The roster includes three players over 23 years old: Carlos Pavon, from Real Espana in the local league, defender Samuel Caballero and midfielder Emil Martinez, from Chinese clubs Changchun Yatai and Gouan Being, respectively.

Honduras will play friendlies against Guatemala, El Salvador and the San Jose Earthquakes to prepare for the Summer Games.

Accepting the money a day earlier, Honduran International Cooperation Minster Karen Zelaya also appealed to government and non- government organizations worldwide to sponsor projects promoting health and wellbeing for the Honduran people.

The fund is to be used for improving water supplies and sanitation systems in impoverished provinces and several immigrant reception centers in the country.

“It is difficult to be a professional in Honduras,” he said.

Guerrero joined the country’s renowned Club Deportivo Motagua in the capital Tegucigalpa when he was 19. But he also had to find construction jobs during the offseason to help supplement his income.

Yet, he did whatever he could to fulfill his childhood dream of being a soccer pro.

“Once you get a chance you must take advantage right at that moment because you might not get another chance,” Guerrero said.

When the last-place Quakes face the Chicago Fire today at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill., they will look for Guerrero to help them find the consistency that has been lacking this season.

“We missed him,” Earthquakes coach Frank Yallop said of his absence earlier this month when he helped Honduras advance in World Cup qualifying rounds.

In his fourth year in Major League Soccer, Guerrero has been a calming presence, previously for the Fire, and now the Quakes. But the league also has provided him with stability after years of toiling in his native land.

He hasn’t wasted the opportunities, becoming one of Honduras’ national team leaders and a respected MLS player who makes $147,000 a year, according to the players union. (He also has played in England and Uruguay).

“His energy, work
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rate and enthusiasm are infectious,” Yallop said.

Growing up in Catacamas, three hours from the capital, Guerrero’s family lived like most Hondurans who scraped by in an economically depressed country. The boys of his city played in the street without shoes dreaming of making soccer a career.

As for many of Latin America’s poor “it was a great way to escape and make a better life for yourself,” Guerrero said.

The left-footed midfielder has used his earnings to help put three younger sisters through college and support his wife and three children.

Former Chicago coach Dave Sarachan immediately saw something special in the 5-foot-7 Guerrero when scouting him in 2005.

“It meant so much for him to perform” for Honduras, he said. “Sometimes they look the part but don’t really back it up.”

Guerrero, 30, represented Honduras in the 2000 Olympics but hopes to help his country reach the World Cup finals for only the second time in history. The country is buoyed by the way some Hondurans have played abroad. Guerrero remains circumspect.

“They’ve talked before, ‘This is going to be the year for Honduras,’”‰” he said of the building excitement. “It doesn’t matter until we get there.”

The country’s only appearance came in 1982 in Spain when Guerrero was 5. Honduras resumes its campaign in August with the third round of CONCACAF qualifiers. The country is in a tough round-robin group against Canada, Jamaica and Mexico, with only two advancing to the final round.

In the meantime, Guerrero wants to help the Quakes establish themselves in MLS. He said playing in San Jose has been the most difficult challenge in his career, but he has “confidence and faith that things are going to get better.” The same sort of belief that helped forge him a soccer career.

Notes: Guerrero’s return last week at the beginning of a five-game trip helped. And now the Quakes expect to have forward Kei Kamara back after almost a month with Sierra Leone’s national team. Veteran defender Nick Garcia also is expected to be in the lineup today after missing four games because of a sprained knee ligament. … But San Jose still doesn’t have striker Gavin Glinton, who has yet to recover after having a hernia surgery last month. Yallop said he isn’t sure when his former starter will return. … And the recently acquired Jovan Kirovski fractured his right foot during a collision with Amir Lowery in practice. He will be lost at least two more weeks.

Honduran Navy Comm. Juan Pablo Rodriguez says the cocaine was found on the Honduran-flagged “Eclipse” about 100 miles (160 kms) off the Honduran coast in a joint operation with the U.S. Coast Guard. The area is near the Nicaraguan border.

Rodriguez said Saturday that the officials were still searching the boat and the total of the haul could end up being more than 4.6 tons.

Mexico will promote regional integration with Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which is expected to facilitate trade by harmonizing rules and different procedures, and also reduce operation costs, said Sojo.

Mexico signed FTAs with Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Northern Triangle nations (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) in 1995, 1998 and 2001 respectively .

Speaking at a business forum titled “Opportunities for Investment and Challenges to Competitiveness in the Mesoamerican Region” Sojo said such integration will help these nations withstand the growing competence of other regions.

The proposed comprehensive FTA seeks to include Belize, Panama and the Dominican Republic as well, thereby completing the Mesoamerican bloc, he added.

Recalling that the Honduran people “is characterized by a profound religious spirit which finds expression, among other things, in the numerous and deep-rooted practices of popular devotion,” the Pope noted that this character faces challenges. Most notable among the challenges are “the spread of secularism and the proselytism of sects,” Benedict said.

These trials should not lead to discouragement, said the Holy Father. Rather, they should “serve as a stimulus for a bold and far- reaching effort of evangelization, founded - rather than on the effectiveness of material means and human plans - on the power of the Word of God, faithfully accepted, humbly experienced and trustingly announced.”

Calling the formation of priests to announce the Gospel “priceless,” the Pope also emphasized the importance of good formation for seminarians.

The Pope then focused in on the topic of defending marriage and the family, saying that the “solidity and stability” of the two foundational institutions “is such a benefit to the Church and society.” “In this respect, it is right to recognize the important step taken by including an explicit recognition of marriage in your country’s Constitution, although you well know it is not enough to possess good legislation if then we do not undertake the necessary cultural and catechetical labors that highlight “the truth and beauty of marriage, a perpetual alliance of life and love between a man and a woman,” Benedict XVI said.

Charity was also highlighted as an important role for the bishops to cultivate. As “successors of the Apostles,” the Holy Father said, bishops must be “the foremost leaders of this service of charity in the particular Churches.”

“I well know how you are affected by the poverty in which so many of your fellow citizens live, and by the increase in violence, emigration, environmental destruction, corruption and shortcomings in education, alongside other serious problems. As ministers of the Good Shepherd you have - through word and deed - worked intensely to assist the needy,” the Pope noted.

I exhort you,” he concluded, “to continue through your ministry to show the merciful face of God, strengthening the network of charity in your diocesan and parish communities with particular concern for the sick, the elderly and the imprisoned.”

Sometime between now and Sept. 4, Honduran businessman David Henson McNab will be released after nearly eight full years in a U.S. federal prison — all because, prosecutors say, he was too selfish about shellfish.

American importers Robert Blandford and Abner Schoenwetter, who entered prison three years later than McNab (unlike him, they had stayed free pending appeals), still must serve three years of their eight-year sentences.

Their crime? In 1999, they accepted from McNab some 70,787 pounds of spiny lobster tails, unloaded at Bayou La Batre, and less than 5 percent of them, horror of horrors, were too short. Even worse — gasp! — they were packaged not in the required cardboard containers, but in plastic.

Both the packaging and the undersized catch allegedly violated Honduran sea-harvest laws. An American law called the Lacey Act makes it illegal in the United States to import goods in contravention of another nation’s laws.

The Lacey Act makes some sense: It promotes reciprocity among nations. After all, we would certainly want a foreign government to refuse to allow the importation of something like American eagle meat, for instance, in contravention of our own wildlife-protection laws.

But there’s a vast difference between reciprocity and prosecutorial audacity. At the very least, one would expect that U.S. Justice Department officials would not use a foreign law as an excuse to prosecute a personal, domestic agenda.

And we would certainly not expect to continue enforcing such an agenda when the foreign government itself says its own laws were not actually violated.

But amazingly and inexcusably, that’s what happened in the McNab case. Here’s the tale:

The original violation with which the lobstermen were charged involved the too-small lobsters (taken before they were big enough to reproduce and replenish the resource).

Prosecutors made the value of the infraction larger by adding the “improper packaging” charge, thus applying it to the value of the whole cargo rather than just the undersized portion.

Then, because it was contraband, prosecutors turned it into a “smuggling” charge — and then, because the businessmen used the money from the alleged smuggling for other goods and services, prosecutors charged them with “money laundering” as well.

Suddenly, the allegation of minor civil violations was turned into a major criminal case. That’s how the three eight-year sentences were handed down.

Eight years. In federal prison. To enforce a foreign regulation. About undersized lobsters.

Never mind that the importers openly took the lobsters through Customs, seemingly unaware they were doing anything wrong.

Never mind that the U.S. Department of Commerce published an official price list for Honduran lobsters of the very sizes supposedly outlawed.

And never mind that from the very start, there was conflicting expert testimony about whether Honduran law was violated at all. The original trial judge, citing a mid-level Honduran official, allowed the trial to continue, all the way to convictions.

Later, when the attorney general of Honduras wrote to say the regulations at issue had been repealed four years before this case began, the appeals court said it was too late.

“There must be some finality with representations of foreign law by foreign governments,” wrote the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. So the men went to prison, even though no existing law had been violated.

McNab and his American co-defendants applied for executive pardons or commutations. No response. Finally, in December 2004, the president of Honduras, Ricardo Maduro, wrote a letter to President George W. Bush.

“In the case of Mr. McNab,” President Maduro wrote, “all the legal bodies of Honduras … have determined that Mr. McNab has not violated any law of Honduras. … I believe the interest of justice will be best served if you assent to the request for clemency.”

No such luck.

Miguel Estrada, the brilliant lawyer whose judicial nomination by Bush was famously filibustered by Democratic senators, represented McNab on appeal. Estrada’s administration connections did not help.

“No one has done squat about it,” he told me this month, in frustration. “I never got the time of day.”

In retrospect, prosecutors did what they always do: Take seriously their charge to enforce the laws.

“Protecting our natural resources is one of the core functions of government,” said Todd Aagaard, a Villanova Law School professor and former Justice Department official who handled the case on appeal for the prosecution.

“Overfishing is a huge problem worldwide,” Aagaard told me recently. “And you have to punish violators enough to make everybody give a second thought before committing a violation. That’s what deterrence is.”

Yes, but even deterrence ought to keep a sense of proportionality. This case lacked such sense entirely, and the courts handled it badly.

It was a case in which the U.S. government claimed to enforce Honduran law, but where the Honduran government said the law no longer exists, and for which there was no U.S. violation unrelated to the original non-offense.

And one defendant was a Honduran who by logic (if not law) should be under the jurisdiction of his own country rather than this one, all about an “offense” that most people would find inoffensive.

“It has always been a mystery to me why the government focused on McNab when he had been coming into this country for years, through Customs, subject to inspections,” said Mobile attorney Donald Briskman, who defended McNab at the original trial. “It has always been my belief that, at the end of the day, the government’s case fell apart through a number of subsequent developments.”

This case has been an abominable injustice from the start. President Bush ought to cut through the idiotic red tape at the Department of Justice and pardon all three men immediately.

By QUIN HILLYER

The representative of the Chorti, Oscar Acosta remembered that on September 9th of 2005, they also took over the park and with the previous government who purchased some other 4,000 acres of land and was distributed among the 48 indigenous communities.

Acosta also explained that on May 13th of 1997 they signed an agreement with the president back then for the purchase of 36,000 acres of land, but only 35% of that total has been recovered among other commitments signed by both parts.

“We want the land to cultivate it because we are dying of hunger” Acosta said after saying they have been seeding their basic grains on private lands where the owners have given them 30 days to abandon their lands before they will be evacuated.

They are also demanding the titles for their land that have been purchased previously and have no title in order to strengthen their trust fund which will be administrated by the Agrarian National Institute and the Maya Chorti National Council.

In these 48 indigenous communities where over 28 thousand people live, there are only eight health care centers and 1 public school in each community. Because of this, they are soliciting the government’s cooperation for the education.

They are also asking the minister of Tourism to assign 30 percent of the income of the Maya ceremonial center to go to their organization, and 60 percent of the staff to be indigenous at the Copan Ruins archaeological park and to have an indigenous representative in the administration area.

On the other side, the administrator of the Archaeological Park, Oscar Ruiz said, by closing the Archaeological Park great economic losses are already registered, the same with hotels and transportation.

The Copan Ruins Archaeological Park receives over 400 tourists a day. The cost to enter the park is 80 lempiras for national tourist and $15 for foreign tourists.

Missions Chief Lt. Col. Jorge “Padre” Cabrera said Maule Air, Inc., signed a contract with the government of Honduras in September to build aircraft for training missions. Honduras has bought four planes, but he said the four are only a starting point for future business relations between Maule Air and Honduras.

Maule Air was chosen over other aircraft manufacturers because they offered planes at a lower price, higher quality and set at a higher standard, Cabrera said. Using Maule aircraft will allow the Honduran Air Force to train with better equipment, which will improve pilot training.

Along with air force pilot training, Cabrera said Honduras could use the Maule aircraft in other areas. The planes could be use for search and rescue missions, surveillance, reconnaissance missions and other ways to support the people of Honduras.

Cabrera said he and the team of pilots have been in Moultrie for about a week training in the planes. They will be leaving Tuesday as they fly the planes back to Honduras over a three-day trip along the Gulf Coast. A team of two mechanics spent time at Maule Air in May to learn about the planes before the pilots came and trained on them.

This trip was the team’s first visit to Moultrie, and Cabrera said all four of the pilots have enjoyed the experience. The people of Moultrie have been very friendly, and he enjoys being in a small town over a big city.

“I like this kind of environment,” Cabrera said. “The people here are very polite, kind, friendly and well-educated. The training has been fun while taking in the whole experience.”

Representatives of the Honduran Enterprise of Telecommunications (HONDUTEL) and the Honduran Science and Technology Council (COHCIT) are working together to foster and apply Zelaya´s proposal, which was a part of his electoral campaign.

The manager of HONDUTEL Jorge Rosa, explained that in the plan that is part of the project “Aprende” led by COHCIT, there is also a participation by the Ministry of Education and the National Commission of Telecommunications.

In the 17,500 educational centers, of which 30 percent are private schools, most with internet available.

The proposal wants to reduce the disadvantages of the students in educational and public institutions in relation with the private ones.

Zelaya has reiterated that the only way to overcome backwardness in Honduras is by preparing youth.

When he took office as President, Zelaya promised that all public schools would have computers.

The Honduras Rural Competitiveness Project will assist rural small-scale producer associations to form alliances with commercial partners and jointly implement with them business plans to expand market access and increase producer incomes.

The project also aims to create employment and improve producers’ ability to compete through increasing market access.

According to Rebeca Patricia Santos, Minister of Finance, the project is aligned with the World Bank strategy to support international efforts to overcome the global food crisis especially in poor countries such as Honduras, that have benefited from the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI) to reduce poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“The project is designed to include market-oriented, demand driven mechanisms to assist rural farmers to establish partnerships with non-financial and financial alliances,” said Laura Frigenti, World Bank Country Director for Central America. “Through this project, we aim to reach 6,700 small-scale farmers, or approximately 18 percent of targeted farmers in the seven Western departments of Comayagua, Copan, Intibuc, La Paz, Lempira, Ocotepeque, and Santa Barbara,” Ms. Frigenti added.

The project has the following three components:

* Support to Productive Alliances, which includes outreach to rural producer organizations (RPOs), commercial partners and private financing groups to help identify potential business opportunities. This component will also support the development of viable business plans by these producer organizations in alliance with commercial partners.

* Productive Investments, which would provide sub-project grants to co-finance the implementation of approximately 150 feasible business plans.

* Project Coordination, Monitoring and Evaluation, which includes project administration and establishing a participatory monitoring and evaluation system. Data collected under this component will provide baseline project information, as well as both mid-term and final project evaluation

The grand total of funds destined to this project amounts to US$ 51.2 million as counterpart organizations (COSUDE, Rural Producer Organizations, Private Financial Institutions) are contributing to the effort with an additional amount of US$ 20 million.

The Second Road Rehabilitation and Improvement Project is designed to improve the quality of road network and of road management in support of the government’s growth and competitiveness goals through, improved governance and enhanced road management capacity in SOPTRAVI and the Road Fund, improvement in selected road corridors; and extension in the scope of the maintenance of the unpaved road network.

The main components of the project consist of:

* Rehabilitation and Improvement of primary and secondary roads (US$ 50.5 million) + Cucuyagua - Nueva Ocotepeque-El Poy + Nueva Ocotepeque - Agua Caliente + La Esperanza - Camasca + Olanchito - San Lorenzo + El Porvenir - Marale + Sulaco - Empalme de Carretera Yoro

* Maintenance by Micro-Enterprises on the Unpaved Road Network (US$2.5 million)

* Implementation Support (US$ 5 million)

* Institutional Strengthening (US$ 3 million)

The IDA financing for the Road Rehabilitation and Improvement Project has enabled the Government of Honduras to leverage resources from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) who are contributing to its objectives with a loan of at least US$ 15 million; making the total funds destined for this objective US$ 64.60 million.

“Both projects will bring technical and financial support to some of the poorest rural areas of Honduras to brighten the economic prospects of small scale farmers,” said Adrian Fozzard, World Bank Country Manager for Honduras, “The government of Honduras will be able to comply with its long-term objective of rural growth through competitiveness.

Market access for organized small-scale farmers will link them to financial institutions while the rural roads will provide better access to business opportunities.”

The Country Assistance Strategy Progress Report which reviews the mid-term implementation of the Country Assistance Strategy during fiscal period 2007-2010 concludes that the general objectives in the CAS are still valid, with minor adjustments needed to the credit program. The credit program for fiscal years 2008-2010 comprises of a total of US$ 220 million to be divided amongst 7 new investment projects and a Development Policy Credit.

Aside from the two investment projects approved today five additional projects are programmed for approval by the Board of Directors during fiscal years 2009-2010. The following operations are programmed: Development Policy Credit (US$20 million), a Utility Restructuring Project (US$ 30 million), the second stage of the Land Administration Program (US$30 million), support for Public Sector Management reforms (US$ 15 million), a Health Sector Reform Project (US$15 million) and a Third Road Reconstruction and Improvement Project (US$20 million).

he World Bank continues to support the government of Honduras in its struggle to achieve development and social equity for its people. The approval today of these credits and the CAS Progress Report is a demonstration of this support.

The previous was proposed yesterday by the president Manuel Zelaya to the active forces of Tegucigalpa, who accepted these terms and admitted they will be responsible along with the government for any risk of the passengers traveling thru this terminal that has been closed since May 30th when a Taca airplane crashed and caused the death of five people.

This determination was taken after a six hour meeting between President Manuel Zelaya, business representatives from the capital, the catholic and evangelist church, the mayors of Tegucigalpa and Comayagua, and authorities from different communities from Comayagua and Francisco Morazan.

At the end of the meeting an official notice was read where the first point says “in order to conclude with the established chronogram, in order to give Tegucigalpa a new airport other than Toncontin, as Palmerola will be, the president Manuel Zelaya will follow up with each stage of the process”.

The second point says “we have to wait for the decision from the ICAO in a term of eight days about the conditions of the Toncontin airport for the normal and secure development of their aviation”.

After ICAO establishes what type of airplanes gather the conditions to land and take off from the Toncontin airport, the government will assume responsibility of applying the same regulations for flights taking off from Toncontin to other destinations.

The company said the location will be at the country’s capital city of Tegucigalpa. Construction is likely to begin shortly, it said.

Faces Cosmetics opened its first location in Honduras in 2007 in the city of San Pedro Sula.

George Emmanuel, T.I.D.E. Communication Coordinator

“The first incident occurred on June 4th and it was our rangers retrieving two gillnets near Monkey River Village. In that incident the individuals fled the scene when the rangers pulled up. The rangers did retrieve two gillnets and we have coordinates for those as well and those were found within the Port of Honduras Marine Reserve. IN the second incident which occurred on June 9th the rangers reported that they caught on particular individual red-handed with a gillnet. In both instances the mesh size of the net were below three inches and in that incident the individual was transported to the fisheries department and then unto the Punta Gorda Police.”

Emmanuel says that the use of gillnets in the marine reserves are strongly prohibited by the authorities.

George Emmanuel, T.I.D.E. Communication Coordinator

“The gillnets are normally used by the fisherman for fishing, they set the gillnets across the river mouths and we have five main rivers entering the Port of Honduras Marine Reserve; you have Rio Grande, Golden Stream, Monkey River, Middle River and Deep River. So the fishermen set the nets across the mouth of these rivers and use it primarily to catch fish and it is illegal to set these nets in all marine reserves in the whole country and those regulations are set by the Fisheries Department. It is also illegal to use long lines, these are lines with many hooks which are set in these areas and a lot of marine species get cut with these lines for example the marine turtles and they get strangled and they die. So these nets are destructive as they also catch juvenile fish and other marine species.”

Emmanuel adds that there are other set regulations for the use of marine reserves and it is important for the public to follow these rules in order to preserve life in the respective reserves.

George Emmanuel, T.I.D.E. Communication Coordinator

“There are rules and regulations regarding the use of the reserve and also the types of activities that can be conducted within the reserve. The reserve as well has conservation and preservation zones which are “no take zones” and in the second incident that I mention the individual was in a preservation zone where there is no extraction of the marine resources and certainly the use of gillnets are destructive. A number of marine species die every year because of the use of gillnets. The manatees for example are found in that area where the gillnets were retrieved near the Monkey River area. We here at TIDE would like to continue working with the fishermen and those who use the marine reserve and we want to make sure that we have resources for future generations. There are regulations set for the use of marine reserves in the entire country of Belize and those are set by the Belize Fisheries Department and us here at TIDE work along with them in ensuring that these kinds of activities do not occur within the marine reserves.”

The Port of Honduras Marine Reserve is co-managed by the Fisheries Department and TIDE.

The groups initiated by removing the most sophisticated parts from the aircraft with the purpose of saving them, since they are too onerous. The recuperation of the pieces is being done carefully so they are not damaged even more. The team of experts has kept on working even with the rains that have been falling in Tegucigalpa.

According to sources, the aircraft which was manufactured in France belongs to a company from the Philippines; Taca Airlines rented the aircraft from this company which is another reason why the investigations of the accident are taking longer.

In the unfortunate accident that happened on Friday may 30th, five people lost their lives, three of them where passengers on the flight and the other two where crushed by the aircraft while driving in their pick up truck.

Since then they have stopped landing any International flights and any domestic flights with more than 42 passengers due to the decision of the president Manuel Zelaya to open the Palmerola military air base as the new airport for the capital.

The determination of the president has caused for most business owners from the Toncontin Airport to worry since most passengers will not go to that terminal.

Since the tragic accident the adjacent streets to the where the wreck is have been closed in order to protect the aircraft