San José, Costa Rica - Sunday 12 September 2004

1.234 Daily Average. Visits in August! Up 10%

Updated every day by 8:00AM Central Standard Time

Día Mundial de Primeros Auxilios la Cruz Roja Costarricense converted La Plaza de la Cultura in downtown San José into a "open air" hospital, imparting health information and what to do in a medical emergency. Click for larger image!

insidenicaragua A new weekly feature published on Sundays, featuring a summary  of current news and events in Nicaragua.

Cabinet Appointments Expected this Week
Two names that are heading the list of replacements at Hacienda and Comercio Exterior, are virtually unknowns in public life.

CCSS Opens Hotline
The Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social (CCSS) wanted to hear from the Costa Rican public what it knew about the Finnish loan, so it opened a special telephone line so that accusations can be made against public officials.

Smoking in Public Places May Soon be Put Out
An initiate can soon become law, that will prohibit smoking in public places.

insidenicaragua
Hurricane turns lights off on Mayorga
After training for several weeks in his hometown of Managua, Nicaragua, Ricardo Mayorga was headed for the Don King Productions training camp facility in Fort Pierce, Fla., but hurricane Frances had something to say about that: the shingles on the roof were torn off and the power was knocked out.

Venezuelan gov't approves humanitarian aid to Grenada
The Venezuelan government approved on Saturday 1 million US dollars in humanitarian relief for Grenada, where at least 24 people were killed and 90 percent of houses damaged by Hurricane Ivan.

Salvadorian troops to move from Najaf to Hilla in Iraq
The third contingent of 380 soldiers from El Salvador will be stationed soon in the southern Iraqi city of Hilla, Vice Defense Minister of the central American country said Friday.

International News from the New York Times
 

BRAZIL: Black Market Cigarettes Account for 30 Percent of the Total More than 360 brands of cigarettes are available on the illegal market in Brazil, six times the number of legally sold brands, complains the company Souza Cruz, British American Tobacco's subsidiary in Brazil. The company, which controls three-fourths of the formal market for cigarettes in this country of nearly 180 million people, also reports that 30 percent of the 131 billion cigarettes smoked in Brazil in 2003 were the product of illegal practices -- piracy, contraband, or tax evasion. That means nearly 40 billion cigarettes smoked last year were sold on the black market, compared to 91 billion sold legally.

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