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updated by 7:00 a.m. CST each day
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Avenida Segunda To
Get a Face Lift
As part of
the project to rejuvenate the downtown core, the
Municipality of San José has asked that all
merchants along the Avenida Segunda strip - the main
west to east artery that passes through San José -
to paint they store fronts.
To that end, it has negotiated with a paint supplier
for a 40% discount for the merchants.
The area affected is from the Hospital San Juan de
Dios to the Museo Nacional (National Museum).
The plan is to beautify the strip with new store
faces, signs and the installation of new street
lamps.
The Compañania Nacional de Fuerza y Luz (CNFL) - a
part of ICE - is well into it's program to bury all
overheard wires in the downtown core.
The project is a 2 and a half year project that
still has a ways to go before it's completion.
As to the Avenida Segunda merchants, the
Municipality will take a tough stand on those
merchants who won't comply. It plans to fine the
merchant a 750 colones fine for each square meter of
store front, every three months of non-compliance.
Municipal authorities say they have the necessary
power in the present municipal code to levy the
fines and have them enforced.
Venezuela's Chavez Warns Costa Rica on 'Coup Plot'
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Sunday accused Costa Rican government officials of backing his opponents in an alleged coup plot from San Jose to topple his leftist government.
Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, in September cut off crude supplies to the Dominican Republic during a diplomatic dispute over similar vague charges Chavez made against the government of President Hipolito Mejia.
Chavez, a fiery, outspoken former army paratrooper who often denounces conspiracies against him, did not provide details about how Costa Rican officials were involved.
"I have information that there are sectors of the Costa Rican government that are supporting these coup mongers in San Jose, giving them support, giving them security, giving them resources," the president said.
"If Costa Rica's government takes the same attitude and allows conspiracies against Venezuela from San Jose then Venezuela won't sit back with its arms crossed," he said in his regular Sunday television broadcast.
Venezuela had been supplying the Dominican Republic with more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day -- more than half of its oil needs -- under the regional San Jose trade agreement. Costa Rica is part of the same accord.
Costa Rica earlier this year granted political asylum to Carlos Ortega, a firebrand Venezuelan union boss who led a crippling opposition strike in December and January that failed to topple Chavez.
Chavez, who also survived a brief coup in April last year, on Sunday played an unspecific audio tape he said was a recording of Ortega in San
Jose and another opposition leader talking over details of plans to destabilize his government.
Since he was first elected in 1998, Chavez has battled a determined campaign from opponents who accuse him of driving Venezuela into economic and political chaos. He brands them elites trying to scuttle his populist reforms for the poor.
His opponents hope to challenge Chavez at the ballot box with a referendum next year.
Venezuela suspended oil shipments to the Dominican Republic and recalled its ambassador in September after accusing a former Venezuelan president and oil traders of plotting against Chavez from Santo Domingo.
The Dominican Republic dismissed the allegations and Venezuelan officials last week held talks on smoothing over the spat and restoring oil supplies to the Caribbean island.
U.S. Campaigning for Treaty Vs. Cloning
The United States is campaigning for a General Assembly vote on a resolution calling for a treaty to ban all forms of human cloning, but 23 countries are opposed and Islamic nations want a two-year delay.
U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte sent letters to ambassadors from about 100 countries that support a total ban, saying a delay would be "extremely unfortunate" and urging them to adopt the resolution when it comes up for a vote Thursday in the General Assembly's legal committee.
"There is a need to act now to confront the emerging threat of human cloning," Negroponte said, appealing to the ambassadors to vote against any motion to delay the resolution, which was sponsored by Costa Rica.
The cloning issue has deeply divided the 19 1-
nation General Assembly, which traditionally seeks
to reach a consensus on new treaties to generate the
most support.
A rival resolution introduced by Belgium and
co-sponsored by 23 countries including France,
Germany, Britain, China and Japan, calls for a ban
only on cloning to produce babies, leaving the
question of human cloning for research and medical
experiments to individual countries.
U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Cunningham said
there was a fundamental difference of
principle.
"Our view, and the view of the hundred or so
supporters of the Costa Rican resolution is that
it's a question of principle that the ban that we
should be working on is total — and should cover
both kinds of cloning," he said in an interview
Friday.
The Costa Rican resolution would set up a working group to start drafting a treaty, and would establish the goal of a total ban on human cloning. It would not ban non-human cloning.
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21st Havana International Exposition opens
The 21st Havana International Exposition opened here on Sunday, attracting about 1,300 enterprises from over 50 countries and regions throughout the world.
At the opening ceremony at the Cuban exposition center, the secretary of the executive committee of the Cuban Council of Ministers, Carlos Lage Davila, said the participation of so many foreign companies in the exposition showed that the economic and trade blockade the United States has imposed on Cuba for the past 40 years is "unreasonable."
About 71 companies from 17 US states participated in the exposition, bringing forth agricultural and livestock products such as rice, fruit juices and meat.
A businessman from California said that all US merchants hope to take the opportunity to have a good display of their products so that more US products could be exported to Cuba.
The Havana international exposition, since its inauguration in 1983, has become one of the most important trade fairs in Latin American and Caribbean region.
U.S. split on Bush, paper says
A latest poll has shown that
the Americans are again split on their President George
W. Bush who, though, has enjoyed a strong support among the populace since
the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
If the 2004 presidential election were being held on the day the poll was conducted, 48 percent of those surveyed said
they vote for Bush, while 47 percent would vote for unnamed
Democratic nominee, with 5 percent saying they do not know, according to anew Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The United States is once again a 50-50 nation, shaped bypartisan divisions as deep as ever that stand between
President Bush and reelection, the Washington Post reported Sunday. Republican supporters for Bush see him as strong and
decisive, a man of good character and moral convictions, while
Democrats regard him as a man who, at home and abroad, is leading
the country in the wrong direction, the paper said.
Bush has enjoyed high prestige in the wake of terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but has lost ground since the mid-term
election last year, as doubts about the US mission in Iraq and
continuing anxieties about the job prospects are mounting in the country.
Californian evacuees begin returning home after devastating fires
Anxious and sad, US residents displaced by raging wildfires in southern California began returning to their devastated communities Sunday as cooler
weather helped firefighters control most of the blazes.
About 10 wildfires, some of them merging in its course of destruction, have killed about 20 people, destroyed 3,400 homes and burned about 750,000 acres (about 30,000 hectares) of forest. This was the worst natural disaster in southern California, whose damage was estimated at between 2 to 12 billion dollars.
The cooler weather that swept across southern California since Thursday with rain, snow and nearly freezing temperatures and helped firefighters conquer the raging blazes with rapid speed.
In Upper Waterman Canyon on the edge of the San Bernardino mountains, about 80 miles (128 kilometers) east of Los Angeles, some residents returned home to survey the damages caused by a wildfire that started Oct. 25 and scorched nearly 100,000 acres (about 40,000 hectares) of forest. In the community of 66 homes
and a seasonal fire station, all but eight of those homes and the
fire station were destroyed.
Some firefighters were pulled from the San Bernardino
mountains Sunday and began to head to home, said US Forest Service
spokesman Bob Narus, although he couldn't say exactly how many.
In San Diego County, which suffered the worst damage from firestorms in the past week, firefighters were expected to begin leaving after 10 days of desperate firefighting, said California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Barb
Daskoski.
More than 15,000 evacuees of the Big Bear Valley in San Bernardino County were also given the
green light to return home Sunday after firefighters created a firebreak zone around the resort city, where all residents were ordered to evacuate last Thursday.
Big Bear City Fire chief Dana Van Luven said the old fire that threatened Big Bear over the weekend was 72 percent contained Sunday. "The threat is still very real, but we are confident we can hold it off," he said.
Firefighters across the region took advantage of the weather
to build firebreaks near communities that could be threatened again next week with the expected return of hot Santa Ana winds.
In San Diego County, the cedar fire -- the largest individual blaze in California history -- was 90 percent contained Sunday after burning for six days and destroyed 281,000 acre (about 112,400 hectares) of forest in northeast of San Diego.
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