Archive for July 8th, 2010
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
The latest report to determine the re-opening of the San José – Caldera was due, but delays have cause the concessionaire, Autopistas del Sol, to request more time to complete the work on the 11 kilometers of the highway between Atenas and Orotina.
Autopistas says the rain and the lack of raw material in Costa Rica have caused the concessionaire to fall behind on the work on the section of highway that has been closed since June 12.
The Ministero de Obras Publicas y Transportes (MOPT), Francisco Jimenez, was clear that the road would not be re-opened until the experts gave the green light on the work to shore up the rock face to reduce the rock falls and land slides.
Notwithstanding, the minister said that the road could still be re-opened by the weekend, saying that Autopistas has made sufficient advances in the work.
The MOPT and the Consejo Nacional de Concesiones are under pressure to re-open the highway to meet the demands of the mid-year school vacation break.
The closure of the road has meant considerable congestion on the the routes known as “montes de Aguacate” and the “Cambronero”, as well as the routes leading from the autopista to and from Atenas and Orotina, as traffic detours around the closed section of the highway.
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
Costa Rica’s president, Laura Chinchilla, defended the decision to allow U.S. warships and Marines in Costa Rica’s national waters, saying that the authorization is not significantly different than previous authorizations with respect to the cooperation agreement signed a decade ago.
The presidenta said that it is necessary to review the statutes of the agreement, but not to diminish the actions, but rather to make them more effective.
Chinchilla reiterated that the intention of the government is to expand its efforts to fight drug trafficking and arms smuggling and to establish new mechanisms of control.
The presidenta assures that the conventions are the same and that her administration is not making efforts to risk the constitutionality of the country or try to militarize police efforts.
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
Please call on the new President of Costa Rica to ban the environmentally and socially disastrous Crucitas mining project.
The project was given the go ahead during the administration of President Oscar Arias despite the threat to the rich biodiversity in the San Juan river basin, home to endangered species of trees and the great green macaw.
Please join us in calling on President Chinchilla repeal the decree that cited the open pit mine to be in the national interest.
Below is a letter we have drafted to the President. You can send it directly to her by copying it and pasting it into the online form on the President’s website.
Send your message from here:
Dear Mrs President:
I am writing with regard to the Crucitas open pit gold mine in Costa Rica.
In the last parliament President Arias Sanchez issued a decree (34 801-MINAET) declaring the Crucitas gold mining project to be in the national interest. We are calling on you to repeal this disastrous decree.
It is well known that open-pit gold mining with cyanide leaching, the method that Crucitas is using, is one of the most destructive industrial practices there is. It is therefore not accidental that in May of this year the European Parliament issued a resolution on the general prohibition of the use of technologies based on cyanide mining.
The resolution calls on member states to ban cyanide mining in their countries and cease supporting, directly or indirectly, any mining project that employs technologies based on cyanide mining in third countries.
Friends of the Earth Costa Rica / Coecoceiba and I share your commitment to reach an alternative development model for Costa Rica. We also share the concerns, expressed in your inaugural speech, about the fracture of the alliance between man and nature and the need to work for a greener and cleaner planet. They, and I, agree with you in your quest for an economic model that is “more innovative and intelligent.” Surely this is a model that has no place for open-pit mining with cyanide.
Coecoceiba have also seen with great satisfaction that your very first decree as President declares a national moratorium for an indefinite period on the activity of gold metal mining in the national territory, understood as the exploration, exploitation, and the benefit of materials extracted using cyanide or mercury.
I believe this is a visionary and courageous act, which must be supplemented by a ban expressed through a law on such activity and by not authorising the continuation of the Crucitas mining project.
Costa Rica is internationally known for its commitment to the environment and its regional leadership in ensuring protection of the human right to a healthy environment. I therefore urge you to live up to your reputation and reverse this past wrong by putting a stop to the Crucitas gold mining project.
I look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Your name here
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Thursday, July 8th, 2010
The brother of “The Dark Knight” film director Christopher Nolan made it clear on Wednesday how much he hated prison.
Speaking at his sentencing for an October escape attempt, Chicago resident Matthew Nolan, 41, said that to keep his mind from rotting while confined to a 7-1/2 by 11-foot cell, he read books, taught himself to draw and wrote letters to his wife and two children.
“This has broken my nerves,” Nolan said as his wife, sitting in the courtroom, sniffled and dabbed her eyes with a tissue. “It’s shattered me.”
While conceding that prison “is not a nice place,” U.S. District Judge William Hibbler on Wednesday sentenced Nolan to 14 months behind bars for his botched escape attempt.
Because Nolan has already served 16 months, he will be extradited to Costa Rica to face charges that he used a fake British passport.
“I don’t think a single person wouldn’t want to get out of jail,” Nolan’s lawyer, Eugene Steingold, said at Wednesday’s hearing. Steingold argued that Nolan’s chances of escaping from his 11th-floor cell were impossible.
Nolan in April pleaded guilty to plotting to escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
Authorities last October discovered about 31 feet of rope and a harness made from bed sheets, a metal clip that could unlock handcuffs, and a razor inside a mattress in Nolan’s cell. At the time, he was awaiting extradition to Costa Rica on murder charges.
The FBI arrested Nolan in February 2009 as he left bankruptcy court in Chicago and charged him with the 2005 kidnapping and murder of Florida accountant Robert Cohen in Costa Rica.
A judge later ruled that because of insufficient evidence from Costa Rican authorities, Nolan could be extradited to Costa Rica to face only false document charges.
Nolan had been in bankruptcy court in a separate case in which a judge entered a $600,000 judgment against him for not paying back a loan from a suburban businessman. Nolan claimed he was using his military skills to run an international bank collection service and needed the loan to finish a job in Costa Rica.
At the time of his arrest, Nolan was being investigated by Chicago police in a check-kiting scam where he allegedly made $1 million by using the connection to his movie director brother to cozy up to local banks. Charges were never filed in that investigation.
On Wednesday, Nolan was also ordered to serve two years of probation and submit to drug tests. If he violates his parole, Hibbler warned, he’d be sent back to prison.
“I’d like to be allowed to close this chapter in my life and hug my wife and kids again,” Nolan said.
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