Monday, April 13th, 2009
President Oscar Arias has been advised not to push forth with plans to reconstruct an oil refinery on the country’s Caribbean coast, despite numbers that suggest the project would greatly benefit Costa Rica.
The multi-million dollar renovation and expansion, expected to generate between 1,000 and 1,500 jobs and save the country between $200 and $300 million in oil costs each year, is proposed as a joint partnership between the Costa Rican Oil Refinery (RECOPE) and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).
But the government’s own fiscal watchdog, the Comptroller General’s Office, said the agreement is not viable because it challenges RECOPE’s legal monopoly in oil refining and distribution, which can only be altered by a change in legislation. (more…)
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Monday, April 13th, 2009
College friends Emily Howell and Emily Eagen – “The Emilys,” they called themselves – felt they had found Eden in Costa Rica.
The young women had become pals at Antioch College in Ohio. When Howell ventured to Costa Rica for a semester abroad in 2000, Eagen paid a visit.
The country is “better than anywhere,” Eagen enthused to her family back in the Midwest. “I have found paradise.”
And there was much to love about Costa Rica.
The Central American country of 4 million is a tropical wonderland, with jungles teeming with howler monkeys, rare orchids and an array of Technicolor birds. At just twice the size of Massachusetts, it spans from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean, with volcano-dotted mountains forming its spine.
Costa Rica is a stable democracy whose well-educated population has a reputation for being friendly to the ecology and tourists alike. Like countless other tourists, the Emilys were charmed by Costa Rica’s “pura vida” – pure life, as the national saying goes.
Emily Howell, described as sensitive and passionate, was thrilled to arrange a school photography project there.
“Emily was in love with Costa Rica,” a friend later wrote.
She left her hometown of Lexington, Ky., in January 2000 for Limon, Costa Rica, a Caribbean port city of 100,000. (more…)
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Monday, April 13th, 2009
Costa Rica’s current procedures for deporting and expelling immigrants violate basic freedoms and rights, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights, or FIDH, said Friday.
Among the “most serious contradictions” with regard to international and regional law, it cited the country’s “processes of deportation and expulsion and preventive detention,” adding that those procedures “do not respect the right to an effective remedy, with access to an independent and impartial court, and to due process.” (more…)
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