this is just another experiment

5/29/7

Just trying to get some pictures on When it works, I will post more. The house is going well.
I got caught speeding yesterday, and expected to pay the usual ten thousand colones bribe. Unfortunately he was honest and showed me a ticket he had written earlier for the same speed. It was twenty thousand. He proceeded to write out the ticket as we talked, he in English, and I in Spanish, and when he gave it to me, it was for a bad light, two thousand colones. What a pleasure after paying or fighting not to pay corrupt officials for two months.
Well, it didn’t work again. Back to Russ.

by Rod Hughes, from a Tico Times report
This country was selected to serve on the Executive Committee of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the foreign ministry announced last week. The ministry announcement said selection for the post “ratifies the historical tradion of the country as a teritory of refuge and asylum and its permanent work to defend and protect human rights.”
The letter from U.N. High Commissioner Antonio Gutierrez read, in part, “Costa Rica has a record of demonstrating interest and devotion to the search for lasting solutions for refugees… Costa Rica traditionally has received refugees in Latin America and, historically, it has had one of the highest refugee reception rates in the world.”
Historically, Costa Rica’s attitude toward political asylum has at times paid off in unexpected ways. Former Colombian president Carlos Andres Perez was granted political asylum after a military coup in his country. Years later, in 1979, Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza threated army-less Costa Rica with invasion.
Perez, by then president of his country, sent four combat aircraft to Juan Santamaria International Airport in San Jose. There were no more threats from Somoza thereafter.

by Rod Hughes from an ACAN-EFE wire report
Despite readily available public health care under the Social Security (Caja) system, Costa Ricans spent a total of $158 million on private health services in the first four months of 2006, according to a study by the Costa Rican Nutrition and Health Research Institute. Some three-quarters of Costa Ricans interviewed said they had used private health care in that period.
The largest item was medicine, $42.8 million, followed by dental care for which they paid $36.9 million.Appointments with private doctors accounted for $31.4 million.
A surprising expense was the $24.7 million they shelled out for the purchase or rental of medical equipment. They spent $4.8 million on lab examinations.
An overwhelming majority of Costa Ricans carry Social Security insurance through their workplace and as self-employed professionals, but long waits for appointments and services as well as minimal dental services encourage those who can possibly afford it to seek private care.

by Rod Hughes
Ferderico (Lico) Ramírez is Costa Rica’s King of the Mountain. Or, at least, undisputed King of Mountain Bikers.
Yesterday, he capped the five phases of the National Mountain Biking Cup competition to earn a total of 200 points, clear winner over fellow BCR-Pizza Hut teammate Iván Amador who had a respectable 186. Ramirez topped all five phases!
Rebecca Hidalgo won the woman’s division with a fine 195 points, five points more than Alexandra Sánchez.
For Lico Ramírez, this is merely a warmup for his planned assault on the TransAlp race.
The mountain bike national championship competition is scheduled to begin June 17 in mountainous Juan Viñas near Cartago, the old capital city.

by Rod Hughes
Costa Rica’s All-Star soccer team is the favorite to win the Gold Cup tourney, a step ahead of Mexico in an informal poll of fans conducted by the federation of soccer of North and Central America and the Caribbean, reported the daily La Nación today.
This comes as an important morale-booster for the Ticos who have never won the tourney. As of 6 p.m. Sunday, fans had given 28.27% of their votes to Costa Rica, edging Mexico with 28.20%. Surprisingly, the U.S. team was far back in number 8 of the 12 teams.
The closest Costa Rica’s beloved “Sele” (an abreviation of the Spanish word “selección“, meaning All-Star) has come to taking home the trophy was in 2000 when they went to the finals only to lose 2-0 against the U.S. team.
However, they have been champions of Central America in a tourney organized by a separate soccer organization, the last time in February.

Housing Minister Fernando Zumbado plans to spend the night with a family in a
San José shantytown in an effort to urge legislators to prioritize proposed laws to fight poverty, according to a statement from the Housing Ministry.

On Tuesday night, the minister plans to arrive to a shantytown in Pavas, west of San José, eat dinner with a family and spend the night at their home. The following morning, he will eat breakfast with them and hand out housing grants to several families before leaving, the statement said.

Zumbado hopes to convince legislators to pass a law that would create a luxury tax for residences worth more than ¢100 million ($190,000). This money would be used to eradicate shantytowns and build houses for low-income families.

Passing a law that would title properties in shantytowns so that those living there can gain formal ownership is another priority for the Housing Ministry, Zumbado said.

The minister also sent a letter to National Liberation Party legislator Ofelia Taitelbaum, who presides over the Legislative Assembly’s Social Issues Commission, explaining the importance of creating new resources to fight poverty.

“It is necessary, in complying with the constitutional mandate that demands that the state work toward the well being of all inhabitants… to legislate so that those who have more resources support efforts to help those who lack these resources,” the letter said.

-ACAN-EFE

By Mike Faulk
editorial@t…

Ancient skeletons, pre-Columbian artifacts and 100-year-old murals weren’t the only things on hand Friday for inauguration of the National Museum’s new administrative headquarters in the western San José suburb of Pavas.

President Oscar Arias made an appearance and cut the ribbon that officially inaugurated the facility. Culture Minister María Elena Carballo, Banco Nacional General Manager Juan Carlos Corrales and Manuel Araya, president of the National Museum board of directors, were also on hand.

“The opening of the museum’s new headquarters is a sign that we will not lose the battle to conserve our history,” Arias said in a speech before the ribbon cutting.

The building, which was acquired by the government from Banco Nacional in 1998, cost ¢389 million (about $750,000) to renovate. The 17,000-square-meter facility will house administrative offices and facilitate research projects coordinated by the museum.

Air-conditioned warehouses at the facility provide space to store archaeological and historical collections, and moving the headquarters to Pavas creates more space for public exhibitions at the museum’s historic site on Avenida 2 in downtown San José, according to museum officials

by Rod Hughes
Three NASA aircraft flying over Costa Rica simultaneously will study cloud formations with the help of Costa Rican scientists in order to find out more about climate changes, according to a report today in the daily Al Día.
“There is a direct connection between cloud formation and climate changes,” explained Mike Gaunce, NASA science project manager, “Clouds absorb ozone and cause a change in general climate behavior.” The craft will fly at varied altitudes to collect samples.
As for the use of local scientists, Gaunce explained, “Costa Rican scientists are excellent. (Former austronautic and physicist) Franklin Chang is the best known, but there are others.” Gauce said at least one Costa Rican would manage the instruments to take samples in one aircraft and that a Tico may act as pilot, although the exact composition of the crew had not yet been defined. The mission, named TC4, will be based in San Jose’s Juan Santamaría International Airport and will probably take place in the second week of July.
Some 30 Costa Ricans in all are expected to take part, some local weather experts assigned to predict the weather on the day of the flight, according to Oliver Gómez, who is in charge of the National Aerotransport Research Program for the National High Technology Center. Gaunce said the mission had been in planning for 20 years and that three airplanes, a climatic radar and 200 persons would be involved, working out of National Civil Aernautics Base 2 at the airport. He added that each flight is sceduled to last 4 to 5 hours, although the DC-8 involved might stay in the air longer.
Costa Rica will have its own parallel mission, named Ticosonda, to take temperature and ozone samples. The tropics are vital to the formation of weather throughout the globe, Gaunce said.

by Rod Hughes
Finally, after weeks of bad news about government agencies, Costa Rica’s leading daily La Nación reported the positive news today that the nation’s Social Security Administration (known universally as the Caja) is not only on top of its collections but has managed to recoup around $108,000 in late employers’ payments in the past three years.
Time was when the Caja was lax and thousands of contributing employers were behind, many times never paying because their companies eventually went broke. But the Caja has institituted a call center, where nine operators make an average of 8,000 calls per month. Result: 5,000 emplyers have brought their payments up to date in the last three years.
Caja collection director Luis Diego Calderón says the most effective method is calling before new debts get old, avoiding the mounting up of a large debt difficult for the company to pay and for the Caja to collect.”I don’t know of any social security institution that has this kind of call center. In our case, this (is part of) a strategic plan. We feel that we were getting to the debtors too late.”
Income to the Caja is important, because all public hospitals and clinics are run by this agency and they must pay doctors and nurses, as well as employees all the way down to maintenance staff.
The Caja has legal tools at hand, including the power to ask the courts to close a business for debts. But often extreme measures simply mean that the debtors cannot pay. The best way, according to Calderón. Currently, there are 17,911 private employers behind in their payments, but a tougher proposition is the biggest debtor of all–the various agencies and ministries of the government that the Caja can hardly close, according to the paper.