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Government Asking
Public to March on Friday
Government officials are asking the public and all
public employees to participate in a march planned
this Friday.
The march will begin at 8am at the Parque Central
(Central Park) and will head north, ending at the
Museo de Los Niños (Chidren's Musuem), in support
of violence against children following the murder of
8 year old Katia Vanessa González.
All public employees will have 4 hours free Friday
morning to participate in the event, it was
announced yesterday.
Over the last couple of days, petitions have been
circulating in downtown San José as part of Casa
Alianza's mission to collect One Million names for
presentation to the legislature, for better laws to
protect children.
American
Dies Falling from Hotel Room
Robert Constance
Valdez, 36, a native from Texas, fell from the
fourth floor of the Hotel Del Rey, in downtown San
Jose, Tuesday morning.
Although initial
indications are that the man committed suicide,
homicide police will be investigating the case to
discard the idea after a series of version arose
around the death.
One of the version include that the man may have
been pushed off by another individual.
Valdez entered Costa Rica last Sunday in the company
of several friends, who had planned on staying until
Tuesday.
At dawn yesterday, while the group conversed in the
hotel lobby ready to leave, Valdez suddenly left the
group and threw himself off the building's fourth
floor. He was reported to have been distraught and
seen crying moments before.
Ticos pays up to
52% of interest
Attracted by
simple and fact transactions, Many Costaricans
obtain consumer loans for personal necessities from
banks and financial companies with interest of up to
52%.
This information is according to SUGEF (General
Supervision of Entidades Financieras) - the
government agency that supervises and regulates
financial institutions - that for the month of May
2003, 11 financial institutions authorised and
palced 14.136 Million colones in loans for personal
credit.
The same period last year there were only 9.000
Million colones in loans placed.
Loans are mostly in small amounts, less than 300.000
colones (or $750 at today's exchange rate) and
repaid on time as stipulated.
This growth in consumer borrowing has spurred many
banks and other financial institutions to offer a
fast and easy way to get a loan for all kinds of
consumer goods - cars, appliances and credit cards.
Local retailer also have their own financial offers,
many consumer appliance goods stores offer purchases
on credit with weekly or bi-weekly payments of up to
36 months, with interest rates as much as 50% per
year.
One local bank had been offering it's credit card at
1/2 the normal interest rate, claiming at 28% was
the lowest rate on the national market.
Franklin
Chang in Costa Rica
Correos de Costa Rica (Post Office) and the Earth
University will give today a special tribute to NASA
astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz.
For this occasion, Correos Costa Rica will introduce
a special stamp with the face of the Costarican
scientist, a photo of the planet and a native beetle
of Costa Rica.
For the organizers, the tribute is way to
demonstrate to the world Costarican pride of the
contributions made by Chang.
The ceremony will take place at 11am at Earth
University in Guácimo
de Limon.
Costa Rica studying possibility of limiting access to public databases
The government is studying whether it needs to regulate the sale of databases after an Atlanta-based company purchased information from the
public registry, the attorney general said Tuesday.
Patricia Vega said officials have put together a commission to study the idea, appointing representatives from several government departments.
The objective is to see if the legislation on this is sufficient, she said.
Atlanta-based ChoicePoint Inc. said it bought official registry files from subcontractors in Costa Rica, as well as Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
ChoicePoint sold the data obtained on tens of millions of Latin Americans to myriad U.S. federal agencies, including the division of the Department of Homeland Security that investigates foreign visitors and residents. However, company officials have said they are no longer gathering data from some countries, including Costa Rica.
Vega said the commission will study what laws regulate the release of official registry files and determine if changes are needed.
Many databases in Costa Rica are a matter of public record and available to anyone, Vega said.
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Cuban boat hijacked to Bahamas
A Cuban surveying boat with 27 people on board was hijacked on Tuesday and eventually entered Bahamian waters.
A government statement, which was released by the Interior Ministry Tuesday, blamed the latest hijacking on the United States, which grants special treatment to Cubans who reach the US soil.
The surveying boat belonged to the state marine surveying company GeoCuba. The boat was hijacked from the port of Nuevitas on the northern coast of the Cuban province Camaguey Tuesday morning, the statement said.
A Cuban border patrol boat followed the hijacked boat before itentered Bahamian waters.
The Cuban government has asked the Bahamas to return the boat and the hijackers.
Meanwhile, Cuban authorities launched an investigation into a failed attempt to hijack a fishing boat on Monday, which left three dead and one child injured.
Three individuals armed with a revolver and a knife captured the fishing boat Monday morning in La Coloma port in the Pinar delRio province, 500 kilometers west of Havana.
The hijackers accompanied by a woman and her two sons, aged 10 and 17, attempted to hijack the boat to the United States, the authorities said.
Unable to start the boat, the hijackers failed to leave the port, and was finally surrounded by La Coloma fishermen and several law-enforcement agents.
All the three killed hijackers were claimed to have criminal records.
Pentagon says Iraq war has cost 48 billion dollars
The military expenses for the Iraq war and its aftermath have cost the Pentagon about 48 billion US dollars so far and are expected to total 58 billion dollars by the end of September, a defense official said Tuesday.
Dov Zakheim, the Defense Department's comptroller, told local media that the estimated cost so far covers the actual combat phase, from March 20 to May 1, postwar stabilization efforts and 30 billion dollars in prewar military buildup.
The cost peaked at roughly 5 billion dollars during the heavy combat phase and has fallen back below 4 billion a month, officials said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Congressional hearing last week that cost estimate for the Iraq campaign had reached 3.9 billion dollars per month, on average from January through Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
This monthly figure is almost double the 2 billion dollars per month estimate issued by administration officials in April. Pentagon officials said the updated monthly average of 3.9 billion dollars is the estimated cost to maintain the current force level in Iraq, which includes expenses for military operations but not reconstruction costs.
General Tommy Franks, who led the Iraq war, said last week thatviolence and uncertainty in Iraq made it unlikely that US troop levels, which stand at about 145,000, would be reduced "for the foreseeable future."
Zakheim did not give an estimate for monthly US military costs after Sept. 30 because numerous factors remain unknown, including the size of the future US military presence needed there and the number of international troops who might arrive to help with peacekeeping in Iraq.
Colombian president moves office to conflict zone
Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe on Tuesday moved his office to Arauca, capital of the province with the same name, to assert authority in an area plagued by rebel activities.
It is the first time in recent memory that a Colombian president has moved his government to a conflict zone. Uribe will rule the Andean country in an army base on the border with Venezuela for three days.
To protect the president and other government officials from possible rebel attacks, thousands of soldiers have been deployed across the lowland city.
"The nation must defeat the violence, the drugs, the terrorism," Uribe said in a televised speech.
Before his departure to Arauca, the president said he was prepared to work for peace in the region. Uribe added that it is necessary not to take a defying stance, because "peace in Arauca means peace for Colombia."
The Arauca region, where leftist rebel groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, together with far-right paramilitaries are operating, is home to the 700-km-long Cano Limon Covenas oil pipeline which has been frequently attacked by rebels. Mayors have been murdered along with religious leaders and parliamentarians as part of the subversive campaign.
Official figures show that the pipeline has been attacked some 700 times, either by the FARC or the ELN, causing huge economic losses and environmental damage.
Since he was sworn in last August, President Uribe has adopted a tough policy against the rebels in order to put an early end to a decades-old civil war that kills about 3,500 people every year. Uribe has also given special attention to Arauca, dispatching extra soldiers to the city and briefly giving them emergency powers to make arrests without warrants and checking identities.
Data show highest Dutch unemployment since 1997
Unemployment in the Netherlands hit 5.4 percent in April-June, a record high since 1997, in line with economic predictions that the jobless queues will grow gradually this year and next, new data showed on Wednesday.
According to the country's Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rose to 5.4 percent of the labor force or an average of 403,000 in April-June from 5.3 percent or 395,000 in March-May. Seasonally adjusted unemployment went up to 5.5 percent of the labor force or 411,000 in April-Junefrom 5.4 percent or 403,000 in March-May.
"For the first time since 1997 the unemployed labor force is larger than 400,000. The lowest level was two years ago when the Netherlands had 232,000 jobless," the CBS said in the data.
A consensus forecast was not available due to insufficient estimates but in general economists expect Dutch joblessness to rise in the course of this year and further next year.
The Central Planning Bureau, a Dutch government think tank, forecast earlier this month that the country's economic growth would stagnate this year and joblessness would rise to 5.5 percentof the labor force this year and 6.75 percent in 2004.
The jobless data were released after Dutch semiconductor equipment maker ASML announced that it would cut 550 jobs, including some 400 in Europe, and reported a worse-than-expected second-quarter net loss.
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