Small and Medium-Sized Business Fair
Through Sunday, Real Cariari Mall, Ciudad Cariari, Heredia.

Film: ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas'
Sponsored by Congregation B'nei Israel, 7:30 p.m., Cine Magaly, Barrio La California, 2231-5243.

Calacas Blues in concert
Blues en español, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, 2253-8933, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Two pineapple companies are facing a criminal investigation for allegedly polluting the water of four rural communities with toxic herbicides, while officials believe municipal and health authorities may have overlooked a lack of environmental permits for the plantations.

Agents with the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) raided the offices and storerooms of the two companies and visited their plantations – located in the canton of Siquirres in the humid Caribbean lowlands northeast of San José – to take samples of the chemicals being used.

The raids were conducted Jan. 29 and Jan. 30, and also targeted Siquirres Municipality offices and the local office of the Public Health Ministry, according to a source inside the investigation, who requested her name not be revealed because she hasn't been authorized to speak to the press.

The official said that recent lab tests of water supplies for the communities of Cairo, Francia, Milano and Luisiana showed traces of toxic herbicides, including bromacil, diuron and hexazinone.

“Imagine that our first sample came back with 1.6 (micrograms of bromacil per liter), and it is supposedly supposed to be at 0.5,” the official told The Tico Times Wednesday. “The law is clear that drinking water should not be contaminated with anything.”

The source also said that both the Siquirres Municipality and the local office of the Public Health Ministry appeared to have overlooked a series of requirements, including environmental permits, when authorizing the expansion of the pineapple farms.

See the March 6 print or digital edition of The Tico Times for more on this story.

Costa Rica placed 42nd on the Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index, the highest ranking of any Latin American country in the report, which was released Wednesday by the World Economic Forum.

Costa Rica's ranking last year was two places lower, at 44th.

The new ranking puts Costa Rica ahead of Mexico, Puerto Rico and Panama in sectors such as tourism infrastructure, education and training within the travel and tourism sector and affinity for travel and tourism.

When Caribbean nations are added to the regional list, however, Costa Rica trailed Barbados, which placed 30th.

Tourism infrastructure, in which Costa Rica ranked 33rd, took into consideration hotel rooms, presence of major car rental companies and ATM's accepting Visa cards.

An emblem of Costa Rican tourism, the country's level of environmental sustainability earned it 27th place worldwide, although in the region it placed behind the popular Caribbean destination of Puerto Rico, which was ranked 11th.

Costa Rica placed 46th for limiting carbon dioxide emissions, which fall under the environmental sustainability segment, a ranking that could improve with driving restrictions introduced last year.

One hundred and thirty three countries were considered and studied for the TTCI annual report, which aims to measure the factors and policies that make it attractive to develop travel and tourism sectors in different countries, said the World Economic Forum report.

Costa Rica's new ranking was helped by Bulgaria and Tunisia falling back to 50th and 44th places from 42nd and 43rd in 2008, respectively.

For the full list, see www.weforum.org/pdf/TTCR09/TTCR09_Rankings.pdf.

First step: Chief Prosecutor Francisco Dall'Anese applauds the new laws but is calling for legislators to approve the anti-organized crime bill to give crime fighters teeth.

Nick Coté | Tico Times

President Oscar Arias signed into law much-needed counter-terrorism and witness protection legislation Wednesday afternoon.

The Witness and Victim Protection Law provides for the creation of an Office for Attention to Crime Victims, through which witnesses and victims will be able to receive psychological support, home surveillance, relocation, a new job or private police escort, as the threat to the parties merits.

The Anti-Terrorism Law defines terrorism as a crime and allows authorities to prosecute for aiding and abetting terrorism, including financing terrorist groups, with penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

The law brings Costa Rica into compliance with obligations under the United Nations' International Convention for Suppression of Terrorist Financing, the regional information network Gafic, and notably The Egmont Group, an organization of 108 member countries that share intelligence on money laundering and terrorism. That group threatened to expel Costa Rica last year if an anti-terrorism bill wasn't passed, but later granted the country an extension through this month.

Chief Prosecutor Francisco Dall'Anese, however, in his remarks before the signing, said these two laws were necessary first steps, but that a third measure, the bill against organized crime, will have to be passed into law before the country can effectively prosecute criminal groups in Costa Rica.

The much-touted organized crime bill was remanded to committee review in late January after the Legislative Assembly's legal review board found numerous, substantive problems with the text, and called the article addressing wiretaps “unconstitutional.”

“This (anti-terrorism) law provides the legal basis to prosecute, but without the law against organized crime in place, the (anti-terrorism) law is a dead letter,” said Dall'Anese. “This is the first step, nothing more. Now we need the willingness of public officials to prosecute these crimes.”

This is the first time Costa Rica has had a counter-terrorism law on the books. The lack of such a law ultimately stymied attempts to investigate alleged ties between Costa Ricans and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) last fall.

Dall'Anese in May 2008 decided not to prosecute Cruz Prado and Francisco Gutiérrez, well-known Tico academics in whose Santa Barbara de Heredia home authorities discovered $480,000 in alleged FARC cash, saying the country had no law against terrorism upon which he could establish a prosecution.

Drug Institute Director Mauricio Boraschi last year put the onus on the Legislative Assembly, which by that time had had nine years to pass an anti-terrorism law.