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updated by 7:00 a.m. CST each day
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The Week
Starts Off with 3 Tremors
Yesterday afternoon three tremors were
registered, with the epicenter in Copey de Dota,
in the area of Los Santos, east of San José.
The first earthquake was felt around 1:30 in the
afternoon and registered 4.3 on the Richter
scale.
Eight minutes later, the second earthquake was
felt, registering at 3.9 and the last occurred
at 1.46pm with a magnitude of 2.7.
According to the authorities, these tremors were
associated with faults located in the Talamanca
mountain range. The tremors were felt in
Turrialba, Cartago, Perez Zeledon and San José.
Contaminated
Water in Alajuelita
Sometimes
water can be scarce, however, this Sunday,
neighbours of Conception de la Alajuelita, a
community on the south side of San José, they
had plenty of water - but with worms.
More than 30 families reported the same problem:
the water was contaminated.
Authorities who responded to the complaints,
confirmed yesterday a break in one of the pipes
that ran close to a sewage pipe, that which
contaminated the clean water.
The leak was repaired and studies are still
being done to determine that there is no more
contamination in the water.
ICE Does NOT
Get Rates Approval
ARESEP,
the regulating body of public service rates and
fees, did not approve an increase in telephone
rates as requested by ICE, the telephone
company.
Basic monthly telephone rates will remain at
1.650 colones for residential and 2.000 colones
for commercial services or $4 and $4.96
respectively at today's exchange rate.
Cellular telephone service will be reduced to 23
colones from 30 colones for each minute and the
basic rate will be now 2.900 colones from 3.000
colones. In addition, the deposit required for
new cellular telephone service, will come down
to 12.500 colones from the 25.000 colones
established for some time now.
The new rates will come into effect once it is
published in the official daily "La Gaceta",
which is expected with the next couple of weeks.
General Cañas
Highway Closed at Nights
Beginning last night, the portion of the highway
General Cañas - or known locally as "La
Pista" - that connects Alajuela to San
José will closed every night from 9pm to 5am
due to repairs.
The road is the main road between San José and
everything west to the airport and beyond. It is
part of the Interamerican Highway that stretches
from the Nicaragua border to the north to Panama
in the South.
The official name of the highway is Autopista
General Cañas, but is known locally simply as
"la pista". MOPT, the Transport
Ministry, says the repairs are part of the
ongoing road maintenance program that the
government has embarked on.
The first stage is work on the portion of the
highway from the Airport to the Firestone plant.
If you are traveling to the airport or points
west during those hours, the alternate route is
to take the Rio Segundo road from the Firestone
plant than goes into San Antonio de Belen and to
the airport.
Another alternate route is the road that leads
from Alajuela to Heredia then through La Uruca
into or from San José.
SEC Settles
Company Certification Case
In the first case of the U.S. enforcing the provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that calls for executives to swear to a company's financial statements,
U.S. the Securities and Exchange Commission settled Monday with Rica Foods Inc. and two of its officers.
Rica Foods, which is based in Miami, grows chickens in Costa Rica via its Pipasa and As de Oros units. It supplies chicken to McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC, according to its Web site.
According to the SEC, Rica Foods submitted an annual report on Jan. 13 that purported to contain a green light from the company's outside auditor, Deloitte & Touche. In reality, however, Deloitte hadn't provided Rica Foods with a signed audit report, and the company's "financial statements contained material classification errors," the agency said.
Chief Executive Calixto Chaves, Chief Financial Officer Gina Sequeira and the company consented to an order permanently barring them from further securities laws violations, and Chaves must pay a $25,000 civil penalty.
All settled without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires top company executives to give their word that the company's financial statements are reliable and prepared according to generally accepted accounting principles.
Rica Foods recently engaged a new independent auditor and filed an amended annual report that contained a signed audit.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, introduced last year, also allows for criminal punishment against officers if they violate the certification requirements. Glenn Gordon, assistant deputy director in the SEC's Southeast Regional Office, declined to comment on any criminal aspects of the case, which come under the purview of the Department of Justice (news - web sites).
Attorneys representing Chaves and Sequeira weren't immediately available to comment.
Rica Foods attorney David Wells declined to comment.
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US personal bankruptcies reach record high
Personal bankruptcies in the United States reached an all-time high in the 12-month period ended on June 30 of this year, the American Bankruptcy Institute said on Monday.
The institute said personal bankruptcy filings in those 12 months totaled 1,613,097, up 10 percent from the 1,466,105 cases filed a year earlier. It also reported a drop of more than five percent for business bankruptcy filings.
The institute, consisted of bankruptcy experts and judges, collects data from the courts and analyze the bankruptcy situationin the United States.
Experts from the institute attributed the rise in personal bankruptcies to the growing debts of individual consumers, saying the low interest rates in the 1990s had significantly boosted their consumption.
Now facing the huge debts, many have to go bankrupt, experts said.
World coffee producers to meet in Colombia on market recovery
The International Coffee Organization (ICO), which groups the world's major coffee producers and consumers, will convene in mid-September in Colombiato boost international coffee markets affected by overproduction and depressed prices.
Colombian coffee producers said on Monday that the conference would take place on Sept. 15-19 in the northern city of Cartagena to seek new forms of cooperation for the recovery of the coffee market.
The meeting in Colombia will also serve to commemorate the ICO's 40th anniversary. It will be preceded by a meeting of coffee producers on Aug. 26 to carve out policies to buoy up dropping international coffee prices, which have affected major producers like Colombia and Brazil.
A total of 500 delegates from 60 countries will participate in the ICO meeting, including the United States, which joined the organization only recently.
The meeting in the Andean country would be the first time the ICO convenes outside its headquarters in London, said Gabriel Silva, director of the National Federation of Coffee Producers of Colombia.
Colombian security brace for Rumsfeld's visit
The Colombian authorities have mobilized all security forces to guard United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's coming visit to the Andean state.
Rumsfeld will arrive in Bogota for an eight-hour visit on Tuesday morning and meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Defense Minister Marta Ramirez and other senior military officers to strike a long discussed deal on US anti-drug trafficking and anti-terror assistance, said government officials.
More than 13,000 armed men, including military servicemen, police and secret forces, are in place to protect Rumsfeld's visitto the capital of Bogota, the government said Monday.
Officials of the US Embassy in Colombia, together with the security personnel directly related to Rumsfeld, had also taken necessary steps to tighten the security during the visit.
Combat aircraft and helicopters would monitor all sectors through which Rumsfeld would pass, and security systems had also been reinforced at the El Dorado International Airport, in the Catam military base and in public buildings, said the government officials.
Colombia, ravaged by a four-decades-old civil war, which kills about 3,500 people every year, has intensified its cooperation with the United States in anti-drug fight in these years.
Colombia, the world's top cocaine and heroin producer with an annual output of 580 tons of heroin, supplies about 80 percent of the world's cocaine market, most of which ends up in the United States and Europe.
Under the two-billion-US dollar "Plan Colombia," US special forces have trained Colombian anti-drug troops in the south to fight the cocaine trade, a major source of funding for the rebel guerrillas.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who took office last August, has vowed to step up the crackdown on illegal armed groups.
Colombia comes third in the amount of assistance received from the United States, after Israel and Egypt. The South American country has received about three billion dollars in assistance tofight drug-trafficking and terrorism.
Colombian rebels seek contact with international community
The rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is asking the international community to hold a meeting to explain what it calls "another version" of the internal conflict in Colombia.
The FARC, in a communique on Monday, condemned the petitions presented by President Alvaro Uribe to other countries seeking support for his government in combating drug trafficking and insurgency.
"We propose a meeting between the governments and FARC, in a place and date to be negotiated," said the FARC, which also suggested that Commander Raul Reyes, a member of the National Secretariat, be spokesman for the meeting.
The FARC expressed its doubts about a declaration issued last May in Peru by the 19 countries of the Group of Rio, the largest political coordination group in Latin America responsible for holding talks between Latin America and other nations or blocs.
FARC said it thought the declaration "actually opens the gates for a direct military intervention" by the United States in the Andean country.
On that occasion, the Group of Rio compromised and asked the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan to call on the rebels to declare a cease-fire and then take part in a transparent peace dialogue.
The declaration also said that if the FARC failed to declare a cease-fire and enter talks with the government, other alternativeswould be necessary to solve the Colombian conflict. But it did notmention a multilateral military intervention.
Since then, FARC has been seeking meetings with the Group of Rio and the United Nations, which had not given positive responsesto the rebels' petition.
President Uribe insisted that any dialogue with FARC occur withUN mediation and be based on the rebels' declaration of a cease-fire.
During a peace process from January 1999 to February 2002, several European and Latin American countries supported the dialogue, which collapsed due to an outbreak of violence.
The 17,000-strong FARC, the largest rebel group in Colombia, has been blamed for explosive attacks and kidnappings, making it become more isolated from the international community.
Colombia has been ravaged by a four-decades-old civil war, the longest in Latin America, in which government forces, leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries fight each other.
About 3,500 people, mostly civilians, are killed in the internal conflict every year.
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