Some 20 Costa Rican national deputies from several political parties have sent a letter to Mexican President Vincente Fox expressing their deep concern for the murders of at least 300 Mexican women near Ciudad Juárez.

The deaths have not received the police and judicial attention they should have, the letter said.

The wave of serial killings has gone on for at least a decade, the deputies said in the letter, noting that this creates social instability.

Martha Zamora, a deputy of the Partido Acción Ciudadana initiated the letter effort, said an assembly aide.

The border area around Ciudad Juárez attracts many women from the countryside to work in the small manufacturing plants there. Periodically Mexican police announce arrests and say they have solved the killings, but the deaths go on and on, according to news reports.

Typically the victim is a woman returning home in the dark after working a second shift in an assembly plant.

Chinese government
sent cash, Fishman says

Luis Fishman, the second vice president of Costa Rica, told lawmakers Thursday that he understood that some money for the Pacheco presidential campaign came from the government of Taiwan.

He was testifying before the special commission set up to investigate campaign funding.

Fishman said that when $300,000 came from the Chinese to the campaign in December 2001 "everyone breathed easily and said that they were going to await the day of the elections."

Fishman is of the same political party as President Abel Pacheco, the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana. But he broke with Pacheco before the second round of elections, the runoff. He is now a vice president with a title but little to do officially.

In his testimony he said that Roberto Tovar, the current foreign minister, was in control of the campaign resources and watched over the expenses. Tovar has not described his role as quite so comprehensive.

Fishman said he loaned the campaign $15,000 to get started but the party never paid him back. He said he held some meetings with possible contributors in his home and that Pacheco outlined his political platform. The checks arrived later, Fishman said.

Grant to improve
rights of workers

The United States has awarded a $6.75-million grant to the Foundation for Peace and Democracy to help improve working conditions in those Central American nations engaged in free-trade talks with the United States, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

The U.S. Department of Labor will fund and manage the four-year grant, the press release said. The funds will be used to educate workers and employers in the region about labor laws and to ensure that workers' rights are respected. 

"As the United States and our Central American partners work to complete our free-trade agreement, we want to ensure that the benefits of trade and openness are shared by workers in all our countries," said U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick. 

Zoellick added that the grant also addresses concerns of U.S. congressional leaders who have emphasized the need to combine free trade with support for workers' rights. 

Catholic clerics
meet with rebels

Two Colombian Roman Catholic Church officials have met with imprisoned rebel commanders as part of efforts to secure the release of seven kidnapped foreigners. 

Church officials say Monsignor Alberto Giraldo and a priest, the Rev. Dario Echeverry, held talks Thursday with the two members of the National Liberation Army, or ELN, at the high-security Itagui prison outside Medellin. 

The meetings with Francisco Galan and Felipe Torres took place one day after the government's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, held similar discussions with the rebel leaders. 

The ELN is Colombia's second-largest rebel group. It has admitted kidnapping the seven tourists Sept. 12 in the northern Sierra Nevada mountains. An eighth hostage, 19-year-old Matthew Scott of Britain, later escaped and has since been reunited with his family. 

In another development, news agencies report ELN guerrillas claim they shot down a U.S. fumigation plane in northeastern Colombia Sept. 21. 

The pilot, Mario Alvarado, a Costa Rican national, was killed when the plane crashed in Colombia's Norte de Santander state.  U.S. officials said Sept. 23 that the plane had been shot down. They were unsure of which guerilla group did it.

The plane belonged to the U.S. government and was on a routine coca-spraying mission in Colombia, the government said. Coca is the raw material used to make cocaine. 

Washington has been helping Colombia organize crop-spraying flights as part of Plan Colombia, a multi-million-dollar program aimed mainly at ridding the country of the drugs that fuel armed insurgencies. 

Chinese day Monday

The Day of Chinese Culture will be celebrated Monday by lawmakers. At 10:30 a.m. in the legislative complex there will be expositions, food and music. An exposition of art done by Chinese-Costa Rican artists will be inaugurated at the Rotonda de la Patria in the assembly at 6 p.m.

Seat belt sweep

Transito officials said that police on the highways will be enforcing a seat belt rule starting today. Not wearing a seat belt is not illegal, although a measure in the legislature would make it so. However, police will be stopping motorists and warning them of the danger of not wearing a seat belt, officials said.

It was an ordinary week until last Friday when I was preparing lunch and felt my heart was not behaving normally. It was a pretty subtle abnormal: a few stabs of pain in the vicinity of my heart, a little difficulty breathing, and then a totally erratic pulse. That is when I decided it was time to get myself to the Clinica Duran. My neighbor Ulisis took me.

It is nice in Costa Rica, even if you are a woman, if you are having what seems to be heart problems, you get immediate attention. (This has not been my experience elsewhere.) As soon as I explained my symptoms, I was taken into the examining room and given an electrocardiogram and a blood test. Then I had to wait almost three hours for the results. I always take a book with me whenever I go to emergency. That is my standard emergency equipment. 

The results of the tests were not reassuring. They mentioned something about a blockage, so they handed me their report (which I couldn’t read) and told me to get myself to Calderon Guardia, which is a full-scale hospital with a much larger emergency section. Unlike the clinic, which had few people when I arrived there at noon, at 4 p.m. the waiting room at Calderon was wall-to-wall people. Most of them were standing in line to sign in. I took my referral paper to the guard at the door, and he let me go into the crowded treatment section while my friend Betty, who had joined me there, waited in line to register me.

There they did another electrocardiogram and took some more blood. I felt this was an unnecessary duplication of effort, but I am not in the medical profession. My job as a patient was to wait. I am not even very good at that. Waiting involved being crammed into a very uncomfortable padded pew with one too many people, all of us in various stages of attention. Most of the others had preparatory needles in their arms in case they would have to be fed something through them. Others were on oxygen. 

The place was getting too crowded for guests so I asked Betty to please meet my friend Grady at the pizza restaurant in my stead. I was never going to make it. Even in Emergency they bring food around for the people who have been there through a meal. Since I didn’t arrive until 4 p.m., I didn’t qualify when the meal wagon came around. 

Living in Costa Rica . . .Where the living is good By Jo Stuart jostuart@racsa.co.cr

They didn’t know I hadn’t eaten since morning. I was hungry, but had no appetite. So I didn’t mind.

By 8 p.m. Betty returned with Barbara, another friend. I was ready to leave with or without the results of the blood test (which is what I was told we were waiting for). My friends talked me into waiting ‘just a few more minutes.’ Barbara, who speaks fluent Spanish, stayed with me while Betty waited in the still crowded waiting room. 

While I had been sitting crammed next to a girl, I asked her what her problem was. She said that she had hepatitis. I sympathized through the hand that was now covering my mouth and nose as casually as possible. I couldn’t remember how hepatitis was caught. That is when I decided that standing off by myself was a good idea. 

But I had lost all patience (a big no no in Costa Rica) and I told an assistant, a technician, or whatever, (you cannot tell who is a doctor who is not, unless it is only doctors who wear stethoscopes), that if I was going to die I did not want to die a hungry sardine. He had no idea what I was saying, I am sure. Barbara, who has lived here so many years she has adopted the Costa Rican gracious, non-confrontive manner that is the only way to get heard, took over. She asked about my tests and explained my plight, and after each response she thanked them profusely while I muttered,"Let’s go."

At 9:45 p.m. we left the hospital with a prescription which took another half hour to fill. I’m not sure what the problem was except that I was told my pacemaker was working, my heart might not be. 

None of this, I figured was worth sharing or writing about. Then I turned on the new Ellen Degeneris show and listened to her talk for 10 minutes about crush/cutting her finger in a gate. I found her very entertaining, so I figured, what the hell, sharing the little mishaps helps — usually to make others feel lucky.

NEW YORK, N.Y. — Supplying small aquariums in homes and businesses with colorful fish has become an almost $300 million business, with the potential of becoming a sustainable industry that can both ease poverty and protect the threatened coral reefs where the fish are harvested. 

A U.N. Environment Program  report is called the first accurate estimate on the number of ornamental fish, corals and other animals being taken from the wild. 

"From Ocean to Aquarium: The Global Trade in Marine Ornamentals" finds that most species are 

"If managed properly, the aquarium industry could support long-term conservation and sustainable use of coral reefs in regions where other options for generating revenue are limited," said Mark Collins, director of the program’s World Conservation Monitoring Center. "Some collection techniques have minimal impact on coral, and the industry as a whole is of relatively low volume yet of very high value."

WASHINGTON, D.C — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  says it has achieved agreement among experts on an operational index and definitions for El Niño and La Niña — disruptions of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific leading to important consequences for weather around the globe.

According to a press release, experts in the federal government and academia reached a consensus on the index and definitions after more than a year of study. "Before now, no widely accepted operational definition of El Niño or La Niña existed," said agency Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher.

The index is defined as sea surface temperature 

Based on the index, El Niño is characterized by a sea surface temperature increase of 0.5 degrees Celsius or more above normal, and La Niña by a decrease in sea surface temperature of 0.5 degrees Celsius or more.

Departures from average sea surface temperatures in this equatorial Pacific region are critically important in determining major shifts in the pattern of tropical rainfall, which influence the jet streams and patterns of weather worldwide.