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Recope to Sign For US$90 Million
Pipeline Loans
Costa Rica's state oil refinery Recope (Refinadora
Costarricense de Petroleo) is
currently obtaining the legal authorizations
required for approvals on loans totaling US$90
million for the construction of a 123km pipeline
between Moín and La Garita, Recope's project manager
Javier Abarca told BNamericas.
The 12-inch diameter, multi-product pipeline will
transport fuel from the Caribbean port of Moín in
Limon to La Garita in Alajuela.
On June 16, Recope is expected to close transactions
with the Central American Bank for Economic
Integration (Cabei) and the Andean Development
Corporation (CAF) for respective loans of US$60
million and US$30 million, local Spanish paper La
Prensa Libre reported.
Argentine construction company Techint was the only
firm to submit a construction bid by the March 12
deadline. Recope is currently studying the proposal,
Abarca said.
Construction of the project's third stage - which
includes the 123km pipeline plus pumping and
receiving stations - is scheduled to begin in
January 2005 and last 15 months, he said.
World Vision, U.S. Government
Agencies Partner to Combat Child Sex Tourists
U.S. citizens who sexually exploit
children while traveling abroad are the target of a
new joint initiative
launched by World Vision (website) in partnership with the
U.S. Department of State and
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
This partnership is one component of World Vision's
Child Sex Tourism Prevention Project introduced
this year in Cambodia, Costa Rica, Thailand and the
United States
Worldwide, an estimated 2 million children are
trapped in the commercial
sex industry. Many of these children, some as young
as five years old, live
in poor countries that receive foreign tourists who
come to sexually exploit
children.
An estimated 25 percent of these "child
sex tourists" are from the
United States.
"This program is intended to deter U.S. citizens
from exploiting children
overseas by sending a clear message that offenders
risk significant prison
time for their actions," said World Vision's Joe
Mettimano, director of the
Child Sex Tourism Prevention Project.
"For those who
don't heed the project's
deterrence message, World Vision is assisting ICE in
their work to identify
and prosecute child sex tourists from the United
States."
Some of those who engage in child sex tourism are
pedophiles who regularly
travel abroad for the purpose of having sex with
children. But many of these
men travel for vacation or legitimate business
purposes, but decide to
experiment with the local sex trade.
Michael J. Garcia, Department of Homeland Security
Assistant Secretary for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement added, "ICE's
Operation Predator targets
those who exploit children. By partnering with
humanitarian groups like World
Vision, we enhance our law enforcement abilities
overseas.
We're sending a
message to these individuals that if you prey on
children -- whether in the
U.S. or abroad -- you will be brought to justice."
World Vision's Child Sex Tourism Prevention Project
is now in operation in
the United States and Cambodia and will begin in
Costa Rica and Thailand in
coming months.
The project's deterrence messages are
being placed in the path
of would-be sex tourists, including airports,
in-flight videos on airlines,
television, and roadside billboards in destination
countries. Also, ICE is
training World Vision staff overseas so that the
organization can provide the
extra sets of "eyes and ears" to help ICE pursue
these sexual predators.
"This project is a powerful example of
public-private partnership," stated
John Miller, Director of the Office to Monitor and
Combat Trafficking in
Persons at the U.S. Department of State. "The State
Department is committed to
combating the exploitation of children overseas,
especially by U.S. Citizens.
Athens 2004 : Costa Rica in group D with Morocco,
Iraq and Portugal
The 16 teams that will
take part in the 2004 Olympic Football Tournament
have all come through an arduous qualification
process enroute for Athens.
The teams are split into four groups of four, with
the top two countries from each group progressing to
the quarter-finals. None of the groups offer an easy
passage to the next round.
Costa Rica has been drawn in group D with Morocco,
Iraq and Portugal.
Portugal will start as favourites to top Group D,
but Morocco that qualified against enormous odds
will all have something to say about that. And Coach
Madih could put the Moroccan squad in the two top
teams and reach the final round.
The feast of football kicks of on 11 August and one
man who is already looking forward to it is Issa
Hayatou, Vice-President of FIFA and President of the
organising committee of the Olympic Football
Tournaments: "Football will have the honour of
opening the Olympic Games," he explained just before
today's draw, "We should be enormously proud of
that."
Here is Men's draw results :
Group A :
Greece
Korea Republic
Mali
Mexico |
Group B :
Paraguay
Japan
Ghana
Italy |
Group C :
Argentina
Serbia and Monténégro
Tunisia
Australia |
Group D :
Costa Rica
Morocco
Iraq
Portugal |
Tourism to Stay Strong in Low Season
The tourism industry
foresees a better "low season" than that of the same
period last year.
A study done by the Cámara Nacional de Turismo (Canatur),
that took in the opinion of 50 tourism businesses,
sees the low season in 2004 much better that what
was experienced in the year 2003.
The positive forecast is based on the first months
of the year, where tour operators saw an increase in
tourism and at least 50% of those polled believe
that the trend will continue for the rest of the
year.
Traditionally, tourism drops off at the end of May
as the rainy or "green" season as it is now being
called, commences and last until the middle of
December.
News
Summary:
- High gasoline prices have prompted drivers to use
their cars less and gasoline consumption has dropped
off in the past week, when a litre of super gasoline
hit a record high of ¢315 colones.
- The new Comptroller General,
Álex Solís,
appointed this week is already
defending his position after it being discovered
that his signed a document using his brother's name
- Ottón Solís, president of the Partido
Acción Ciudadana (PAC) and presidential candidate in
the 2002 elections - but it was not a forgery, he
told the press.
- A Puntarenas court ordered six months of
preventative detention to Canadian, Francesco Pécora,
who is suspected of defrauding the Asociación de
Desarrollo Integral de Paquera (ADIP). Pécora faces
a 10 year sentence if convicted. Pécora was elected
chief executive of ADIP following promises of
millions of dollars of investment for the area, then
using ADIP funds for his own personal use.
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G-8 leaders agree to promote private sectors in
developing countries
Leaders from the Group of Eight on Wednesday agreed
on a US-led plan to promote private sectors in
developing countries, as part of a three-day summit
dealing with various political and economic issues.
"President (George W.) Bush led the G-8 today in
committing to a US-driven action plan on 'Applying
the Power of Entrepreneurship to the Eradication of
Poverty,'" the White House said in a statement.
According to the plan, the G-8 countries will
facilitate and lower the cost of sending money back
home by immigrants abroad to their families and
friends, launching pilot projects aimed at cutting
transaction costs by half from up to 15 percent.
The plan called for the expansion of access to small
loans to help new entrepreneurs establish or grow
their businesses. The G-8will pilot a so-called
microfinance initiative in the broader Middle East
region, pledging to help over 2 million
entrepreneurs get themselves out of poverty through
microfinance loans over five years.
The United States will also expand its microfinance
program, which is currently active in 58 countries,
reaching over 5 million clients worldwide with total
combined loans of more than 2.5 billion dollars.
Besides, the G-8 pledged to help finance housing and
clean water by developing local mortgage and
municipal bond markets, and to improve the business
climate in developing countries for entrepreneurs
and investors. This goal would be achieved by
assisting committed countries with comprehensive
reforms and encouraging multilateral development
banks to increase lending and technical assistance
for small businesses.
The United States will help organize a conference
this fall to outline strategies for private sector
growth and share best practices.
The leaders are having a three-day meeting at Sea
Island, Georgia to discuss a wide range of issues
such as global economy, Iraq and a broad initiative
calling for social and political reform in the
greater Middle East region.
Tijuana seeks to shake sin city image
With its rowdy tequila bars, massage parlors and
betting shops, the Mexican frontier city of Tijuana
has long had a reputation as sin city for weekend
revelers from the United States, according to
Thursday's China Daily.
Its tarnished civic stock sank even further in
recent years when it lent its name to one of the
most ruthless drug smuggling rings in history -- the
Tijuana Cartel -- and became a bridgehead for
illegal migrants to the United States.
But in a bid to shake off its negative image, the
booming industrial city of 1.2 million people is
attempting a bold make-over to replace its
reputation for vice and criminality with a highbrow
renown for the arts and culture.
Steered by a specially convened Image Committee,
authorities in the city have developed an ambitious
program of public art to transform its parks and
underpasses, and are celebrating the city's locally
born good-guy heroes in a prominent hall of fame.
The city's cultural center, meanwhile, has developed
an innovative arts program including opera, theater
and film festivals, as well as regular painting and
photography exhibitions that celebrate a
contemporary border culture.
"We want to give people symbols of beauty that they
will love and get attached to, because we want them
to love Tijuana and take pride in it," Image
Committee director Jose Galicot said in his
art-crammed office.
"Right now we have more cultural activities than the
Americans across the border in San Diego. We believe
that Tijuana will become another Venice and another
Florence," he grandly predicted.
Locals say silent film star Charlie Chaplin started
the city on its downward path when he coasted over
the border for illicit shots of liquor during
Prohibition in the 1920s. He was followed by
gangster Bugsy Siegel, who cut a racetrack deal that
set the city's enduring illicit tone.
But after an economic crisis prompted by the
collapse of the peso in the mid-1990s wiped out the
value of family savings overnight and plunged the
city into a period of deep gloom, Tijuana residents
took the first steps toward improving the city's
beleaguered image.
Galicot and a painter friend took a brush to a low
concrete balustrade just south of Tijuana's 24-lane
border crossing into the United States and painted
Mexican flags in a bid to cheer up passing
motorists. It worked.
Collaborating with local artists, the businessman,
writer and amateur painter went on to paint murals
of upbeat subjects including schools of whales,
battling dinosaurs and desert flora across 70 of the
city's plain concrete bridges and underpasses.
"There is no other city in the world that has more
murals in its streets," Galicot says of the
eye-catching friezes daubed across the industrial
city, each bearing the heartfelt dedication: "With
love to Tijuana."
Because of this creativity, Galicot was appointed by
the mayor in 2002 to head up a newly convened Image
Committee. He went on to set up a hall of fame in
the arrival area of Tijuana's international airport,
to present newcomers to the city with a gallery of
locally born notables and their achievements.
"When people think of Tijuana, they think of the
notorious Tijuana cartel. But the Arellano Felix
brothers (who led the drug-smuggling band) weren't
even from the city," Galicot said.
"We created the hall of fame to champion the careers
of local heroes" such as boxing's world
super-featherweight champion Erik 'Terrible' Morales
and Major League baseball star Esteban Loaiza, he
added.
Characterized as a sepia-tinted drug den in director
Steven Soderberg's Oscar-winning movie "Traffic,"
and as a town of "tequila, sexo y marijuana" in
French singer Manu Chao's hit Welcome to Tijuana,
the city has a lot to live down.
While satisfying U.S. citizen's sinful appetites is
still a big business in the tawdry Avenida de La
Revolucion strip of bars and lap dancing clubs, city
authorities say they have closed down all but three
of Tijuana's 120 massage parlors since 2001.
In a bid to further challenge the downbeat
perceptions, the Tijuana Cultural Center is offering
a broad program of classical dance, opera and
theater in its series of specially built performance
spaces.
"(Part) of our mission is working for the city's
image. Through the Center we can show the rest of
the world what is happening in Tijuana," Center
director, Teresa Vicencio said.
"There is an explosion of interest in culture here
... And I want people to say 'I'm going to Tijuana
because of the dance festival'... and not because of
the Avenida de La Revolucion," she adds.
Known as "la bola," or the ball, for its domed
concrete cinema space, the Culture Center has become
a landmark for residents of the border city, and a
focus for culture across northwest Mexico.
The Center regularly holds exhibitions by local
painters, photographers and video artists
celebrating the city's vibrant border culture, and
is beginning to spark interest from outside the
area, Vicencio says.
Tijuana was named as one of the world's eight "most
creative centers of culture and vitality" by
Newsweek magazine in September 2002 -- alongside
cities such as Austin, Texas, and Gateshead, in
Britain.
"The eyes of the country are turning to Tijuana,"
she says with a smile. "They are starting to get
news about what is going on here, and learn about
the artists that we have."
Britain backs peace talks between ELN rebels,
Colombian government
A British diplomat said here Wednesday
that Britain backs the possible peace talks between
the Colombian government and the country's second
largest guerrilla, the National Liberation Army (ELN).
Tom Duggin, British ambassador to Colombia, said he
trusts the ELN seriousness on peace talks with
President Alvaro Uribe's government.
The 5,000-strong ELN, which had engaged in
preliminary peace talks with Uribe's predecessor,
Andres Pastrana, issued a letter on June 1, saying
it was ready to hold talks with the Colombian
government and local leaders as the only way to
reach peace.
The group also said it was willing to accept a
ceasefire before starting the peace talks with the
government.
Colombia has been ravaged by a four-decade-old civil
war, during which government forces, leftist
guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries have fought
one another, killing an average of 3,500 people,
mostly civilians, each year.
Groups of right-wing paramilitary fighters have
already reached an agreement with the Uribe
administration to disarm and demobilize.
But the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC),
the country's largest leftist guerrilla group that
has 18,000 combatants, has rejected to accept a
ceasefire as the precondition for peace talks with
the government.
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