The Costa Rican government is restricting visas to Jamaicans following the murders of 20-year-old student Milena Madriz and police officer Randall López.

According to investigators, Madriz was killed by a stray bullet Oct. 29 in a conflict between Jamaican gangs. Thirty-year-old López was killed Nov. 3 in a shootout with Jamaicans in San Antonio de Escazú, a mountain village northwest of San José.

Jorge Rojas, director of the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ), told the daily La Nación that these two incidents involving Jamaicans are not isolated events. He linked the incidents to problems of international organized crime. “This country has a very open policy when it relates to receiving people. Some come to invest, others to kill,” he said.

The restriction will begin Dec. 1 and will require Jamaicans to submit their case to the Immigration Administration in San José for special review.

“(These restrictions) are in relation to the recent incidents,” said Mario Zamora, head of the Immigration Administration. “But the details of (each case) will be taken into consideration.” 

The majority of the accused in the case were not in the country legally, Zamora acknowledged, but his administration still thinks that the new measure is an important step in reducing climbing homicide rates in Costa Rica.

The decision to restrict visas comes 10 days after the Public Security Ministry took its own measures to curtail the increase in violence by suspending new gun permits to foreigners.

Costa Rica's immense biodiversity database can now be found online.

The Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry (MINAET) inaugurated the Costa Rican Biodiversity Information System on Tuesday, a Web site that contains information about the country's diverse ecosystems and the conservation practices designed to protect them.

The Web site http://crbio.cr includes directories of flora and fauna, animal species, and protected areas. Site visitors can also read, in Spanish, national legislation and laws that have been established to guard Costa Rica's green spaces and biodiversity.

“Today, making use of new technologies, Costa Ricans will be able to access databases about ecosystems, species, maps, research projects and many other topics through any computer,” said Environment Minister Jorge Rodríguez.

Costa Rica's National Museum, the National Biodiversity Institute and the Tropical Studies Organization also contributed to the creation of the new site.

Costa Rican television might become a lot clearer in the next few years, as representatives of several communications businesses came together to announce the “Arrival of the Era of Digital Television” at a presentation at the Hotel Marriott in San Antonio de Belen last Thursday.

The forum, which was hosted by the consulting firm Deloitte and the Chamber of Info-Communications, announced that a panel of representatives from several Costa Rican sectors would decide the type of digital television package that would be implemented. The panel will select a digital television (DTV) package and present it before the Executive Branch by March 30, 2010.

The announcement of the “Digital TV” era met some resistance Monday when University of Costa Rica (UCR) Dean Yamileth González advocated for a more open debate about digitalization.

“This should be a public debate that presents a transparent process of digitalization,” González said. “There needs be strong communication of the decision to the people of the country.”

The possible integration of digital television in Costa Rica follows a growing trend worldwide. In the past three years, several countries have integrated digital television nationally, including the United States, which implemented nationwide DTV on June 20, 2009. But after the switch, many homes were unable to watch their televisions because the sets were unequipped to receive the digital signal.

At the presentation Thursday, it was announced that, in order to receive the DTV signal, households must purchase a digital-ready television or a signal converter to wire into their current television.

The Escazú Municipality ordered the closure Tuesday of the 100-year-old bridge spanning Río Convento in San Rafael, according to the daily La Nación.

The closure is believed to be indefinite and came at the orders of the municipality's Infrastructure and Works Department, which reported it to be in poor condition.

The bridge, which will either be replaced or repaired by the local government, is located on Calle Real, opposite the Pomodoro restaurant.

The closure came a day after authorities closed two other Costa Rican bridges due to structural damage caused by fast currents and flooding of the rivers they span.

A total of six bridges have now been closed since the Orotina bridge collapsed on Oct. 22, which killed five people.