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updated by 7:00 a.m. CST each day
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Will
there be a strike at ICE tomorrow?
The
government has made it clear it will not intervene
and pressure the Central Bank (Banco Central de
Costa Rica BCCR) to issue the bonds as stipulated in
an agreement between ICE and the government of 16
February of this year. According
to Revenue Minister, Jorge Wálter Bolaños, the
Central Bank is an autonomous institution and the
government will not intercede.
The bonds in question refer to a petition made by
ICE to the Central Bank, for that institution to
issue a 38.000 Million colones bond. ICE says
it needs the bond issue to complete some of it's
project, especially in the southern areas of the
country and to avoid layoffs.
The Central Bank has said that the bond issue will
affect the local and foreign bond market and it
needs more study before it can make any issues.
According to Jorge Arguedas, president of the "Frente
Interno de Trabajadores"0 (FIT) - the union
representing the workers of ICE - 'a strike is
imminent, we will wait no longer'.
President Pacheco stated that the government
fulfilled it's part of the agreement, meanwhile ICE
has not on two counts. Nonetheless, it is now out of
the government's hands.
Pablo Cob, president of ICE, begs to differ. Cob
stated, "that the government made a commitment
to guarantee that the bonds would be issued as part
of the agreement, now they are trying to put the
blame on ICE.
According to sources we spoke yesterday, if the
strike goes on as planned this Friday, telephone
service will not be affected. Customers will be
continue to be able to make and receive telephone
calls without any problems.
What will be affected, as far as customers are
concerned, is service if there is a problem on a
line and new installations. All if ICE's offices
will be closed and no payments can be made on
accounts. If your telephone bill is due during the
day(s) of the strike, it will not be cut due to lack
of payment.
Fugitive
American banker captured in Costa Rica
An
American banker accused of fraud by a U.S.
grand jury has been captured by authorities
in Costa Rica, the country's Security
Ministry said Wednesday.
Banker Jean Pierre Harper of Frisco,
Texas, was arrested Tuesday in Costa Rica,
where he arrived in September.
A federal grand jury in Alabama indicted
Harper in August on charges of conspiracy to
commit bank fraud, making false entries in
bank records, and soliciting and accepting
bribes in connection with his work while at
Compass Bank.
Harper was being held Tuesday in Costa
Rica while his extradition was processed by
U.S. authorities.
A news release from the Security Ministry
said Harper had been living in an upscale
neighborhood east of the Costa Rican
capital.
The indictment against Harper alleges
that he took bribes to allow questionable
telemarketers to process credit card charges
at Compass Bank in violation of bank
policies, exposing the bank to possible
losses.
The criminal charges carry maximum
sentences ranging from five to 30 years and
fines of up to US$35 million.
Government Will Pay
Teachers Interest
To the
teachers who have not received wage in these months,
the Government of will pay interest on the
amount they have yet to receive.
This was one of the
main commitments at which the Ministry from
Education (MEP), the Teacher's agents and President
Abel Pacheco made last night after 10 hours of
negotiations.
Today, union leaders and the vice-minister of
Education, Carlos Campos, will meet to define
the payment procedure.
Texas Doctors
operate in Costa Rica
Two Amarillo,
Texas, doctors performed more than a dozen
gynecological cancer surgeries in 21Ž2 days during
a trip to Costa Rica.
The doctors, William
"Rusty" Robinson and Gregory May, went to
Costa Rica in March on a Medicine for Humanity
mission. They joined Dr. J. Eric Christman of
University of Colorado at Denver and Dr. Robert
Greenburg of UCLA.
Medicine for Humanity
is a nonprofit organization that specializes in
women's cancer prevention, screening, early
detection and treatment.
Robinson is a
gynecologic oncologist at The Don & Sybil
Harrington Cancer Center. May is senior resident in
obstetrics and gynecology at Texas Tech University
Health Sciences Center at Amarillo.
The team went to
Puentarenas, a region where women have some of the
highest rates of cervical cancer in Central America.
The Monsignor Sanabria Hospital there has doctors
who can diagnose cancerous tumors but no specialists
who can do the surgeries, Robinson said.
Robinson had been to
Costa Rica for similar missions twice before, but
this was the shortest one, he said.
"We were all so
busy, we couldn't get away. But they so wanted us to
come, I just carved out a few days," Robinson
said.
When they arrived,
the hospital doctors had already identified patients
with cervical, vulvar, ovarian and uterine cancers
and scheduled surgeries for them on those days.
About all the American doctors had to do was show up
and operate, Robinson said.
"It's very
satisfying to offer them the chance for a cure that
they may not have otherwise," he said.
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Brazil
never recognized so-called Sahrawi republic (diplomat)
Brazil's ambassador
to Morocco, Lauro Barbosa Da Silva Moreira, on Tuesday said
his country never recognized the "puppet Sahrawi
Republic." Brazil never recognized the "puppet
Sahrawi Republic" and "never had any contacts with
the Polisario," the diplomat said in an interview with
a Moroccan daily.
Morocco's strong presence in Latin America made several
countries of the continent withdraw recognition of the
mirage republic, self-proclaimed by the Polisario
separatists, he said. Several Latin American countries
severed ties or froze recognition of the "Sahrawi
Republic."
These include Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia,
Dominican republic, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and
Paraguay. Latin-American countries' interest in Morocco
stems from Morocco's sustained diplomatic action in the
continent, he stressed.
Alberta and B.C. ripe for West Nile
virus
Unseasonably warm, dry weather in
Alberta and British Columbia has
created the perfect conditions for a
serious outbreak of West Nile virus,
warned a Harvard Medical School expert
yesterday.
In the United States, the explosive
debut of the disease occurred in 1999
in New York City, after a dry winter
and a summer heat wave, which
accelerated the cycle of transmission.
A winter drought and relatively
warm weather in Western Canada and the
U.S. should have public-health
officials on alert, said Paul Epstein,
associate director of the Center for
Health and the Global Environment at
Harvard Medical School.
"The antenna should be up on
the West Coast, which had a warm
winter. British Columbia and Alberta
are most at risk in Canada," Dr.
Epstein said. "Canada has had
some very unstable weather patterns,
which are conducive to nuisance
organisms."
West Nile virus, which can cause
potentially fatal brain inflammation
in a small percentage of people
affected, targets birds not humans,
but is spread to people through
mosquitoes that feed on the blood of
both.
Unlike malaria-bearing mosquitoes
that thrive after rains, mosquitoes
that transmit the West Nile virus
breed abundantly in shallow, stagnant
pools of water that remain after a
drought. Infected birds may congregate
around shrinking water fields, and
drought also means a decline in the
population of frogs and dragonflies,
the natural predators of mosquitoes.
In Alberta and British Columbia,
precipitation levels were 20 to 40 per
cent below normal this past winter,
despite a late spring snowfall in
Alberta. Temperatures in both
provinces were two to four degrees
above normal.
Experts are also concerned about
outbreaks in Alaska, Utah, Arizona and
Nevada this summer, after winter
droughts that have amplified
conditions for the virus' spread.
Many major outbreaks of West Nile,
which was first identified by
scientists in Uganda in 1937, are
related to drought, said Dr. Epstein
and Douglas Causey, a senior biologist
at Harvard University's Museum of
Comparative Zoology. The two experts
held a news briefing yesterday to
discuss this trend, and the role of
global warming in the spread of the
disease. Epidemics in Israel and
Romania in the 1990s can be linked to
drought, as well as the appearance of
the disease in New York City in the
summer of 1999.
By December, 2002, more than 4,000
people in 40 states had contracted the
virus and 274 had died.
Harvey Artsob, chief of zoonotic
diseases at the federal lab in
Winnipeg, also predicts that West Nile
will spread westward in Canada.
Last summer, 400 cases in Ontario
and 17 in Quebec were documented and
the disease claimed the lives of 17
Ontarians and one Quebecker. (Two
Albertans also fell ill with the
disease in the summer of 2002, but
they contracted it outside the
province.)
In July, 2002, West Nile virus was
also detected in birds, mosquitoes and
horses in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and
Nova Scotia.
"There are different species
of mosquitoes spreading the diseases
in the West and we don't know if the
virus has over-wintered," Dr.
Artsob said. "If it has, it will
increase the risk to humans."
West Nile virus has now spread to
238 animal species, and has been
detected as far south as the
Caribbean, Mexico and Central America,
notably in horses in El Salvador and
in birds in Costa Rica, where the
disease is the leading suspect behind
the 10-fold drop in bird species.
Global warming has helped diseases
normally associated with warmer climes
to spread to cooler countries, says
Dr. Causey. Warmer winters and longer
summers in Canada will increase the
threat of mosquito-borne diseases.
There is no treatment for West Nile
virus and the development of a vaccine
to prevent the disease is still two to
three years away.
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