police detained 10 women illegally in the country including one from the Dominican Republic and nine from Nicaragua, according to a release from the Ministerío de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública. Officers also arrested two men with warrants out for their |
arrest near
the rotunda in Zapote during the raids. The first man who had the last
name Patterson was wanted to face a drug trafficking charge. The second who has the last name Zenan was wanted on an allegation that he made threats, according to the ministry. Ms. Meléndez said the night clubs were in violation of Law 7600 or “the law of equal opportunity for people with disabilities.” Ms. Meléndez said she could not comment on if the clubs had been shut down last month in the municipality raids or if this was the first time. The raids were carried out by the Dirección de Investigación Especializada of the ministry, the Policía Turística, the Policía Especial de Migración, and officials of the Municipalidad de San José, |
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New political party will
oppose free trade treaty with U.S.
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A new national political party is taking root, and one of its major objectives is to oppose the free trade treaty with the United States and the so-called neoliberal policies of current political leaders. The party is the Partido Humanista, and it is based on the Comités Patrióticos or patriotic committees that formed to oppose the free trade treaty at the local level. The organization also says that the Oct. 7 referendum in which the citizens approved the free trade treaty was distorted by fraud and overspending by proponents. The party was supposed to have an organizational meeting Saturday and make plans to organize in all 470 of the nation's electoral districts, it said in a release. Although the free trade treaty with the United States is almost certain to go into force in a few weeks, the document does contain steps for a country to withdraw. So far, the Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones does not list the Partido Humanista as one of the 14 registered national political parties. But there still is time. The Partido Acción Ciudadana opposed the free trade treaty in the legislature, but with 17 votes, it was unable to |
impose its will on the two-thirds
majority stitched together by the Óscar
Arias administration. Some radical opponents of the treaty think
Acción
Ciudadana failed to fight hard enough. Some of their suspicions were
underscored when Epsy Campbell, the party president, was found to be
receiving advisor payments from Casa Presidencial. Ottón Solís, a former Partido Liberación Nacional executive, launched Acción Ciudadana and ran as its presidential candidate in 2002 and in 2006. In the first election he finished a strong third to the eventual winner Abel Pacheco of Unidad Social Cristiana and Rolando Araya, the Liberación candidate. Solis forced Pacheco and Araya into a runoff. In 2006 Solís lost by a mere 18,000 votes nationwide to Óscar Arias in a campaign dominated by the free trade treaty. In addition to opposition to the trade treaty, the new Humanista party opposes what it describes as an oligarch in which the "political, social, cultural, generational, ethnic and territorial" powers are concentrated in a few hands. Meanwhile, Araya, the 2002 loser, has left Liberación and seems to be on the verge of forming his own party, the Frente Social Demócrata, which accuses Liberación of being too far to the right. |
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Officials study priest's
request to continue radio broadcasts from his prison
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Officials will study the rights of the Rev. Minor de Jesús Calvo Aguilar to host a radio program from jail, according to the Ministerio de Justicia y Gracia. The National Institute of Criminology, an agency within the justice ministry, is responsible for assessing the request of Calvo, to conduct a radio program live from the prison in San Sebastián, because it is the body responsible to assess and approve projects of inmates, said Casa Presidencial. Calvo, a Catholic priest, presented the request Thursday |
afternoon shortly after prison
officials cut him off after he was on
the air for a few minutes. He was using the public phone in a hookup
with Radio Centro. Officials said that Calvo did not have permission. Calvo was sentenced for fraud based on allegations that his previous radio station, Radio María, asked people for money for religious reasons and later used the money for other things. Calvo was also investigated, tried and acquitted in the murder of radio commentator Parmenio Medina Pérez. Medina was publicly critical of Radio María. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page |
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Banco Nacional to introduce
new system to decrease thefts
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Banco Nacional will institute a new system that is supposed to keep crooks from stealing account passwords from Internet users. The system, which only is generally outlined on the bank's Web site, gets half the password from the computer keyboard and the remainder from a number pad that is displayed on the computer screen. Banco Nacional and other banks have been plagued by crooks who use customer passwords to raid accounts. Banco de Costa Rica has distributed a card containing numbers that are supposed to be used just one time. Banco Nacional said the system would go into effect Friday and that it uses Java Sun and ActiveX technology. |
Banco Nacional officials have
claimed repeatedly that failures in the
security system were the fault of users. Bank officials claimed that
unseen keyloggers were capturing the users passwords and distributing
them to crooks. The bank officials blamed users who opened attachments
that came with e-mails. ActiveX actually makes a keylogger that it sells for less than $50 on the Web. It is designed to let businesses know what their employees are doing with the company computers. Banco Nacional also has subscribed to a McAfee daily security scan which seeks to show that the site has not been hacked. Banco Nacional released a number of requirements for using the new online system, and it is not clear if anything except a traditional PC will be supported. |
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Arias says that interest rate
was the reason Chinese bond deal was a secret
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
President Óscar Arias Sánchez finally made public the nature of the transaction whereby the People's Republic purchased Costa Rican bonds. Arias said in a weekend statement that he kept the details secret because China gave Costa Rica a 4 percent interest rate, which is much more favorable than what the country usually offers its international friends. Arias had been under pressure, mainly from opposition politicians and the Spanish-language daily La Nación to give the details. Arias said he was turning the information |
over to the Contraloría de
la República where it would become public information. China agreed to buy $150 million this year and a similar amount next year, Arias said. The bond purchase, which amounts to a loan, was part of the deal that led to Costa Rica rejecting its long-time diplomatic relationship with Taiwan in favor of the People's Republic. Some of the bond money will go to construct a new soccer stadium in Parque la Sabana. Arias denied that anyone in the country would get a commission from the bond deal and that all the money centimo would go to government budgets. |
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wave of crime, abductions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have marched in locations across the country to demand a stop to a wave of killings, abductions and shootouts. Scores of towns and cities took part in silent marches to show a united front against escalating kidnappings and murders. In Mexico City, an overflow crowd of more than 100,000 gathered in the capital city's main square, the Zocalo. As indigenous musicians blew into sea shells to signal the start of the rally, protesters dressed in white, and cupping their hands around flickering candles, carried signs that read "Enough is Enough," "We want to live in peace" and "The Death Penalty For Kidnappers." Most crimes in Mexico go unsolved, with corrupt police and justice officials often complicating investigations. Mexico is one of the worst countries in the world for abductions, along with conflict zones like Iraq and Colombia. Violence has continued to climb in Mexico despite a crackdown launched by President Felipe Calderón after he took office in 2006. Calderon deployed more than 25,000 soldiers and federal police to fight drug cartels. Aug. 21, Calderón called a crime summit of state governors and other officials to discuss ways to combat the country's soaring crime rate. Well over 2,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence just this year. The summit took place following widespread outrage over the kidnapping of a 14-year-old boy found dead even though his wealthy father had paid a ransom. Pineapple foes report police ended blockade By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Opponents of pineapple cultivation in the community of La Perla de Guácimo said that police eliminated their blockade of the local producer. This has been a long-running battle in which the residents claim that pesticides used by the producer, Tico Verde, has infiltrated the drinking water. The community organization said it met with representatives of the producers Saturday at a church in Guácimo and presented their demands. Among the demands are that the company cease production of pineapple and use the land for other crops. The community leaders said they would give the company six months to harvest any pineapple already in the fields. After the producer gave a negative response, the community residents set up a roadblock that eventually was removed by police, they said. |
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