Archive for February 15th, 2010
Monday, February 15th, 2010
“Mike,” from BetFirstClass (BFC) is awaiting his fate on a sealed indictment that stems from the US Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Oklahoma.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like to spend Valentine’s Day in a Federal Detention Center located in Houston, Texas.
Unfortunately, the main guy behind BetFirstClass was picked up on Friday afternoon at 3 PM in Cancun, Mexico by the Mexican authorities. He had just deplaned from San Jose, Costa Rica.
When attempting to navigate though Customs and was arrested immediately. Shortly, thereafter, Mike was deported to Houston, Texas. He will eventually be transported to Oklahoma.
One source states,
“Mike had been bookmaking for a long time in Oklahoma. He decided to flee the United States when his house was busted into and his computer seized back in May of 2007.”
He allegedly filed fraudulent tax returns for the years of 2004 and 2005.
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
Costa Rican police seized around a ton of cocaine and arrested two suspected Mexican traffickers on Friday in the latest sign Mexican gangs are stepping up their use of the country as a storage point.
Police found 2,139 pounds (969 kg) of cocaine stashed at a rural house near the Pacific coast northwest of San Jose, and arrested two Mexican nationals at the scene. They are believed to be members of Mexico’s Juarez cartel, the public security ministry said.
President-elect Laura Chinchilla, a former security minister who won a landslide election victory on Sunday, has said combating Mexican drug gangs operating in Costa Rica will be a priority when she takes power in May.
A three-year army crackdown on drug gangs in Mexico has encouraged some traffickers to push south into Central America, setting up bases in countries like Guatemala as they seek new routes to smuggle South American cocaine to the United States.
Costa Rican authorities have seized 93 ton of cocaine between 2006 and 2009 — nearly twice the amount the country captured in the preceding decade.
Costa Rica is known for being an oasis of stability, high living standards and low crime in a region scarred by Cold War-era civil wars and plagued by violent street gangs.
But it also sits halfway between the cocaine-producing Andes and Mexico, whose smuggling gangs earn some $40 billion a year smuggling the drug north using planes, boats and trucks.
Police raided the house in Costa Rica early on Friday following a tip-off from neighbors, the ministry said.
The two suspects are from the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, one of the world’s most violent spots. One had a press credential from a Mexican newspaper, the ministry said.
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
The socially conservative, pro-business former vice president hails from the party of incumbent President Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work in the 1980s to end Central America’s wars.
Chinchilla’s victory was widely seen as a vote for continuity in a politically stable country that enjoys one of the region’s highest standards of living.
It’s the first time Costa Rica has chosen a woman to lead the nation. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner are the other female chief executives in Latin America. In the past, Panama and Nicaragua also had female presidents.
I suppose this is one of those things you would be excited about..except, Chinchilla is opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion and the morning after pill. We are proven once again that having a vagina does not ensure you will protect others that have them.
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on the Costa Rican legislature to remove criminal defamation provisions from its penal code after a recent Supreme Court decision eliminated prison terms from its 1902 Printing Press Law.
The provisions were eliminated from the Printing Press Law—known as Ley de Imprenta—which imposed prison sentences of up to 120 days for defamation in print media.
The court made the ruling while it was reviewing a defamation case against José Luis Jiménez Robleto, a reporter with the San José-daily Diario Extra, according to local news reports. Jiménez had been accused by a former Costa Rican official after publishing a news story on alleged embezzlement, the press reported. The journalist was sentenced in March 2004 to 50 days in prison based on the outdated 1902 press law. His conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court.
The court’s decision about the press law, issued on December 18, was made public this week. Costa Rican journalists said it was a victory for freedom of the press. The daily La Nación described it as “historic.” The paper’s editor, Armando González, said that the court set an important precedent.
Under Costa Rica’s Penal Code, anyone who libels, slanders, defames, or reproduces offensive statements against someone, even public officials, can be fined or placed on an official list of convicted criminals, but not imprisoned, CPJ research has found.
“We consider the Supreme Court’s decision an important step forward toward what we hope will be the total elimination of criminal defamation in Costa Rica,” said Carlos Lauría, CPJ senior program coordinator for the Americas. “We now urge Costa Rica’s legislative assembly to eliminate defamation provisions from its Penal Code.”
Laws that criminalize speech are incompatible with the rights established under Article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights, which Costa Rica has ratified. As the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated in 1994: “Considering the consequences of criminal sanctions and the inevitable chilling effect they have on freedom of expression, criminalization of speech can only apply in those exceptional circumstances when there is an obvious and direct threat of lawless violence.”
There is growing international consensus that journalists should not be jailed for criminal defamation. In November, the Argentine Congress repealed criminal defamation provisions in the penal code. In April 2009, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal annulled the 1967 Press Law, a measure that had imposed harsh penalties for libel and slander.
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
Of all forms of online gambling in the US, lawmakers go after sports betting the most. The reason for this can be traced back to a law called the Wire Act of 1961 which prohibits placing sports bets via “wire communication”. This old law is used to support the idea that online sports betting in the US is illegal, even though the internet did not even exist when the Wire Act was written. This is an important distinction since internet gambling in general is not actually illegal in the US, but only heavily discouraged.
This sets the stage for news that just surfaced of a Kansas City man who on Wednesday plead guilty to operating an online sportsbook in the USA. Michael Badalucco, 26, ran an underground website that channeled bets through a maze of computers all across the US before finally ending up in Costa Rica with a legal sports betting operation there.
Because the US government tries to find ways to keep players from gambling online, they make it very difficult for US players to fund their online gambling accounts. To circumvent this issue, Badalucco collected cash from his clients, and paid them in person once every week.
When caught, Badalucco waived his right to a grand jury review and pleaded guilty immediately. In return, prosecutors agreed not to ask him to act as a witness in trials to implicate others in his business.
Badalucco now faces a maximum sentence of two years in prison, though it is likely that his actual sentence will be under a year.
The case against Badalucco is the first charge to result from a long-running probe into illegal gambling websites operating out of the US. Meanwhile, many players avoid trouble by simply playing at foreign-hosted internet casinos and sportsbooks, which cannot be shut down by US authorities.
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
Costa Rica and China signed a free trade agreement on February 10, 2010 making it the first Central American country to reach a free trade agreement with China. The agreement will immediately open up trade by eliminating tariffs on 58% of products imported from China and 99.6% of products exported to China. Over the next ten years, the agreement will eliminate tariffs on approximately 90% of the goods imported from China. Costa Rican Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz stated that this agreement creates an “enormous opportunity” for the country to boost exports with its second largest trading partner. Mr. Ruiz added that the agreement would strengthen Costa Rica’s presence in Asia.
Negotiations for a free trade agreement with Costa Rica started in June 2007 when Costa Rica declared that it no longer recognized Taiwan and asserted its recognition of mainland China. Since 2007, China and Costa Rica strengthened their relationship through several rounds of negotiations and projects. China’s imprint in Costa Rica is already evident, as China is building an $80 million soccer stadium in Costa Rica as a gift. China gave Costa Rica $20 million of aid in 2007 and the China National Petroleum Corporation has agreed to assist Costa Rica in an expansion of Costa Rica’s National Oil Refinery that could potentially triple the refinery’s output by 2015. China also purchased $300 million in Costa Rican bonds during 2008. This year, the Costa Rican city, San Jose, will inaugurate an area of the city as “Chinatown.” In October 2009, the mayor of Beijing stood with the mayor of San Jose and laid the first brick in “Chinatown.” The area will have a Chinese architectural makeover and will include several symbols of the Chinese culture.
Costa Rican leaders hope that exports will drive economic growth in the coming years. Last year, Costa Rica’s economy contracted at a rate of 1.3%. This year, Costa Rican Central Bank President, Francisco de Paula Gutierrez, predicts that the Costa Rican economy will expand by 3.2%. Mr. Gutierrez stated that a decline in foreign trade drove most of the economic contraction last year. During 2009, exports to China rose 13% to $768 million whereas exports to the United States fell by 13% to $3.1 billion. Costa Rica has already experienced higher demand in dynamic exports in the past few months and Mr. Gutierrez expects this trend to continue to strengthen in 2010. The free-trade agreement with China should increase export demand for Costa Rican products. Experts predict that Costa Rican agricultural products will benefit the most from the free trade agreement in such products as fruit juice, decorative plants, leather, pork, beef, and coffee. Experts also expect that technology exports to China will surge.
Not everyone in Costa Rica supports the free trade agreement. Several Costa Rican leaders in the industrial and agricultural sectors openly oppose the agreement. Juan Maria Gonzales, President of the Chamber of Industries stated in a press release that the scope of agreement was too broad and that China has a reputation as an “untrustworthy” commercial society. Mr. Gonzales desired stronger protection for national industries and fears that the agreement will negatively affect investment in the industrial sector. Mario Montero, general manager of the Food Industry Chamber, expressed reservations about Chinese competition in the local market. Mr. Montero also thought that the agreement should have required China to increase its labor and sanitation standards to Costa Rican levels before opening up the markets. Foreign Trade Minister, Mr. Ruiz, acknowledged that free trade agreements do not please everyone; however, he insisted that in the end the free agreement with China “will provide extraordinary benefits to Costa Rica.”
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
Catholics in Costa Rica continue to express disgust following the actions of Deborah Formal, the girlfriend of presidential candidate Otto Guevara. Last Sunday, Formal broke off a piece of the Eucharist and placed it in her boyfriend’s pocket.
The Costa Rican media has continued to air footage of the Mass which shows Formal receiving Communion, bringing a piece of it back to her seat, and giving it to Guevara.
Being divorced, Guevara did not present himself for Communion.
The video shows that as she approached the archbishop to receive Communion, the two briefly exchanged words. Formal said later she had requested permission from the archbishop to “share the blessing” of Communion with Guevara. She said she misunderstood the archbishop and thought that he had given her permission.
“It was never my intention to disrespect the Catholic Church,” she said.
Formal is seen receiving Communion in the hand, consuming a portion and carrying what was left back to her pew, where she leaned over and put it into Guevara’s shirt pocket.
“I tried to do something that would allow Otto to carry a part of God in his heart,” Formal explained.
After priests were notified of Formal’s actions, they asked the presidential candidate to return the consecrated host. He returned it and it was immediately consumed by one of the concelebrating priests.
Numerous Catholics interviewed by the media expressed outrage over the actions of Formal, saying she displayed not only ignorance in describing the consecrated host as a “blessing” instead of as the Real Presence of Christ, but also complete disrespect for Communion and for the Eucharistic Host.
Archbishop Hugo Barrantes of San Jose called her actions “inappropriate and disrespectful,” although not sacrilegious.
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