Costa Rica

"Celebrity: The state or condition of being celebrated; fame; renown." "Notoriety: The quality or condition of being notorious; the state of being generally or publicly known - commonly used in an unfavorable sense." - Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary I define the words because, apparently, some of us don't understand the difference. By which I mean the National Broadcasting Company, which recently sought to hire former Illinois Gov. Milorad "Rod" Blagojevich to appear on its "reality" game show I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!

New York -- After the El Salvador peace agreement, it looks as if the curtain is being rung down on a decade and a half of revolutionary aspiration and U.S.-backed counter-revolutionary repression. Now for the hard part in Central America -- to stop it all happening again in ten years' time.It has been a horrific and bloody business, costing countless lives, gaining something for sure, electoral rule rather than dictatorship, but not measurably altering the balance of power between rich and poor, nor enabling these mini-countries of the volcanic Guatemala trench to escape the feeling that, in the last resort, their destiny is always decided in Washington.

GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala - It's about a three-hour bus ride to the Pacific side of this Central American country, but that could turn out to be a short trip compared with what's ahead as the United States begins the long road to Asia today for World Cup 2002. Host Guatemala, an outsider in a CONCACAF qualifying group that also includes Barbados and Costa Rica, is doing everything it can to make today's opener difficult, including shifting the site from the capital city to isolated Mazatenango.

Anselmo Zeitung stood up from his wheelchair as a Costa Rican; he sat back down as an American.In a polyglot ceremony with questions, answers and comments in English, Spanish and Yiddish, the 99-year-old Pikesville resident underwent another change in a series of citizenship changes since his birth in Warsaw."

HACKENSACK, N.J. - From the outside, the modest single-family house in Hillsdale, N.J., looks unremarkable. Yet the house is testimony to a quiet but rapidly unfolding change in New Jersey's suburbs. The house, with its peeling paint and mismatched secondhand furniture, is home to 19 immigrants: nine children and 10 adults - one of whom is pregnant with a baby due. The immigrants, an extended family from Costa Rica living in the United States illegally, are rarely home at the same time.

When the swank Wind Song makes its maiden call on Costa Rica this December, passengers will be offered an unusual means of getting into the swing of the country -- careening from tree to tree along a metal cable 100 feet above the rain-forest canopy in a scene more evocative of a Rambo flick than a cruise-ship shore excursion.For further thrills, passengers can gallop across a working ranch with an active volcano for a backdrop or hike up the steep bank of a seaside jungle preserve, hooted on by howler monkeys and toucans.

Shelley B. Meyer, who had been the friendly and welcoming receptionist at St. Paul's School in Brooklandville, died Friday from a stroke at Gilchrist Hospice Care. The Reisterstown resident was 40. Shelley Boggess, the daughter of a pediatrician and a homemaker, was born in Durham, N.C., and raised in Roanoke, Va. She was a 1988 graduate of St. Margaret's School in Tappahannock, Va., and earned a bachelor's degree in art history in 1992 from Salem College. Mrs. Meyer moved to New York City in 1994 where she was a receptionist at Julius Lowy, an antique frame dealer and restorer.

You can separate your trash, mothball your car and blow your savings on solar panels, but the quickest means to environmental correctitude is to employ a simple prefix: Eco. Add it to any word: ecocandidate, ecocompany, ecoarticle, ecotainment -- it's flexible, it's convenient and, if used properly, it will stick like so much green spray paint.No one knows who first placed "eco" in front of tourism, but suffice it to say that somewhere some travel brochure writer is chuckling at the revolution the word ignited, the smoke from which can be spotted in just about every adventure-travel company's latest catalog.

WASHINGTON -- In a game marred by 31 fouls and played before a hostile home crowd of 30,082, the United States scrapped and clawed its way to a 2-0 victory over Guatemala yesterday, successfully launching its bid to return in 1998 to soccer's premier tournament -- the World Cup."It was an ugly game and a very physical game with a lot of fouls, which disrupted our rhythm," said defender Alexi Lalas, whose lead pass upfield in the game's waning moments set up the knockout goal by substitute Brian McBride.

NEW YORK -- Picture this:It is 1994, the World Cup is under way, and the U.S. soccer team has made it to the second round, upsetting the status quo. Now it has designs on the championship. Crowds fill stadiums wherever the American team is playing, and the chants are deafening:"Bor-a! Bor-a! Bor-a!"It has a familiar ring, like "De-Fense! De-Fense!" But this is not American football, this is soccer and it has captured the imagination of America. The man they are cheering is Bora Milutinovic, who has turned the U.S. team into a heavyweight contender for the Cup.Is that picture only a dream?