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José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan 5, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 2
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By the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration news staff
A new study shows that tropical forests may be absorbing far more carbon dioxide than many scientists thought, in response to rising atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas. The study estimates that tropical forests absorb 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of a total global absorption of 2.5 billion, more than is absorbed by forests in Canada, Siberia and other northern regions, called boreal forests. "This is good news, because uptake in boreal forests is already slowing, while tropical forests may continue to take up carbon for many years," said David Schimel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Schimel is lead author of a paper on the new research, appearing online in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences. Forests and other land vegetation currently remove up to 30 percent of human carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. If the rate of absorption were to slow down, the rate of global warming would speed up in return, scientists say. The new study is the first to devise a way to make apples-to-apples comparisons of carbon dioxide estimates from many sources at different scales: computer models of ecosystem processes, atmospheric models run backward in time to deduce the sources of today's concentrations (called inverse models), satellite images, data from experimental forest plots and more. The researchers reconciled all types of analyses and assessed the accuracy of the results based on how well they reproduced independent, ground-based measurements. They obtained their new estimate of the tropical carbon absorption from the models they determined to be the most trusted and verified. "Until our analysis, no one had successfully completed a global reconciliation of information about carbon dioxide effects from the atmospheric, forestry and modeling communities," said co-author Joshua Fisher. "It is incredible that all these different types of independent data sources start to converge on an answer." The question of which type of forest is the bigger carbon absorber "is not just an accounting curiosity," said co-author Britton Stephens of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado. "It has big implications for our understanding of whether global terrestrial ecosystems might continue to offset our carbon dioxide emissions or might begin to exacerbate climate change." As human-caused emissions add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, forests worldwide are using it to grow faster, reducing the amount that stays airborne. This effect is called carbon fertilization. "All else being equal, the effect is stronger at higher temperatures, meaning it will be higher in the tropics than in the boreal forests," Schimel said. But climate change also decreases water availability in some regions and makes Earth warmer, leading to more frequent and larger wildfires. In the tropics, humans compound the problem by burning wood during deforestation. Fires don't just stop carbon absorption by killing trees, they also spew huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere as the wood burns. For about 25 years, most computer climate models have been showing that mid-latitude forests in the Northern Hemisphere absorb more carbon than tropical forests. That result was initially based on the then-current understanding of global air flows and limited data suggesting that deforestation was causing tropical forests to release more carbon dioxide than they were absorbing. In the mid-2000s, Stephens used measurements of carbon dioxide made from aircraft to show that many climate models were not correctly representing flows of carbon above ground level. Models that matched the aircraft measurements better showed more carbon absorption in the tropical forests. However, there were still not be enough global data sets to validate the idea of a large tropical-forest absorption. Schimel said that their new study took advantage of a great deal of work other scientists have done since Stephens' paper to pull together national and regional data of various kinds into robust, global data sets. Schimel noted that their paper reconciles results at every scale from the pores of a single leaf, where photosynthesis takes place, to the whole Earth, as air moves carbon dioxide around the globe. "What we've had up till this paper was a theory of carbon dioxide fertilization based on phenomena at the microscopic scale and observations at the global scale that appeared to contradict those phenomena. Here, at least, is a hypothesis that provides a consistent explanation that includes both how we know photosynthesis works and what's happening at the planetary scale." NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how the planet is changing. The agency shares this knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan 5, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 2 | |
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| An A.M.
Costa Rica analysis on the news China's agenda with Costa Rica appears to be long-term |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
President Luis Guillermo Solís and a Costa Rican delegation are in China in what Casa Presidencial said is an effort to consolidate relations for the next decade. The $430 million expansion of Ruta 31 from Río Frio to Moín and an effort to jump start plans for a new $1.5 billion petroleum refinery are among topics that will be discussed. Costa Rica is seeking Chinese money for these major projects. The highway job is a loan that would not be felt in the national budget for six years. The refinery is a joint project that includes a loan. In negotiating these deals, Costa Rica is involved with a country that rejects much of what Ticos hold dear. Solís will be meeting with the Chinese president. As Freedom House points out: "When Xi Jinping took the reins as Communist Party chief and president, he promoted the goals of the “China Dream.” However, after two years of his rule, his dream has turned out to be a nightmare for many Chinese. Xi and his cohort have stepped up repressive campaigns against perceived threats to the party’s rule, including activists who criticize the persecution of religious minorities. In one recent example, Ilham Tohti, China’s most prominent advocate for the rights of Uighurs, was sentenced to life in prison for supposedly inciting separatism." China continues to tighten its grip on Hong Kong, the Internet, education, the media and dissidents. Costa Rica has remained silent on Chinese violations of human rights. Part of the reason is that Costa Rica's trade with China |
has
jumped from less than $100 million in 2001 to the current $2 billion. Casa Presidencial said that the Costa Rican delegation would be discussing special economic zones, free trade zones that would dot the country and generate employment. In the short term China looks like a favorite uncle that is lavishing gifts on Costa Rica. Here the administration changes every four years. China is known to be looking much further into the 21st century. Although Costa Rica purports to be a defender of human rights, there have been no words from the foreign ministry over any rights violations by China. International sources say that in the short-run this is what China seeks, like that will either defend its repressions or at least ignore them. China also is seeking to expand its interests in all of Central America as it continues to isolate Taiwan and pursue other diplomatic agendas. During his visit, Solís is expected to accept an honorary doctorate at Renmin University of China, which is beginning a Latin America studies program. With Solís will be Manuel González, the foreign minister; Alexander Mora, minister of Comercio Exterior; Celso Gamboa, minister of Seguridad Pública; Olga Marta Sánchez, minister of Planificación, and Carlos Segnini, minister of Obras Públicas y Transportes. So during the Costa Rican visit it might be China that is consolidating its relations for the next decade. |
| Nearly 400 persons suffered injuries from bulls, Cruz Roja
says |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The bulls have stopped running at three locations in the Central Valley, and plenty of Costa Ricans will be limping and holding their ribs for some weeks. The Cruz Roja reported as of early Sunday that 397 persons had been treated for encounters with bulls. Some 78 required further treatment at clinics and hospitals. A few were bull riders. There were a few more added to the list Sunday afternoon in events at both the Zapote fairgrounds and the new bull ring at Pedregal. The numbers are not accurate because there was a third ring at Paraiso de Cartago that is not included in the Cruz Roja figures. Some participants in toros a las Tica suffered real beatings Sunday, and the television news shows aired clips repeatedly. The major channels also covered live most of the encounters. These are the events where up to 100 individuals test their bravery by getting into the ring with a 1,100-pound bull. This appears to be a uniquely Costa Rican practice. With the end of the Zapote fiesta and the holidays, Costa Ricans are supposed to return to work today. Some will have prolonged their holiday by applying vacation days. Traffic appeared moderate Sunday afternoon on major highways. Law enforcement and the Cruz Roja will be reporting in detail the injuries and tragedies of the holidays later today. The judicial morgue already reported that 27 persons died in vehicle mishaps from Dec. 19, the start of the holiday through New Year's Day. In the same period there were 22 murders, the morgue said. The count is authoritative because all victims of violent deaths go to the morgue. Added to the traffic toll are weekend deaths Two men died in a traffic mishap in Damas de Quepos Saturday about 1:35 p.m. Saturday when their vehicle collided head-on with another vehicle. A 4 year old in the |
 Municipalidad de San José photo
The bull encounters filled
the grandstands.other car suffered substantial injuries and was taken to the Hospital Nacional de Niños. An 18 year old in the vehicle with the two victims also was injured, said agents. In a Cartago location known as Navarro de Muñeco, a 14 year old died when a pickup carrying at least nine persons in the truck bed plunged down a cliff. The victim was one of those riding in the truck bed. The individual at the wheel faces a drunk driving prosecution, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. The accident took place about 6 p.m. Saturday. Two persons died about 4:30 a.m. Sunday in Coyol de Alajuela when the vehicle in which they were riding struck a railroad bridge abutment. The vehicle burst into flames, and agents were unable to make an immediate identification. The vehicle was headed from San José west on the Interamericana highway. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan 5, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 2 | |||||
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| U.S. faces foreign policy challenges all around the globe in
2015 |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica
wire
services
2015 is here, and with a new year comes new challenges and some old ones. Last year left the United States with a lot of unfinished business around the world. President Barack Obama's top foreign policy challenges as he enters his final two years in the White House will be varied and require careful coordination. In December, Obama marked the end of America's longest war. But Pentagon officials say the dawn of 2015 does not mean the end of U.S. assistance. "It’s not like on December 31 we’re just going to walk away. We aren’t. We are going to remain," said Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby. Air support, training and counterterrorism are all on the agenda for the more than 10,000 U.S. troops staying in Afghanistan this year. It's help Afghan forces need, as the year saw a rise in Taliban attacks. The U.S. will also fight terrorism in the form of Islamic State militants. The group surged into the public consciousness in 2014, with its rapid takeover of large parts of Iraq and Syria and its brutal beheadings of Westerners. Air strikes against the group appear to be working, with analysts predicting continued gains. “I think Iraq, between the Kurdish army and the national army based in Baghdad, with strong U.S. support, will make progress in 2015,” said Paul Salem of the Middle East Institute. |
Also in need
of progress are the efforts of the U.S. and five other
world powers to reach a nuclear deal with Iran. Negotiators are now aiming for July after a November deadline passed without agreement. “These talks are not going to suddenly get easier just because we extend them. They're tough. And they have been tough. And they are going to stay tough,” said Secretary of State John Kerry. And the new Republican-controlled U.S. Congress could complicate things even more, say analysts. “Members of Congress are anxious to impose additional sanctions. That could have a disruptive effect,” said the Brookings Institution’s Robert Einhorn. Russia is the source of even more sanctions tensions. Those the U.S. has imposed for Russian support of Ukrainian separatists have helped send Russia's currency and economy into a nosedive. But the Ukraine conflict is a dispute U.S. officials are determined to overcome. “No one is giving up on the U.S. - Russia relationship. We have to get it to a better place,” said Eric Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs. The U.S. says Russia could get sanctions relief by withdrawing all troops from Ukrainian territory, among other conditions. And not to be forgotten is North Korea. U.S. investigators traced the November cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment to the isolated nation. In response, President Obama made new sanctions against North Korea his first foreign policy move of the New Year. |
Here's reasonable medical care
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2015 and may
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| Chechen brothers quietly devised plan, study shows By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Three short paragraphs hand-written, in Russian, on lined, notebook paper sat atop a stack of old newspapers next to the television in the newly vacant third floor apartment at 410 Norfolk Street. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had done the first of two searches of the East Cambridge apartment, rented for more than a decade by an ethnic Chechen family, the Tsarnaevs. Days earlier, on April 15, 2013, two pressure cookers, packed with nails and ball bearings, exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three, maiming scores and shattering the celebration of the world’s oldest annual marathon. The Tsarnaevs’ two sons had been implicated: Tamerlan, 26, had been killed during a police shoot-out. Dzhokhar, 19, was in police custody. A friend, who had known the Tsarnaev family for years and was very close to all of them, discovered the paper in the apartment and recognized the handwriting as Tamerlan’s: "They said: how many small armies had defeated larger armies by the will of Allah. The Prophet called to Allah with the words: give me the perseverance in all my undertakings and the resoluteness to follow the correct path. If Allah will give you support, then no one will defeat you. If he removes this support, then who will help you in place of nothing? Let the devout rely on Allah." The writing is a glimpse into the mind of the man considered to be the mastermind of the Boston terrorist attack. Nearly 21 months later, the scars of the bombing, psychological and physical, are deep and raw in the Boston area as survivors, witnesses, Americans and Chechens, from Boston and Grozny, have groped to understand the motivations of the Tsarnaev brothers. Reporters have retraced some of the key steps leading up to the bombing, interviewing members of the Chechen émigré community and others who had close dealings with the Tsarnaev family. The story that emerges is one of a troubled family buffeted by the challenges of adapting to American culture and by the undercurrents of war and radicalism wracking their ethnic homeland. The best hope, however, for understanding what led to April 15, 2013, lies with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose trial on 30 terrorism and related charges opens today in Boston’s federal court just a few miles from the marathon’s finish line. “They took the innocence from us, that they did take,” said Jason Rosenberg, a Boston-area lawyer who represents a man once cared for by the Tsarnaev family. “We think: ‘they can’t be these beasts,' but we all know that a human being … can be caring and loving to someone else and then be a horrendous person,” he said. “You can be, and are, one and the same, the same person.” ‘Why did you do it, Tamerlan, why?’ A caring and loving person is what Tamerlan seemed like less than four weeks before the bombs sent panic through runners and spectators lining the few hundred yards along Boston’s Boylston Street leading up to the finish line. Around March 20, Tamerlan, along with his American wife, Katherine, traveled to the outskirts of Manchester, New Hampshire, to visit another Chechen family who had fled the region in the early 2000s: Musa Khadzhimuradov, his wife Madina, and their two children. Among the two dozen or so Chechen families living in Boston and southern New Hampshire, it was common to mark holidays together, to attend one another’s barbecues, to carry on traditions from back in Chechnya. Tamerlan had come, Khadzhimuradov said, to say goodbye to Khadzhimuradov’s mother-in-law, who was returning to Chechnya. Khadzhimuradov, who formerly worked as a bodyguard to Chechen separatist leader Akhmed Zakayev, said he had been in touch with Tamerlan since 2006, when they met at a Chechen holiday celebration in Boston. During the March visit, both Khadzhimuradov and his wife Madina recalled, Tamerlan played happily with his young daughter Zahara, and chatted with the Khadzhimuradovs’ own daughter. “We didn’t talk about war or religion, nothing,” Musa Khadzhimuradov said. “He was happy. Maybe he had a double life or something, but he was playing with his child.” “I see him almost every night in my dreams,” Madina said. “He looks just as always: very handsome and calm." But according to FBI affidavits, the grand jury indictment and other details made public in media reports, Tamerlan was plotting something destructive. On at least two occasions in the months prior to April 15, Tamerlan had visited a Manchester firing range just a few miles from the Khadzhimuradov apartment to practice shooting. On March 20, Dzhokhar, who was a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, joined Tamerlan at the range. Tamerlan had also traveled to the New Hampshire coastal town of Seabrook to buy fireworks, and gather gunpowder to fuel the pressure cooker bombs. On Feb. 6, at around 7:40 p.m., Tamerlan stopped at Phantom Fireworks and paid $199 cash for a package called “Lock and Load,” and took advantage of a “buy-one-get-one-free deal.” He left with 48 mortars and the equivalent of eight pounds of low explosive powder, according to prosecutors. “He asked ‘what was the loudest, most powerful firework we had?” store manager April Walton said. “It’s what 80 percent of our customers ask for.” Sometime around April 5, just 10 days before the bombings, Tamerlan went online and ordered electronic components that could be used in making bombs, according to the grand jury indictment. Those components were delivered by mail to the Norfolk Street apartment. In recent years, some members of the Tsarnaev family, including the boys’ mother Zubeidat, had begun openly expressing their Muslim faith. They dressed in traditional conservative clothing and attended prayer services, mainly at the Islamic Society of Boston’s Cambridge mosque four blocks from 410 Norfolk Street. Once a fashionable and flashy dresser, Zubeidat had taken to wearing headscarves, long skirts and long-sleeved dresses and shirts. She reportedly started wearing gloves constantly so as to avoid touching the hands of unrelated males, such as shop clerks or tollbooth workers. The Tsarnaev boys’ sisters, Bella and Ailina, also began wearing headscarves. Prior to November 2012, the Tsarnaevs didn’t stand out among the hundreds who attended prayers regularly, said the Cambridge mosque’s acting imam, Ismail Fenni. That month, a guest speaker gave a sermon about the importance of Muslims accepting public holidays like Thanksgiving. Tamerlan stood up and angrily interrupted the speaker, calling him wrong. Fenni said he and other elders spoke to Tamerlan and reminded him of the mosque rules of behavior and decorum. Tamerlan nodded and said he understood, Fenni recalled. Then in January 2013, at the prayer service before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Tamerlan again stood up and interrupted the sermon, as the guest speaker discussed how Muslims should accept the civil rights leader. “There was nothing really for us to be worried about with him before his explosive outbursts,” Fenni said. “Before then, he was just a face in the crowd.” That first outburst had occurred four months after Tamerlan returned from a trip to Russia’s North Caucasus, where Chechnya is located. Between January and July 2012, Tamerlan spent some of his time in Makhachkala, the capital of the Dagestan region, working with his father Anzor, who had arrived in the region in April. Anzor was newly divorced from Zubeidat, according to a family friend. The stated reason for Tamerlan’s trip in January 2012, according to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, was to obtain a Russian passport: Tamerlan held a Kyrgyz passport, the result of his early childhood in Kyrgyzstan, where many Chechens lived after being expelled from their homeland by Stalin in the 1940s. But last year, Irina Gordienko, an investigative reporter for Novaya Gazeta, reported that Tamerlan didn’t actually apply for a passport until the end of June, more than six months after arriving. Gordienko also reported Tamerlan had been in contact with two militants wanted by Russian security agencies. One, a Russian-Canadian named William Plotnikov, was killed by police on July 14, 2012. Within two days, Tamerlan left the region to fly back to the United States. “People in Dagestan told me he dressed strangely, his behavior was unusual,” Ms. Gordienko said. “He wasn’t very knowledgeable about Islam.” In the United States, Tamerlan had been a show-off from a young age, always seeking attention, the family friend said. He loved to sing, to play violin and to dance. He was smart academically, but he never seemed focused, the friend said. He talked about being an accountant, but he took only a handful of classes at Bunker Hill Community College. Tamerlan was athletic, as well. He trained at a boxing club in Somerville, next door to Cambridge. His boxing career, nurtured by his father, Anzor, hit a high point in February 2010 with a regional trophy. Then it petered out. Over the years, Tamerlan pulled income from short-term jobs. In 2009, he worked as a driver for a Watertown-based elder care facility that catered to Russian immigrants. He also helped his mother with her work as a home health aide in the Newton home of Donald and Rosemary Larking. Donald Larking was an older man who became so close to Tamerlan that he attended prayer services at the Cambridge mosque, according to Rosenberg, Larking’s lawyer. Larking also had constant discussions with Tamerlan about politics and espoused dark conspiracy theories about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Donald Larking refused to be interviewed for this article. Tamerlan was interviewed by the FBI in 2011, at the request of the lead Russian security agency, the FSB, which had been monitoring Tamerlan’s alleged interactions with radical groups. Chechnya had by then suffered through the second of two wars since 1994, and the turmoil had spawned a terrorist insurgency, influenced by Islamic extremists, that had affected the entire North Caucasus. According to an FBI statement, the Russians reported that Tamerlan “was a follower of radical Islam” and “had changed drastically since 2010 as he prepared to leave the United States for travel to the country’s region to join unspecified underground groups.” Dzhokhar, by contrast, was considered smart but quiet, always in his older siblings’ shadow, according to friends and acquaintances. When the family moved to the Boston area, Dzhokhar, then 8, spent second grade at an elementary school in Needham, a Boston suburb. He lived with the family of a prominent Chechen doctor, Khassan Baiev. Baiev’s daughter Maryam remembers Dzhokhar, who later called himself Jahar, as a happy boy who was good at math, who liked to rollerblade and bicycle around the neighborhood playground. As they grew older, however, she said she had few interactions with him, only occasionally by Facebook. “I remember when I saw him on TV… I ran straight to my brother, and said, “Did you see who was on TV?’ He said “Yeah, I saw it,’” Ms. Baieva, 21, said. “I felt heartbroken, betrayed at the time. It was scary, because I didn’t know how people were going to look at me after, what people were going to think of me afterward,” she said. Unlike with Tamerlan, the trip to Russia, the mosque outburst, the initial FBI investigation, Dzhokhar’s involvement in the attack was even more baffling. According to friends and acquaintances, he never elicited attention or worry prior to April 15, 2013, not from neighbors or friends, not from school, not from law enforcement. At Cambridge’s Rindge and Latin high school, Dzhokhar was known as low-key, laid-back and friendly. He was captain of the public school’s wrestling team, an honor student and the recipient of a small scholarship from the city of Cambridge. At the Dartmouth campus of the University of Massachusetts, Dzhokhar was known as a middling student and, according to The Boston Globe, an active dealer of marijuana. “Dzhokhar kept to himself, he was smart. He made his own choices,” the family friend said. “He wasn’t the center of attention; he was always off to the side.” “I never worried about Dzhokhar,” the friend said. In the months immediately before the bombing, the Norfolk Street apartment was occupied only by Tamerlan, his wife and their daughter. Katherine worked as a home health aide. His parents were both living in Russia. His sisters had moved out. On the Dartmouth campus, according to prosecutors, there were indications that Dzhokhar was exploring violent acts. Sometime in the spring of 2013, Dzhokhar downloaded to his computer several books and pamphlets espousing radical Islamist ideas. One was a book that contained a passage by a well-known al-Qaida propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki. Another was a copy of the summer 2010 issue of Inspire magazine, an English-language publication by al-Qaida’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. The issue contained detailed instructions about making a pressure cooker bomb using common materials in an article titled: “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.” After his arrest, investigators later found Dzhokhar’s college dormitory room, his computer and a backpack containing fireworks that had been emptied of gunpowder. The night of April 15, Dzhokhar sent a friend, the son of a prominent Boston-area Chechen émigré, a text message asking him if he was at the marathon and was OK. On April 18, as police widened their search for the alleged bombers, the brothers shot and killed a police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, according to the grand jury indictment. Hours later, as the manhunt began closing in, Dzhokhar sent another text message to a college classmate saying: “If you want u can go to my room and take what you want.” In the early hours of April 19, with Tamerlan dead and the suburban town of Watertown resembling a war zone, Dzhokhar, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds, huddled in a boat parked in a backyard driveway. Inside the hull and on an overhead beam, he scrawled several messages that give some insight into his motivations, according to the indictment: “The U.S. Government is killing our innocent civilians; I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished; We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all; Now I don't like killing innocent people it is forbidden in Islam.... stop killing our innocent people and we will stop.” Edward Brooke, lawmaker, reported to be dead at 95 By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Edward Brooke, a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts and the first African-American elected by popular vote to the chamber, died Saturday. He was 95. Brooke's death was confirmed by a family spokesman, who said he died surrounded by family at his home in the southern state of Florida. A liberal Republican, Brooke won his Senate seat in 1966 and was re-elected in 1972. He was one of only two African-Americans to serve in the Senate in the 20th century, and the first since the end of the American Civil War, when state legislatures appointed senators. President Barack Obama, in a statement, praised Brooke for an extraordinary life of public service. He also hailed Brooke's pragmatic approach to lawmaking and said he stood at the forefront of the battle for civil rights and economic fairness. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, a former Massachusetts senator, also issued a statement, calling Brooke a strong public servant. Kerry added, "Whether in the Army infantry during World War II, where he was awarded the Bronze Star fighting fascism, or as state attorney general, battling corruption, or, finally, as a United States senator, helping to pass landmark civil rights legislation and pushing for affordable housing, Ed Brooke gave to his country every day of his life." Brooke was widely seen as a centrist, during an era when Congress was noticeably less partisan than it is now. He was among the first U.S. lawmakers to call on former president Richard Nixon to resign in 1974, as the scandal known as Watergate gripped the nation. He also opposed two Nixon nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court over civil rights issues. Observers widely viewed Brooke as a consensus builder who backed fair housing legislation and improved ties with China. He lost his bid for a third term in 1978 to Democrat Paul Tsongas, as details of a bitter divorce drew the attention of the national press corps. The controversy led Brooke to admit that he'd made a false statement under oath during a court deposition. |
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2015 and may
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After the palm, the heliconia is perhaps most indicative of the Costa Rican tropics (…insert pause for arguments from people who
Anyway, I am here to apologize to all the heliconia lovers who read this column. They are indeed worthy of their own time and space, so here it goes. Plants in the Heliconia family can do it all and do it well. If you are looking for a bedding plant for cut flowers, the parrot’s heliconia is perfect. They grow to a little over a meter (about 3.5 to 4 feet). You can line the driveway with them or plant them in front of the house for good effect. The rhizomes can become invasive and they self-seed so take some care with them. For the other members of the family, wow, they can be amazing. Some of the inflorescences are upright and some pendulant, but they are all spectacular. There are even fuzzy flowers (heliconia denielsiana) and flowers that look like the beak of a parrot (Heliconia psittacorum). Most of the flowers tend to be on the large side, but for those who want a more delicate flower, the heliconia irrsa and heliconia latispatha can be good choices. The flowers on these plants are separated on the inflorescence and give the impression of an open ladder. Heliconia are easy to grow and can be used as an attractive hedge or as a specimen grouping. The flower bases are usually yellow or white, while the flowers themselves are red, yellow, red-purple, orange, and a range between. Most heliconia bloom all year long, and all flowers are long lasting after they are cut. Flowers and their seeds are attractive to birds and other wildlife, so watch your plantings for visitors Choose your heliconia wisely. Remember, some varieties can grow to 8 meters (about 26 feet) and can quickly overtake windows. Most heliconia do very well in full sun and moist soil and need little care. If your stand of heliconia is getting too large, simply dig some out and move them to a new location (or give them to a neighbor). All in all, a great, year-round, easy-care plant for the garden.
If you would like to suggest a topic for this column, simply send a letter to the editor. And, for more garden tips, visit the Arenal Gardeners Facebook page. Minor quake on Caribbean coast By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A minor earthquake took place Sunday at 7:34 p.m. near Limón on the Caribbean coast. The Laboratorio de Ingeniería Sísmica at the Universidad de Costa Rica estimated the magnitude at 3.0, and said that most residents of the area would not have felt it. The Laboratorio estimated the epicenter at 2.1 kilometers north northwest of Matina and 7.3 kilometers south southwest of Limón Centro. |
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Page 7: Canadian program seeks qualified immigrants By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The government of Canada has begun a new program for immigrations that is supposed to be faster. It is called Express Entry and is designed to attract qualified workers to Canada. The Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration of Canada is handling the program which evaluates applicants on their ability to speak either English or French, their education and their employment experience. The program began Jan. 1, and the government said that it expects to have the first candidates by the end of the month. The program promises residency for successful applicants with needed skills that suggest they will be successful in Canada. The new program combines three earlier programs to attract skilled immigrants. More information is available HERE! |
