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To the surprise of no one, Ottón Solís announced his candidacy for president Wednesday. Solís is the founder and leader of the Partido Acción Ciudadana, and he was the party’s candidate in 2002.

He is certain to get the nomination because the party’s period of members declaring to be "pre-candidates" expired Wednesday.

Solís opposes the free trade treaty with the United States in its present form. He is considered a socialist on many issues.

He is certain to face Oscar Arias Sanchez, the only candidate of the Partido Liberación Nacional. Arias, the former president, needed a favorable Sala IV constitutional court ruling to run because the Costa Rican Constitution says citizens may serve just one four-year term as president.

The elections will be in February, and earnest campaigning will not start until August or September.

The Partido Unidad Social Cristiana has a four-way race for its nomination. One candidate is Ricardo Toledo, the former minister of the Presidencia under current President Abel Pacheco.

That party will not hold a convention until July, so other candidates are likely.

Both Liberación and Unidad have been shaken by corruption allegations. Two presidents who are Unidad members are under house arrest facing corruption charges.

José María Figueres Olsen, another ex-president who is the son of the founder of the modern Costa Rican state, declined to return from Switzerland to face similar allegations. He is a member of Liberación.

Man killed in Heredia
was Canadian not from U.S.

A 46-year-old North American, shot fatally in Heredia last week, was a Canadian and not a U.S. citizen, investigators said Wednesday.

He was Richie Hattan, 46, who got in an argument with Guillermo Villalobos Hernández, the owner of the hotel where the Canadian had stayed for two months. Hattan originally was identified as a U.S. citizen.

Investigators said that Hattan had problems with aggressive conduct, alcohol and drugs and that he faced a criminal case for the attempted murder of a former girlfriend.

The argument developed because Hattan had not paid his rent for two months, investigators said. They said that the hotel owner was beaten up and that the case was one of justifiable self-defense.

Hattan suffered a gunshot wound to the hip and died several hours later in a hospital.

Air Force Eye doctors
will work in San Carlos

Eye doctors from Lackland Air Force Base in Texas will be in San Carlos for two weeks offering their medical skills to residents there.

A release from the U.S. Embassy said the doctors would be working at the Hospital de Ciudad Quesada and would be seeing from 30 to 50 patients a day.

The visiting physicians are believed to be members of the 59th Medical Wing at the Air Force base.

The group is headed by Dr. Richard Lane and consists of four eye surgeons, two assistants and an anesthesiologist, said the embassy.
They will be in San Carlos for two weeks, beginning Friday.

The medical staff at Lackland has a long history of conducting readiness exercises that benefit residents at various points in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Two from San Pedro
face pimping allegations

Two San Pedro beauty shop operators are facing allegations of being pimps after a raid at the shop.

The investigation was by the Unidad Contra la Explotación Sexual. A release from the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública said that the men provided men, women and transvestites to customers.

Investigators said the beauty parlor was near the Banco Nacional branch office in the center of San Pedro. The men were identified by the last names of Medina and Suárez.

Investigators said the men advertised in newspapers and other publications for massage services, which were offered in addition to haircuts.

Encounter on the border
for Pacheco this Friday

President Abel Pacheco and his Panamanian counterpart, Martin Torrijos, will meet Friday in Bocas del Toro, just south of the Costa Rican border. The topic will be economic development of the frontier zone, including Sixaola, which was ravaged by the January floods.

Casa Presidencial said the main topics would be security, infrastructure, tourism, environment and agriculture.

The two presidents also will discuss the interconnections of electricity between the two countries and plans for reconstructing the bridge over the Río Sixaola that was destroyed in the flooding.

The two presidents are expected to agree on joint patrols of police at the border to guard against illegal immigration and drug and arms trafficking.

Three-day holidays set

Workers will get a guaranteed three-day weekend for five national holidays starting in 2006. 

Lawmakers voted Wednesday to schedule the holiday on a nearby Monday to provide three-day weekends that encourage tourism.

That means a day like Labor Day, which is May 1, a Sunday this year, always will be celebrated on the Monday. Workers lose the holiday this year.

Other days are: Mother’s Day (Aug. 15), Anniversary of the Battle of Rivas (April 11), Annexation of Nicoya (July 25) and the day of the Cultures (Oct. 12).

The World Bank has approved an $8 million grant to help fight HIV/AIDS in Central America, including in Costa Rica.

The new funds are timely because HIV/AIDS is a growing health issue in Central America, the World Bank said in a statement.

Jane Armitage, the World Bank's country director for Central America, said that, if unchecked, HIV/AIDS has the "potential to erode human welfare, socio-economic progress, productivity, and social cohesion" in the region.

Armitage said the grant "builds on the strengths of regional cooperation in Central America on health issues by improving access to and equity of services" for groups vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. The project will operate in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

The World Bank said the grant supports the ability of the Central America region to better address HIV/AIDS by undertaking critical actions that are beyond the capability of individual countries.

The project will promote access to HIV testing, counseling and treatment, and pay for anti-retroviral drugs, lab tests and other related medical supplies.

In addition, the project will develop an epidemiological surveillance system for collecting and distributing information about HIV/AIDS. This will involve regionally coordinated surveys about the groups most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS. These groups include mobile populations who work in seasonal jobs, commercial sex workers and members of several ethnic communities.

For its part, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says Latin America remains a high priority in the fight against the HIV/AIDS global pandemic. USAID operates HIV/AIDS programs in the Latin American and Caribbean countries of Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.

In addition, President George Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief has targeted Haiti and Guyana as two of 15 countries around the world that will receive U.S. funds to support treatment and prevention programs against HIV/AIDS.

Costa Rica and four fellow Latin American countries have called on the World Trade Organization to arbitrate their banana dispute with the European Union.

Ecuador, Colombia, Panamá and Guatemala, as well as Costa Rica, filed the request.

Earlier this year, the European Union announced that it plans to impose a blanket $300 levy on banana imports 

African, Caribbean and Pacific countries believe the EU proposed rate should be higher.

The Latin American states are trying to avoid a repeat of the so-called "banana wars" that took place in the 1990s. That dispute ended after the WTO decided that EU banana import rules were discriminatory.

An unprecedented four-year study initiated by the United Nations has concluded the majority of the planet's ecosystems is being degraded in an unsustainable fashion. 

At the first of nine news conferences being held in various cities around the world Wednesday, some of the 1,300 experts involved in the study warned of the damage that growing demand for resources is having on the Earth's life support systems. 

The researchers, from 95 countries, concluded that 15 of 24 ecosystems are being damaged by such problems as human population growth, global warming and over-logging. 

In the conclusions released Wednesday, the scientists warn the problems could get worse in the next 50 years if dramatic steps are not taken. Among the ecosystems studied were mangrove forests, rainforests and dry-land areas. 

In Tokyo, Hans van Ginkel, a United Nations undersecretary, said the assessment reveals a consensus of the largest body of social and natural scientists ever assembled to examine the planet's ecosystems.

"It's not yet extreme, it's not exactly immediately collapse, but we better act before the collapse is there," he said. "And that may be very much a scientists' type of approach. But we have to make clear that the future of humankind is not based on simplistic pictures." 

He called on Asian nations, home to 60 percent of the world's population, to take special note of the report. 

"Much of what it is in the report relates strongly to Asia," he added. "But, at the same time, it's not easy to come up with a one-fits-all solution because almost all the diversity of the world is present in that one continent, as well." 

There are concerns it could end up gathering dust on bookshelves unless there is a political and grassroots movement to act on its findings. 

The report includes an optimistic note amid the gloomy forecasts. The assessment's co-chairman, Malaysian biologist A.H. Zakri, says much of the damage can be reversed if practices are changed. 

"I would hope that individual governments would take action to take notice of the analysis and try to incorporate them into better policy formulation and management of ecosystems," said Zakri.

Zakri calls on people to speak up about imperiled ecosystems in their areas, to push policymakers to take concrete action. 

Although its organizers hail the assessment as the first to focus on how ecosystem changes affect human well-being, they acknowledge no new research was undertaken and their mandate was not to present new findings. 

Zakri, director of the U.N. University's Institute of Advanced Studies, said the starkest situation is the desertification of the world's drylands. 

"That's the most urgent and that's the most vulnerable and that's the most disenfranchised of our brothers and sisters," he said. "On a scale of one to 10 I would give it the top mark." 

The third part of the study will be released over the next year. It will include assessments of the Himalayan Hindu Kush, the Laguna Lake Basin in the Philippines, the Arafura and Timor Seas, western China region and Vietnam's Mekong wetlands, as well as several regions within India and Indonesia.

Every year, the migration of hundreds of humpback whales draws the attention of tourists as the whales swim between Alaska and the warmer waters of  Mexico's Pacific coast.

It is the time of year when adult whales and their young migrate from the tropics, returning to Alaska — putting on a spectacular display for whale watchers.

Last December, humpback whales traveled south, searching for the warm waters of the Caribbean and 

The whales are a tourist attraction. Every year, people from all over the world travel to the Pacific to watch the migration.

At the end of January, the whales' offspring start growing at an accelerated pace in preparation for the return migration.

Now, the whales and their young will begin the journey back to Alaska.