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San
José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 15
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on the prowl in downtown area By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Motorists take heed. There is a new group of traffic police on the streets of the capital and they actually are handing out tickets for such violations as talking on cell telephones while driving and parking a vehicle badly. The transport ministry said that 32 new officers graduated last week and have joined the usual group of 12 officers in the center of the city. They have been working downtown for a week. However, last Thursday they were sent to the festival at Palmares where they issued 346 traffic tickets. But back on the city streets that racked up 99 tickets for badly parked vehicles and 120 tickets for violation of the downtown license plate restriction. The area of coverage was along Avenida Segunda, Barrio Tournón and as far south at the Estación al Pacifico. Tickets for badly parked vehicles have been rare in the center city, but police now see these as conditions hampering the flow of traffic. The license plate restriction keeps 20 percent of the vehicles out of the center city on any given day based on the last digit of the license plate. The traffic police also are doing the unthinkable: They cited six persons for talking on the cell phone while driving. That is a 99,000 colons fine, about $200. The others are: ignoring the plate restriction, 21,000 colons or about $43; parking badly, 49,000 colons, about $100, and not using the seat belt, another $100. The officers also impounded five cars and five motorcycles for more serious violations like expired registration, said the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes. Northeast U.S. struggling through another winter storm By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
and wire service reports Another snow storm is moving through the U.S. northeast. There are a number of flight cancelations, and more are expected for today. Arrivals and departures can be checked on A.M. Costa Rica's business page HERE! Arrivals were delayed Tuesday night at Juan Santamaria airport in Alajuela. American and Delta flights from New York were around two hours late. There was snow reported on the ground there. A United Airlines flight out of Newark, New Jersey, was reported en route but delayed with a landing time around midnight. United canceled a Newark flight that was scheduled to depart Juan Santamaría at 2:25 p.m. At Liberia's Daniel Oduber airport, JetBlue canceled its 2:55 p.m. New York flight, but an evening flight from New York landed just 14 minutes late, according to the airport flight summaries. More than a foot of snow was reported in the path of the storm. Temperatures were dropped, and New Yorkers are waking up today with 12-degree weather. Elsewhere zero degrees was expected. Nearly 2,300 flights in the United States had been cancelled Tuesday in the face of the storm, according to FlightAware, a tracking service. The worst-affected airports were Philadelphia International and New York's LaGuardia. Gusty winds will accompany up to a foot of snow in southern New England as the cold front picks up moisture from the Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. National Weather Service said. "It will be a winter wonderland for these areas," the weather service said in a statement. In Washington, hundreds of thousands of federal workers were ordered to stay home in the face of what was forecast to be the heaviest snowfall since five inches (12.7 cm) came down in 2011. City schools and offices also shut down, and the White House canceled its Tuesday press briefing. But the Supreme Court remained open to hear cases, and organizers of the annual anti-abortion March for Life said today's rally would be held regardless of bad weather. In neighboring Maryland the state government was shut down and the Maryland Transit Administration cut back rail and bus services. Further to the northeast, the inauguration party for New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie on Ellis Island in New York Harbor was canceled because of the looming storm. Some schools in North Carolina closed early. Connecticut closed all its schools for today, and Hartford, the state capital, sent students home early Tuesday. New shipping service seeks to avoid land border crossings By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A Managua shipping firm has opened a service to transport freight by sea from Corinto, Nicaragua, to Panamá along the Pacific coast, including that of Costa Rica. The firm is Naviera Mercante de Nicaragua S.A. Said the firm to justify its service: "Since Nicaragua lacks a well-equipped deep water port at the Atlantic Coast, most of its import or export cargo is handled through the neighboring international ports such as Port Cortes, Honduras, and Puerto Limón, Costa Rica. In order to comply with this, the shipping lines must contract the service of transportation companies and have their cargo moved over long distances and through different international border crossing. "Our direct feeder service can be the solution to make the service more competitive by providing a most comprehensive connection from Nicaragua to the hub ports of Panama West Coast." Expat William Becker, Jr., to be buried in Pennsylvania By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Warren Edward Becker, Jr., a long-time expat here, will be buried in Pennsylvania, according to reports from his family. Becker traveled widely but seemed to consider Costa Rica his base. He operated a flower farm in Poasito and lived in San José de la Montaña. He moved to Barva in September, said a friend. That is where he died Saturday. He was 69. Becker served with the Peace Corps in Honduras and then worked exporting hardwoods from Costa Rica. Friends said that at one point he spent nine years in Africa looking for rare and exotic tribal artifacts. After returning to Costa Rica he was recruited to do international consulting missions to various underdeveloped countries in the Mideast. He also spent time in Azerbaijan and Afghanistan, according to the family in an obituary published in the Williamsport, Pennsylvania, Sun-Gazette. Survivors include an aunt, nephews, a cousin and a niece.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 15 | |
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| Modified crop moratorium called major
2014 political goal |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some environmental organizations are targeting key elements of commercial agriculture this year, they promised Tuesday. Monoculture, vast fields with a single crop, is one of the techniques they oppose. They also are against genetically modified crops and agricultural chemicals. The announcement comes as international activist Vandana Shiva arrived in Costa Rica. The controversial Indian environmentalist toured the Caribbean pineapple growing region Tuesday. She is expected to make presentations today at the Universidad de Costa Rica. Ms. Shiva, who opposes globalization, has won wide acclaim and has received a number of awards, prizes and honors. She also has been called by critics a luddite who opposes anything new. Their stiffest criticism is directed at her opposition to golden rice, a genetically modified strain that generates vitamin A to youngsters and others. Vitamin A deficiency kills several million a year in developing countries and also causes blindness. At a session at the university Tuesday, members of Bloque Verde and Federación Costarricense para la Conservación del Ambiente said they were planning a court appeal to require labeling of genetically modified produce on store shelves. They also are planning a political effort to pass a law banning genetically modified crops from Costa Rica. The organizations already have convinced councils in 70 cantons to ban the planting of such crops. However, the legality is uncertain because approvals are in the hands of an agency in the Ministerio de Agricultura y Gandería. The presenters urged their audience primarily of university students to vote for either the candidates of the Partido Acción Ciudadana or Frente Amplio because those political parties have supported the proposed national moratorium on modified crops. One of the presenters, Grace García, was quoted by the organizations saying that a vote for the Partido Liberación Nacional or Movimiento Libertario was an endorsement of the monoculture of death. Genetically modified crops are grown worldwide, even in Ms. Shiva's India. They are the result of genetic manipulations in the lab. Much of the corn and many other crops grown in the United States and imported into Costa Rica as animal food and food products for humans contain such crops. Environmentalists here have been fighting proposals by the Monsanto Co. to grow a test patch of corn. Corn strains |
 Federación
Costarricense para la Conservación del Ambiente photo
Panel
of environmentalists promote the moratorium.
usually are modified to protect the plant from the company's weed killer Roundup. The organizations also said Tuesday that a field of genetically modified pineapples have been planted in southern Costa Rica. There have been a wide range of modified crops planted in Costa Rica for years. The environmentalists also oppose a law that was required by the Free Trade Treaty with Central America and the United States that provides patent protection to new plant strains. They say that seeds are the heritage of the people and should be free. Monsanto charges farmers for growing their plants and then sells them the weed killer to eliminate plant competition. The company defends its patents vigorously. Ms. Shiva, the Indian activist, also supports the free use of seeds. The organizations correctly note that pineapple production has caused toxic agricultural chemicals to flow into the water and that some communities have to rely on truck deliveries. There have been a number of court cases. Ms. Shiva holds a doctorate in physics from a Canadian university. She has been active in the environmental arena for years and most recently in an international campaign for free seeds. |
| Hemispheric press advocate concerned by
Diario Extra case |
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By
Michael Krumholtz
of the A.M. Costa Rica wire services The allegation by executives at El Dairio Extra that the Poder Judicial wiretapped telephones of reporters is garnering international attention. Now the Inter-American Press Association has expressed its concern that the judiciary is attempting to intimidate news sources. Monday a number of Diario Extra representatives called a press conference to alert local newspapers and television stations of what they said was illegal intrusion. They claimed that the Judicial Investigating Organization had engaged in espionage by tracking reporters corporate and personal phones to discover the sources behind their news stories. Consisting of more than 1,300 print organizations through the Western Hemisphere, the Miami-based Inter-American Press |
Association is a nonprofit
that specializes in defending press freedoms in the Americas. Claudio
Paolillo, who is chairman of the association's Committee on the Freedom
of Press and Information, said that “this is a flagrant violation of
freedom of information.” The wiretapping began 10 months ago after the newspaper investigated a series of kidnappings that involved police officers, the executives said. A 200-page report that was anonymously sent to Diario Extra details the order given to spy on the phone calls of reporters and police staff, according to the newspaper's articles. Authorities from the Poder Judicial, including president of the Corte Suprema de Justicia, Zarella Villanueva, have denied any wrongdoing. Still, the newspaper's lawyer said Monday that they plan to file a complaint with the Sala IV constitutional court. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 15 | |||||
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| Elderly are not slow thinkers because
they process much more info, study says |
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By
the Tübingen University news service
What happens to cognitive abilities as humans age? Research reported this week says that the brain does not go into a steady decline. The work, headed by Michael Ramscar of Tübingen University, takes a critical look at the measures usually thought to show that cognitive abilities decline across adulthood. Instead of finding evidence of decline, the team discovered that most standard cognitive measures, which date back to the early 20th century, are flawed. “The human brain works slower in old age,” says Ramscar, “but only because we have stored more information over time.” The university summarized the study this way: Computers were trained, like humans, to read a certain amount each day, and to learn new things. When the researchers let a computer “read” only so much, its performance on cognitive tests resembled that of a young adult. But if the same computer was exposed to the experiences that might be encountered over a lifetime – with reading simulated over decades – its performance now looked like that of an older adult. Often it was slower, but not because its processing capacity had declined. Rather, increased experience had caused the computer’s database to grow, giving it more data to process, which takes time. Technology now allows researchers to make quantitative estimates of the number of words an adult can be expected to learn across a lifetime, enabling the Tübingen team to separate the challenge that increasing knowledge poses to memory from the actual performance of memory itself. “Imagine someone who knows two people’s birthdays and can recall them almost perfectly. Would you really want to say that person has a better memory than a person who knows the birthdays of 2,000 people, but can only match the right person to the right birthday nine times out of ten?” asks Ramscar. The answer appears to be “no.” When Ramscar’s team trained their computer models on huge linguistic datasets, they found that standardized vocabulary tests, which are used to take account of the growth of knowledge in studies of aging, massively underestimate the size of adult vocabularies. It takes computers longer to search databases of words as their sizes grow, which is hardly surprising but may have important implications for the understanding of age-related slowdowns. The researchers found that to get their computers to replicate human performance in word recognition tests across adulthood, they had to |
keep their
capacities the same. “Forget about forgetting,” explained Tübingen
researcher Peter Hendrix, “if I wanted to get the computer to look like
an older adult, I had to keep all the words it learned in memory and
let them compete for attention.” The research shows that studies of the problems older people have with recalling names suffer from a similar blind spot: There is a far greater variety of given names today than there were two generations ago. This cultural shift toward greater name diversity means the number of different names anyone learns over their lifetime has increased dramatically. The work shows how this makes locating a name in memory far harder than it used to be. Even for computers. Ramscar and his colleagues’ work provides more than an explanation of why, in the light of all the extra information they have to process, older brains might seem slower and more forgetful than younger brains. Their work also shows how changes in test performance that have been taken as evidence for declining cognitive abilities in fact demonstrates older adults’ greater mastery of the knowledge they have acquired. An example is what is called paired-associate learning, a commonly used cognitive test that involves learning to connect words like up to down or necktie to cracker in memory. Using big data sets to quantify how often different words appear together in English, the Tuebingen team show that younger adults do better when asked to learn to pair up with down than necktie and cracker because up and down appear in close proximity to one another more frequently. However, whereas older adults also understand which words don’t usually go together, young adults notice this less. When the researchers examined performance on this test across a range of word pairs that go together more and less in English, they found older adult’s scores to be far more closely attuned to the actual information in hundreds of millions of words of English than their younger counterparts. Harald Baayen, a professor who heads the Alexander von Humboldt Quantitative Linguistics research group where the work was carried out, said “If you think linguistic skill involves something like being able to choose one word given another, younger adults seem to do better in this task. But, of course, proper understanding of language involves more than this. You have also to not put plausible but wrong pairs of words together. The fact that older adults find nonsense pairs – but not connected pairs – harder to learn than young adults simply demonstrates older adults’ much better understanding of language. They have to make more of an effort to learn unrelated word pairs because, unlike the youngsters, they know a lot about which words don’t belong together.” The Tübingen research concludes that scientists need different tests for the cognitive abilities of older people – taking into account the nature and amount of information their brains process. “The brains of older people do not get weak,” says Michael Ramscar. “On the contrary, they simply know more.” The research was published in the journal Topics in Cognitive Science. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 15 | |||||
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| Oxfam cites unequal wealth at World Economic Forum By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The human rights group Oxfam says the wealth of the world's 85 richest people equals that of half the world's population. Oxfam released a study on global inequality on Monday, before a meeting this week of government and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. A co-author of the report, Nick Galasso, said that wealthy elites have used their political power to get lower tax rates, hide wealth offshore, and otherwise serve their own interests. "High levels of inequality actually corrode democratic processes. What we have seen across the globe and what the report documents is how wealth concentration is used to influence the political process to create laws and regulations that benefit the rich over everyone else," said Galasso. He said high levels of inequality hurt economic growth, make it harder to reduce extreme poverty and lead to a variety of social ills, including crime and disease. Oxfam said that "by some measure, the riches of billionaires are now unparalleled in history." Last year, Forbes calculated the combined fortunes of the 85 wealthiest at nearly $1.7 trillion. The report did not name the world's 85 richest individuals, but cited lists compiled by Credit Suisse bank and Forbes magazine. Oxfam said the income alone derived from the $73 billion fortune of the world's richest individual, Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim, could pay the yearly wages of 440,000 Mexicans. The report lists financial deregulation, tax havens and secrecy, and diminished public services as examples of political maneuvering by the wealthy. It said the effect of these policy changes is not only to concentrate wealth and political influence in higher income brackets but to ensure it stays there for the next generation. Oxfam says in the past decade the number of billionaires in India has increased tenfold, while in Europe austerity measures mainly affect the middle and lower classes. It says in Africa, global corporations exploit their political influence to avoid taxes, reducing government resources to fight poverty. Oxfam is calling for those business leaders and government delegates attending the World Economic Forum to support government programs that strive to help under-served middle- and lower-income levels, support development of fair wages and crack down on tax dodging and financial secrecy. Galasso acknowledged reducing inequality will not be easy. "I think that this is certainly an uphill battle, but this is the right moment. If you scan the Internet, if you look at the news, this is the issue, this is a global issue that people seem to overwhelmingly care about. What we are asking world leaders at Davos, the movers and shakers, to do is to instead of using their influence to, for example, generate better tax policies for themselves or allow them to ship their profits out of state so they do not get taxed, we are asking them to use their influence to help create a more harmonious society where there's shared prosperity," he said. Meanwhile, Pope Francis has called on the world's business and political elite to use their skills and immense resources to alleviate global poverty. The pontiff's message Tuesday opened the annual World Economic Forum. In it, the pope praised the fundamental role that modern business has played in improving health care, education and communications. But he also said it is intolerable that hunger continues to grip many struggling economies. He urged forum delegates to ensure that humanity is served by wealth and not ruled by it. Obama will have an audience with Pope Francis March 27 By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama will have an audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican on March 27. A White House announcement said the president looks forward to discussing their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality. Increasing inequality in the United States and globally has been a major issue for the president, and the focus of at least two major speeches since 2011. In a speech in Washington, D.C., in December, he said the U.S. economy has become profoundly unequal with the economy doubling in size since 1979, but most income growth going to a fortunate few. And he noted a remark by Pope Francis. "This trend towards growing inequality is not unique to America’s market economy," he said. "Across the developed world, inequality has increased. Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. "How can it be, he wrote, that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?" Obama has commented on other remarks Pope Francis has made since he was elected pontiff last year. On the issues of abortion, homosexuality and contraception, Pope Francis last year, in an interview with the Italian Jesuit journal, voiced frustration that the church had locked itself up in small things, small-minded rules." In a CNBC interview last October, Obama said he was hugely impressed by the pontiff's remarks. "He seems somebody who lives out the teaching of Christ, incredible humility, an incredible sense of empathy to the least of these, to the poor. And he is also somebody who is I think first and foremost thinking about how to embrace people as opposed to push them away," he said. In 2009, President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama visited the Vatican for a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. Obama's European trip will also include the Nuclear Security Summit being hosted by The Netherlands March 24 to 25. The first was hosted by Obama in 2010. The White House says leaders meeting in The Netherlands will highlight progress made to secure nuclear materials and commit to future steps to prevent nuclear terrorism. Obama will also attend the U.S.-EU Summit in Brussels and meet with Belgian officials and the NATO secretary general. In Italy, President Obama will meet with President Giorgio Napolitano and Prime Minister Enrico Letta. Obama and Prime Minister Letta held wide-ranging talks at the White House this past October, covering trade, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. Priest in Vatican charged again for a financial crime By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A former Vatican monsignor on trial for an alleged plot to smuggle $26 million from Switzerland to Italy has been further charged with using his Vatican accounts to launder money. The lawyer for Nunzio Scarano says his client is suspected of money laundering and making false statements. He is already being tried for the alleged plot to move millions of dollars in what police say were false donations to charity from offshore companies. They say the money was routed into his accounts at the Vatican bank on its intended path to a group of Italian shipbuilders. Scarano, who is in poor health, is being held under house arrest in Salerno, in southern Italy.  U.S. Coast Guard file photo
The Coast Guard Cutter Healy is
the newest and most technologically advanced U.S. polar
icebreaker.Special code
being drawn up
for ships traversing the Arctic By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
New shipping rules are soon to be agreed upon for the Arctic, where summer sea ice has shrunk by about two-thirds over three decades, opening a new ocean with vast natural resources. Maritime nations are close to a landmark deal on the Polar Code, aimed to improve safety, lead to lower insurance premiums and help the rise of traffic, industry insiders said. About a tenth of the world's undiscovered oil and close to a third of its undiscovered gas is thought to lie under Arctic waters. The northern sea route along Russia's edge can reduce the sailing distance between Asian ports and northern Europe by 40 percent. A draft of the code could be finalized by members of the International Maritime Organization this week and go into force by 2016, ending years of delays, Sturla Henriksen, the director general of Norwegian Shipowners' Association said. “There are no international conventions which regulate Arctic shipping operations, so in principle the same rules apply for sunny sailing in the Mediterranean as for the Arctic,” Henriksen said on the sidelines of a conference. “It's a cold place. It has a hostile climate. It's enshrouded in darkness half of the year. Weather is violent and extreme, distances are vast, the area is remote from large population centers, it's sparsely populated and it's far from basic infrastructure,” Henriksen added. Only 71 ships crossed the northern sea route last year, compared to the 18,000 handled by the Suez Canal, but about a 1,000 vessels traveled into the high Arctic, with much of the growth coming from oil and gas activity, particularly in Russia. The Polar Code will set stringent rules on pollution, safety of life, training, certification and watch keeping. It will prescribe ship properties including required ice class and set uniform rules for all vessels in all of the polar countries. Under the current rules, any vessel traveling into the high Arctic, defined as above 72 degrees north, had to agree on a separate policy with its insurer with unique conditions negotiated for each vessel and each journey. “The Polar Code is a very good step forward, we endorse it, but it is just a step forward, we can't stop now,” said Stein Are Hansen, the assistant director of the Norwegian Hull Club, a mutual marine insurance firm. “Any risk mitigation measures that produce fewer insurance claims will of course on average make insurance prices go down,” Hansen said, adding that better search and rescue, improved maps and more icebreakers were still needed. If the draft is approved this week, it could get a final approval before the end of the year and go into force 18 to 24 months later. The code does not deal with the problem of ballast water discharge, which often introduces non native species to a region, and continues to allow vessels to use heavy fuel oil, a risk as the fuel would contaminate waters in case of an accident. “We are concerned that there are important aspects that the Polar Code doesn't address,” Nina Jensen, the head of environmental group World Wildlife Federation's Norwegian branch said. Asian expo in California gives immigrants a taste of homeland By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Many Asians around the world are preparing to celebrate the Lunar New Year. This year, the year of the horse, begins on the last day of January. Many Asian Americans say celebrating the Lunar New Year in the United States is very different from what it’s like in Asia. One tradition in the Los Angeles, California, area is going to the Asian American Expo. From the music, to traditional foods from throughout Asia, to the sea of Asian faces, this event could be anywhere in Asia. But the Asian American Expo is fewer than 50 kilometers east of Los Angeles. It is a place where tens of thousands of people, mainly from the Chinese Diaspora, come as a part of their Lunar New Year Celebration. “It made our New Year feel so much better,” said Julien Tan, who is from Malaysia. Lily He feels the same way. She said attending the event feels more like a New Year celebration in China, although it is not as good as the celebrations back home. Ms. He remembers Lunar New Year celebrations in China where everyone would be on vacation for weeks. But in the United States she has to work, so the most she can do is go to her mother’s home for a holiday meal. Originally from Taiwan, Alex Hong said in the United States he celebrates the western New Year, not the Lunar New Year. The Asian American Expo is trying to change that by scheduling the annual event around the Lunar New Year and by bringing a more festive feel to the Chinese Diaspora, according to event operations director, Gorden Kao. “Overseas, New Year is a really big event, they bring out the firecrackers - everything - family, food and everything. In the local market, even though there are lot of Chinese immigrants, they do not really do much to celebrate. That is why we are putting on an event where we pretty much bring everything together to get all this done,” Kao said. The Asian American Expo originally started 33 years ago to bring local businesses together. But it has evolved into an event where consumers can come and see new products from China and Taiwan. “These are all products that you probably would not find even around here, in the United States,” added Kao. But many people come for a taste of the old favorites from back home, like a lion dance and some stinky tofu. They are also here to share old cultural traditions in a new land with the next generation.  A
police leaflet shows Ruzanna Ibragimova.
Obama promises
security help
with Winter Olympics at Sochi By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The White House says President Barack Obama spoke Tuesday with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on how to ensure a safe and secure Sochi Olympics. A White House statement says Washington is offering its full assistance. The top-level conversation came a day after the Pentagon said it offered Moscow air and naval assets to help secure the resort city area. It also came as Russian police continued the hunt for at least three potential suicide bombers, including a woman thought to have penetrated a security perimeter surrounding the city. The Winter Olympics are set to begin next month. Witnesses in Sochi say police have distributed photos of the female suspect, who is said to be the widow of an Islamic militant from the predominantly Muslim region of Dagestan. She has been identified as 22-year-old Ruzanna Ibragimova, nicknamed Salima. Russian officials have blamed the so-called black widows of slain insurgents for previous suicide attacks in the country. Sunday, an Islamic militant group from Dagestan posted a video online claiming responsibility for last month's deadly suicide bombings in Volgograd, which killed 34 people. The two men in the video also threaten attacks at the Olympics. It is unclear when the video was made. Thousands of athletes and spectators from all over the world are expected to travel to Sochi for the Olympic Games, which will feature competitors in a variety of winter sports, including skiing, skating and ice hockey. Andrew Kuchins, the director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told reporters Tuesday that security in Sochi is not the only Russian security concern. "You don't necessarily have to hit Sochi to spoil the games," he said. "A series of Volgograd attacks would terrorize the whole of Russia and spoil the games and that will be a great tragedy." Putin said in comments broadcast Sunday that his country will do whatever it takes to ensure security at the Olympics. He spoke about massive security preparations in and around Sochi and said: "If we betray weakness, betray fear -- display our fear -- then we will be helping terrorists achieve their goals." Russian punk rock rights icons will attend New York concert By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Two members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot who were jailed for nearly two years on charges of religious hatred and became international emblems for human rights campaigners will appear at a concert in New York, organizer Amnesty International said Tuesday. Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova will make their first trip to the United States since they were granted amnesty in December by Russian President Vladimir Putin, two months before they were set to be released. Ms. Alyokhina, 25, and Ms. Tolokonnikova, 24, were convicted in 2012 of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred after they stormed the altar of Moscow's biggest cathedral and beseeched the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin. "A month ago we were freed from Russian prison camps," the women said in a joint statement. "We will never forget what it's like to be in prison after a political conviction. We have vowed to continue helping those who remain behind bars and we hope to see you all at the Amnesty International concert on February 5th in Brooklyn!" It is not clear whether the women will perform at the "Bringing Human Rights Home" concert featuring rock groups The Flaming Lips, Imagine Dragons and R&B singer Lauryn Hill. Ms. Alyokhina and Ms. Tolokonnikova derided their early release last year as a propaganda stunt by Putin to improve Russia's image before it hosts the Winter Olympics in February. Putin, who denies jailing people for political reasons, has said the amnesty would show that the Russian state is humane. Ms. Tolokonnikova staged a hunger strike last year to draw attention to stark conditions and long hours of mandatory labor in the jail where she was held. A third Pussy Riot member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was freed when a judge suspended her sentence on appeal. NASA agency says that 2013 was tied for being 7th warmest By
the Goddard Institute for Space Studies news service
NASA scientists say 2013 tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years in the 134-year record have all occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest years on record. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which analyzes global surface temperatures, released an updated report Tuesday on temperatures around the globe in 2013. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience temperatures warmer than those measured several decades ago. The average temperature in 2013 was 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 Celsius), which is 1.1 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since 1880, according to the new analysis. Exact rankings for individual years are sensitive to data inputs and analysis methods. "Long-term trends in surface temperatures are unusual, and 2013 adds to the evidence for ongoing climate change," institute climatologist Gavin Schmidt said. "While one year or one season can be affected by random weather events, this analysis shows the necessity for continued, long-term monitoring." Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperatures from year to year, but the continued increases in greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere are driving a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but with the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and plays a major role in controlling changes to Earth's climate. It occurs naturally and also is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere presently is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years. The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, the first year in the GISS temperature record. By 1960, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, measured at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was about 315 parts per million. This measurement peaked last year at more than 400 parts per million. While the world experienced relatively warm temperatures in 2013, the continental United States experienced the 42nd warmest year on record, according to GISS analysis. For some other countries, such as Australia, 2013 was the hottest year on record. The temperature analysis produced at the Goddard Institute is compiled from weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea-surface temperature, and Antarctic research station measurements, taking into account station history and urban heat island effects. Software is used to calculate the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same place from 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period functions as a baseline for the analysis. It has been 38 years since the recording of a year of cooler than average temperatures. The temperature record is one of several global temperature analyses, along with those produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the United Kingdom and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. These three primary records use slightly different methods, but overall, their trends show close agreement. Foundations may save art at Detroit's famous museum By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Detroit Institute of Arts Museum houses one of the top art collections in the world. So when Detroit went bankrupt, that collection, owned by the city, became one of the most controversial issues in the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. An emerging deal with several national foundations offers city officials a way out of the crisis, and could ultimately save the museum and its valuable collection. The art collection housed in the Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, or DIA, draws throngs of visitors from around the world each year. “You can tell the story of Western art through this collection," said Mark Stryker. Which makes it hard to put a price tag on it, says Detroit Free Press art reporter Mark Stryker. “It’s invaluable, irreplaceable," he said. But a price is the very thing Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr seeks as he takes the city through bankruptcy, says a Wayne State University law professor, Laura Bartell. “At the very beginning of this bankruptcy, Kevyn Orr made it clear that the city of Detroit owned the assets of the DIA," said Ms. Bartell. “It is a city owned collection, and that makes it different from almost every other museum in America, which operate as independent, private nonprofits," said Stryker. As the complex bankruptcy case winds through federal court, Orr enlisted Christie's auction house to value the collection, with one important caveat. “He asked Christie's to specifically evaluate only the works in the collection that were bought by the city directly," said Stryker. That translates into about 2,000 items, roughly 5 percent of the DIA’s 66,000 works. But it does include some of the premiere pieces, including Vincent Van Gogh’s “Self Portrait with Hat.” "Christie's evaluated those works to be worth somewhere between $450 million up to about $870 million," said Stryker. In 2012, voters in three surrounding counties supported a property tax hike to fund the museum in exchange for free admission. Stryker says any sale of the DIA’s assets could inflict more damage than simply losing its important pieces. “They would rescind the tax if any of the art was sold, so that means that any sale would quite quickly lead to the closure of the museum," he said. Which means emergency manager Orr was stuck between a rock and hard place. “Would you want to be the man who went down in history as the man who destroyed the Detroit Institute of Arts? I don’t think anybody wants to be in that position. If he can craft a plan of adjustment without selling the DIA’s assets, he’s going to do it," said Ms. Bartell. That plan got a boost in January from several national foundations, including the Ford Foundation and the John S. and James. L Knight Foundation. Together, they’ve pledged about $330 million to keep the DIA’s assets off the auction block. “The DIA would be spun off from the city to create a separate nonprofit, separate from city control so this kind of situation, the city would never find itself in this situation again," said Stryker. The amount pledged does fall below Christie’s appraisal of the items, and creditors could seek more money. But the proposed deal offers Orr a way out of the crisis, and Stryker says it is the most promising option on the table to keep the DIA’s art in Detroit. Civilian deaths by drones said to have been greatly reduced By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A new report by a London-based organization says there has been a sharp decline in confirmed civilian casualties by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism issued its assessment in its recent annual report . Speaking in London Tuesday, the bureau's senior reporter on drones, Alice Ross, said that in 2013, only 27 suspected drone strikes took place in Pakistan. That was the lowest number since U.S. President Barack Obama took office five years ago. Ross told reporters the number is down from a peak of 128 in 2010. "There has been a sharp decline in civilian casualties. In order to confirm civilian casualties, we have to see it reported by several different sources," said Ross. "What happened in 2013, there were no reports of civilian casualties that were backed up by several different sources." Pakistan's government condemns drone strikes, calling them a violation of its sovereignty. Some opposition parties in Pakistan also are outraged by the strikes and say they kill innocent civilians. But the United States says the strikes undermine terrorism by targeting militants that carry out attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pakistani high commissioner to the United Kingdom, Wajid Shamsul Hassan, said he would not comment on the report because his country's stance on drone strikes is very clear. "This is against the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan. This is a violation of international law," said Hassan. The report says that since 2004, Pakistan has been hit by 381 drone strikes, and between 416 and 951 civilians have been killed. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 15 | |||||||||
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Pacified Rio
slums again echo with gunfights and clashes By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Daily shootouts are unsettling two of Rio de Janeiro's slums, communities that until recently showcased attempts to pacify the historically violent shantytowns. Just five months before Rio welcomes visitors for the soccer World Cup, and two years before it hosts the Olympics, the communities of PavIao-PavIaozinho and Cantagalo are bracing for what residents fear is the return of a decades-old turf war involving armed drug gangs, cops and robbers. The communities, sprawls of bare brick on hills near the prosperous beachside districts of Ipanema and Copacabana, are among the most emblematic of Rio's favelas, as the slums are known. The two favelas were hailed by authorities as triumphs in a campaign to expel crooks using a strong police presence. Lately, though, violence in both favelas is rekindling. “We really thought things had gotten better here,” said Alzira Amaral, president of the neighborhood association of PavIao-PavIaozinho, a dense wall of jerry-built homes that climb up a steep outcropping near the Atlantic shoreline. “Now,” she added, lamenting the return of regular gunfire, “we don't know what to think.” The pacifications were supposed to pave the way for development of long-neglected areas of Rio, Brazil's second-biggest city and a metropolitan area home to 11 million people. Local authorities, cocksure during a decade-long boom that fizzled just as the pacifications took root, promised to free the favelas from criminals and reverse decades of neglect. To date, 36 areas have been pacified. Over 9,000 police patrol favelas home to 1.5 million. Initial success in evicting the gangs was applauded but the pacifications have also been criticized for merely displacing crime to other neighborhoods. And recently, the crime, along with growing unease, is creeping back into pacified zones. Residents who once welcomed the cops are increasingly disappointed by what they see as a lack of crucial public investment that was supposed to follow. Meanwhile, police face a backlash in occupied favelas because of oppression, violence and other alleged human rights abuses. Corrupt officers in Rocinha, another well-known slum, were arrested last year for the torture and disappearance of a local bricklayer they claimed had ties to drug rings. Sensing the growing discontent, drug traffickers have ordered gangs to reconquer territory. “The criminals believe now is the time to strike back,” said Alba Zaluar, an anthropologist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “With tension and anger in these communities it's easier for gangs to go back and impose themselves through a tried and true culture of violence.” PavIao-PavIaozinho and Cantagalo, home to more than 10,000 residents between them, were pacified in 2009. Residents awoke one morning to the arrival of hundreds of armed police who set up a base in the area and have patrolled it ever since. For three years, their presence raised hopes that the communities were indeed ripe for transformation despite the open sewers and intermittent water and power supplies. Last October, an armed gang confronted police on patrol in VietnIa, a restive cluster of shacks among trees near the PavIao-PavIaozinho hilltop. In a shootout, police killed one suspect and injured another, the alleged leader of the resurgent drug faction. The leader, known locally as Pit Bull, is believed to be recovering there but police don't know for sure. Sporadic firefights followed the October shootout until earlier this month, when gang members and police began clashing daily. In addition to gunfire, the neighborhoods now ring regularly with blasts from homemade pipe bombs and grenades. Friday police killed a suspect they said was a Cantagalo drug kingpin. Gang members, using a routine tactic from the bad old days, the next morning descended upon Ipanema and ordered shops to shut in tribute to their fallen comrade. Lt. Fabio Azevedo, subcommander of the pacification unit in the two communities, said the flare-up is a function of supply and demand. With few hideouts remaining near tourist haunts, gangs are re-establishing footholds from which to sell drugs. “They are trying to come back, but we are not going to let them,” he said. |
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| From Page 7: Metro development plan finally given approval By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
President Laura Chinchilla signed a development plan for the greater metro area Tuesday, and the document is supposed to guide development for the next 20 years. The document itself was 10 years in the making with hearings and consultations and delays. Nearly every government agency was involved in the preparations. Officials said that the plan considers the protection of natural resources, landscaping, and the creation of compact and integrated urban centers. The plan is supposed to provide for green areas and roadways. Already it needs to be updated because it is based on the 2011 national census. The central government has been criticized for permitting urban sprawl. |
