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Family of Abused Boy
Charges Archbishop
The family of a boy who was apparently abused by a priest, is
accusing archbishop Angel San Casimiro for concealing information in the
case.
The case goes back to 1995 when the boy was only 10 years old. He was an
altar boy in the church Pocosol de San Carlos, and the mother worked as a
domestic in the priest's home.
According to the family, their priest Enrique Vázquez, abused the boy. The
family waited three years before filing charges against the priest, saying
they were pressured not to do so.
Vázquez disappeared the day following the filing of charges.
Church officials have denied knowing the whereabouts of the priest,
meanwhile the family searched and found that apparently Vázquez is in the
United States. Apparently he is under an extended permit by the the
ecclesiastical authorities in Costa Rica.
Deathly Beating
A Nicaraguan man, yet to be identified by authorities, was beaten
to death Saturday night in El Roble de Alajuela, a neighbourhood with a lot
of conflicts in the past, by an angry crowd after he tried to rape a young
girl.
According to the police report, a neigbour saw a man who was attempting to
rape a young girl, when she created a scandal that brought other neighbours
out with sticks, pots and pans and other utensils and beat the man.
The beating was so severe that the man died in front of a public telephone
where other neighbours had dragged him with the intent of calling for an
ambulance. A passerby noticed the man, bleeding and called police.
Given the problems experienced by police in the area in the past, about 25
police officers were dispatched to the scene, including members of the
Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ) who took charge of the
investigation.
No one has been arrested as yet.
Study Abroad
Opportunities
The Interamerican University Studies Institute will offer two programs in
Latin America this summer for high school students.
Costa Rica, Pura Vida! focuses on biology and includes Spanish immersion as
well.
Artes en Mexico provides an opportunity to work with professional Mexican
arts teachers.
Individual homestays, excursions and small group instruction are features of
both.
The programs are open to students between the ages of 15 and 17 who will
have completed two years of high school Spanish by June. For more
information, call IUSI at (800) 345-4874 or visit their website at
http://www.iusi.org.
U.S. Threatens Action Against Online Gambling
Federal prosecutors have begun a wide-ranging effort to curb the growing
popularity of online gambling in the United States by quietly threatening
legal action against American companies that do business with Internet
casinos and sports betting operations based outside the country, lawyers and
industry executives say.
The investigation into the activities of media, public relations and
technology companies relies on a controversial legal concept that holds that
the American businesses, by providing advertising and other services that
support Internet gambling, are "aiding and abetting" online casinos. That
gives prosecutors an indirect way to attack the overseas enterprises, whose
operations are illegal here but fall outside their jurisdiction.
Lawyers said they were not aware of any charges that had been filed. Still,
the campaign, which has gone on for months, has already chalked up some
significant non-legal victories. Several big media operations — including
Infinity Broadcasting, Clear Channel Communications and the Discovery
Networks — stopped running advertisements for offshore Internet casinos last
fall in light of the threat of further scrutiny that might lead to
prosecution.
The investigation comes as millions of Americans have turned to their home
computers to place sports bets and play casino games. Using credit cards or
other electronic payment methods, players can place wagers with the Internet
casinos, most of them in Costa Rica, the Caribbean or the Isle of Man,
between Ireland and Britain.
David Carruthers, chief executive of BetonSports.com, an online sports
betting business based in Costa Rica, said he was licensed in Costa Rica, as
well as in Antigua, the Dominican Republic and Britain. His company alone,
he said, has 1.2 million registered American users and accepted 33 million
bets from North America last year, the vast majority from the United States.
He said his advertisements had been banned recently from, among other
places, the Howard Stern show, which is produced by Infinity Broadcasting, a
unit of Viacom.
The investigation of the Internet gambling industry, lawyers said, is being
run by Raymond W. Gruender, the United States attorney in the Eastern
District of Missouri. His office convened a grand jury last year in St.
Louis that has issued summonses to a number of companies and individuals,
including Sebastian Sinclair, a market researcher who provides economic
analyses of the online gambling industry.
Mr. Sinclair said he received a subpoena at the end of February. He said it
required him to testify before the federal grand jury next month.
Patent Enforcement
By Gary Stix
The U.S. intellectual-property system has distinguished itself in the past
several years for such gems as patents on privatizing government, a method
for using a playground swing, and a computerized system that handles
reservations for going to the toilet. But patenting the obvious is by no
means confined to the land of reality shows and SUVs.
In recent years, Costa Rica has given new meaning to the legal term "patent
enforcement." It all has to do with the country's popular canopy tours, in
which visitors strapped in a harness slide along a cable between treetop
platforms. For Costa Rica, decade-old canopy tours are big business,
generating a reported $120 million annually. It is estimated that a quarter
of the more than a million tourists who come here every year patronize one
of the 80-plus tour operations.
But the future of many of these
businesses may now be in the balance because of a patent. In 1998 Darren
Hreniuk, a transplanted Canadian entrepreneur, received a 20-year patent
from Costa Rica's Industrial Property Registry for "an elevated forest
transport system using harnesses and pulleys on a single horizontal
line, using gravity for propulsion."
Last spring Hreniuk began to "enforce" his rights in the most literal
sense of the word, according to reports in two Costa Rican newspapers,
the Tico Times and La Nacion. With a cease-and-desist order from the
country's Industrial Property Registry, issued on April 25, 2003,
Hreniuk and police officers went to 14 canopy tour operators and tried
to close them down unless each agreed to pay at least $75,000 for a
franchise.
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An attorney representing the besieged tour outfits entered a
series of legal motions, and the registry's order was suspended for a number
of months. But a Costa Rican Supreme Court ruling last November unfreezing
the order sent Hreniuk back on the warpath. After the court's decision,
Hreniuk and officials from the police and the Industrial Property Registry
then tried to shut down several tour operators--and they did so reportedly
by cutting cables and destroying platforms. By December the Costa Rican
security minister had suspended the registry's order again -- and then
lawsuits brought against registry director Liliana Alfaro led to her
suspension for two months.
One of the disputes surrounding the case centers on "prior art": previous
technology that would undermine the claim in Hreniuk's patent application
that his treetop apparatus is new and inventive. And putting this
controversy to rest may be as simple as going to the Juan Santamaría Museum
near the capital, San José, to inspect a piece of prior art that is actual
art. There a painting shows soldiers crossing above the Barranca River in
1860 using ropes and pulleys during a pitched battle.
The wrangling over the canopy tours has spawned a bemused audience in the
world capital of intellectual property. Patent gadfly Gregory Aharonian
follows the case in his Internet Patent News Service, commenting on how U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office examiners are not the only ones who ignore the
wealth of prior art that is not contained in patent databases. The Juan
Santamaría Museum painting is but one example of so-called nonpatent prior
art. (Aharonian makes his living doing prior-art searches.)
The U.S. leads by example in novel forms of patenting. Still, a grudging
respect may linger for Costa Rica, a country that once issued a trademark
for the word "ecotourism." If pressed, the legions of American litigators,
mired in the point-counterpoint of legal briefs, might reluctantly
acknowledge a secret admiration for the slash-and-upturn methods employed by
Hreniuk and the Costa Rican authorities in enforcing intellectual-property
rights.
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Colombia
seizes 2.5 tons of cocaine
At least 2.5 tons of cocaine have been seized in Colombia in two
separate raids led by police and government troops, which also destroyed a
drug-processing laboratory, police said Sunday.
The first raid was carried out on Saturday, with soldiers and policemen
capturing 1.5 tons of cocaine in a ship anchored in the southeastern
Buenaventura port.
The vessel was destined for the United States with scheduled stops at
Guatemalan and Mexican ports, police operative director, Gen. Alberto Ruiz,
told the press in the capital Bogota.
The second raid was launched in a rural area in the northwestern state of
Antioquia. Anti-drug police found and destroyed a cocaine laboratory with a
ton of drugs hidden underground.
Local authorities said that Colombian police had captured 15 tons of cocaine
valued at 400 million US dollars so far this year.
The United States is the main destination of about 600 tons of cocaine
processed every year in Colombia, the most important drug producer in the
world.
Venezuela
taxman targets media
The Venezuelan government has ordered three privately-owned television
stations to pay up to $2m in taxes for airing opposition ads free of charge.
The stations broadcast opposition endorsements of a strike in late 2002,
which had been called to try to force President Hugo Chavez from office.
The stations are Venevision, Televen and Radio Caracas Television (RCTV).
RCTV called the move a bid to silence the media, which Mr Chavez accuses of
supporting efforts to overthrow him.
"This is a strike against freedom of expression," RCTV Director Marcel
Granier told Reuters news agency as tax inspectors arrived at the station's
studios.
Threats
Officials said the free broadcasts were a taxable item under the law.
Most private television, radio and newspaper companies in Venezuela openly
oppose the government.
They often echo opposition leaders who denounce Mr Chavez as an
authoritarian ruler and a communist sympathiser.
The president has vowed to shut down channels he says foment revolt against
his government.
He has yet to carry out those threats.
But last October officials seized equipment from the 24-hour news channel
Globovision, known for its criticism of Mr Chavez.
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