Archive for August 11th, 2009
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias has contracted influenza A-H1N1, commonly known as swine flu, and was under medical treatment, reported today by the Minister of the Presidency, Rodrigo Arias.
Mr Arias first started to feel unwell at the weekend and underwent tests at his own request that revealed he had caught the virus which reportedly has already claimed 27 lives and infected 800 others in the Central American country.
“In the afternoon he was informed that he had contracted the H1N1 influenza A virus,” the minister, who is the brother of the president, said.
Arias, 68, should rest at home in isolation for at least seven days, but did not delegate the power in the hands of Congress President Francisco Antonio Pacheco, said the minister.
“He will continue his role as president of the republic,” said Rodrigo Arias.
The president, who suffers from chronic asthma, underwent medical tests after suffering several days with a persistent flu.
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Tourism has been considered an antidote for many of Costa Rica’s economic problems.
Yet, just how much those Hawaiian shirt-wearing, photo-snapping Gringos (and others) have contributed to local economies is hard to measure.
For the regional Guanacaste tourism board, the answer is quite a lot.
Guanacaste Chamber of Tourism (CATURGUA) attributes a 50 percent drop in poverty over the course of seven years and a 16.2 percent increase in household income between 2006 and 2008 to the thousands of foreigners who visit the northern Pacific peninsula each year.
“Clearly, tourism has become a core axis of the economy of Guanacaste and an engine that has contributed to the improvement of living conditions of the population, said Ana Saborío, vice president of CATURGUA. Thanks also to the growth in tourism, migration to the Central Valley also has been reversed. This province has captured many professionals from the metropolitan area.
According to the National Statistics and Census Institute ( INEC), the percentage of households in extreme poverty in the region of Chorotega in northern Guanacaste dropped by 50 percent during the last seven years, from 12.4 percent of the total population in 2001 to 6.5 percent in 2008.
INEC’s household survey also indicates increased income redistributionand employment and housing opportunities, according to CATURGUA.
Because 26.3 percent of the people living in Guanacaste work for hotels, shops and restaurants all jobs closely linked to tourism. Tourism has played a central role in the economic growth of the region.
Taking this statistic alone affirms that tourism is the principal source of income for more that 25 percent of the province, a percentage that is significantly larger when you take into account the number of indirect positions tourism generates, which is estimated to be between four and five (per direct position), Saborío said.
Saborío cautioned against taking the economic growth for granted, calling for infrastructure improvements to roads, aqueducts and wastewater management.
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Only seven people rode the first train leaving the Heredia station headed for San José Monday morning, as the long awaited commuter train service began operations. However, within minutes of the beginning of the service all four trains were in operational instead of only the two that the Instituto Costarricense de Ferrocarriles (Incofer) – Costa Rican railway – had expected to run for the first month.
However, the demand on the first day was so great that the head of the Incofer, Miguel Carabaguíaz, decided to get all four trains running, at times two and three trains leaving the station at the same time instead of being spread out.
For now the train will provide service every 30 minutes during morning and afternoon weekday rush hours, with service expanding to every 15 minutes by the end of the month.
For many it was worth the ¢350 colones it costs to ride the train that takes only 21 minutes between downtown Heredia and the Estación de Atlantico, located diagonal to the Parque Nacional, in San José.
The bus ride between Heredia and San José is only a few colones less but takes up to two and three times more time as traffic congestion between Heredia and San José is at an all time high.
The Incofer says it carried some 1.500 passengers yesterday morning.
The projection is to carry up to 5.000 people daily.
For many the train is a novelty, some riding a train for the first time in their lives.
Costa Ricans have been used to seeing train tracks but very few have actually seen a train running on those tracks and that was the problem when the Pavas – San José commuter train began running a couple of years back, as accidents between trains and vehicles were frequent.
The major cause of those accidents was the result of vehicles stopping in traffic on train tracks, or drivers trying to outrun the train. In one minor fender bender, the Pavas train collided with a vehicle as it was leaving the station. In a more serious accident, a woman tried to outrun the train as it crossed La Sabana in front of McDonalds.
With the beginning of the Heredia train, talk has resumed of reviving train service to Alajuela and Cartago. Carabaguíaz explained that analysis for those services is underway, but it will be some time before those tracks will be active again, mainly due to lack of funding.
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Burning tires and tree branches in the middle of the road and the throwing of rocks against vehicles forced the complete closure of the autopista Próspero Fernández between Guachilepin and Santa Ana last night in a riot that lasted several hours.
The disturbance that began minutes after 7pm last night was by a group of local residents upset about the charging of tolls on the road to Caldera, as it is commonly kwown, and for the immediate dismissal of Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes (MOPT) minister, Karla González.
One resident and alleged leader of the manifestation that got out of hand, Cinthya Crespo, said that the community is tired of the problems of the highway, mainly the poor quality of the work by the highway’s concession, Autopistas del Sol.
The residents say they have been lied to and are being continually duped by MOPT officials.
The major complaints are the location of the pedestrian overpasses, which according to the residents, are too far away from the normal crossings and bus stops on the road. In particular attention is the overpass at Santa Ana which is more than 500 metres from the Santa Ana intersection, people being forced to walk on the highway as there is no sidewalk.
However, the MOPT assures that the complaints of the residents are being considered and that the municipality of Santa Ana has been granted permits to build more bus bays and the construction of an additional pedestrian bridge at Pozos and that the Consejo de Transporte Público (Public Transporation Board) will be approving more buses on the Santa Ana – San José route.
The protestors forced the complete closure of the highway and a confrontation ensued when the Unidad de Intervención Policial (UIP) – riot squad – arrived on the scene, who were met by rocks being thrown at them, several impacting the UIP bus windshield.
Burning tires and branches kept the riot atmosphere going, providing fuel for the protestors to engage police, which kept their calm, removing the UIP bus from the scene, but kept with its engine running nearby.
The rioters calmed down by 9pm with a total of 24 protestors arrested.
The organizers of the protest vowed to take their manifestations to the front of the Legislative Assembly in San José, to see which of the legislators are behind what is being called the big lie.
“This highway was paid for 25 years ago”, shouted one protestor for the news cameras, referring to the time it has taken from the first plans to build the highway to the Pacific coast to today where parts of the highway – like the 40 kilometres between Santa Ana and Orotina – are still incomplete.
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Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
Agents from Costa Rica’s OIJ law enforcement agency arrested a suspected member of El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha gang over the weekend for the kidnapping of two Costa Rican brothers, officials said.
The 33-year-old gang member was arrested Saturday along with a 27-year-old Salvadoran woman and a 21-year-old Panamanian woman, OIJ director Jorge Rojas said.
The police operation took place in both San Jose and Corredores, a town near the border with Panama, where the Salvadoran had lived for about six months.
The victims, brothers ages 19 and 22 from a family of merchants, had been kidnapped last Monday and were rescued unharmed.
The brothers were abducted from their house and kept at a residence in San Jose, police said.
The kidnappers were demanding about $10,000 in ransom for the brothers’ release.
The kidnappers planned to send the money to the Mara Salvatrucha in El Salvador, Rojas said.
The family negotiated with the kidnappers and gave them a vehicle in exchange for releasing the brothers, Rojas said, adding that police recovered the vehicle.
El Salvador’s two largest violent youth gangs, known as “maras,” are Mara 18 and Mara Salvatrucha.
Mara Salvatrucha is a criminal organization that evolved on the streets of Los Angeles during the 1980s, with most of its members young Salvadorans whose parents fled their nation’s erstwhile civil war for the United States.
Because many of the gang members were born in El Salvador, they were subject to deportation when rounded up during immigration crackdowns in California in the 1990s.
Sent “home” to a land they barely knew, they formed gangs that spread throughout El Salvador and to neighboring countries in Central America, where membership is now counted in the tens, or even hundreds of thousands, and gang members are engaged in murder, drug dealing, kidnapping and people smuggling.
In addition to those activities, gang members are blamed throughout Central America for a spike in rapes and robberies, and for running protection rackets to extort “taxes” from bus companies and owners of small businesses.
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