Archive for February 11th, 2010
Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Residents of Pavas on the west side of San José, got the scare of their lives when a small aircraft piloted by a student ran into trouble, running off the runway of the Tobías Bolaños (Pavas) airport.
Authorities did not say what caused the accident, only to confirm that the plane piloted by 18 year old, Tom Herrera González, with 70 hours of flying experience, ran off the runway at 11:15am while on a training exercise.
Fortunately no one was hurt in the accident.”
González was taken immediately to the San Juan de Dios hospital and was home by dinner time.
The small, single engine airplane is owned by the Escuela Costarricense de Aviación, the local flying school at the Pavas airport, whose officials would not comment on the accident or one of their students.
Airport officials would only say that the plane did not lift off the runway and ran into the ground at the edge of the airport perimeter, where on the other side it is populated with a residential development.
The Dirección General de Aviación Civil is investigating the accident.
This is not the first accident to occur at or near the Pavas airport. Last year a pilot with a similar type of plane had to make an emergency landing on the Circunvalación at Uruca, several kilometres from the airport when the small plane ran into engine trouble.
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Elections officials announced Tuesday that they will be manually recounting at least half of the votes in Sunday’s presidential election after finding discrepancies in some of the ballots.
Luis A. Sobrado, president of the Supreme Elections Tribunal, said he doubts it could alter the final count, but is undertaking the process “to remove any doubts or suspicions.”
Any number of reasons could prompt the recount, Sobrado said, including discrepancies between the tally of voters and the number of ballots, questionable markings or the missing signatures of a sufficient number of election observers.
“We expect one vote to be invalid here, another to be void over there, but in the end, we think it would be unusual for (the recount) to modify the results,” Sobrado said.
However, the results for the Legislative Assembly “could generate surprises” in the coming week as more than 10 percent of the congressional vote has yet to be counted, Sobrado said. The results of the vote for the legislature will be confirmed after elections officials complete the presidential count, which he expects to take place next week.
As of the latest tallies, National Liberation Party candidate Laura Chinchilla had 46.7 percent of the vote, Citizen Action Party candidate Ottón Solís had 25.1 and Libertarian Movement’s Otto Guevara had 20.9. The 57-seat Legislative Assembly was split with 23 going to the National Liberation Party, 11 to the Citizen Action Party, 10 to the Libertarian Movement, six to the Social Christian Unity Party, four to Accessibility Without Exclusion and one each going to the Broad Front Party, the Costa Rican Renovation Party and the National Restoration Party.
Speaking on the Radio Monumental on Tuesday, President Oscar Arias said Costa Rica’s voting in its first female president “a dream come true.”
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Legislators have now taken up the discussion of amending to the recent Traffic Act and have until Feb. 25 to approve changes, according to the number of sessions set for it by Congress in December last year.
The new law, which initially posed heavy fines and prison sentences for offenders, was badly drafted and had problems with consistency between articles and was not applicable.
Hence, the Legislators themselves who approved the reform in December presented a new project to correct it.
Members of the Citizens Action Party (PAC) question cuts to the fines and points system for driving related offenses under the influence of alcohol.
“We will present several motions, we are concerned that the penalties were down indiscriminately. There are penalties that are disproportionate, but the penalties for alcohol consumption should not be lower,” said the head of red and yellow fraction, Alberto Salom.
Meanwhile, the head of the Libertarian Movement Party bloc, Carlos Gutierrez, said the fines are necessary to streamline the new traffic law, provided they maintain a policy of “zero tolerance” to the combination of drinking and driving.
Gutierrez stressed that the fact that the libertarian congressman involved in a crash Ovid Aguero in 2008 while driving under the influence does not mean they changed their inflexible position on the issue.
Still, libertarians never took steps to internal party against Aguero.
“We are ready to help make the law workable, but with common sense, to punish the use of liquor, but provide space for people to work,” said Gutierrez, who noted that there are rules in the current wording that punish juveniles in a disproportionate manner.
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
The earthquake that shook parts of the country last night at 8:50 pm, was centered in the area of Quepos on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, and its magnitude reached 4.4 degrees on the Richter scale, according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica.
This tremor was, specifically, 15 kilometers northwest of Quepos, Aguirre canton, and originated at a depth of 44 km. The cause was subduction of the same, ie the clash of the Cocos and Caribbean plates.
Besides the central Pacific, there were reports that the quake was felt across much of the Central Valley.
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
The American people are tired, tired and broke. They just cannot longer afford the forced charity that is being rammed down their throats; the latest scam is enormous medical bills from the care of Haitians brought to the U.S. for advanced medical care.
Right now, the residents of Florida are the ones that are being forced to pay for the charitable medical efforts that someone in Washington has prescribed. Hospitals in the U.S. are strapped for cash: Some are cutting retirement benefits and freezing salaries; others are forcing employees to take days off without pay; and all of them are cutting back their expenses in order to stay viable.
Now comes this wave of Haitians needing expensive medical care, and there is no one signing on the bottom line assuming the bills.
Enough is enough. The American people were recently forced to bail out the rich and crooked financial institutions, businesses that had nothing to do with citizens. The American people cannot longer afford the largess of the Washington politicians and their minions. They are always helping their buddies and others with money that is not theirs.
When the doors of this country are opened wide to new guests, refugees, immigrants or others, someone is going to have to pay, and that someone is the U.S. taxpayer.
Generosity has its limits, and right now America is well beyond the limit. With unemployment on the rise and the consequent loss of health insurance, hospitals are stretching their resources to care for residents of the communities that they serve, and they cannot stretch any more to care for a new class of patients coming from another country.
Why not transport these Haitians in need of advanced medical care to Canada, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica or other countries in Central and South America? Or pay for their medical expenses with money that has been raised to help the
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Two men from Styria are missing, feared dead in Costa Rica, according to the Austrian Foreign Ministry.
It said today (Weds) that the men, aged 66 and 68, from Knittelfeld, had gone missing around Christmas.
The 68-year-old had called his brother in Austria for the last time shortly before Christmas.
The two had gone to Costa Rica in October to spend the winter months there, where the 68-year-old owned a house in Puerto Jimenez near the border with Panama, an area known to be frequented by drug-traffickers.
The ministry said the men had been reported missing to Costa Rican police by Austrian Honorary Consul in Costa Rica Manfred Maurer in late January after he got a call from the Austrian brother of the 68-year-old.
The brother told Maurer that an Austrian in Costa Rica had called him in early January to report that he had seen a stranger driving the 68-year-old’s car and that the unknown man was staying in his house.
Costa Rican police then detained and interrogated the stranger staying in the house and found traces of blood there. They also learned he had used the 68-year-old’s debit card 28 times.
Maurer said neither of the missing Austrians had registered with him. “I did not meet them,” he added.
He also noted that 800 to 1,000 Austrians were living permanently in Costa Rica or spent a large part of the year there.
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Costa Rica’s coffee production in the current 2009-10 crop cycle is now forecast to fall 2.7% to 1,548,274 60-kilogram bags, the official Costa Rican Coffee Council, or Icafe, said Wednesday.
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Thursday, February 11th, 2010
Chinese President Hu Jintao has appointed five new ambassadors in line with decisions adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislature.
Li Changhua was appointed ambassador to Costa Rica, replacing Wang Xiaoyuan.
Lv Fan was named ambassador to Chile, replacing Liu Yuqin, female, who was reappointed ambassador to Cuba, replacing Zhao Rongxian.
Zhao Rongxian was reappointed ambassador to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, replacing Zhang Tuo.
Xue Jinwei was appointed ambassador to Cameroon, replacing Huang Changqing.
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