Archive for December 12th, 2009
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
Tonight San José comes to life with the traditional annual “Festival de la Luz” (Light Festival), perhaps the most popular and most attended of all festivals of the year. The big Christmas parade is set to start about 6 p.m. tonight from la Sabana to follow the line of march up Paseo Colón and Avenida 2. San José officials brag that the parade attracts nearly a million spectators. And it is free!
One major change this year is a “zero tolerance” to alcohol use. Araya was clear that it hurts no one, the festival is a family affair and there is no place for drinking in the streets.
More than 1.600 police officers will be on hand along the parade route, plus 150 Tránsito (traffic) officials to control traffic.
Some of the companies entering floats in the parade are Más X Menos, Florida Bebidas (Cerveceria), BCR, ICT, Coca Cola and Recope.
Posted in Costa Rica News | No Comments »
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
In remarks given during a conference focused on challenges facing U.S. relations with Latin America, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States’s position on the political situation in Honduras shows that it is committed to helping Hondurans get back to democratic and constitutional order.
“We condemned President Zelaya’s expulsion, we’ve taken concrete steps to demonstrate unequivocally our opposition. But we’ve continued to try to reach out and work with diverse sectors in Honduras, and along with others like President [Oscar] Arias of Costa Rica, to help the Hondurans themselves chart a new way forward for a peaceful negotiated end to this crisis,” she said.
Clinton was referring to the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis, sparked by an attempt by the former President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, to change the constitution in order to stay in power.
On June 28, 100 soldiers came into Zelaya’s home and flew him to Costa Rica. On September 21, Zelaya snuck back into the country, but resorted to the Brazilian Embassy.
“The culmination of what was a year long electoral process occurred on November 29, when the Honduran people expressed their feelings and their commitment to a democratic future,” she said.
According to Clinton, the people of Honduras “threw out in effect” both Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti, the Speaker of Congress, who was sworn is as the interim President in Zelaya’s absence. She also said that
Since then, Clinton added, President-elect Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo “has launched a national dialogue, has called for the formation of a national unity government and a truth commission has set forth among the requirements of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.
“That is an agreement that the Hondurans themselves reached. We helped to facilitate it but the Hondurans decided they wanted a local resolution. In the days and weeks ahead, we want to be [on] the side of the Honduran people,” Clinton said.
Posted in Costa Rica News | No Comments »
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
She says poor health services delayed treatment. She is wanted in Costa Rica in a murder case.
A Costa Rican woman who was on an international most-wanted list after a 1997 slaying until her U.S. arrest last year has sued over what she says is a lack of health services in New Jersey – so severe that her advanced stage of breast cancer went undetected.
A lawyer for Maria Magdalena Pacheco Bolanos, 39, said his client had gone from a young woman who panicked and fled Costa Rica after the death of a prominent newspaper executive to a mother of three living in a $1 million home on Long Island, N.Y., where she ran a successful landscaping business.
Attorney Gil Garcia alleges Pacheco’s former boyfriend was responsible for the slaying. Pacheco is charged as an accomplice.
The international police organization Interpol caught up to the woman in April 2008. She was arrested on Long Island and is in the Hudson County Correctional Center in New Jersey pending extradition to Costa Rica.
Garcia said his client had not had access to a doctor or undergone medical tests for 10 months of her detention, despite repeated complaints to medical staff that she felt a lump in her breast.
When an immigration judge ordered Pacheco taken to a doctor, advanced breast cancer was diagnosed, and she had a mastectomy, Garcia said.
“It’s not so much the issue of a latent diagnosis,” he said, but it’s tantamount “to cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution. If you commit cruel and unusual punishment – and it could be tantamount to a death sentence in this case – they have to pay for it.”
The suit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Newark.
Jim Kennelly, a Hudson County spokesman who handles jail inquiries, said he would look into the complaint, but had no immediate comment. A representative of the Costa Rican consulate in New York said inquiries about the case must be submitted in writing and would be referred to government officials in Costa Rica.
Garcia denied the lawsuit was an attempt to delay his client’s extradition. He said she was cooperating with U.S. and Costa Rican authorities on her transfer. Meanwhile, he said, her requests for timely radiation treatments have been delayed.
“Inmates have many more medical issues than the general population, and receive much worse medical attention,” Garcia said. “They are in jail for a reason – there’s no doubt about that – but to deny them the proper medical care adds an extra layer to their punishment that is not contemplated by the law.”
Posted in Costa Rica News | No Comments »
