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President Pacheco Travels to Miami
President Pacheco arrived in Miami yesterday
and is expected to stay until Thursday.
For the first two days of his stay he had no
public functions on his agenda, a spokesperson
telling the press that he will be attending to
private matters.
During his stay he will be speaker at the
17th Conferencia
de la Cuenca del Caribe and will also be
meeting with Florida Governor Jeb Bus, brother
of U.S. President George W. Bush.
Accompanying him is his wife Leila Rodriguez,
Ricardo Toledo, Minister for the Presidency
and presidential protocol
director, Jorge Arce.
An Attractive
Destination
The tourists
who choose Costa Rica for their vacation find a
place that, even though it is not the cheapest in
Central America, offers services and attractions at
affordable prices.
Manuel Carranza, of the Costa Rican Association of
Professionals in Tourism (ACOPROT), admits that
while the prices are not the lowest in the area, the
visitor returns home wholly satisfied with what he
enjoyed in Costa Rica.
The latter fact is confirmed by a survey among
tourists that the Costa Rican Board of Tourism (ICT)
carries out on a regular basis.
On the other hand, Costa Rica remains as the leading
tourist destination in Central America.
Last year, 1.1 million people visited Costa Rica for
leisure; El Salvador was next with 950,000 tourists.
Regarding income, while each visitor spent an
average $970 in Costa Rica, that amount was $360 in
El Salvador.
However, in spite of Costa Rica's positive
performance in tourism, this industry is making
faster progress elsewhere in Central America than
here..
Death in
Childbirth Remains High in Latin America
At least
two Latin American women died every hour last
year from complications during childbirth
caused by poverty and a lack of access to
proper health care, said a recently released
report.
In the region, there were 190 deaths for every
100,000 births last year -- for a total of
22,000 deaths -- compared to an average 12
deaths per 100,000 births in developed
countries, said a report by the Latin American
Center for Perinatology and Human Development,
which belongs to the World Health
Organization.
The report said there had been no significant
decrease in the maternal mortality rate in
Latin America and the Caribbean over the past
four years.
"This is a social injustice that women within
the same country or region, because they live
in poverty that marginalizes them from medical
care ... are more likely to have complications
and die," said Jose Belizan, director of the
center.
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean are
more likely to die from blood loss, infections
and miscarriages that would normally be
considered survivable if they had been given
proper hospital treatment.
More than two out of every five people in the
region live in poverty, a percentage that is
unchanged since 1977, according to U.N.
figures.
Haiti and Bolivia had the highest maternal
mortality rate in the region while Costa
Rica and Trinidad and Tobago registered a
rate closer to that of rich nations.
The United Nation has set a goal of cutting
the Latin American maternal mortality rate in
half by 2010 but Belizan said that was
impossible. "We're not going to achieve that,"
he said.
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100 kg of cocaine
seized in Colombia
Colombian police have
seized 100 kg of cocaine hidden in a container bound
for Spain, anti-narcotics authorities said on
Saturday.
The agents discovered the drug during an inspection
of the container in Buenaventura harbor, in Valle
del Cauca state, 600 km southwest of the capital of
Bogota. The cocaine, worth 4 million US dollars, was
contained in packages inside four sacks.
The container came from the Ecuadorian port of
Guayaquil, and was bound for the Spanish city of
Valencia.
The anti-narcotics authorities did not indicate
whether there were arrests after the confiscation of
the drug in Buenaventura, Colombia's principal
Pacific port.
Colombia, one of the largest drug producers in the
world, supplies much of drugs to the US market. It
produces 850 tons of cocaine a year, accounting for
90 percent of the world's total output.
Two major Canadian
opposition parties agree to merge
A new national political force in Canada has taken
shape Saturday as Canada's Progressive Conservative
Party and the Canadian Alliance, the country's major
opposition party, voted for merger.
On Friday, 96 percent of Alliance members voted in
favor of rejoining the ranks of the Conservatives
they split from 16 years ago.
Despite deep misgivings among some Conservatives
about the merger, 94 percent of party delegates have
voted for the merger, paving the way for the
Conservative Party of Canada to become the new
official opposition.
Both Canadian Alliance leader Stephen Harper and
Conservative Party leader Peter MacKay said the
merger marks a "new era in Canadian politics."
Officials in the two major opposition parties are
hoping a united conservative party will end the
vote-splitting that has cost them seats in the
parliament, especially in the elections in Ontario
Province.
Nevertheless, analysts said the merger is not likely
to form a threat to the ruling Liberal Party in the
near future as the two opposition parties combined
have 78 seats in the parliament, trailing far behind
compared with the Liberal's 171 seats.
Over one million
Italians protest pension reforms in Rome
The unions which
organized Saturday the mass protest in Rome against
the government's pension reforms claimed that over
one million people flooded in from all over the
country to fill the square in front of St. John
Lateran Cathedral.
Three main Italian trade unions, the CGIL, CISL and
UIL, organized three marches from different points
in the city which converged in front of St. John's.
"The government should reflect on the large numbers
taking part in the protest and change it decisions,"
Guglielmo Epifani, the leader of Italy's biggest and
most militant union, the CGIL, said ahead of the
demonstration.
The CGIL, CISL and UIL have warned that the
demonstration could be followed by a second and more
hard-hitting general strike.
The unions are demanding that the government
withdraw its reform plan and reopen negotiations on
the issue with the unions.
Trade unions have vowed to defeat the current plan,
which entails scrapping so-called seniority pensions
(after 35 years at work), raising the pension age to
65 for men and 60 for women, and putting severance
pay pools into pension funds starting in 2008.
In an effort to placate the unions, the government
has said that "seniority" pensions will still be
allowed after 2008 but with penalties.
The government will also offer incentives to people
to work longer, including higher, untaxed take-home
pay.
Starting in 2004, workers who decide to stay on the
job instead of retiring will be allowed to keep all
their pension contributions, raising their gross
salaries by an average of 32.7 percent.
The project was approved by the cabinet on October 3
and is expected to get parliamentary approval by the
end of this month.
But the unions argued that previous pension system
overhauls, in 1992 and 1995, sufficiently boosted
the sustainability of pension spending and accused
the government of lying over the needf or further
reform before 2005.
They also accused the government of trying to ram
its reforms through without adequate consultation.
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