Users of the Pay Pal electronic payment service are being targeted by crooks who are trying to steal passwords and account information. They are using look-alike e-mailings to trick users to a phony Web page or worse.

Several messages arrived in Costa Rica Thursday purportedly from the eBay-owned Pay Pal.

The first set of messages asked Pay Pal subscribers to go to a Web page to fill out a questionnaire. The e-mail threatened that the user’s account would soon expire.

A second set of messages came with an attachment that users were asked to trigger. The contents of the attachment are unknown, but the possibility exists that a small program could read all the passwords and personal information on a computer and transmit it to some crook’s computer.

A.M. Costa Rica is a Pay Pal customers and uses the U.S.-based firm to receive advertising payments and to disburse certain cash payments. The firm is one of several that provide banking-like services over the Internet.

If a crook obtained a  Pay Pal password, he or she could easily transfer money. Some accounts are linked to traditional bank accounts, so the possibility of damage is great if someone falls for the trap.

Two women held
as crack ring leaders

Investigators have arrested two women they say were major distributors of crack cocaine in the San José downtown.

Agents raided four locations over the weekend, and announced the results Thursday. The two women, who have last names of Cedaño and Segura underwent arrest at a home in Concepción de Tres Rios. Cedaño is 39, and Segura is 28, investigators said.

Crack cocaine was being fabricated in a bar located on Calle 2 between avenidas 8 and 10, said investigators. In addition to that location, a house on Calle 11 between avenidas 10 and 12 was raided.

Investigators said they confiscated crack rocks at the bar.

The pair are accused of using a group of vendors to distribute crack throughout the downtown area. The investigation has been gong on since April.

Fake musical CDs
result in arrests

Fuerza Pública officers in Puntarenas have arrested two men who now face a charge that they copied copyrighted musical CDs for sale.

The men were arrested on the Paseo de los Turistas in that Pacific seaport. One man, identified by the last name of Murillo and an age of 40, had in his possession eight CDs, and a 28-year-old man with the last name of Montiel had 20, police said.

An intellectual property law in Costa Rica prohibits the sale of pirated disks.

Representatives of international music companies have encourages such police actions.

FTC busts firm
in visa lottery

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has obtained a court order to shut down a business concern that the agency alleges was defrauding consumers attempting to participate in the diversity immigrant visa program. The FTC reported that a firm known as USA Immigration was attempting to charge fees for services provided for free by the U.S. Department of State.

The diversity visa program is administered annually by the State Department under congressional mandate, issuing resident visas to individuals selected by lottery from a pool of qualified applicants. The FTC alleges that USA Immigration and its operators misled consumers into believing their company was affiliated with the U.S. government. 

The application process is free, but the FTC reports that USA Immigration charged customers fees to apply for the opportunity to receive a visa. A U.S. court has issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the company from making misrepresentations and freezing the firm's assets. The two operators were arrested in October and face charges of mail and wire fraud. 

The diversity visa program makes 50,000 permanent resident visas available each year to persons from countries with a low rate of immigration to the United States. 

The press release said any prospective immigrants who applied for consideration in this year's diversity visa program through USA Immigration must re-apply. The registration period for visas to be issued in 2005 is Nov.1 through Dec. 30.

The FTC has previously published warnings to participants in the diversity visa lottery about the fraudulent activity that can occur in connection with the program. 

Powell praises area
after Isthmus visit

HOUSTON, Texas — U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is praising democratic reform in Central America and says the region can substantially benefit from trade liberalization. 

In a recent column in the Houston Chronicle, Powell said he saw considerable progress during his visit last week to Panamá, Nicaragua and Honduras. 

Powell said that democratic and accountable governments are making Central American societies more just and their economies more efficient. But, he warned that the region remains plagued by poverty and corruption. Powell said democratic institutions must be strengthened further to deal with issues like social unrest and the administration of justice. 

The United States and five Central American countries are close to concluding a free trade agreement. Powell said such an accord will help those nations expand and upgrade their economies for a new century.

Additionally, Powell acknowledged Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador for sending troops to Iraq as part of U.S.-led coalition forces.

Costa Rica tourism has been spared more competition for U.S. dollars by Cuba. U.S. congressional negotiators, bowing to White House pressure, have scrapped an effort aimed at lifting the four-decades-old ban on travel to Cuba. 

The House of Representatives and the Senate earlier this year approved a measure that would have barred the use of government money from enforcing the travel ban as part of the Treasury and Transportation Appropriations Bill. 

But congressional negotiators removed the amendment, citing a White House threat to veto the legislation if it contained the Cuba language. 

The travel ban effectively limits tourism travel to the Communist island, and U.S. officials have said they are going to step up enforcement of the ban by cracking down on U.s. citizens who make visits there.

The move by House-Senate negotiators angered Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democratic of North Dakota, one of the chief sponsors of the amendment. He spoke on the Senate floor Thursday. 

Dorgan and other opponents of the travel ban say the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba has not brought democratic change to the Communist-ruled island nation.  President Bush strongly supports maintaining the ban, saying it stops hard currency from propping up a repressive Communist regime. 

Many in the Cuban-American community in Florida have long pressed the Bush administration to take a tougher approach to the government in Havana. Florida could be a crucial state for Bush's re-election bid next year. 

Cuba started to encourage tourism on a grand scale when the Soviet Union and other eastern European Communist regimes collapses from 1989 to 1992. Much of the country’s support came from sweetheart trade deals with Eastern Europe. Now it is the island’s No. 1 hard currency generator.

The proximity of the island, the cost of living there and the quality of the beaches make Cuba a potential competitor for U.s. dollars. 

A new study says that trade wind dust transported from West Africa can have significant implications for climate, atmospheric quality and public health in the Caribbean and the southeastern United States.

Results of the study, reported by researchers of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and published in the Nov. 7 issue of the journal Science, show that trade wind dust transported from West Africa to Barbados in the eastern Caribbean is strongly linked to rainfall patterns in West Africa. The study says decreased rainfall in Africa results in a sharp increase in dust transported across the Atlantic the following year.

Joseph Prospero, director of the administration’s 

The researchers said the study's findings have implications for climate and public health in the Caribbean and south Florida, and future changes in climate could result in significant changes in emissions from Africa and other arid regions that, in turn, could change climate over large areas.

Previous work by Prospero has shown that large quantities of African dust are carried to the southeastern United States every summer.