The Tico Times Online Daily Page

Daily Edition: San José, Costa Rica, January 13, 2004

Mexican President Vicente Fox (right) and Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco shake hands before their bilateral meeting yesterday, on the sideline of the Special Summit of the Americas in Monterrey, Mexico.
AFP/Omar Torres

January 13

Summer Classes for Kids
Children 5-7 can learn all about how to make and manage puppets, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m.- noon at the José Figueres Ferrer Cultural Center in Alajuela. Classes begin today. Info: 447-2178.

Community Courses at the University of Costa Rica
Classes include music, theater, dance, photography, sports, massage and more, Jan. 19-30. Registration begins today and continues through Jan. 15. Info: 207-4165.

Dance, Martial Arts, Yoga and More
Zingari Dance Studio invites everyone to join its classes on yoga, tai chi, meditation, martial arts, ballet, flamenco and belly dancing, for children and adults. The studio offers various schedules. Info: 282-1127.

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Suspect in Case of Slain Journalist
Given Conditional Liberty

A Uruguayan businessman arrested on suspicion of having a connection to the murder of journalist Ivannia Mora was granted conditional liberty yesterday, said Justice Ministry press officer Laura Quesada.

Eugenio Millot was arrested two days after the Dec. 23 murder of Mora, who was shot twice in her car in front of the Plaza del Sol shopping center in Curridabat, east of San José. Witnesses reported the killers were two men on a motorcycle who fled the scene immediately after the shooting (TT, Jan. 9).

Millot is the director of the Red Castle media group and Mora's former employee at the business digest Estrategia y Negocios. Mora had quit her post at Estrategia y Negocios in August to help start a rival economic magazine Summa, the first edition of which was scheduled to appear this month.

Millot and Mora reportedly had unresolved problems at the time of Mora's murder, although Millot had claimed before his arrest that he also had received death threats from unknown individuals, and that his office had been robbed and his personal computer stolen.

Attorney General Francisco Dall' Anese told the daily Al Día that the motive behind the murder appeared to be personal rather than associated with Mora's work as an economic journalist.

According to an Agence France Press (AFP) report, Millot must check in with authorities every 15 days and is prohibited from leaving the country. He initially had been given a preventive prison sentence of three months, which his lawyer, Bernal Robles, characterized as "excessive," according to the AFP report.

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Country Issues $250 Million in Bonds

Costa Rica yesterday placed and sold $250 million in foreign-debt bonds on the New York Stock Exchange. The bonds are to be repaid in 10 years at a 6.548% interest rate (2.5% higher than the yield for U.S. Treasury Bonds).

"This was the most successful bond issue conducted by Costa Rica in recent years," Finance Minister Alberto Dent explained. "The interest rate negotiated is historically the lowest at which Costa Rican bonds have sold. The rate is an acknowledgement of the country's efforts to sign a free-trade agreement with the United States and approve a permanent fiscal-reform package."

The demand for Costa Rican bonds, which totaled $2.4 billion, greatly surpassed the $250 million the government was offering.

Deutsche Bank handled the bond placement. The funds from the bond issue will be deposited in an account belonging to Costa Rica's Central Bank early next week, Dent said.

The bond issue was the last of five bond issues totaling $1.25 billion conducted since April 1998. Proceeds from the bonds are used to cover the government's regular expenses, which significantly surpass total revenues obtained from taxes.

The government's inability to cover its expenses (fiscal deficit) has created a downward spiral in which an increasing percentage of the yearly budget is used to pay interest payments on bonds. Each year, an increasingly larger percentage of the total budget must be used to make interest payments. Interest payments reduce the total amount of funds available to pay government expenses and further increase the need to issue additional bonds to finance expenses.

Each year, the percentage of government expenses that must be covered through foreign-debt bonds increases. Roughly 50%, or $2.45 billion, of the 2004 budget is being financed through bonds. The government has stressed the need for permanent fiscal reforms as a way to once and for all put an end to this cycle (TT, Dec. 5, 2002).

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Study Warns of Imminent
Earthquake in Pacific Region

The Nicoya Peninsula is due for a major earthquake - if past quakes can predict the next one, according to a report published in the daily La Nación yesterday.

A recent study by the Volcanic and Seismologic Observatory of Costa Rica and international researchers revealed that the unexpectedly shallow depth at which the Pacific Cocos tectonic plate crashes into the Caribbean plate and the sandy foundation on which the towns on the coast are built, raises the probability of severe destruction from a large quake.

A severe earthquake strikes the region every 50 years on average. The last large quake occurred on Oct. 5, 1950, which could mean another big one is likely. The study predicts a possible quake as large as 7.4 on the Richter scale.

According to the study, a large quake would probably create a tidal wave that would cause damage to coastal communities, then raise the coastline up to one meter above its current level. The opposite side of the peninsula, which faces the mainland of Costa Rica, would sink several centimeters, according to the study's predictions.

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Tico "Burro" Arrested in Airport

Officers of the Costa Rican Drug Control Police (PCD) arrested a Costa Rican man in the Juan Santamaría International Airport yesterday who was discovered to be carrying 1.3 kilos of cocaine in his stomach.

The 28-year-old suspect, identified by the last name Zúñiga, was detained because of "the nervousness he showed" before boarding a flight to Madrid, Spain, according to the Security Ministry.

Police said they took Zúñiga to a hospital, where X-rays revealed he was carrying 100 bags of cocaine in his stomach.

Doctors removed the cocaine from the suspect's stomach and then handed him back to the authorities for detention and eventual prosecution, according to a representative of the Security Ministry.

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Wednesday October 26, 2005