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Women Celebrated "International Women's Day";
Two Women Found Murdered
Hundreds of women celebrated 'International
Women's Day' in San José's Parque Central.
The afternoon was filled with activities organized by the Instituto Nacional
de la Mujer (Inamu), including a discussion on women's rights in Costa Rica
and steps to take in case those rights are violated.
The group alos protested against discrimantion of women in the workplace and
domestic violence, which this year has already claimed the lives of seven
women.
The musical group Guadalupe Urbina closed the day with a concert.
Ironically, two women were murdered on International Women's day; a young
lady of only 18 years of age was found on the roadside in Carrizal de
Alajuela and the other found dead in her bathtub in
San Joaquín de Flores.
At around 7am police were alerted when the body of Claudia María
Flores Guadamuz, 18 years of age and of Nicaraguan
nationality, was found at the side of the road near a coffee field.
According to the girls' family, Flores Guadamuz left
the family home on Sunday to go out with friends and never came home.
According to police, Flores Guadamuz was discovered with two gun
wounds to the thorax and is believed to have been killed at the location
where the body was found in the hours earlier before her body was
discovered.
In an unrelated case, the body 72 year old Zeneida Vega Víquez,
was discovered by her son-in-law in the bathtub of her home.
Police say that the woman had had her hands and feet tied and was faced down
in a pool of water. She had lesions and bruises on here shoulder and appears
to have died from drowning.
Car Theft Ring Broken
Up
Police, yesterday, were able to break a band of car thieves with the
discovery of at least 8 vehicles in partial disassembly in a warehouse in
Orotina, Alaljuela, west of San José.
According to plice, the vehicles were
primarily stolen in the areas Alajuela, Heredia and San José.
No arrests were made at the warehouse.
The discovery and disbandment comes days following a report by the
Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ) that an average of 14 cars are
stolen daily in Costa Rica.
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Is It Cold, Anyone?
Anyone who lives in Costa Rica can attest that the weather these past few
weeks has been un-seasonal and unpredictable.
Normally, in the dry season that runs into May, there is a lot of sunshine,
with the occasional clouds and almost no rain.
Two weeks ago, San José was hit with a rain storm that was more like the
rains of the rainy season.
This weekend more than 50 families were affected in San Carlos, in the
northeast region of Costa Rica, by heavy rains and strong winds.
The heavy rains in the area provoked flooding mainly in San Carlos and
sections of Guatuso and Upala, where a 'green alert' was declared.
The national emercency commission - Comisión Nacional de Emergencias (CNE) -
set up temporary shelter in a civil hall in San Rafael de Guatuso, where at
least 22 people were reported to have taken shelter there.
The CNE is calling on residents of the area to take preventative measures
and stay alert to the weather conditions.
Strong winds and a cold spell gripped San José in the late afternoon and
into the night. The night temperature dipped in the low 60's Farenheit /
High Teens Celsius. Coats and jackets were the norm. The thermometer read 68
°F / 20 °C at 6am at the Juan Santamaria airport.
The weather conditions are affecting most of the country and are expected to
continue for today and possibly tomorrow.
Government to Decide if it Will Pay Harken
This week, the government has to make a decision
on where it will pay or not the U.S. petroleum firm, Harken Energy, when
Costa Rica cancelled Harken's concession to explore the Atlantic for oil.
According to Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, Minister of the Environment and
Energy, the discussion is whether Costa Rica will compensate Harken for it's
losses which will be in the $3 to $15 Million Dollars range. The Minister
announced that a decision will be made by this Thursday.
In 1998 Harken was given a concession by Costa Rica to explore for oil off
the shores of Limon in the Atlantic. However, in 2002, the Secretaría
Técnica Ambiental determined that environmental studies done by Harken were
not approved and thus the government cancelled the contract with Harken.
In Septmeber last year, Harken asked for an arbitration before the Centro
Internacional de Diferencias por Inversiones, which is based in Washington
D.C. and asked for compensation of $57 Billion dollars, which it then later
withdrew.
The Costa Rican government is discussing the different options and looking
for the best solution within the terms of the contract and the amount it
will pay Harken.
Online
Betting Sites Fight Cyberextortion
Online gambling sites are betting on tighter
security after a recent wave of computer attacks from cyberextortionists
plunged several into darkness.
Shadowy hackers demand $20,000 to $50,000 for protection from distributed
denial-of-service attacks, which flood a Web site with data so that it is
overloaded.
BetWWTS.com in Antigua was forced to pay $30,000 when hackers shuttered its
site and thousands of its customers couldn't place wagers worth an estimated
$5 million, CEO Simon Noble says.
It's one of the lucky ones. Since the attacks started a few months ago, a
handful of smaller operations have gone out of business or abandoned Web
sites in favor of phones to avoid the problem.
"These sites rely on transactions with clients every few seconds. You
disrupt that, and you've got major problems," says Michael Caselli, editor
of Online Casino News. "A bank, by comparison, can shut down its site for an
hour or two."
Now, online gambling operators are bracing for a new batch of threats for
college basketball's March Madness tournament, which starts next week.
Online gambling sites are fertile territory for extortionists. Many of the
approximately 2,000 sites are vulnerable to hacking attacks and have little
legal recourse because Internet gambling is illegal in the USA, security
experts say.
Great Britain's National Hi-Tech Crime Unit, which is investigating cases
with other law-enforcement agencies, says the problem appears to be confined
to gaming sites. But some security experts fear it could spread to banking
and other industries that are reluctant to report computer breaches.
The FBI had no comment.
International gambling sites raked in $5.7 billion last year, with
projections of $11.6 billion in 2006, says Christiansen Capital Advisors, a
New York consulting firm that studies the gaming industry.
Gangs of computer crooks allegedly operating out of Eastern Europe have
collected protection money from 10% to 15% of the companies they have
threatened, says DK Matai, executive chairman of security company MI2G.
Most issue ultimatums in e-mail messages in the days leading to major
sporting events, such as the Super Bowl. Often, threats are issued after an
attack, demanding that American currency be sent to a Western Union office.
BoDog Sportsbook & Casino in Costa Rica was forced to pay more than $20,000
last fall when hackers immobilized its site, says Rob Gillespie, the
company's president.
Since then, it has fortified its site with security products. It withstood a
hack attack during Super Bowl weekend.
"You want to yell an obscenity at your PC screen when you get an e-mail
threat," Noble says. "These guys are dangerous."
American
Arrested On Child Pornography
The police's special unit that deal with the
sexual exploitation of Minors -
Explotación Sexual de Seguridad Pública - report that they arrested over the
weekend an American identified only as Rishfield.
According to police, Rishfield was found to have had in his home in Pavas,
more than 100 photos of naked women of which an undetermined amount were
minors. According to the report, the man would pay young girls about ¢10.000
colones to take their pictures and may have possibly included sexual favours
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Chile offers to mediate in Haitian conflict
The Chilean Vice Foreign MinisterCristian Barros is to visit
Jamaica Monday to meet Jamaican Prime Minister Percival Patterson in a bid
to help resolve Haiti's political conflict.
In an interview with the Chilean daily "El Mercurio," Monday, Barros said
his country would assume a more protagonist role in the democratic
transition in Haiti, after the countries of the Caribbean Community and
Common Market (CARICOM) had urged him to mediate with the new authorities.
Chile was chosen as a mediator supposedly because it is the only Latin
American country that joins the United Nations peacekeeping force in Haiti.
Barros also said he took into account CARICOM's decision to refrain from
sending troops to Haiti and ask for a probe into the circumstances of the
resignation of former president Aristide, who accused Washington of
kidnapping and forcing him to exile in the Central African Republic.
Patterson made the request last Thursday when he telephoned Chilean
President Ricardo Lagos after the regional bloc decided not to send troops
to Haiti.
in response to the request for mediation, the Chilean government decided to
send Cristian Barros to meet Patterson in Jamaica ahead of his visit to
Haiti, where he is to hold talks with the interim president Boniface
Alexandre and the UN special envoy.
Barros said the aim of his meeting with the authorities was to "offer the
support of Chile to establish a permanent government and carry out elections
in three months."
CARICOM refuses to contribute to multinational force in Haiti
The Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) refused to contribute to
the multinational peacekeeping force in Haiti, CARICOM's rotating president
Jamaican Prime Minister Percival Patterson announced Monday,
According to reports reaching here, Patterson held meetings with the special
envoy to the United Nations to Haiti, Reginald Dumas, and explained
CARRICOM's efforts to resolve the Haitian crisis.
The talks took place over the weekend in Jamaica's capital Kingston and a
report on them was sent Monday to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
An official communique of the Jamaican government said that Patterson told
Dumas of their discontent with the development of events in Haiti. The prime
minister said the CARICOM had made several decisions, including no
participation in the multinational peacekeeping force in Haiti.
Patterson demanded an investigation on the resignation and exile of Haiti's
former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who accused the United States of
leading a coup against him.
CARICOM's official stressed that they could not find an excuse for the
leader's unconstitutional removal and warned that what happened in Haiti set
a serious precedent.
Dumas, a former diplomat to Trinidad and Tobago, arrived to Kingston last
Thursday after an emergency meeting of Caribbean leaders to discuss the
Haitian crisis.
During the meeting the leaders talked over the phone with Aristide, who
reiterated that he had been forced to abandon the country under the threat
of US soldiers. However, the United States has repeatedly denied his
accusations.
Mexico's PRD leaders facing expulsion as video scandal roils party
The leadership council of the Party of the Democratic Revolution
(PRD) will announce next weekend if prominent party members will be expelled
after a series of secretly-filmed videos ignited a corruption scandal that
continues to take its toll on the party.
Leonel Godoy, the PRD's president, said a decision on the status of former
Mexico City Mayor Rosario Robles and two other city politicians would be
decided by next weekend. PRD leaders moved to suspend Robles and the other
politicians from the party on Friday pending an internal investigation.
Robles, the leader of the party until last year, testified before the
leadership council on Saturday and denied any part in suspect,
multimillion-dollar donations to the party by construction magnate and
soccer team owner Carlos Ahumada.
Robles resigned in 2002 after the party did not fare as well as promised in
mid-term congressional races, leaving the party millions of dollars in debt.
Last week, a series of videos surfaced showing two leading city politicians
in compromising positions. Rene Bejarano, the PRD's majority leader in the
city assembly, took a leave of absence from his post and resigned from the
party after videos filmed a year ago showed him accepting tens of thousands
of dollars from Ahumada.
After Bejarano resigned, several acting and former precinct chiefs have been
implicated in accepting funds from Ahumada, the owner of construction firm
Grupo Quart. The Argentine businessman, also the owner of the first division
soccer team Santos and the newspaper El Independiente, received lucrative
paving contracts during Robles' administration.
Ahumada, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, is under suspicion in a 31
million-peso fraud investigation by city prosecutors over irregularities in
construction contracts.
In the videos, Ahumada says he had given nearly 4 million dollars to the
party and Bejarano said he would try to convince the mayor to favor Ahumada
with construction contracts.
During her testimony Saturday night, Robles indignantly denied she knew
anything about Ahumada's actions. Earlier Saturday, Tlalpan precinct chief
Carlos Imaz testified Ahumada had given Robles at least 600,000 pesos for
her campaign to head the PRD and that Ahumada had later tried to blackmail
her for the aid.
The Bejarano videos emerged only days after Televisa broadcast images of
then city Finance Secretary Gustavo Ponce at the high-stakes blackjack table
in an exclusive Las Vegas hotel. The station reported Ponce had travelled to
Las Vegas dozens of times over the last year.
Following the video's release, the mayor fired Ponce, who has fled and is
currently at large.
Both scandals have weighed heavily on Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel Lopéz
Obrador, who has cultivated the image of an honest, corruption-fighting
politician. Previous polls gave Lopéz Obrador a commanding lead over other
politicians as an early presidential favorite.
City prosecutors are investigating both cases. Officials said they are
looking into a possible connection between Ahumada and Ponce, who managed to
wipe his computer files and clean out his office before fleeing.
On Sunday, city government secretary Alejandro Encinas said he had received
a telephone call from a man claiming to be Ponce Saturday night. Encinas
said that the man told him he had fled in fear for his life, and that he had
performed various illegal financial operations under order from Lopéz
Obrador to fund massive public works projects.
Despite the fact that Encinas and Ponce worked closely as members of the
city cabinet, Encinas would not confirm if he recognized Ponce's voice or
not.
Encinas offered Ponce fair treatment if he turned himself in to authorities.
The call only last a little over three minutes because Ponce said his cell
phone batteries were low and he feared a wire tap, Encinas said.
Earlier Sunday, Lopéz Obrador said he would present evidence next Thursday
that current government officials, possibly in league with former President
Carlos Salinas de Gotari, were behind the release of the videos. Lopéz
Obrador, who denies any wrongdoing by himself, said there is a campaign
afoot to tarnish his image by people who feel he is becoming too popular.
"Independent of these acts of corruption, which should be punished, there is
a state-sponsored operation from the right and I will prove it, there is
evidence," said Lopéz Obrador. "A lawmaker from the right distributed the
tapes, the Interior Secretariat and [the intelligence agency] Cisen
participated and we have to see what role the unnamable played" he added in
a reference to Salinas.
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