|
 |
Your daily |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica Second newspage |
 |
||||||||
| Home |
Tourism |
Calendar |
Classifieds |
Entertainment |
Real
estate |
Rentals |
Sports |
About us |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 179 | |||||||||
 |
| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
 Click HERE
for great
hotel discounts
|
|
their case against municipality By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Residents of the housing project Vista Hermosa in Oreamuno, Cartago, have won their case before the Sala IV constitutional court. The residents gathered to protest last week at the building of the Corte Suprema de Justicia. Friday the Poder Judicial said that the constitutional court had ordered Oreamuno officials to connect the houses that are without water to the municipal supply and to provide the proper documentation so that families who are not now in the homes that have been assigned to them can enter. The municipality had declared a state of emergency over the housing project and withheld what amounts to occupancy permits. The court specifically directed the ruling to Gladis Coto Carpio, president of the consejo municipal and Marco Vinicio Redondo Quirós, the mayor. The court noted that the persons seeking the housing were very poor. It also awarded the citizens court costs from the municipality. Autopista becomes scene of multiple tragedies By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Autopista Próspero Fernández was involved in three deaths Sunday. A taxi driver, identified as Guillermo Roja, died when someone in an adjacent car shot him multiple times in the head and neck. A female passenger in the taxi was not injured. That was at 2:30 a.m. in Escazú. When the sun came up a passer-by noticed the body of a man in a culvert alongside the road. Police do not know yet if the crimes are connected. A man died the victim of a hit-and-run driver Sunday on the same highway near the autopista turnoff to Guachapelín. Meanwhile in Sardinal in the Nicoya Peninsula, Fuerza Pública officers are taking credit for taking a murder suspect out of the hands of an angry mob. The Fuerza Pública said that Víctor Manuel Arias Picado, 52, got in a fight with another man, and the other man used a knife. That was just after 11 p.m. Saturday. Police said they had to intervene to keep a crowd from killing the suspect, identified by the last name of Mairena. The response was slow because police were involved in another shooting, that of a man identified as Cecilio Méndez, who suffered a wound in the stomach. When police arrived at the murder scene they said that friends of the victim had doused Mairena with gasoline and were about to set him afire. Costa Rica sends help to hurricane victims By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some 50 members of the national emergency commission and the Cruz Roja are in Nicaragua lending aid in areas hit by Hurricane Felix. The Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias said that its representatives would travel in a caravan of seven vehicles, two of them trucks loaded with supplies. They were going to Managua and then to where the supplies were needed most, their comission said. Among the vehicles is a radio base station. Some 100 persons are believed to have died in Nicaragua as a result of winds and flooding from the hurricane. House robbery suspects face allegations in Garabito By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Judicial Investigating Organization says it has detained a band of robbers who were invading homes in Garabito on the Pacific coast. Agents said that the gang consisted of three persons, including a woman they described as blonde and pretty. Investigators said that the women would appear at the door of a home dressed well and seek permission to use the bathroom. Once inside, she would oepn the door to her confederates, they said. Age-discrimination proposal introduced in legislature By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A Costa Rican over age 50 generally is unemployable if he or she is not a professional. A lawmaker now has moved to make discrimination based on age illegal. He is José Manuel Echandi. His proposal, if passed, would cover both public and private employment. The measure seems to establish a quota of 10 percent that companies and public agencies would have to meet as far as employing persons 50 and over. The Ministerio de Trabajo would be in charge of keeping track, according to the measure. Employment legislation in Costa Rica lags behind First World countries in equal employment, and employers have been known to seek photos of potential employees along with resumes. In fact, potential employees willingly provide this information as well as details that might be considered off-limits elsewhere, such as age.
|
 |
 |
|
on our real estate page HERE! |
| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
 |
||||||||
| Home |
Tourism |
Calendar |
Classifieds |
Entertainment |
Real
estate |
Rentals |
Sports |
About us |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 179 | |||||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
| Stiff
license fee for sportsbooks is back on legislative table |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Partido Acción Ciudadana has introduced a bill to tax sportsbooks and other electronic betting operations. The new proposal, No. 16.450, carries a heavier tax burden for betting operations than does the stalled administration tax plan. This is the latest in a long line of proposals to tax the betting industry which provides a lot of work for young English-speaking residents. The Acción Ciudadana proposal would also tax betting operations based on the number of employees on their payroll. Up to 20 employees the annual tax would be 15 million colons, about $28,000. At the top of the scale operations with 61 or more employees would pay 28.4 million colons or about $54,600. The tax is being characterized as a license fee. Taxing sportsbooks is an easy idea to propose but the politics of passage are complex. In October 2002 sportsbook employees protested for two days outside the Asamblea Legislativa in opposition to a similar tax contained in the proposed fiscal reform package promoted by then-president Abel Pacheco. The entire plan died in the legislature, effectively blocked by the Movimiento Libertario which has championed the cause of the sportsbooks. |
Since
then the sportsbook industry has taken a few hits. One major betting
operation, BetonSports, stopped taking U.S. bets because
its executives were indicted in the United States. The firm is trying
to distribute funds to creditors and employees, according to its Web
site. A large part of the day-to-day operations of Bodog.com has been transferred to a new Web site because owner Calvin Ayre, said he is having problems with the domain ownership. He appears to have returned to Antigua and just announced an agreement with Morris Mohawk Gaming Group in Canada to operate his gambling sites. His operation no longer employees many Costa Ricans. The Arias administration package of new taxes also includes a licensing scheme for sportsbooks. Online casinos and sportsbooks first must register with the Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Comercio. Unregistered companies would be illegal here. The Arias proposal begins at firms with 10 employees and specifies a fee of 10 million colons ($19,200) a year. Firms with 61 or more employees would pay 24 million colons, about $46,100. So the Acción Ciudadana proposal is about 18.5 percent higher. Passing a law and actually collecting the taxes are two different challenges. The sportsbook industry employes North Americans who work there illegally and do not even benefit from social security payments on their salaries. And sportsbook executives have said in the past that to move the operation to a more favorable country would not be difficult. |
| Be true to yourself, this Costa Rican saying insists |
|||
| Andando caliente
aunque se burle la gente “Keeping warm even if people scoff at you.” To me this dicho makes so much sense especially up north as our weather now begins to show signs of turning cooler. What it is saying is that it is better to be warm than to worry that people will make fun of your wooly wardrobe. Or, in other words, a person should do the right thing no matter what others may think or what is currently in vogue. I’m also reminded of this dicho in Santo Domingo de Heredia, where we live in Costa Rica, when people laugh at me because I hurry to find a warm jacket after the sun goes down. It’s often quite breezy and cool in the evening, and the ridicule of others matters little to me when I feel the chill. I want the comfort of warmer clothing, and I really don’t give a fig what others may think of my choice of attire. It’s better to be true to your own feelings than to be constantly agonizing over what is fashionably — or politically — correct. Anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States has ballooned to such a point that these days even municipalities are passing statutes giving authorities the right to arrest a business owner if he or she is suspected of hiring “illegal immigrants.” Hating immigrants has become the politically correct thing to do in many communities. Interestingly enough, however, a recent article in The New York Times reported that some farmers in southern California and the southwestern states have started moving their operations to northern Mexico because the immigration crunch in the U.S. has left them without the workers that they depend upon to harvest such labor-intensive crops as lettuce, celery, asparagus, tomatoes, strawberries, and tree fruits. In Mexico, however, labor is abundant and cheap. So, it would appear that another U.S. industry is on the brink of picking up and relocating. Though it may be fashionable among certain action groups and their eagerly attendant politicians to jump on the anti-immigrant bandwagon, the relocation of yet one more U.S. industry south of the border, which their campaign is certainly contributing to, actually plays directly into another anti-immigrant bugaboo, the exodus of employers from the U.S. This paradox is quite excellently expressed by a dicho, or expression, in English: It’s like “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” Yesterday I saw a piece on television about three kids ages 17, 13 and 9, all of them U.S. citizens by birth but whose undocumented parents had been recently deported. The |
|
||
 |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
| A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page |
 |
||||||||
| Home |
Tourism |
Calendar |
Classifieds |
Entertainment |
Real
estate |
Rentals |
Sports |
About us |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 179 | |||||||||
| Second
place is a tight race in Guatemalan presidential vote |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
and wire service reports The remaining Guatemalan presidential race appears to be for second place and a chance to meet Otto Pérez Molina of Partido Patriota in the Nov. 4 runoff. Pérez Molina had 26.2 percent or some 201,766 votes in preliminary results reported at midnight by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral. He is a former army general. Alvaro Colom of Unidad Nacional de Esperanza was second with 22.99 percent and 177,023 votes. Close behind was Alejandro Giammattei of the Partido Gran Alianza Nacional with 22.27 percent and 171,497 votes. The results are not unexpected. Recent public opinion polls indicate that no clear winner will emerge and a two-candidate runoff vote is likely. But, in Guatemala City many people see the electoral process itself as an important victory. There were few reports of problems in the first hours of the voting process and that in itself is regarded as an important accomplishment in a nation where political violence is a part of everyday life. In recent weeks there were numerous incidents of election-related violence in which some 50 people died. |
Some 14 candidates are on the
ballot. A candidate must get 50 percent to win outright. Among the other candidates running in this round is 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, the first woman to run for president in Guatemala. She is of Indian origin and is known for dressing in her native garb. But her candidacy has failed to gain much support and even in primarily Indian zones, most voters favor Colom rather than her. Several candidates from her party were victims of violence in recent weeks, a reminder of the bitter legacy of Guatemala's 36-year civil war that ended in 1996 and claimed around 200,000 lives. Her Partido Encuentro por Guatemala was getting less than 3 percent of the vote. Violence of a different sort is the main issue in this election. Guatemala has one of the highest violent crime rates in the world. With more than 5,000 murders a year, the nation of 13 million people has one of the highest per capita homicide rates in the world. Front-running candidates have promised to fight drug traffickers and other violent criminals, but Colom warns against policies that could take the country back to the rampant civil rights abuses of the past, while Pérez Molina advocates a strong hand and use of the military to fight organized crime. |
| First
Mexican trucking firm gets permission to operate outside U.S. border
area |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Department of Transportation has approved a Mexican trucking company to operate in the United States, as the start of a year-long experiment that expands cross-border trucking between the two countries. Officials decided Thursday to allow the Nuevo Leon-based Olympic Transport company to operate in the United States, while the Texas-based Stagecoach Cartage and Distribution is being allowed to deliver cargo in Mexico. The agreement allows Mexican trucks to deliver cargo |
beyond the 40-kilometer commercial
zone that runs along the
U.S.-Mexican border. U.S. trucks will be allowed to deliver in Mexico
for the first time ever. Critics of the program say it will be difficult to get Mexican drivers to comply with U.S. safety requirements such as truck inspections and drug testing. A report from the transportation department's inspector general submitted to Congress Thursday says every Mexican truck will undergo a security check at the border. U.S. officials say they hope to approve as many as 100 Mexican trucking companies for the program. |
| We can put your business announcement
here where those seeking international news will see it |
|
| News from
the BBC up to the minute |
BBC sports news up to the minute |
| BBC news and sports feeds are disabled on archived pages. |
|
| A.M. Costa Rica Sports news local and from the wires |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 179 | ||||||
|
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
