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Police
Investigate Bank Heist in Limon
Several armed anti-socials, as they known locally,
robbed tens of millions of colones at the Banco de
Costa Rica branch in Matina, Limon. The assault
occurred yesterday morning.
Tuesday night, the attackers arrived at the house of
the branch manager and took him and his family
hostage. Wednesday morning they took the branch
manager to the bank and waited for other employees
to arrive to open the bank vault.
The assailants proceeded to rob the bank and took
the manager's wife and two children with them to
make their getawat and later in the afternoon
released them. Walter Navarro, head of the Fuerza
Publica, confirmed that the hostages had been
released unharmed
The Fuerza Publica and OIJ are working together to
find the bank robbers.
No More Murders of
Children in Costa Rica
This year, at
least four children under the age of ten have been
taken from their families and brutally murdered in
Costa Rica. This past Thursday, the 10th of July,
police found the remains of eight year old Kattia
Vanesa González, buried under the floor of the
suspected killer's home. The suspect has previously
been convicted of both homicide and rape.
Casa Alianza, an
organization dedicated to the defence of children's
rights, is demanding that the representatives of the
Legislative Assembly consider and vote upon the
"Osvaldo and Kattia Law". The law will
increase the penalty for crimes against children,
for example, the kidnapping of minors, currently
carries a sentence of only two years in prison.
In addition, it will
create a system to track sexual abusers; similar to
Megan's Law in the United States. The tracking
system allows the authorities to monitor the
movements of sexual criminals, and to quickly and
efficiently react to kidnappings, abuses and other
crimes in the community. Only with adequate controls
and severe jail sentences will it be possible to
prevent such atrocities against the children of
Costa Rica.
Casa Alianza needs
your help so that the members of Congress will
understand the grave harm created by their
complacency in addressing the situation of children.
Please, send an email with your name and a one
paragraph message to [email protected]
as quickly as possible.
They have already
begun the campaign "One million signatures for
Kattia and Osvaldo's Law" so that every Costa
Rican can support this project. Your email messages,
regardless of where you write to them from, or in
what language you write, will be included in their
petition.
It's the least that
we can do to stop these atrocities.
Gallo Pinto made
in the US
Mexican, Chinese, Italian, Thai...It doesn't matter where you are. There's always one of these restaurants. But what about
Costa Rican food? Is there any Costa Rican restaurant out of the country at all? The answer is yes.
The Gallo Pinto (rice and beans), sweet plantains, ceviche and many other typical dishes enjoyed with coffee and tamarindo drinks are made in the United States too. There are a few places where to find typical tico food and an example is the in the Hamptons, New York: the Witch's Rock.
Named after a beach in Guanacaste (Roca Bruja), the restaurant was opened July last year by
Costa Ricans Franklin Cubero, Arturo Quiros and Maricruz Solis, of San Ramon, Alajuela, and the kitchen is commanded by
Costa Rican chef Raul Castro.
Why that name? Solis explained that many American people who live in that area have been surfing in Roca Bruja and are attracted to a restaurant especially decorated to make them feel back in the beach.
Many of them bring their pictures taken in Roca Bruja, write their names on them and leave them in a special wall in the establishment.
Surrounded by surf boards, pictures and wall paintings that reflect the sea, visitors can enjoy Gallo Pinto (rice and beans) with sirloin steak and salad, rice and seafood, picadillo de chayote (minced vegetables), ceviche, chicharrones (pork) and other dishes, in some cases seasoned with Salsa Lizano directly brought from Costa Rica.
For desserts, the menu offers from fried bananas to Crepas Pura Vida (crepes with fruits). The coffee and the liquors are imported from Costa Rica while other things, for example Tamarindo beverages, are only offered when it's possible to buy them in New York.
Who is the main customer of the Witch's Rock and what is the favorite dish? Approximately 90 per cent of the visitors are Americans and Gallo Pinto is nearly half of all the food ordered everyday.
Solis said the good reaction of the people surprised them in the beginning and attributed part of the success of the business to how well-known Costa Rica is nowadays.
"Everybody knows Costa Rica. People have been there or have heard of it and that makes a Costarrican restaurant a popular place to go. That's why it's possible to open Costarrican restaurants here or in any other country", Solis said.
But the origin is not the only important element. She explained that is also important to keep the real taste of the food as it is cooked in Costa Rica and to present an elegant establishment.
The cultural exchange is other attraction the restaurant offer in its menu. The Witch's Rock has in its staff some American employees, it celebrates national days like September 15 (Independence Day) and Mother's Day (August 15), and shows
Costa Rican paintings.
The music is also varied, not only Costa
Rican or Latin but also North American or from other parts of the world.
And like this one there are some more Costa
Rican restaurants in other parts of the United States that can well be worth a visit in the next trip.
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Latin American countries to meet on cooperation
The Standing Secretariat of the Latin American Economic System (LAES) said here on Wednesday that the government of Panama will host next week the 16th Meeting of International Cooperation Directors of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The LAES, a regional consultation and negotiation organization headquartered in the capital city of Venezuela, said in a communique that the meeting will focus on "Financing for Development and the Fulfillment of the Millennium Targets in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean."
The meeting will gather in Panama the ministers in charge of international cooperation from 28 Latin American and Caribbean countries that are members of the
LAES.
Representatives from the United Nations and Pan-American organizations will also participate, along with representatives from some other regional and international organizations as the Andean Community, the Andean Promotion Corporation, the Group of 77 and the East and Southeast African Common Market.
The participants will debate on the need to redefine the goals of international cooperation to meet the challenges posed by international system changes and the globalization process.
Moreover, they will analyze the formulas to strengthen the cooperation among the Latin American and the Caribbean countries and their cooperation with other developing nations.
The meeting is scheduled to conclude with a declaration that will contain the Latin America-Caribbean consensus on international cooperation and development financing.
CIA chief questioned over dubious intelligence on Iraq
US Senators grilled CIA Director George Tenet Wednesday on the intelligence indicating Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa in a controversy over why President George W. Bush used this false information to make his case for the war with Iraq.
Tenet testified before a closed session with the Senate Intelligence Committee, his first trip to Capitol Hill since he took responsibility on Friday for approving the inclusion in Bush's January State of the Union speech a statement that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.
The White House has been under fire in the past several days after that claim turned out to be based on forged documents.
The committee's Republican chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas told reporters that Tenet had been questioned about the uranium claim and he had repeated his responsibility for it.
Roberts said Tenet would be asked to testify before the committee again at a later date.
Two of the Democratic presidential candidates called for the resignation of Tenet while other Democrats tried to turn the blameon the White House.
"If, in fact, it was his fault, then George Tenet has to be held responsible," Senator Joe Lieberman from Connecticut said during a campaign appearance in South Carolina.
Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, another Democratic presidential candidate, said he has maintained that Tenet should leave.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, an Intelligence Committee member, said the false claim on the uranium sales was only one of "a lot of other troubling evidence."
"There may have been a pattern of exaggeration or stretching. So this is just one of a number of examples, it is not an isolatedexample," he said.
Senator John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate from North Carolina and member of the intelligence committee, told reporters before the session that Bush should take responsibility for his speech.
"The responsibility is not the CIA's, it's not anyone else's. It is the president's responsibility... he has to take responsibility for them," he said.
FBI probes into forged documents on Iraq's nuclear attempt
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has begun a wide-range investigation into the forged documents which led people to believe that Iraq was seeking to buy significant quantities of uranium, the Newsweek magazine reported Wednesday on its web-site.
The report came as the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been under increasing fire for including the statement about the alleged Iraq attempt to buy uranium from Africa into President George W. Bush's State of the Union speech in January. The documents on which the claim was based turned out to be forged.
The previously undisclosed probe is being conducted by the FBI's counter-intelligence division, the Newsweek report said.
The bureau has sent agents to Italy and other countries to lookinto the murky origins of the documents and ordered the questioning of officials at the State Department and the CIA, saidthe report.
The FBI is trying to determine who forged the documents and why,and whether anyone tried to influence US foreign policy, the weekly magazine quoted officials as saying.
The disputed documents were first provided to Italian intelligence services in late 2001, and information about them wasthen passed along to allied intelligence agencies, including Britain's MI6 and the CIA of the United States, the report said.
But the documents didn't come into the possession of the US government until nearly a year later, in October 2002, when a foreign journalist turned them over to the US embassy in Rome, which then quickly passed them along to the CIA station chief in Rome and officials at the State Department.
But the CIA headquarters in the United States did not get the documents until early February 2003, which was after Bush's State of the Union address, the report said.
Throughout the fall and in the weeks prior to the State of the Union address, the CIA had tried to warn the White House that the intelligence reporting about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger was "fragmentary" and not reliable.
At one point, CIA director George Tenet himself personally advised deputy national-security advisor Steve Hadley to remove a reference to the uranium purchases from a speech Bush was preparing to give in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, said Newsweek.
But the idea that the documents themselves were based on forgedmaterial did not become known until after Feb. 4, 2003, when the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asked theUS government to back up some of the allegations it was making about Iraq's nuclear program.
IAEA forensic analysts figured out they were forgeries, Newsweek said.
In another development, Tenet on Wednesday testified before a closed-door session with the Senate Intelligence Committee over the dubious arms data, days after he took responsibility for approving the inclusion in Bush's State of the Union speech the statement that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa.
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