Pay dispute leaves Canadian
shot three times in Jacó


A former security guard, upset about his payoff, shot a Canadian hotel administrator in Jacó Thursday morning.

The Judicial Investigating Organization identified the victim by the last name of Hubert. They said he was shot three times in different parts of the body.

They said that the secruity guard showed up at the hotel and expected to get his severence pay but that the administrator denied the man the money because the guard could not produce proper identification. The hotel is in the Quebrada Seca section of Jacó.

The guard fled after the shooting and still was being sought Thursday night.

Agents said that according to the gaurd's contract he had to present adequate identification.

Two police officers die
in separate vehicle mishaps


Two police officers, one in the Fuerza Pública and the other in the Policía de Tránsito, died overnight in separate accidents.

The Fuerza Pública officer was Emmanuel Gerardo Quirós Navarro, 24, who was thrown from a police patrol vehicle when it hit a truck on the Bernardo Soto highway a few miles west of the Juan Santamaría airport. Another officer was hurt.

The Judicial Investigating Organization said that Quirós was thrown from the vehicle on impact and was run off by another vehicle. He was assigned to the La Garita substation and was just getting off work when the mishap took place.

The Tránsito officer was identified by the last names of Dinarte Vega. He was 51 and on his day off when he was involved in a crash in Santa Cruz, Guanacaste.  He was at the wheel of a vehicle that collided headon with another in oncoming traffic when he tried to pass a slower car, said traffic policemen.


Foreclosures and job losses
dominate U.S. economic news


Rising home foreclosures and continuing elevated job losses dominated a mostly-somber batch of U.S. economic data Thursday.

It was a rash of home mortgage defaults in the United States that helped precipitate last year's financial meltdown and a global credit squeeze that pushed the United States into the deepest and longest recession of the post-World War II era. Economists say stabilization of homeowners' finances and an overall recovery of America's battered housing industry will be a key to a sustained economic recovery.

Wednesday brought news that new home construction fell unexpectedly last month, reflecting continued softness in the U.S. housing sector and concerns about expiring federal subsidies for first-time homebuyers.

Now, a private group reports that the proportion of American homeowners who are behind on mortgage payments or in foreclosure continues to rise, reaching a record-high for the ninth consecutive quarter.

In 2007 and 2008, unscrupulous lending to borrowers with poor credit was blamed for most foreclosures. Currently, a growing proportion of defaults stems from homeowners with solid financial histories who have lost their jobs. That, according to Jay Brinkman, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association which compiled the report.

"Clearly, the results have been driven by the changes in employment," he said. "We have had about a 5.5 million increase in the number of unemployed in the country over the last year."

The president of the trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance, Guy Cecala, agrees. "Unemployment over 10 percent is creating a great hardship for a lot of borrowers, and that is clearly showing up in the  numbers," he said.

If foreclosures are tied to employment, U.S. job losses are holding steady at an elevated level. The Labor Department reports 505,000 newly-laid off Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, virtually identical to the previous week's total.

On a more positive note, a gauge of future U.S. economic activity continues to rise. The New York-based Conference Board's index of leading economic indicators edged up .3 percent in October. Although an improvement, the rise was less than most economists had anticipated.