Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Seven Nicaraguans serving time in prison in Costa Rica were sent home to their native land yesterday, to serve out their prison term in Nicaragua.
The prisoners benefited from an agreement wich Costa Rica has with a number of countries to repatriate prisoners.
The seven, that included those involved in the 1994 kidnapping of executives of Cabo Marxo in Pital de San Carlos, were handed over by Costa Rica correctional officials to their Nicaraguan counterparts at the Peñas Blancas border crossing.
In addition to the kidnapping, the prisoners were sentenced for murder, extortion, rape and drug trafficking.
A total of 23 Nicaraguans have been repatriated this year.
According to correctional official records, a total of 9.300 people are behind bars in Costa Rica, of which 1.200 are foreigners, of which the majority of the foreigners are Nicaraguan nationals.
Among the other foreigners, they include 87 Colombians, 19 Panamanians, 9 Salvadorans, 9 Guatemalans, 9 Mexicans and 8 Americans.
This year alone a total of 305 Nicaraguans (276 men and 29 women) were sentenced in Costa Rica for crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking, the majority of the sentences handed down by the courts.
In the past nationals from England like Robert Dodd and John Anthony Springer, both sentenced on drug trafficking charges, have gone home to serve out their sentences. Claudio Robernas Barrantes and María Aniceta Nevado, from Spain have gone home.
Canadian Stanley Epinal, Holland’s John Ricardo Desanders, Italian Nidia Ben Allige and American Carl Kenev have all been repatriated after being sentenced in Costa Rica.
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Thursday, November 19th, 2009
China may spend $700 million to help fund expansion of Costa Rica’s Refinadora Costarricense de Petroleo SA oil refinery as it boosts energy ties in the region.
China National Petroleum Corp. may tap a China state-run bank for financing to triple capacity at the plant to 60,000 barrels a day, Jose Leon Desanti, head of the Costa Rican refining company, known as Recope, said in an interview. The Chinese company, known as CNPC, is a partner in the expansion.
“CNPC is doing some work to identify the possible bank or banks in China,” Desanti said from San Jose, the Costa Rican capital, on Nov. 13.
China and Costa Rica may also hold talks within three years for the development of a separate refinery with capacity of 300,000 barrels a day to handle crude from Latin American producers for export, according to Desanti. The Asian nation is strengthening ties with commodities producers from Africa to Latin America to ensure supplies of energy and metals, said Pedro Tuesta, senior Latin American economist at 4Cast Inc. (more…)
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Thursday, November 19th, 2009
A break in the Arcos underwater cable left most of Costa Rica without an internet connection for almost two hours.
The cable connects the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) network to the world by internet to Miami. The break occurred at 10:20am by a ship in the Caribbean about 2.5 kilometres from the building that houses the Miami connection.
When such an accident occurrs, the system is to automatically switch over to another connection. But that didn’t occur yesterday.
ICE officials say that service was restored by noon when service was channeled manually by way of Panama and Cartagena and then back to Miami and that 60% of users in Costa Rica were without service during the time.
Elberth Durán, spokesperson for ICE, said that the cut in services in the afternoon were not related to the Arcos break.
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