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Calderón Leaves Hospital Goes
Back to Jail
Following a two day
respite, yesterday afternoon at
1:15pm, former president Rafael
Angel Calderón left Clínica
Católica hospital for his way
back to his temporary home in La
Reforma prison, where he is
serving out his nine months of
preventive detention.
Calderón, who is under investigation for conspiracy and illegal
enrichment, was admitted to hospital on Thursday following his
appearance in court to appeal for house arrest instead of preventive
detention.
Doctors say he suffered from high blood pressure and hypertension,
probably caused by stress of being incarcerated for the past two
weeks. Calderón was given the green light by the The
Calderón, at the recommendation of doctors, was escorted back to
prison in a regular automobile and not the usual "perrera" or police
wagon used to transfer prisoners.
The former president is expected to return to court on Monday to
continue his hearing. Gonzalo Castellón, Calderón's lawyer is
confident that they will have an opportunity to convince Didier Mora
that his client should be at home, where he can receive the
necessary medical attention and maintain his special diet, under
house arrest and not in a jail cell.
Only
67.000 Cellular Lines Left
Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) announced
that it has only 67.000 cellular telephone lines available and once
those are gone, it will be one to two years before it can offer new
cellular lines.
ICE says it has about 50.000 TDMA and 17.000 GSM lines available to
subscribers. The GSM lines are part of lines that have been returned
to ICE for non payment by customers and will be available on the
marked the first week in December.
Orlando Cascante Moraga, an ICE director for mobile communications,
says that the institution expects a high demand for service in
December. The last time ICE offered GSM lines for sale, all 15.000
lines were bought up in only one week. In the case of TDMA lines,
17.000 lines were taken in the last six weeks.
The difference between the two systems is speed of transmitting
data. GSM is better for sending images, fotos and surfing the
internet, though these services are not available as yet on the
current GSM service ICE offers. TDMA on the other hand is great for
cellular customer who just want to talk and send and receive text
messages.
ICE has available 990.000 cellular telephone lines - 590.000 TDMA
and 400.000 GSM, which were installed by the French
telecommunications firm Alcatel.
Alcatel has been implicated in offering "pay offs" to public
functionaries, which has resulted in the preventive detention of
former president Miguel Angel Rodríguez and Edgar Valverde, former
president of Alcatel in Costa Rica. Several other public
functionaries are being investigated and are under house arrest. And
former José María Figueres Olsen had to leave his post at the World
Economic Forum last week when it was discovered that he had been
paid a us$900.000 consulting fee from Alcatel.
ICE had planned on installing 600.000 new GSM cellular lines this
December in a contract with the Ericsson company, worth us$130
million dollars and overturned in September by the Contraloría
General de la Republica (Comptroller's office), that would have been
available for sale no later than March of 2005. ICE was forced to
cancel it's contract with Ericsson.
The Contraloría said no to the deal after it was revealed that
several high ranking ICE officials had met privately in Prague,
Czech Republic, with the president of Ericsson and questions were
raised over expenses incurred by ICE managers, including their hotel
stay, was paid by Ericsson.
The cancellation of the contract by ICE is currently before the
Constitutional Court, Sala IV, after an appeal was made by Ericsson,
which is putting the process of tendering a new contract on hold,
which according to ICE, will take 18 months.
Once the current cellular lines are used up and until a new contract
is awarded and installed, customers have to wait until a line
becomes available, usually for non payment or in the case a customer
voluntarily cancels their service.
Season Change
Underway
The change from the "rainy season" to the "dry season"
has begun. And with that comes lots of rain, strong winds and cold
temperatures.
According to the weatherman, the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (IMN),
the change has begun.
The cold front will literally start in the Caribbean side, move
inwards to the Central valley and to the Pacific Coast. During the
change, the rains will be more intense and for longer periods and
temperatures will drop drastically.
Last night it rained throughout the entire night in most of the
Central Valley.
The changeover can last from two to three weeks and the IMN is
warning those living in high flood and mud slide areas to take the
necessary precautions during the period.
Coco
Gets Land For New School
By Zoraida Diaz ,
The Beach Times
It’s taken four years, dozens of meetings and countless more
appeals, letters and reports, but this week with a couple of
signatures on a single sheet of paper in a cramped office in
Filadelfia, Playas del Coco got its first high school.
At a little after ten o’clock Wednesday morning, Mayor José María
Guevara Navarrete signed a contract, which hands over three hectares
of town land upon which the school will be built.
“This merits celebration and applause,” the Mayor said, as he waved
his pen with a flourish.
And with that signature, the first of two installments totaling 54
million colones, or about $120,000, will be released by the Ministry
of Education to build Liceo Diurno de Playas del Coco, which will
house 150 students from years seven to 11.
“This is the culmination of four years struggle,” said a clearly
delighted Javier Campos Chaves, President of the Asociacion de
Desarrollo Integral de Playas del Coco.
“The community is going to be very happy at this news, and within a
month we expect the Ministry of Education will give us the first
installment of 27 million colones to start building,” Mr Campos said
after the signing ceremony.
The Municipality of Carrillo’s agreement to provide the land, just
off the main road into Playas del Coco, was the Ministry of
Education’s main criterion for funding.
In July this year the Municipality voted unanimously to provide the
three hectares, but it was the signed agreement that will release
State funds. That agreement cedes the land to the Association for 20
years with the proviso it can only be used to build the school on a
portion of the property, and sport and recreation projects on the
rest.
In fact, only one hectare will be used for the school buildings. The
remaining land will one day have a children’s park, a soccer field
and a basketball court.
The Municipality will remain responsible for property taxes, while
the Association will pay all electricity, water and maintenance
charges.
The first phase, which the Association hopes will be finished in
time for the new school year, will be a single wing of five
classrooms and some administration offices. A further two wings in
phase two will add another ten classrooms.
Playas del Coco has never had a high school. In the past local
students —- about 130 of them —- had to travel to Sardinal and
Liberia for secondary education. In February of this year Playas del
Coco got a headmistress from San José for the non-existent school,
and students were moved temporarily into the old Super Luperon
building off the main square.
Flushed with the success of this week’s meeting, the Association is
already working on obtaining a second lot for a community center.
Bank Hunch on the Money About Scam
By Jules Crittenden,
Boston Herald
Thanks to an on-the-ball bank clerk, a bid by Costa Rican scammers
to bilk an elderly Taunton, Massachusetts, woman of her life
savings was foiled Thursday.
The 83-year-old woman already had coughed up several thousand
dollars after she got a call from Costa Rica from some nogoodniks
who told her she had won a $350,000 lottery prize. The catch was,
she needed to send them money to secure the prize.
She went back to Mechanics' Bank in Taunton on Thursday to draw more
money, and that's when a clerk became suspicious that something was
wrong. A bank manager asked her about it, and she explained the
lottery story to him. He called police.
She was trying to draw $7,000 and had another $3,000 in her
pocketbook, along with a Western Union form filled out to transfer
the money to Costa Rica.
Taunton Police Detective James Dykas said that because the con men
are operating out of Central America, there is little the cops can
do about it but warn people to be wary.
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