Archive for January 2nd, 2009
Friday, January 2nd, 2009
Police in Costa Rica say they have arrested nine illegal Chinese migrants, together with the people smuggler who had brought the group over the border from neighbouring Panama.
A police statement said the group were travelling in two vehicles when they were stopped at a roadblock.
Five migrants and the Costa Rican driver of one of the vehicles were detained at the roadblock, while the other migrants were picked up after trying to escape across a nearby river.
Police say a second people smuggler escaped in a separate vehicle.
The migrants are expected to be deported in the coming days.
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Friday, January 2nd, 2009
Motorists have begun to sweat in the high beams of Costa Rica’s recently approved traffic law, which consists of harsher punishments for anything from failing to buckle up to driving under the influence.
Yesterday afternoon the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court received its first appeal by a man accused of drunken driving. The man, with the last name Fuentes, is appealing against a section of the new law that calls for a prison sentence for motorists caught driving while intoxicated, the court said in a statement.
Fuentes cited the World Health Organization’s categorization of alcoholism as a disease and claimed the state should apply curative measures rather than criminalize drunken driving, according to the statement.
The case came after a week in which police arrested dozens of drivers for allegedly driving under the influence. Authorities said 26 arrests were made over the weekend in Filadelfia, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, when people were purportedly driving after drinking at a party in the area.
The drivers’ vehicles and licenses were taken away and could be held for up to two years, while the motorists could face one to three years in jail, TV channel 7′s Web site, www.teletica.com, reported.
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Friday, January 2nd, 2009
The Costa Rican government has declared the Los Quetzales region the country’s 28th National Park. The 4,000 hectares of reserve were first created in 2005 in one of the rainiest parts of the Central American country, 122 kilometres from the capital San Jose.
According to officials, the park owes its rich biodiversity to the seven different levels of altitude which house 25 different local species, 116 types of mammals and wetlands such as seasonal lagoons from the glacial era.
The Costa Rican government said the new Quetzales National Park would not only help to protect the diverse wildlife in this area, but also allow flourishing oak trees to continue to grow without being in danger of becoming extinct.
The new park boosts Costa Rica’s protected territory from 25 to 26 per cent.
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