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updated by 7:00 a.m. CST each day
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Queen of
Prostitution Had 'Important' Clients
The "queen of prostitution in Costa Rica",
as she was called by a Spanish TV station a few
years back, Sinai Monge Muñoz, had in her client
list not only football (soccer) players, members of
the Poder Judicial and foreign police forces who
operated in the country, according to a report in
the Diario Extra, the English language daily.
It is suspected that high court officials and
judicial investigators are figured among the persons
on the list, which investigators are now reviewing
following the arrest of Monge last Thursday.
The Extra claims to have the list of names but has
decided not publish them not to hinder the ongoing
investigation. The report says they will be
contacting those on the list to ask for any
declarations, hence it is a crime to be have sexual
relations with minors.
ICE Workers to
March in Protest
The march is
set for October 20th and a call is made to all who
want to protest against the Free Trade Agreement
between Central America and the United States.
The details and route of the march that will end in
front of the Legislative Assembly. still being
discussed.
Costa Rica May
Derail US Free Trade Plans
As befits a man whose very surnames are enough to conjure up images of Latin American radicalism, Fabio Chaves Castro is threatening to derail an ambitious plan to open up trade between the United States and the five small republics of Central America.
If the union leader of Costa Rica's 15,000 telecoms and electricity workers have their way, a series of demonstrations over the next few weeks against the deal known as Cafta will eventually force the government to postpone an agreement for at least six months, which would potentially put the whole accord at risk.
That would represent another big blow to free trade proponents in the region, coming so soon after the failure of last month's World Trade
Organization meeting in Cancún.
Mr Chaves argues that CAFTA forms part of a broader geo-political plan to allow US-based multinationals free rein in Latin America, and says the deal should be put to a referendum.
"A treaty of this importance cannot be agreed in just 11 months," the union leader warns.
Yet only weeks ago the ratification early next year of
CAFTA - which would form a southern extension of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (known as Nafta) between Mexico, Canada and the US - looked set to be trouble-free.
Big US farmers opposed to opening up agricultural trade with South America have little to fear from their Central American competitors, while local business has already adapted to greater competition, with tariffs down to an average of between 10 and 11 per cent compared with over 80 per cent 15 years ago.
Both Costa Rica and Guatemala ruffled US feathers by joining the efforts of the G-22 group of developing countries, but both have now withdrawn from the grouping (along with other countries close to the US such as Peru and Colombia).
Costa Rica's problem is that the government is far less able to accede to another US demand which was unexpectedly stressed by Robert Zoellick, US trade representative, during a visit to San José 10 days ago.
That demand is the liberalization of industries like telecommunications, electricity and insurance that - almost uniquely in Latin America - remain in public hands.
Three years ago plans to privatize ICE, the telecoms and electricity company, were scrapped in the face of some of the largest and most violent protests in the largely peaceful history of Costa Rica. Public opinion remains opposed to change and President Abel Pacheco's centre-right government does not have the stomach to reopen a controversial issue it believed was safely buried until Mr Zoellick made his comments.
Alberto Trejos, the trade minister, says the government is ruling out even limited
liberalization that would, for example, let private operators compete in internet service provision - currently dominated by an ICE subsidiary.
"We are agreed that we should not take steps that would weaken the status of public companies and generate the kind of political upheaval we saw three years ago," Mr Trejos told the Financial Times.
Mr Zoellick hinted that in this case the US is prepared to sign a deal with just four Central American countries.
But this would be necessarily smaller in scope, since Costa Rica accounts for about half the $6.4bn non-textile trade between the region and the US and is by far the most democratic, institutionally stable and economically diverse country in the region.
In addition, successful leftwing mobilization to stop
CAFTA in Costa Rica could embolden opposition in its neighbours. In El Salvador, Shafik Handal, presidential candidate of the leftwing FMLN party, is currently leading polls ahead of next March's election and is critical of US trade.
Negotiators are confident a compromise can be agreed. They insist the interests of small farmers can be defended and say the costs of exclusion for Costa Rica would be massive.
Although local producers benefit from the Caribbean Basin Initiative, a trade concession agreement regularly renewed since the early 1980s,
CAFTA would put the benefits on a firmer footing, giving businesses greater security and helping foreign investors make longer-term commitments.
Roberto Artavia, rector of the Incae business school in San José, says flows of foreign direct investment could rise by 30 per cent annually in the next four years from between $1bn (£600m) and $2bn a year currently.
The US also has a lot of interest in reaching a deal, partly because the added prosperity expected to flow from
CAFTA should help to secure political stability in a region troubled by growing drugs-related crime.
But, for the time being at least, Mr Chaves is convinced that the US trade representative has managed to give a new lease of life to his campaign to delay
CAFTA.
"Mr Zoellick," he says, "has done us a favour."
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Egyptian conjoined twins separated in US surgery
Doctors successfully separated 2-year-old Egyptian twin boys conjoined at the head Sunday, paving the way for their independent lives.
Ahmed and Mohamed Ibra him were separated at noon after nearly 26 hours in the operating room at Children's Medical Center
Dallas, the United States.
The most critical and dangerous part of the operation, the separation of blood vessels connecting the children's brains, was completed and the boys were doing well so far, the hospital announced in a statement.
The boys were "now within striking distance of living independent lives," said Dr. Jim Thomas, chief of critical care
at the hospital.
Doctors are now continuing the next phase of the surgery to reconstruct the boys' skulls and cover the head wounds with skin harvested from their hips.
The twins, who were born June 2, 2001, in a small town about 800 kilometers south of Cairo, came to Dallas in June 2002 with the help of the World
Cranio facial Foundation, which helps children with head and face deformities receive treatment.
Twins connected head-to-head are extremely rare, accounting
for about 2 percent of all conjoined births, according to the foundation.
New Yorkers warned of mystery disease
The New York City Health Department has issued an alert after five residents in Staten Island, one of the five boroughs of the city, were hospitalized with what the department called a mystery illness.
Four of the five patients, ranging in age from 22 to 54, are incritical condition at Staten Island University Hospital. Doctors said they are suffering from symptoms of encephalitis, a rare swelling of the brain, but they said they do not know at this stage what is causing the disease.
Encephalitis is a symptom of the West Nile virus, but preliminary tests for the West Nile virus have been negative. Doctors are considering a strain of another virus that causes encephalitis and is also carried by mosquitoes and ticks.
The department has sent a medical alert to physicians, laboratory directors and health-care providers, asking them to report any patients exhibiting symptoms consistent with encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain tissue.
Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue and malaise. Some of the hospitalized patients have also had seizures and exhibited confusion.
There were nearly 200 cases of encephalitis in New York City in 2001.
US troops return to Iraq after leave at home
he first batch of US soldiers who had spent a 15-day R&R (rest and recuperation) holiday at home left for Iraq on Sunday.
The nearly 200 troops came back on Sept. 26, as part of the first to rotate home in the US military's largest leave program since the Vietnam War.
There has been one flight from Iraq each day with some 240 soldiers on board since Sept. 26, an Army spokesman said.
The program, which offers 15-day vacations, is available for all the more than 130,000 US troops deployed in Iraq and in neighboring countries staying in the region for a year, officials said.
The program was approved by the Pentagon in mid-September, as an effort to provide relief and boost morale for US forces in
Iraq and neighboring countries.
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