Costa Rica News - Sep 18, 2005

High Speed Internet At Lower Cost Coming October 1

The Radiografica Costarricense S.A. (Racsa) announced earlier this month that beginning October 1 it will more than double the internet connection for it's customers, keeping the cost the same.

Existing customer don't have to do anything. Come October 1 their internet connection speed will increase considerably, depending on the connection plan purchased.

For example, Racsa residential customers who are currently connected at 128/64 pay $35 monthly. Come October 1, the 128/64 connection in increased to 512/128 and the cost will only by $34.95 Residential customers connected at 512/128 will be soon surfing at 2Mbps/256.

Top Dollar Reserves

In spite of the larger oil bill, the Costa Rican dollar reserves -destined to challenge emergencies - currently have reached a historical maximum of us$2,4 billion dollars, us$795 million more than in September last year. In the meantime, the oil bill for the first eight months this year went up to us$655 million, almost the overall amount paid in 2004, us$699 million.

Space Technology Here

Former NASA astronaut Franklin Chang is planning the production of space technology in his home country, Costa Rica. e expects to do so by establishing here a branch or sister company for his Ad Astra Technology Inc. (ATT), which currently operates in a NASA laboratory at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Chang, who traveled to space seven times, is trying to enlist private investment to accelerate the development of a plasma engine that would reduce the travel time to Mars. Chang also leads in Costa Rica the Strategic Half Century Plan for Science and Technology, a proposal on the scientific, productive, and educational path of Costa Rica for the coming decades.

U.S. Setback Won't Sink Costa Rican Economy

“When the United States sneezes, the whole world catches cold” – or so goes the old saying. However, as enormous a sneeze as Hurricane Katrina was for the United States, Costa Rica 's prognosis seems pretty good, according to various sources consulted by The Tico Times.

In the United States, estimates of damages and costs associated with the storm are in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and a reduction of 1% is expected in the gross domestic product, Phillip Swagel, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington D.C., told The Tico Times. However, the economic effects are expected to be temporary there, as well as in Costa Rica.

$6 million for research

The Government of South Korea offered $6 million to establish here an institute of joint research on biodiversity. This was one of the leading agreements reached by President Abel Pacheco and his Korean peer Roh Moo-hyun at a Central America and Korea Summit held in Alajuela. During his visit to Costa Rica, Moo-hyun commented his amazement at the natural wealth of the country, "the sky so blue and the mountains." The new institution, the Korea-Costa Rica Biodiversity Research Center, will be jointly developed and operated by the Costa Rican National Biodiversity Institute (INBio) and the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB). INBio director doctor Rodrigo Gamez commented that the Koreans had analyzed several Latin American institutions to develop the project, and finally decided to do it here.

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