Archive for February 17th, 2009
Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
China bought a second batch of bonds of Costa Rica’s internal debt for US$150 million, signalling a new rapprochement between the two countries, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
The investment came on top of US$300 million in bonds China purchased on terms favourable to San Jose, the ministry noted in a statement.
“The People’s Republic of China has purchased the second part of bond debt for US$150 million, under conditions similar to those of the first tract: a period of twelve years, with semiannual interest payments and a 2.0 per cent rate,” the ministry said.
“We are delighted to have completed this second transaction under the same conditions we made last year, following the same procedures that were analysed and endorsed by the General Accounting Office,” said Finance Minister Guillermo Zuniga. (more…)
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Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
Jaco, Costa Rica – Arno (Piper) Tzit, 38, owner of a restaurant along the quiet Pacific coast, was murdered today, apparently for financial motives.
The businessman was found dead in his restaurant in Hermosa. According to Israel’s foreign ministry, Tzit held French citizenship as well, and his family has been notified.
The attack occurred near the resort town of Jaco, two hours south of Costa Rica’s capital city, San Jose. There were no witnesses to the fatal shots, which, according to the local Jewish community, had to do with Tzit’s business debts. “He was everyone’s friend,” said Y., an Israeli living in Jaco. “This is really a tragedy.”
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Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
As the global financial crisis squeezes state finances, President Oscar Arias’ administration has decided to close three foreign embassies and two consulates.
The Costa Rican embassies in Bolivia and Paraguay will close April 30, while the embassy in the Czech Republic will close May 31. Consulates in Puerto Rico and in Chicago, in the U.S. state of Illinois, will also close.
We are trying to shift some of our resources human and financial to Costa Rican soil, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday.
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Tuesday, February 17th, 2009
After installing an extensive network of monitoring stations in Costa Rica, researchers have detected slow slip events (also known as “silent earthquakes”) along a major fault zone beneath the Nicoya Peninsula. These findings are helping scientists understand the full spectrum of motions occurring on the fault and may yield new insights into the events that lead to major earthquakes.
A slow slip event involves the same fault motion as an earthquake, but it happens so slowly that the ground does not shake. It can be detected only with networks of modern instruments that use the Global Positioning System (GPS) to measure precisely the movements of the Earth’s crust over time.
Susan Schwartz, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, leads a team that has installed a permanent network of 13 GPS monitoring stations and 13 seismic stations on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. (more…)
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