Today's Stories: • High Inflation • Baylor Symphony Orchestra To Tour Costa Rica • $151 Million in Flower and Plants • Bus Drivers Unite With Taxis Stop 'Piratas' • Bettor Wins $1.3 Million; Net casino Won't Pay • Venezuela UN ambassador resigns • New cartel crackdown in Colombia

High Inflation
Increases in the prices of potatoes, papaya, gasoline, and tuition in elementary schools accounted for a 1.29 percent rise in inflation last month, the highest increase in the month of February since 2001.

The figure was disclosed by the National Statistics and Census Bureau (INEC in Spanish), which estimated the cumulate inflation from March 2003 to February 2004 at 11.55 percent, the highest in the last two years.

According to analysts, the rise experienced by inflation in the last few months points to the fact that the overall 9 percent goal set by the Central Bank and the Government for this year is becoming ever harder to attain.
 

Baylor Symphony Orchestra To Tour Costa Rica
An exciting spring break awaits members of Texas' Baylor Symphony Orchestra as the group embarks on a concert tour of Costa Rica on March 15-22.

The orchestra was invited to the picturesque Central American country by the National Institute of Music of Costa Rica.

Coordinators of the trip are the institute’s dean, Jorge Duarte, and Norman Gamboa, a Costa Rican native and Baylor graduate student, who plays euphonium in the orchestra. The orchestra is led by Stephen Heyde, The Mary Franks Thompson Professor of Orchestra Studies and Conductor-in-Residence.

Three musical events are planned for the Baylor Symphony tour. The orchestra will perform a concert March 19 in the National Auditorium of San José, Costa Rica’s capital city. On March 20, the orchestra will present an evening concert in the Cathedral of Santo Domingo de Heredia, situated in the north-San José suburb of Heredia.

The Baylor Symphony will complete its tour March 21 with an outdoor concert in the Plaza of the Basilica of the Holy Virgin of the Angels, located a few miles southeast of San José in the town of Cartago.

While in Central America, Baylor students will be staying with families of members of the National Youth Orchestra of Costa Rica, which is the premier ensemble of the National Institute of Music. Sight-seeing excursions will be offered to the students, including visits to the still-active Poas Volcano, the Carara Rainforest and Wildlife Conservation Park, and Jaco Beach, which is well-known for its surfing and natural beauty.
 

$151 Million in Flower and Plants
Costa Rica exported $151 million worth of flowers, plants, and foliage last year.

This amount equals 24 percent of the overall sales abroad of non-traditional agricultural products. Bart de Lange, chairman of the Costa Rican Association of Flower Growers, said that 90 percent of the flower exports are destined to the United States.

According to the Foreign Trade Promoter Office, the other leading markets are Germany, Holland, Japan, and Canada.
 

Bus Drivers Unite With Taxis Stop 'Piratas'
The battle by taxi drivers to force out "piratas" and "porteadores" - informal taxis that don't count with a license to operate as a taxi - is continues, as taxi drivers press the Ministry of Transport to eliminate this kind of service completely.

In support of taxi drivers are now bus drivers. This was confirmed by the Coopetazi of Tibás at their meeting last Thursday.

Present at the meeting as the president of Federación Nacional de Cooperativas de Taxi, Edwin Barboza and Maritza Hernández, presidente of the Cámara Nacional de Transportes, which represents bus drivers.

The bus drivers association said that is supports the taxi drivers because the government has opted to impose regulations on public transport and thus it should now enfore those regulations to maintain order and insure public safety.

To that end, bus drivers, will be vigilant of pirate taxis and will hamper their ability to pick up passengers on the street, taking business away form licensed taxis.
 

Bettor Wins $1.3 Million; Net casino Won't Pay
In the highest-stakes dispute of its kind in the short history of Internet gambling, an American bettor and a Costa Rica-based Internet casino are engaged in a running battle over $1.3 million that the player says he won fair and square and the house claims was amassed using a banned “robot” software program.

The big-money feud pits the gambler known as “Pirateofc21” against Hamptoncasino.com and, by proxy, Realtime Gaming of Atlanta, the software company that developed and licensed the “Caribbean 21” game that yielded the disputed windfall.

The battle has been raging for more than two months on Internet gambling forums, with “Pirate” and Hampton officials regularly trading accusations, and has become the soap opera of choice for online gambling aficionados.

The experts have further enlivened the discussion by weighing in with theories as to whether the gambler used a “robot” -- an automatic play program that maximizes the player’s odds by eliminating mistakes -- or otherwise cheated the game or was simply the victim of an unscrupulous casino operator.

"Pirate" declined to comment on the dispute when contacted by MSNBC.com, citing ongoing settlement negotiations. Hampton officials did not respond to repeated interview requests.

He also said that he had been denied access to “about $96,000” that he had built up at Delanocasino.com, another Realtime Gaming licensee, playing the same game.

After talking to officials at Realtime Gaming (RTG), Casinomeister Webmaster Bryan Bailey counseled “Pirate” to be patient, saying that the company had pulled the game from public play so that it could check for possible software glitches.

“I just got off the phone with RTG and they assured me that they are looking into this diligently and carefully,” Bailey wrote in a Jan. 5 e-mail to “Pirate” that he later posted in a Casinomeister forum in a timeline for the dispute. “There is a lot of money at stake and this understandably warrants their checking your game play and looking at their software/payout tables. Hopefully, in a couple of days this should be resolved.”

Two days later, the dispute boiled over in a now-infamous phone conversation between “Pirate” and Hampton’s Lewin -- a heated discussion that was surreptitiously recorded by both parties.

In the taped conversation Lewin told “Pirate” that the company had brought in “outside help” to review the playing logs and developed evidence that he had used a robot program to automatically play his hands, a violation of the site’s terms of service agreement.

“I want you to remember the $1.3 million,” Lewin told the player at one point. “You’re never going to see a penny of it. ... You cheated, you’re not getting paid. End of story.”

“Pirate” initially reacted with outrage to the accusation, repeatedly stating that he had not used a robot program or otherwise cheated. But Lewin continued to hammer away, at one point offering to pay “Pirate” $300,000 if he would turn over the robot program and in another instance offering to “go partners” so they could use the software to beat other casinos running the RTG game.

Nearly 30 minutes into the conversation, “Pirate” finally changed his tune. “I wrote it myself,” he said quietly, adding that it had taken him a month to create the program.

Scott Owens, marketing director for the BreakawayCasino.com in Costa Rica, told MSNBC.com this week that his company had paid “Pirate” about $40,000 in winnings on the game since last summer despite suspicions that something wasn’t on the up-and-up.

“People win sometimes and people win a lot of money sometimes,” he said. “But normally people win a lot of money on a big jackpot game. When people win a lot of money at a table game over a period of time, that’s very unusual.”

As the controversy continues to simmer, there are indications that a settlement of the case could be near.

Realtime Gaming President Michael Staw told MSNBC.com on Friday that a settlement had been reached and that he expected it to be finalized shortly.

He said an unidentified third-party had agreed to purchase Hamptoncasino.com from its current owner and had reached an agreement to pay “Pirate,” though it was not clear whether such a settlement would involve the full amount.

But Bruce Holway, a gambler from California who says he has previously had success persuading reluctant RTG casinos to pay off and is advising “Pirate” in the negotiations, said Friday that the third-party had not yet put a dollar amount on the settlement offer.

“A deal can’t very well be imminent if we don’t know the figures,” he said.

 

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Venezuela UN ambassador resigns
Venezuela's ambassador to the UN says he is resigning his post in protest at President Hugo Chavez's policies.

Milos Alcalay told a news conference in New York that he had always worked to promote democracy, human rights and a non-confrontational foreign policy.

"Sadly, Venezuela now is operating devoid of these fundamental principles," Mr Alcalay said.

As further anti-Chavez protests took place across the country a local opposition leader was killed.

Democratic Action party leader Eva Carrizo was killed when protestors backing a recall referendum clashed with National Guard troops in Zulia state, 600 kilometres (375 miles) west of Caracas.

Carrizo was shot dead as the demonstration in the city of Machique turned violent, according to regional lawmaker Elias Mata.

Eight people have now been killed and dozens injured in unrest since last Friday.

Referendum wrangling

Venezuela has seen increasing tension over opposition attempts to force a referendum on Mr Chavez's rule.


Marchers call for the release of people arrested during the protests
Opponents of Mr Chavez have been protesting against an announcement by the electoral authorities that they had not gathered enough signatures, so far, to call a referendum on his future.

The electoral authorities ruled on Tuesday that not enough valid signatures had been collected in a petition to force such a vote.

The opposition is currently negotiating with the government and electoral officials over ways of checking over one million signatures deemed in need of further verification.

Crisis point

Mr Alcalay said the actions of the National Electoral Council - which says some 1.1 million signatures need further verification - "rob Venezuelans of the right to effect change through the democratic process".

He said Venezuela was seeing army and police repression, unacceptable loss of life and that peaceful protest were no longer possible.

Mr Alcalay, a career diplomat for 30 years, warned that "the increasing bipolarisation and problems we are experiencing at home in Venezuela have impacted on our relationships around the world."

But the ambassador said that if Mr Chavez showed his respect for the rules of government, human rights and democracy, he could work with him.

Divisions

The government's response was swift, insisting that democracy and human rights were respected in Venezuela, before calling into question Mr Alcalay's role in the short-lived coup that briefly ousted Mr Chavez in April 2002.

Venezuela is deeply divided over President Chavez, with his supporters regarding him as a champion of the poor and his opponents viewing him as dangerously autocratic.

On Thursday, several hundred people marched through Caracas calling for the release of more than 300 people they say were arrested during the recent protests.

They held up pictures of an opposition politician, Carlos Melo, detained on charges of weapons possession.

At the same time, pro-Chavez supporters held a demonstration urging people to make sure their names were not fraudulently included on the opposition's petition.
 

New cartel crackdown in Colombia
The Colombian authorities have re-established the country's elite police group known as the Search Bloc.

The squad was instrumental in destroying the drug cartels of Medellin and Cali.

Now their target is the last of the big cartels - that of Norte del Valle, whose leaders are wanted for extradition to the US.

It has been many years since the cartel-busting Search Bloc has been active in Colombia.


Farc rebels have plugged the gap in the drugs trade left by the cartels

It was this unit made up of elite police that gunned down the legendary head of the Medellin drug cartel, Pablo Escobar, in 1993 as he fled across roof-tops in Medellin.

Their new target, Norte del Valle, is based in south-west Colombia and is the last of the civilian drug cartels.

The Search Bloc's mission is to track down and capture the leaders of the cartel and seize their properties, which will then be sold by the state to raise much-needed revenue.

But should the Norte del Valle cartel meet the same end as the Medellin and Cali drug cartels, there will be little interruption in the flow of drugs from Colombia, estimated at 800 tonnes of cocaine and 10 tonnes of heroin every year.

Into the place of the cartels have stepped two organisations far more powerful and dangerous than the drug gangs -- Colombia's Marxist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries, who now between them dominate the drugs trade.