Archive for June 27th, 2008
Friday, June 27th, 2008
Lawmakers voted this week to prohibit parents from spanking their kids.
The bill, passed in a second vote Wednesday, would outlaw physical or emotional punishment or mistreatment of children. The proposal will become law once it is signed by President Oscar Arias.
Ombudswoman Lisbeth Quesada, whose office proposed the bill in 2005, cheered the vote.
Nothing justifies hitting children, she said in a statement.
Still, lawmaker Luis Antonio Barrantes, who serves on the committee that approved the bill, said the proposal lacks mechanisms for enforcement.
It’s symbolic, he said. There are no clear sanctions, but it does send a clear message that you mustn’t mistreat children.
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Friday, June 27th, 2008
A group of volunteers from different countries worked for a month and a half to build a nursery designed to protect turtle nests at Matapalo Beach, in the Costa Rica Central Pacific. This is the second such facility built there, since the useful life of the first one had come to an end. Also, groups of volunteers patrol the beach during the spawning season –June 1st through November 30th– to prevent the action of poachers, among other predators. As an average, 500 turtles come to nest at this beach, according to Gustavo Gamboa, the Matapalo coordinator for the Association of Volunteers at the Service of Protected Areas (ASVO in Spanish).
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Friday, June 27th, 2008
Established here in 1988, VF Corporation employed 4,000 workers at one time, but now is halting its operations in Costa Rica and will lay off its last 400 employees. VF operated here under the name WR and assembled Wrangler and Lee jeans. Company sources said that the decision to shut down the plants here is due to a drop in the sale of jeans in the United States. Costa Rican exports of textiles have dropped by 26 percent, from $811 million in 2002 to $429 million in 2007, according to the Foreign Trade Promoter.
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Friday, June 27th, 2008
United Airlines is going to halt operations in Guatemala next September 2; Spirit Airlines postponed flights to El Salvador from Miami due to start in August; American announced that it is canceling flights from Puerto Rico to the United States and to Caribbean islands. However, Costa Rica will not be affected by such cancellations, sector sources said. The increase in the price of fuels and the more expensive operation costs are quoted among the reasons for the cancellations.
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Friday, June 27th, 2008
The months of tension between the governments of Oscar Arias and Raul Castro seem to have come to an end. There is frequent and growing dialog between the ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two nations, even though the absence of diplomatic relations remains. Minister Bruno Stagno has met several times with his Cuban peer Felipe Perez. The Costa Rican official discarded any formality in those meetings, even though he admitted that the Ministry keeps open dialog with Cuba and permanently watches over what is going on in the Island. Dr. Arias, who is for democracy and trade opening, endured attacks from Cuba early in his current term. He was called “a lackey of Yankee imperialism” by Havana. According to analysts, the changing trend is due to an apparent new order of things in Cuba, where Raul Castro took over his brother Fidel at the helm.
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