President-Elect Arias Announces His Cabinet
President-elect Oscar Arias Sanchez, as expected, announced his cabinet for the new administration to take office on May 8. The new government will be made of 18 ministers, of which 13 are men and five are women.

20.000 Expected For The Labour Day Protest
Monday is May 1 and in Costa Rica like in most of Latin America, it is "Día Internacional del Trabajo" or labour day, a national holiday.

Fixed Line Telephone Rates Going Up
Get ready for an increase in telephone rates. Yesterday, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the state monopoly on telecommunications, made a request to the Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep) for a hike in telephone costs.

Outgoing Deputies Scold President Pacheco Over 2002 Election Campaign Irregularities
Closing the 2002-2006 legislative session, deputies took one last stab at president Abel Pacheco, scolding him for irregularities during his 2002 election campaign, which was never cleared up.

Job Wanted
When the Ministro de Trajabo (Minister of Labour) Fernando Trejos announced "Job Fair", that begins today at 12 noon and carries over to tomorrow, president Pacheco, tongue in cheek, asked him whether there was any company looking for a psychiatrist, since the current head of state will join the ranks of the unemployed  as of next May 8.

Life Sentence
A court in Atlanta, Georgia, served a life sentence to James Vincent Sullivan, a businessman who had hid in Garabito, on the Costa Rican Pacific coast, after paying a gunman to murder his wife in 1987.