Word: costas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Human Rights, an autonomous judicial arm of the 32-member Organization of American States, ruled 7 to 0 that a law requiring the licensing of journa lists violated the right to free expression. Stephen Schmidt, an American reporter, had been found guilty in 1983 of practicing journalism in Costa Rica without a required license and had received a three-month suspended sentence from that nation's Supreme Court. In its landmark ruling, the human rights court, which sits in San Jose, Costa Rica, held that "the compulsory licensing of journalists is incompatible with Article 13 of the American Convention...
...while working on a story about a secret jail where political prisoners were said to be tortured. In a deliberate effort to break the system, Schmidt, then an investigative reporter for San Jose's English language Tico Times and for the Spanish language daily La Prensa Libre, challenged the Costa Rican colegio at a San Jose meeting of the Inter- American Press Association (IAPA) in 1980. "I'm covering this meeting illegally," he announced. "Let me work or sue me." The colegio responded to the dare, and a criminal suit followed. At his first trial in 1983, Schmidt was acquitted...
While the case was being appealed to Costa Rica's Supreme Court, Schmidt left the country--and journalism--to become a financial consultant in Dallas. But he continued the fight. When the Supreme Court released its decision, Schmidt rejected the judges' stipulation that the sentence would be suspended if he returned to Costa Rica and apologized to the colegio. Government attorneys indicated that he could receive a pardon...
...Honduras and positioned an additional 3,000 along the border. Last week the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry charged that the border forces were poised to invade Nicaragua with the support of the Honduran army. In the south, where the FDN has opened a second front along Nicaragua's frontier with Costa Rica, there were reports of fighting last week between contras and Sandinista troops. The contras' aim: to cut the Pan-American Highway, which bisects Nicaragua, disrupt the economy and prepare the way for an urban rising against the regime in Managua...
...Continental Hotel, on the Reforma, Eva Hernandez, a Costa Rican tourist, was staying in Room 930. "It started to shake," she said. "We ran out of the room. We ran down the stairs and we ran and ran. The building was falling all around us. Rocks were falling on us. My roommate fell and her pajamas were torn off, but we kept on running. Now there is nothing there, where we were. Nothing." The hotel's top two floors had collapsed, spewing debris onto the boulevard below...