San José, Costa Rica - Saturday 14 August 2004

1.116 Unique Visitors Daily Average in July!  What's This? 

Updated every day by 8:00AM Central Standard Time

With a magical Opening Ceremony, Athens welcomed the best athletes from around the globe for the Olympic Games, which returned home. Connecting symbolically the Ancient Olympia Stadium with the Athens Olympic Stadium, the beginning of the Opening Ceremony bridged 3,000 years of Olympic Games history. [Foto:  ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games © ATHOC / ANA] Click for larger image!

Costa Rica Attorney General Urges Court to Reject Support for Iraq War
A coalition of the unwilling is growing in Costa Rica. Attorney General Farid Beirute has urged the country's top court,  Constitutional Court,  to formally reject Costa Rica's membership in the U.S.-proclaimed coalition of support for the war in Iraq.

Minors Demand Better Conditions at PANI
Minors under the protection of the child welfare agency, Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (PANI) are demanding better living conditions at it's shelters.

Mother's Day Tomorrow
Tomorrow is Mother's Day in Costa Rica, a holiday that is celebrated in several nations around the world on the second Sunday in May. In Costa Rica it is always celebrated on the 15th of August.

Ticos Will be Asked to Reduce Gasoline Consumption
A plan to reduce the use of gasoline in Costa Rica or to at least make drivers aware of the high cost due to rising world crude oil prices, will be tabled on Tuesday, as government officials discuss the various options available.

Non-stop Flights to Madrid
The Spanish airline Iberia will fly four times a week non-stop from Costa Rica to Madrid.

Canada Donated $406,000
As part of the cooperation program between Costa Rica and Canada within the Free Trade Agreement between the two nations, the Canadian Government donated $406,000 for a labor administration program.

Panamanian president-elect announces cabinet
Panamanian President-elect Martin Torrijos announced Friday the lineup of his cabinet due to start working on Sept. 1.

Vice president confident of Chavez's winning
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Rangel predicted Friday that President Hugo Chavez will win Sunday's recall referendum, and an "alternative leadership" is something out of the question.

4 Guantanamo detainees affirmed as "enemy combatants"
The US military has classified four detainees held at the US naval base prison at Guantanamo Bay,Cuba, as legitimate "enemy combatants" after a review process that started late July, the Pentagon said Friday.

International News from the New York Times
 

SPECIAL REPORTS DEVELOPMENT- ARGENTINA: Utter Poverty in Former Reserve The cows in this arid former nature reserve in northwestern Argentina are so bony that they do not even look like they belong to the same species as their robust cousins to the south, in the rich pampas (grasslands) of the central part of the country. They barely give milk, and provide little meat, just enough to keep their owners -- poor campesinos or peasant farmers who live in improvised corrugated iron and wooden shacks with plastic bags as insulation and wear heavily patched and re-patched clothes -- from dying of hunger. No one imagined the utter abandonment in which the local campesinos and indigenous people were living in the General Pizarro nature reserve -- until the provincial authorities decided to sell off the public land to agribusiness interests for planting soy, and their plight began to draw limited media attention.

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