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In the last week, eight minors died violently
The authorities maintain that it is not a
case of isolated facts and worries them lack of attention on the part of the
adults. It is now at 8, the count of small children that have found the death in
violent form, in the last week, while they played or while they were
in their houses.
One of those cases was the one of the small boy
that died of being run over by a bus. And most atrocious was the murder of a 7
year old girl. She was working in a coffee plantation, were she found death. The
suspect if still at large.
The authorities worry about the indifference that
some adults have over their children. A hard hand by the authorities and a
reinforcing of the laws are options being discussed, however the experts
believe, there must be an increase the care of the parents.
Support for Pacheco goes down
Costa Ricans are more stern now when
evaluating the performance of President Abel Pacheco and his ministers, but they
are still benevolent with the image of the chief executive, according to the
most recent poll by Unimer for the daily La Nacion.
Nine months after he was sworn into office, 46.5 percent of the Ticos rate his
performance as good to very good. However, that figure means a 17.5 percent drop
from his positive rating last October, 64 percent. On the negative side, in the
preceding poll only 7 percent of the respondents rated his performance as poor
to very poor, but that figure has now risen to 17.7 percent.
Those who consider his endeavor regular went from 26 percent to 33 percent.
Regarding his popularity, President Pacheco still rates high, even though it
decreased from 81.6 percent to 76.4 percent.
Low inflation
Even though January is usually a tough
month for the pockets of Costa Ricans, this time around it was not as bad as
expected regarding inflation, that increased by 0.65 percent only last month, as
compared to December, according to the National Statistics and Census Bureau.
The increase took the cumulate inflation for the last 12 months to 9.17 percent.
This was the lowest increase in January -as compared to December- since 1993,
when it went 0.5 percent up, and a far cry from the 4 percent it reached in
1995.
Cheaper AIDS drugs
The Central American nations achieved a historical agreement with five
international pharmaceutical corporations to lower -by 55 percent on the
average- the prices of 14 drugs used in the treatment of AIDS patients. In a
meeting held in Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua,
and the host country reached the reduction after talks with representatives of
E. Hoffman-La Roche, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Merck Sharpe & Dome, Glaxo Smith
Kline, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. According to official sources, the region has
16,000 AIDS patients and 180,000 HIV carriers. They added that the treatment of
each patient costs $2,800 a year, but that amount will be lowered to $1,035 to
$1,454 thanks to the agreement.
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