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Temporary security: Laura Chinchilla yesterday appears at the inauguration of Judicial Congress at College of Lawyers just hours after being named interim minister of public security following the departure of Fernando Berrocal. |
Ronald Reyes | Tico Times |
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| Rodrigo Arias says FARC not tied to Costa Rican politicians |
Costa Rica's minister of the presidency, Rodrigo Arias, said departed Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal made “statements without foundation” about local political ties to Colombian guerrillas, requiring his removal. |
| See More... |
| Journalism group slams state of press freedom in Latin America |
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) lamented a “troubling decline” in Latin American press freedoms at its mid-year meeting last week in Caracas, Venezuela. |
| See More... |
| As teachers strike, students protest school turned 'battle field' |
Costa Rican secondary school teachers went on strike yesterday in education's latest push for better work conditions and pay. |
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| 3 Nicaraguan radio stations fall victim to cable theft |
Three radio stations in Managua have gone off the air in fewer than eight days because bandits have made off with their transmission cables. |
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On the Chicken Bus in Guatemala |
My arm felt like it was about to wrench out of its socket as I hung on to the bars in the bus to keep myself from falling while we went careening around another curve. Finally, we went all the way around the curve, and I stood up straight again, as straight as I could with so many people squeezed around me.
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Rodrigo Arias says FARC not
tied to Costa Rican politicians |
By John McPhaul
Special to The Tico Times | editorial@ticotimes.net |
Costa Rica's minister of the presidency, Rodrigo Arias, said departed Public Security Minister Fernando Berrocal made “statements without foundation” about local political ties to Colombian guerrillas, requiring his removal.
Berrocal left his post Sunday on the eve of his scheduled appearance before the Legislative Assembly to explain comments that a computer seized from Colombian guerrillas in a March 1 attack on their positions inside Ecuador contained information linking the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to “political sectors” here.
“Neither a list or names of Costa Rican politicians linked to drug trafficking exists,” said Arias at a press conference yesterday.
Vice President Laura Chinchilla was named interim-public security minister.
Arias – brother of President Oscar Arias – stopped short of saying Berrocal was asked to resign, but did say he made statements at odds with the government.
“There were some statements by don Fernando that the government did not share," said Arias. “Statements were made that were not completely accurate.”
Arias said a commission composed of Chinchilla, Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno and Chief Prosecutor Francisco Dall'Anese will travel to Colombia to talk with government officials about what information they have about FARC ties in Costa Rica.
Separately, the Legislative Assembly formed a committee yesterday to investigate the country's links to the Colombian rebel group.
After his departure, Berrocal wrote a letter to the assembly's president, Francisco Antonio Pachecho, requesting to appear before the committee in April or early May “to make the speech that, for reasons the country knows, I could not make today.”
The issue of FARC ties arose after information from the computer seized in Colombia's cross-border raid in Ecuador allegedly led police to $480,000 located in a safe at the home of a couple in Heredia, north of San José. |
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Journalism group slams state
of press freedom in Latin America |
By Blake Schmidt
Nica Times Staff | bschmidt@ticotimes.net |
The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) lamented a “troubling decline” in Latin American press freedoms at its mid-year meeting last week in Caracas, Venezuela.
Five Latin American journalists were killed during the past six months: three in Mexico, one in Argentina and another in Honduras. More than 30 were attacked in Peru, and 32 threatened in Colombia. The transfer of power in Cuba from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl did not improve the status of the 25 journalists still in prison or the adverse working conditions of independent journalists, according to an IAPA statement.
The press association highlighted judicial rulings and court cases against journalists in the region.
The association condemned Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's treatment of the media. In Venezuela, where the March 28-30 meeting was held, “President Hugo Chávez and several of his ministers continued their hostile attitude toward independent newspapers and journalists,” the association said. After Radio Caracas Televisión was shut down last year, threats against Globovisión have been stepped up recently.
Some improvements have been made, however, with Nicaragua among several countries to introduce new laws to allow public access to official information.
But IAPA still listed Nicaragua among countries whose press freedoms have suffered, along with Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Mexico, Brazil, Guayana, Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Argentina. News media in these nations, the association asserts, have faced threats ranging from verbal attacks, censorship and impunity in crimes against journalists to government discrimination against newspapers' editorial policies by punishing or rewarding them with government advertising. |
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As teachers strike, students
protest school turned 'battle field' |
Costa Rican secondary school teachers went on strike yesterday in education's latest push for better work conditions and pay.
It was not clear how many teachers participated in the strike before this article was posted, although the Education Ministry told reporters participation was low.
The High-School Teachers' Association (APSE) claims the government left its workers out of a wage hike the administration gave to its own functionaries.
“The problems are with the ministry (of education) and they're not giving us a viable solution,” said Beatriz Ferreto on Saturday, calling for teachers to begin taking action yesterday, according to the news agency ACAN-EFE.
Some students protested the teacher-government schism. Jazmín Núñez and Nick Espinoza, ninth-graders at Liceu Nuevo de Purral school, in downtown San José, where teachers were meeting about their next action. The students carried a sign that read, “We want a school, not a battle field!” |
-Tico Times and wire reports |
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| 3 Nicaraguan radio stations fall victim to cable theft |
Three radio stations in Managua have gone off the air in fewer than eight days because bandits have made off with their transmission cables.
The latest was Radio 15 de Septiembre, staunch critics of the Sandinista government.
Radio Corporación, another pundit of President Daniel Ortega's administration, fell victim to cable theft twice in the past month, leading some listeners to wonder if the thievery is actually politically motivated radio sabotage or worse, government-led conspiracy.
Corporación's manager Carlos Gadea last week said he believed the incident could “have been committed by fanatics, but I don't think the government had any leadership in it.”
Independent radio station El Pensamiento became a victim last weekend too and was forced off the air.
All but 15 de Septiembre (at the time of reporting) have resumed their normal broadcast. |
-ACAN-EFE |
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On the Chicken Bus in Guatemala |
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My arm felt like it was about to wrench out of its socket as I hung on to the bars in the bus to keep myself from falling while we went careening around another curve. Finally, we went all the way around the curve, and I stood up straight again, as straight as I could with so many people squeezed around me.
While I stood there crammed into the aisle on the bus, I held a suitcase desperately, to keep it from falling on the man sitting by me. He was the third person jammed into the seat made for two people, and he was squashed between the second person in the seat and my mom, who was standing in the aisle pressed up against me. On the other side of my mom, there were three more people jammed into the two-person seat.
As we neared Antigua (a colonial city about an hour from the Guatemalan capital), the man running the system on the bus yelled in his singsong Guatemalan Spanish, “Everyone getting off at Antigua, please come to the front of the bus.”
The people began to get up and squeeze their way through the many passengers standing in the aisle to get to the front. When we were about a block from the stop, the man began to honk the horn like a maniac to let the people waiting at the stop know we were coming. We pulled up, the people got on and off, and we were moving again before the new passengers could even get all the way up the bus steps.
“Please move back to let the new people on,” the voice sang again.
Yeah right, I thought. There was no way to move back with all the other passengers jammed in there. The man who ran the system and also collected the money began to squeeze his way to the back of the bus to charge the fare to some new people who had gotten in through the back emergency door. Having done this, the man climbed out the back door and up the ladder on the back of the bus. Soon we heard him clambering over the roof and saw him come in the front door again, all this having been done while we were flying down the road at warp speed.
At one point, we had to wait at a construction spot where the road was only one lane while some cars coming from the other direction went through the available lane. When it finally came our turn to go, it was like a race; all the vehicles that had been waiting tried to get through first.
After a total of about two hours of travel and a half an hour of waiting in the bus at the road construction spot, it was our turn to squeeze through the people to get to the front of the bus. The bus came to a stop and we hopped off; then it went honking and speeding away to continue its rapid, crazy journey.
Although we were off the bus, the adventure still continued when we found that our friend's wallet had been stolen sometime during the voyage…
Daniel Mauger, 16, was born in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania but has been a Costa Rican resident since he was two and a half months old. He lives in San Francisco de Dos Ríos, east of San José, and attends school at Academia el Camino home school. He visited Guatemala with his parents last year.
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