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| A.M. Costa Rica Second newspage |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 257 | |||||||||
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 A.M. Costa Rica/Manuel
Ramírez Corrales
Body of unlucky motorist awaits investigationMotorcyclist avoids hitting
dog, but loses control and dies By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A 27-year-old man Wednesday night became another motorist who will not see the new year. The man, identified as Marco Francisco Sanabria Alvarado, was on his motorcycle about 11:15 p.m. when a dog entered his lane on the Circumvalación in San Sebastián in south San José. The motorist tried to avoid hitting the dog, lost control and flew about 100 feet through the air, said witnesses. He was dead when rescue workers arrived. Meanwhile, tránsito officers and even the Fuerza Pública have begun an effort to cut down on holiday deaths. Since Tuesday police have pulled 45 vehicles off the highway for failing to have various permits. They also have detained a number of undocumented foreigners. The Fuerza Pública and the Policía de Tránsito started setting up at least eight checkpoints around the country Wednesday night. The roving checkpoints will be in operation until Jan. 6, officials said. Police are on the lookout for persons driving under the influence. They detained nearly a dozen drivers who were participants or spectators of the Tuesday tope or horse parade. Now police are buckling down for the New Year's holiday. they also have to cope with the heavy traffic from the beaches and other tourist points Monday as Central Valley residents return home. Weather expected to warm slowly and winds diminish By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The nation's weather experts say a change for the better is in the works. The nation has experienced a front that created cold conditions for Costa Ricans. But the effect of this front is expected to diminish today as will the velocity of the winds, said the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional. Overnight minimum temperatures, which have been as low as 15 to 17 C. (about 59 to 63 F.) in the Central Valley are expected to climb slowly to normal seasonal levels. The bad news is that the cold front brought heavy rain to some sections of Costa Rica. The weather institute issued a warning for residents to be on the alert for flooding and landslides. Some areas in the northern zone received heavy rain.
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 257 | |||||||||
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| Cuba
unleashes a broadside of criticism against Oscar Arias |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Óscar Arias Sánchez has emerged as the man the Cuban leadership loves to hate. In the latest volley, the Cuban state-run daily Granma criticized Arias for comparing President Fidel Castro to late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. In an interview last week, Arias said the two leaders had different ideologies, but both were "savage, brutal and bloody," according to news agencies. Granma said Arias is a "vulgar mercenary" who supports U.S. plans to annex the Communist island nation. The Cuban ministry said the declarations against the country are not the first and will not be the last. It also berated Arias for being critical of some of the new leftist governments that have been elected in the Western Hemisphere. The ministry said Arias called some of the leaders irresponsible, demagogues and charlatans who play with the aspirations of the people. Cuba has long been at odds with Arias because he supports the Central American free trade treaty with the United States. Much of what the Cubans have said seem to have been instigated by Costa Ricans who oppose Arias and the trade treaty. In the statement that smacks of conspiracy theories the ministry outlined what it considered proof of complicity by Arias with the United States: March 11: President George Bush congratulated Arias for |
being elected
and said that Arias can help the United States with the new panorama in
Latin America. Aug. 28: Arias published an article "La Hora de la Democracia en Cuba" that duplicated statements made five days previous by Thomas Shannon, U.S. undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. Sept. 23 Arias met with John Maisto, U.S. ambassador at the Organization of American States to finalize an anti-Cuban agenda to be delivered at the Iberoamerican summit in Montevideo, although Arias eventually did not dare to deliver it. Dec. 6: Arias talked about the case of Cuba with President Bush in the White House and then expressed his desire to see democracy restored to the island after 47 years. Arias does not have the moral character to criticize Cuba because he used his influence to modify the Costa Rican Constitution so he could be reelected president, said the Cuban statement. And he only was elected with 25 percent of the popular vote, it said. Arias is a vain and mediocre person who should not be taken seriously, the statement said. There was no immediate reaction to the statement here, although in the past Arias has usually let the foreign ministry here reply. Arias, a winner of the Nobel Prize for helping to restore peace in Central American in the 1980s, has an international reputation, which may be why the Cubans were stung so much by his comments. |
| Suspect
caught in stickup of microbus containing tourists |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Tourists in another microbus have been held up by a gunman, but this time police officers caught a suspect. The details are unclear, but the the incident happened Monday on a bridge over the Río Pacuare near Siquirres, said the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública. A man with a gun commandeered a microbus containing tourists. He held them at gunpoint and took their valuables, said the ministry. The suspect has the last names of Williams Arroyo, said officers. The manner in which he was detained is unclear, too, but officers said they recovered a bag containing possessions of the tourists and a .22-caliber revolver. Industry employees have been complaining for months |
about holdups involving microbuses
containing tourists. Some of the stickups happened near San José
on the Autopista General Cañas. Industry sources said there were at least 12 such holdups, including one where a German tourist was pistol-whipped. Typically gunmen in a car cut off a bus on a highway or an exit ramp. Jorge Rojas, director of the Judicial Investigating Organization, said that his agency had reports on six such incidents and denied suggestions that investigators hushed up the cases to avoid hurting tourism. Meanwhile at least 70 scheduled public buses have been the target of bandits, including one case Dec. 19 where a 22-year-old Pavas woman was shot in the head and killed by a gunman near Multiplaza Mall in Escazú. |
| New
tourism police units take to the field at key points |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The new tourism police have made their debut at points around the country. They are distinctive in their blue pants, white shirts and insignias of the Fuerza Pública and the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo. The tourism units are in the Plaza de la Cultura, certain bus stops and the Coca Cola terminal in San José as well as tourist points in Puntarenas, Alajuela, San Carlos, Guanacaste, and Limón, said the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública. In all 122 officers, already Fuerza Pública members, |
adopted the new responsibilities
last week. Each unit of the Policía Turística have two officers designated to keep track of criminal trends in their areas and provide this information to the Judicial Investigating Organization, embassies and statistical units of law enforcement, the ministry said. The officers are traveling on motorcycles and bikes. Most have some abilities in English. Among other duties the offices distribute pamphlets to tourists telling them how to protect themselves and their belongings. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
| A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 257 | |||||||||
| Secret
Service agents went bonkers over all those rifles |
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By Jay Brodell
editor of A.M. Costa Rica U.S. presidents take some terrific chances and go to some dangerous places, but Gerald Ford really had the U.S. Secret Service in a sweat when he ventured into rural Colorado in 1974. Ford, who died Tuesday, survived two assassination attempts in 1975. But the year before he planned a campaign stop in Grand Junction, Colorado, with U.S. Sen. Peter H. Dominick, who was seeking reelection. As is routine, the Secret Service, which has the job of protecting the president, sent an advance team to scope out the town. The time happened to be deer season. "Every pickup has a high-powered rifle with a scope hanging in the rear window," an agent was heard telling superiors in Washington from his hotel phone. Soon more agents flooded into the city. These were simpler days when hunting was universally lauded and no one would dare steal a man's rifle from his pickup rack. This laid-back attitude was lost on the Secret Service. They set up a security plan as if the president was going into Beirut. And agents were tense the whole time Ford was on public display at a local baseball stadium. The attitude of the townspeople was "Who would want to kill Gerald Ford?" They got their answer a year later when Lynette Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson who was known as "Squeaky," tried to plug him with a .45-caliber bullet when he visited Sacramento, California. Agents jumped her and later found she failed to load the pistol properly. A little more than two weeks later in San Francisco, California, a woman identified as Sara Jane Moore actually got a shot off but a former Marine standing nearby reacted at the sight of the weapon and pushed her gun arm into the air. But that was California. Ford retreated for his vacations to Colorado and stayed at a borrowed home in the ski town of Beaver Creek near Vail. Ford's Air Force One landed at the Grand Junction airport each time and, |
 White House photo
The portrait of former President Gerald R. Ford is draped with
a black cloth in the Cross Hall of the White House Wednesday. The
portrait was painted by artist Everett Raymond Kinstler in 1977.depending on the weather, he took a limo or a Marine helicopter into the Colorado Rockies. Secret Service agents became more comfortable in the western Colorado town, and Ford even worked the airport crowd on a couple of visits. A few of the agents also slipped away later to go deer hunting. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Dec. 28, 2006, Vol. 6, No. 257 | ||||||
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