‘Rock Out Cancer'
Concert and fashion show organized by Inter-American University students to raise funds for the Costa Rican Association Against Childhood Cancer, 6 p.m., CENAC, Avenidas 3 and 5, Calles 11 and 15. 

Sege in concert
African-Brazilian, Mundoloco concert series, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Jazz jam session
10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

A U.S. citizen was arrested on Friday in Montezuma, on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula, on the Pacific, and her toddler son taken away from her, however, she said she has yet to see formal charges.

Mary Anginette McBeth, 37, is being held in the Temporary Detention Center for Foreigners in Hatillo, a southern suburb of San José.

A real estate agent from Surfside, Florida, McBeth has been living in Costa Rica since September 2007 under the name Nova Johnson.

McBeth said that she was on her annual visit last spring to see her other son, 17, who lives in Heidelberg, Germany when her husband, Luigi Cuomo, 50 – a furniture importer originally from Naples, Italy, last living in Coconut Grove, Florida – filed international kidnapping charges against her. McBeth has filed for a contested divorce against Cuomo, which is pending in a Florida court, she said in an exclusive interview with The Tico Times at the detention center.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's Web site says an FBI International Parental Kidnapping warrant was issued against McBeth for the abduction of her son, Amedeo Cuomo, 2, and that the two have been missing since May 2007.

Asked what charges she's seen in Costa Rica, McBeth said “They haven't brought any charges against me here. They have violated my rights at every turn.… And they have not told me anything about my child in three days.”

She said Immigration officials, the same ones who arrested her in Montezuma, came to the center yesterday to see her and “tried to forcibly take me to the U.S. Consulate. …They're trying to forcibly extradite me without due process.”

“I said, ‘I need to talk to my lawyer,'” McBeth said, “and they said, ‘No, you don't really.' I said, ‘Do I have a right to talk to my lawyer?'” to which, per McBeth, the Immigration officials responded, “‘Well, yeah.'”

She is primarily concerned about her son.

“I've had no news about my son. I do not know his whereabouts. Everybody has told me he's in PANI,” said McBeth, referring to the Child Welfare Office.

McBeth said that friends have tried to contact PANI offices in San José and Puntarenas but have been unable to locate the child.

McBeth did not mention a visit by any embassy official.

An English-speaking inmate, however, confirmed that both a representative from the U.S. Embassy and the three Immigration officials showed up. The inmate, who declined to give his name or nationality for fear that Immigration officials would delay his case, said the embassy representative arrived and met with, but did not identify himself to, McBeth. The inmate said he and other inmates watched the embassy representative give McBeth a pamphlet that detailed her rights as a U.S. citizen in Costa Rica. The inmate added the embassy official said he did not know the charges against her, nor who she was.

Employees at the detention center said that John Ice, a vice consul at the U.S. Embassy, came to the center to see McBeth, but said no Immigration officials had come.

Reached after hours, Ice would not confirm if he had been to the center to visit McBeth yesterday and declined to comment on any details of the case.

Center employees said they did not know what charges were brought against McBeth, and that all file information is kept at the Immigration offices in the northwestern San José district of La Uruca.

César Zamora, president of the Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), says that calls in Washington to suspend millions of dollars in U.S. aid to Nicaragua is a “nuclear bomb” that would hurt the common people and “radicalize the government” of President Daniel Ortega.

U.S. Democratic Rep. Howard L. Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter yesterday to John Danilovich, CEO of the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC), urging the U.S. government's aid organization to suspend its $175 million program in Nicaragua in light of Nicaragua's questionable elections.

Nicaragua's MCC compact, signed two years ago during the end of the administration of former President Enrique Bolaños, provides U.S. funding for sustainable development projects in the northern departments of León and Chinandega.

“It is time to consider carefully whether it is still appropriate to spend $175 million of U.S. taxpayer money through MCC's Nicaragua compact,” said the letter to Danilovich from Berman. “I urge you to suspend the Nicaragua MCC program until, at a minimum, we achieve better clarity regarding the behavior of the Ortega government in the recent electoral contest.”

Berman's letter comes in the wake of the highly suspect results of the Nov. 9 elections. The Ortega-controlled Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) gave a majority of the mayors' seats to the ruling Sandinista Front, despite claims that more than a third of the 146 polls were rigged.

Berman, of California, said that for more than two years, MCC indicators that determine eligibility – rule of law, investment in people and the promotion of economic freedom – have eroded steadily in Nicaragua. Continuing U.S. aid to Nicaragua “in its current form seems to call into question the credibility of the MCC program overall.”

“Worse, it may in some measure be undermining the credibility of the United States itself in the region,” Berman added.

Zamora, however, is urging the U.S. government to be prudent and not make any hasty decision that would “only cause suffering to common Nicaraguans.”

The MCC, Zamora stressed, is “possibly the only hope that northern Nicaragua has for any sustainable and important development.”

While the business chamber president acknowledges the political crisis afflicting Nicaragua, he said cutting aid would be a “nuclear bomb for the economy.” Trying to punish Ortega this way would be counterproductive because it would “radicalize the government.”

“We are in a profound crisis, and to be honest, I still don't see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Zamora told The Nica Times yesterday. “But cutting off aid would make any light at the end of the tunnel impossible. They need to give a window to the politicians to see if we can get out of this crisis.”

A lingering storm on the Caribbean side of the country has indirectly claimed its first victim, a man in the town of Siquirres.

Red Cross spokeswoman Fiorella Vilca said the man was electrocuted, apparently while working in wet clothes on an electrical cord in his home.

Vilca said the Red Cross could not yet confirm the victim's name or age.

Some 4,000 people have been forced into shelters and 35 roads sustained damage, mostly in Siquirres and the Caribbean province of Limón, which have been put on maximum alert for flooding and landslides, the National Emergency Commission reported.

The commission initially reported yesterday morning that the low pressure system showed signs of becoming a cyclone, but the storm later subsided slightly and the chance of it becoming a cyclone was reduced to 20 percent, said Evelyn Quirós, of the National Meteorological Institute.

The Caribbean region today is likely to see a gradual lightening up of rain, she said, but the cool temperatures felt in many parts of the country should be similar to yesterday.

Heavy rains also caused the deaths of four people in nearby Panama, according to the news agency EFE.

President Oscar Arias will veto a recently approved bill that would have allowed for binding public votes in Costa Rica on the government's environmental decisions.

Rodrigo Arias, the president's brother and minister of the presidency, announced yesterday that the bill would be sent back to the Legislative Assembly, which approved it in late October.

“We are vetoing this (bill) for reasons of unconstitutionality,” Arias said.

Though the legislature approved the bill unanimously and could override a veto with a two-thirds vote, the bill is likely doomed because Oscar Arias' party, the National Liberation Party (PLN), has withdrawn its support. “Now we are listening to the executive branch and we think (President Arias') legal reasoning is correct,” said PLN lawmaker Jorge Méndez.

The bill would reform Costa Rica's Environment Law to allow for, among other things, binding votes on administrative decisions made by the Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry (MINAET).

This would occur when the ministry decided to put a matter to a vote, or when at least 10 percent of the population in an electoral district signed a petition.

Some in the business community worry that the reforms would allow small groups of motivated citizens the ability to halt construction projects or public works, based on emotion rather than legal or technical criteria (TT, Nov 7).

Supporters herald the legislation as an expansion of democracy.

The bill would grant citizens broad rights, including increased access to environmental information and more participation in government “matters that affect the environment,” according to the text of the bill.

“We consider it a clear invasion of the legal jurisdiction,” Rodrigo Arias said.

In Costa Rica, elections and referendums are handled by the Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE). Arias said that it was unconstitutional to give MINAET the responsibility of overseeing popular votes.

Arias also said the constitution prohibits deciding “administrative acts” by referendum.

“We recognize the importance of citizen participation, but with limits and duly ordered and authorized by the Constitution,” Arias said.

José Merino, the Broad Front Party legislator that pushed the bill, said he would “defend the constitutionality” of the reforms because “he does not believe that decisions on environmental matters should only be in the hands of the experts and businessmen,” according to a statement released by his office this week.