|
|
A.M.
Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday |
 |
| (506) 2223-1327 |
Published Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, in
Vol. 17, No.
237
|
Email us |
 |
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| ||||||||||||||
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for more details |
|
|||
|
San José, Costa
Rica, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, Vol. 17, No.
237
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
Former
president Monge dies at 90
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Former president Luis Alberto Monge Álvarez, 90, died late Tuesday night. The death was confirmed by the Partido Liberación Nacional of which he was a co-founder in 1951.
The U.S. set up air bases in Costa Rica for arms trafficking. There were allegations of cocaine trafficking, too. The country was basically in a state of war with troops stationed on the Nicaraguan border and mines being used to restrict access. A radio station in San José continually blaring anti-Sandinista propaganda. Monge was succeeded by Óscar Arias Sánchez, who adopted a stronger position against the United States. During his administration the country barred White House advisers Oliver North and John M. Poindexter, former ambassador Lewis A. Tambs and C.I.A. station chief Joseph F. Fernandez. Arias also participated in developing a peace treaty among the warring factions. Monge, who was 90, became ill in his Santa Ana home Tuesday night and rescue workers took him to San Juan de Dios Hospital in San José where he died. Despite the hour, there were many social media condolences. Typically a former president is buried with extensive honors from the Catedral Metropolitana.
Budget
passed as lawmakers walk out
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff.
The nation's $8.9 billion national budget for next year received passage Tuesday for the second time in the same way it was approved initially. Nine lawmakers walked out of the evening legislative session to let the budget become approved automatically. Six other lawmakers did not make the session. The budget gained initial approval automatically Sunday during a special legislative session when the quorum was broken. Casa Presidencial quickly issued a statement saying that the budget reduction would harm operation of the Ministerio de Obras Pública y Transportes, the Policía de Control Fiscal, the Policía de Tránsito and the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia. The budget of the Patronato, the child welfare agency was controversial because some in the legislature sought to restore it to the level requested by the executive branch. Frente Amplio said that the reduction was 57 percent of the agency's total budget. The reduction was about 12 billion colons or about $21.8 million, but lawmakers also allocated money from the Patronato to the Ministerio de Seguridad Pública. The budget of the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional also was cut. The walkout Tuesday night was by four members of the Partido Liberación Nacional and three members of the Partido Acción Ciudadana, the same party that elected President Luis Guillermo Solís. The president did not win any friends in the legislature when he presented a proposed budget 12 percent higher than the current year. Casa Presidencial said that the cuts would cause reductions in the operations of the Policía de Control Fiscal, the tax police, and prevent the purchase of new uniforms for the Policía de Tránsito. The cuts also would reduce the work at an asphalt plant run by the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes, it said. Casa Presidencial acknowledged that the cut was just two-tenths of a percent of the entire budget. By providing extra money to the security ministry, lawmakers seemed to ask to remove the pressure to pass a new corporate tax law, which is in the hopper awaiting expedited action. The passage was automatic because the Constitution requires a new budget by Nov. 30 each year. School kids enlisted against corruption By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
The Contraloría General de la República has created two pilot projects aimed at reducing corruption by winning hearts and minds of children. This training was tested at the Escuela Alejandro Rodríguez Rodríguez in Asserí, which has 345 children, according to their report. It is intended to instill in the youth a general intolerance against corruption, encourage them to be more active and less indifferent to these issues and promote a responsible participation as national citizens, said the Contraloría. These exercises are considered model projects and the Ministerio de Educación Pública is cooperating with the Contraloría to implement them at the national level. The chief tenets of the exercises being conducted in long-term experiential as well as creative activities are: efficient use of resources, rectitude, good faith, non-discrimination, and legality. Again, it is all for the purpose of developing ethics and civic virtue among children at an early age. The Contraloría intends to expand this project to include other schools such as the Escuela Roosevelt de Montes de Oca, the Rafael Francisco Osejo at Sabana Sur and at the Salon Comunal Cubujuquí in Heredia Centro. The agency said this will add approximately 1,740 children to the program. The Contraloría is the nation's budget watchdog that has to pass on major contracts.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this
Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Ro Colorado
S.A 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
 |
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
|
San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov.
30, 2016, Vol.
17, No. 237
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Majority
of children are exploited by those close to them, expert
says |
|
|
By Conor Golden
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff The majority of child sexual exploitations comes from the close associates of the victim, according to an expert. She is Dorothy Rozga, the head of an international organization that is an advocate for children. She spoke Tuesday at the opening session of the three-day Congreso sobre Explotación Sexual Comercial de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes. The event featured representatives from the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia, the Fundación Paniamor and the now international End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism organization. The purpose of this congress is to explore ideas and combine organizations together in the fight against the abuse and exploitation of children for sexual purposes, organizers said. The keynote speaker was Mrs. Rozga, who is the executive director of the End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism organization, which covers much more than Asia, and a member of the board of directors for the WePROTECT Global Alliance, an international board of representatives from countries, civil society organizations and the technology industry. Mrs. Rozga addressed the audience of the need to recognize the cultural contexts related to the commercial and sexual exploitation, citing a statistic in her presentation that claimed over 67 percent of all these cases originate from the child’s circle of trust, such as family members, coaches, teachers, and neighbors. The globalization of producing child sex abuse via a live broadcast across continents with the production being ordered in one, the filming done in another, and the viewing being done in a third location is presenting a rising challenge for governments and other groups to act against it, she said. Ms. Rozga spoke of a young victim she called María, who appeared in one of the international porno movies. She said her organization was trying to track down the girl but with little success, discussed how hard it is to acquire details of how many are abused because “her age silences her, and she will further be silenced by shame, stigma, and fear.” |
 A.M. Costa
Rica/Conor Golden
Mrs. Rozga gives her opinions on sex
exploitation.In her presentation, Mrs. Rozga brought in statistics from the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on the number of uploads of child pornography and abuse, the International Police Agency database on the problem, and from INHOPE: The International Association of Internet Hotlines. The point of all this data was to exhort on the need for greater collaboration at the grassroots, governmental, international, and business levels to combat this problem. To that end, her main point was the handing out and explanation of a document designed by the WePROTECT organization illustrating 21 general requirements needed from the categories they defined as: Policy and governance, criminal justice, victim, societal, industry, and media/communications. Its intent, the organization claims, is to help a country or a group identify any potential gaps they may have in their policies or efforts and then fill those in with the solutions provided on the page. The congress will continue to meet today and tomorrow from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. at the Aurola Holiday Inn with workshops and other presentations as well as gatherings related to discussing these international, geopolitical combinations of issues. |
| Woman
gets 15 years for elaborate tourism insurance fraud |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
For the first time in the history of the Instituto Nacional de Seguros, someone has been convicted of a very complex fraud. That is what the Fiscalía de Fraudes said Tuesday. The prosecutor’s office for fraud said a judicial penal has sentenced Luz Mercedes Rojas Meneses to 15 years in prison after she was found guilty of felony-level fraud, attempt at major fraud, 140 counts of forging documents and another 140 counts of using forged documents. The Tribunal Penal del I Circuito Judicial of San José issued the sentence. Ms. Rojas was also obligated to reimburse the Instituto Nacional de Seguros $42,000 to compensate for the damages caused by her crimes. The case began in late November of 2007 when Ms. Rojas purchased a traveler’s insurance policy at the Juan Santamaría airport for a trip to Lima, Perú. Returning back from this trip, she filed an extended claim with the Instituto saying that she had lost consciousness for three days at the hotel where she was |
staying
and had to be transferred to a private clinic. To prove her case, she presented extensive documentation that included receipts of payments and of the extensive medical care she allegedly received. There was one problem with all of this however: the documents were forgeries, prosecutors said. The insurance institute, not realizing this at the time, compensated her $41,744.43 benefit. In March of 2009, Ms. Rojas again submitted another claim to the insurance institute for around $90,000 in order to receive compensation for an alleged accident she had while on another trip to Lima. She claimed she was involved in a hit-and-run accident where she was again transferred to the same clinic as the first time. This time, Ms. Rojas claimed she contacted former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, whom she said was her friend, who provided her emergency care and a flight back from Perú to Costa Rica. The prosecutor’s office said it was able to clearly demonstrate however, in cooperation with the Venezuelan Embassy, that she never used any sort of aircraft originating from that country. |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
 |
| |
 |
| |
 |
| |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this Web site
are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.
2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page |
|
San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov.
30, 2016, Vol.
17, No. 237
|
||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Costa
Rica stock fraudster had links to associate of Trump's
adviser |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Controversial Trump ally Steve Bannon was involved briefly with a firm that sought help from Jonathan Curshen and his Red Sea Management in Costa Rica. Bannon, the Breitbart News chairman, has been picked by Donald Trump to be his chief White House strategist. Before entering the online journalism business, Bannon was involved with penny stock promotions, including one involving SinoFresh Healthcare, Inc., a maker of homeopathic nasal sprays, according to the Washington, D.C.,-based Politico. Bannon was on the firm's board of directors in 2004 when a court battle developed over stock ownership and corporation control. The Securities and Exchange eventually withdrew stock registration from the firm, long after Bannon left. During the ownership dispute, an associate, another board member sought help from Curshen to set up an offshore corporation to hold stock, said Politico. Red Sea Management was in Edificio Colón in San José. The U.S. Justice Department has identified the firm as a money |
laundering
hub that established bank accounts and brokerage accounts
in the United States and Canada under false pretenses and
through nominee owners. In May 2012 Curshen and an associate, were convicted by a jury of conspiracy to commit bank, wire and securities fraud. Curshen was also convicted of two counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, said the Justice Department. Last year Curshen was back in court challenging his conviction and an order to make restitution. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to turn over $7.3 million. Curshen was a well-known financial figure in Costa Rica and his firm employed a lot of expats who sold stock mostly to investors in North America. He also was an honorary consul for a small Caribbean nation. He was convicted in what is known as a pump and dump scheme involving the shares of a firm called CO2 Tech. Promoters run up the value of a stock and then unload it at the time when they can maximize profits. There is no indication that Bannon was involved in this fraud. |
Here's reasonable
medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
|
A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
 |
|
|
San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov.
30, 2016, Vol.
17, No. 237
|
|||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
|
|
for president-elect's cabinet By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump made his selections for two more cabinet posts Tuesday. Included was an outspoken foe of Obamacare. Trump named Rep. Tom Price, a Georgia Republican, as his secretary of Health and Human Services. Trump says Price will lead his administration's efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Health Care Act. "Price, a renowned physician, has earned a reputation for being a tireless problem-solver and the go-to-expert on health care policy, making him an ideal choice to serve in this capacity," Trump said. Price is chairman of the House Budget Committee and was an orthopedic surgeon before entering politics. He says he wants a health care system that works for patients, families and doctors and leads the world in curing and preventing sickness. Trump made getting rid of Obamacare one of his major campaign themes, constantly referring to one of Obama's proudest achievements as an expensive disaster. But neither Trump or other Republican critics have spelled out what they want to put in its place. Trump has said he wants to keep two of Obamacare's most popular provisions, barring insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and letting children stay on their parents' policies until they are 26 years old. Also Tuesday, Trump named former Labor secretary Elaine Chao to head the Department of Transportation. "Secretary Chao's extensive record of strong leadership and her expertise are invaluable assets in our mission to rebuild our infrastructure in a fiscally responsible manner," he said. Ms. Chao was born in Taiwan and was labor secretary under president George W. Bush. She was the first Asian-born woman ever to serve in a U.S. president's cabinet. Carrier says it will not send 1,000 of its jobs to México By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Carrier Corp. has reached a deal with president-elect Donald Trump to cancel plans to move about 1,000 furnace plant jobs from the Midwestern state of Indiana to México. The company, which makes heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and refrigeration equipment, said Tuesday in a Twitter message that it was pleased to have reached a deal and that details would be announced later. A Trump transition team official said the president-elect and vice president-elect Mike Pence, who is governor of Indiana, would talk more about the agreement when they meet Thursday with Carrier officials. It was unclear whether Carrier's parent company, United Technologies, would go through with plans to move jobs from a separate plant to Mexico. Trump campaigned on promises to keep manufacturing jobs from moving overseas. He had threatened to impose heavy tariffs if companies who moved try to sell their products to U.S. consumers. He blamed such trade deals as the North American Free Trade Agreement for giving companies financial incentives to set up factories overseas. Would-be terrorist admits his desire to slay people By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A 20-year-old North Carolina man has pleaded guilty to attempting to commit an act of international terrorism at the encouragement of the Islamic State group. Federal prosecutors said Justin N. Sullivan intended to use an assault rifle equipped with a silencer and loaded with hollow-point bullets to gun down hundreds of people in North Carolina and Virginia to prove his allegiance to Islamic State extremists. Sullivan, whose plot unraveled when he confided in an undercover FBI agent, admitted his guilt in court Tuesday in Asheville, North Carolina, and said he had agreed to accept a sentence of life in prison. Sullivan admitted he conspired with Junaid Hussain, a senior member of Islamic State responsible for online recruitment, U.S. officials said. There were frequent contacts between the American, who was a teenager at the time, and Hussain before federal agents moved in to arrest Sullivan in June of last year. Hussain, believed to be the third highest-ranking member of IS, was killed in an airstrike in Syria in August 2015, U.S. officials said. Court records said Sullivan discussed his attack plan with an undercover FBI agent he was trying to recruit. The young American had researched online how to manufacture firearm silencers, and he enlisted his supposed accomplice to build silencers they could use in an attack. Aiming for maximum casualties, Sullivan supposedly said he hoped to kill up to 1,000 people with automatic-rifle fire at a club, concert hall or bar. Hussain, Sullivan's Islamic State controller, asked him to be sure to record a video of the attack, which Sullivan promised to do. The defendant admitted in court documents to his deep involvement in every aspect of his attack plot. He and the undercover agent were to have attended gun shows in the North Carolina-Virginia area on June 20 or 21, 2015, where they hoped to purchase automatic rifles. However, on June 19, law-enforcement agents arrested Sullivan at his parents' home, where they also recovered a gun silencer and other items related to the case. U.S. officials said Sullivan was suspected of killing a neighbor, John Bailey Clark, in December 2014. Forensic testing showed the gun that killed Clark was owned by Sullivan's father. The son said later that he had stolen the weapon and hidden it beneath the family home. Sullivan did not admit that he killed Clark, but prosecutors said they would present further evidence before he is sentenced. Court documents also showed that Sullivan's parents were suspicious about his activities and that he intended to have them killed by the undercover FBI agent, in return for compensation, so they could not interfere with his attack plans. Women business leaders send entrepreneur plea to president By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Actress Jessica Alba is a supporter. So is the president and CEO of Mastercard. The co-founder of AOL and the CTO of Estee Lauder are also on board. What do they all have in common? They are among the 85 American business leaders and startup founders who have signed their names to an open letter addressed to the next U.S. president. The letter outlines policy recommendations designed to drive and foster female entrepreneurship in the U.S., including increasing access to capital, expanding entry into local and global markets, and streamlining government processes for entrepreneurs seeking to get their businesses up and running. According to the group of signees, there is a great deal of money potentially at stake, $30 billion to be exact. The letter cites a McKinsey Global Institute study which found the United States' GDP could rise by that amount if women and men contributed equally to entrepreneurship efforts. But gender inequalities in society and the workplace have reduced women's clout and, as a result, their economic contributions, they said. "I always think about the venture funding gap, but there's really a gap in the whole cycle," said Elizabeth Gore, who spearheaded the letter and is an entrepreneur-in-residence at computer-maker Dell. "Women need bridge loans. They need payment cycles that are not 90 days. They need to be paid as sub-contractors within 30 days … so this notion of access to capital is much bigger than I actually perceived." The letter was sent November first to both Hillary Clinton and president-elect Donald Trump, a week before participants knew who would become the next president. Of the 85 signees, 63 are female CEOs and startup founders, including Lisa Price of Carol's Daughter, Melanie Whelan of SoulCycle and Sarah Kauss of S'well Bottle. Dengue vaccine has problems for some, report concludes By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The World Health Organization is continuing to assess the risks and benefits of the first vaccine developed to prevent dengue fever. A study, published in September, concluded that the vaccine, called Dengvaxia, could have a positive impact in regions where there is a high incidence of dengue, preventing one in five hospitalizations, but could be problematic in other areas. A new report, commissioned by World Health and spearheaded by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, refined that conclusion. Researchers used mathematical models to assess data from human trials of Dengvaxia involving some 30,000 people around the world. According to the new report, the vaccine could potentially reduce the incidence of dengue fever between 6 percent and 25 percent in countries with moderate to high transmission rates, where at least 50 percent of children get infected for the first time by their ninth birthday. Investigators concluded a policy of routinely vaccinating 80 percent of 9-year-olds is needed to realize the reduction in cases. But in places where the disease is uncommon, affecting 10 percent of the population or less, Dengvaxia could cause severe illness and hospitalization in individuals who contract dengue for the first time after being vaccinated. Approximately half of the world's population is at risk for contracting dengue, a mosquito-borne illness that can cause high fever, joint pain, bleeding and potentially, death by dengue shock syndrome. A person can potentially be infected by four different strains of the virus, and can be infected more than once. A second infection is generally the worst. In people who have been infected the first time, the vaccine may prevent a serious second infection. But in those who have never been infected and are vaccinated, as in low burden countries, the vaccine can act like a silent, first infection, making individuals very sick should they actually become infected. Fake news is getting blame for Trump election victory By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A common narrative that emerged during this year's presidential race was that of a country divided, which experts and pundits say explains the rise and stunning electoral victory of Republican Donald Trump over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. The other story of 2016 is the rise of so-called fake news and its spike on social media outlets. Facebook, in particular, has come under fire, having surpassed Google as the biggest driver of audience on all social media platforms. This week, Trump again invited controversy by tweeting out a claim of voter fraud during the November election that he says denied him the popular vote without citing any evidence. The fake news phenomenon has rattled the web, not to mention mainstream journalists, scholars and ordinary users of social media, many of whom are tweeting and writing op-ed columns, news stories and guides on how to spot inaccurate news stories and fake news Web sites. All this has put unprecedented pressure on Facebook, where, according to an analysis by Buzzfeed News, fake election stories generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election articles from 19 major news outlets in the final three months of the election campaign. The heat on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg prompted the company to tweak its algorithm to weed out inaccurate information, and later, as the outcry grew, publicly outline steps the company is taking to reduce what Zuckerberg called misinformation. He prefaced his post with a familiar caveat: "We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties." There are legitimate sites, journalists and scholars who are paying attention to the prevalence of fake news. Among them: Snopes.com, the Columbia Journalism Review, The Poynter Institute and Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication and media at Merrimack University, who wrote a Google document with tips on how to spot fake news sites or inaccurate news stories for her students. According to these fact-checkers, internet users must first understand what fake news is and is not. “We classify 'fake news' as specifically web sites that publish information that's entirely fabricated," said Kim LaCapria, content manager for Snopes.com, a Web site that tracks misinformation. And that conflation of what information can accurately be described as fake or misleading or maybe only partially true, coupled with the warp speed of digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter, have created a perfect storm of confusion, said a University of Connecticut philosophy professor and author, Michael Lynch. Ms. LaCapria, like Lynch, also has seen first-hand how branding everything that is verifiably false 'fake news' isn’t really what is happening on social media. “One long-circulating rumor held that Hillary Clinton was fired from the Watergate investigation for lying,” Ms. LaCapria said. Ms. LaCapria points out distorted or false information has existed for a long time. “This is the first real social media election we’ve ever experienced. And we had two social media candidates: Sanders and Trump,” she said, “now that people are upset about Trump, they're looking at social media as a culprit. And it may be a mitigating factor, but this has all definitely been affecting politics hugely for many years.” The Poynter Institute’s Alexios Mantzarlis, who leads the International Fact-Checking Network, agrees that there is a bit too much angst over fake news. “Politicians distorting the truth isn't a new phenomenon. Voters choosing politicians based on emotions rather than facts is not a new phenomenon,” Mantzarlis said in an email. “Moreover, we know from research that fact-checking can change readers' minds." For social media companies like Twitter and the rest, the ability to weed out false information or hate speech can be daunting, no matter how savvy their back-end web engineers may be. Facebook in essence acknowledged that recoding its algorithm wasn’t enough, when Zuckerberg posted his latest statement about the spreading of misinformation on his platform. In terms of fixes, Mantzarlis puts the burden on users. “For one, headline writers could avoid repeating a baseless claim without any indication that it is unfounded.” Mantzarlis also argues that Facebook will need to hire some human beings to vet content in tandem with creating smarter back-end technology. “The algorithm itself will have to change … to recognize that fake news, and the pages that consistently post them, to get a reduced reach on News Feed,” he said of the Facebook feature, adding that this tack will hit fake news purveyors where it hurts the most. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
|
San José, Costa
Rica, Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 237
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|||
|
Traffickers threatening
newspaper again
Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Drug dealers once again are threatening the weekly newspaper Zeta, the feisty investigative publication in Tijuana, México. The Inter American Press Association Tuesday urged Mexico's authorities to take firmly and urgently measures to protect the staff of the weekly, who said they have received threats from drug traffickers in reprisal for a report on their criminal activities. Friday Zeta, based in Tijuana, in the Mexican state of Baja California, published information and 10 photographs on the front page of its recent issue on members of organized crime, mostly belonging to the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, under investigation for various alleged offenses. Several hours later officers of the Baja California security force warned the Zeta editors that one of the drug trafficker chiefs was understood to have ordered their offices to be shot up Sunday in retaliation for the publication of a photo of him and other members of the gang. However, it was learned that the attack might have been postponed. Roberto Rock, urged the government to deal firmly and urgently with this matter through its system of local protection, taking precautionary measures so as to ensure the safety of all the weekly's staff. He is chairman of the press association's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information. Rock, editor of La Silla Rota in Mexico City, called Zeta "a courageous publication that for decades has been navigating the dangers facing the practice of journalism" and added that "it has been the target of several attacks," a reference to the murder of two of its joint editors, Héctor Féliz Miranda in 1988 and Francisco Javier Ortiz in 2004. An attack upon one of its founders, Jesús Blancornelas, in 1997 critically injured him and killed his bodyguard. Since its launch in 1980 Zeta has been a model of independent journalism in the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico. No oxcart parade for this year By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The parade of oxcarts and their drivers, suspended because of Hurricane Otto Sunday, will not be rescheduled, the Municipalidad de San José said Tuesday. The parade that features the lumbering oxen or bueyes is generally considered the unofficial start of the holiday season. There had been hopes to reschedule the event for another Sunday. More than 300 wagons and carts were expected for the parade, which is a big tourism draw. |
| Costa
Rican
News |
AMCostaRicaArchives.com |
Retire NOW
in Costa Rica |
CostaRicaReport.com |
| Fine
Dining
in
Costa Rica |
The
CAFTA Report |
Fish
fabulous Costa Rica |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
| From Page 7: Dying man runs marathon with oxygen tank By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A terminal case of pulmonary fibrosis wasn’t enough to keep Evans Wilson from finishing a marathon. Wilson, 63, finished the Seattle Marathon in just under 11 hours Sunday, and toted an oxygen tank the entire way. He said he wanted to raise awareness of the disease as well as to raise up to $50,000 for research into a potential cure. His time was three hours less than his goal of 14 hours. The former runner, who was diagnosed with the debilitating lung disease at age 57, told the Seattle ABC TV affiliate KOMO that he felt pretty good after the effort. |
