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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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José, Costa Rica, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 16
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Despite winds, the Caribbean coast is not likely to see high seas until at least Monday, but Puntarenas is expected to see the highest seas of the year today at 5 p.m. That is the prediction from the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología at the Universidad de Costa Rica. By Sunday the north Pacific should be seeing choppy seas due to strong winds. That prediction includes the Gulf of Nicoya and even Lake Arenal. Through Tuesday the Caribbean is expected to be good for navigation, said the center. Distance storms are sending higher waves to the Pacific coast, the center said. The prediction is for the higher waves to arrive Monday. Book sale for the animals in Coco By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Coco Animal Responsibility & Education plans its fund-raising annual book sale Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Coldwell-Banker offices on the main boulevard in Playas del Coco, the organization said. Books are priced at $1 or 6 for $5, said an announcement, adding that magazines, puzzles, games, and DVDs may be available as well. This is a nonprofit group in Playas del Coco concerned about the unwanted pet population in the area. The organization sponsors low-cost spay/neuter clinics monthly, and the annual book sale is one of the major fundraisers. U.S. Senate agrees that climate is changing By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
In a largely symbolic move, the U.S. Senate has formally acknowledged that global climate change is a real phenomenon and not a hoax. The Republican-led body, however, remains silent on whether human activity is to blame — a sign that meaningful legislation to cut U.S. carbon emissions is unlikely for the foreseeable future. For years, scientists have spoken with an increasingly unified voice issuing increasingly dire warnings about global warming. Now, the Senate is on record saying climate change is, in fact, occurring. One day after President Barack Obama told lawmakers that global warming must be confronted, the Senate affirmed almost unanimously that climate change is real. The measure was an amendment to a larger bill seeking approval of a pipeline to transport Canadian oil to U.S. gulf states — a project business interests strongly back and environmental groups vehemently decry. Many Republicans who oppose unilateral U.S. efforts to cut carbon emissions voted for the amendment precisely because it did not assign blame for global warming. Sen. James Inhofe, an outspoken skeptic of climate change, explained his ‘yes’ vote this way: "Climate is changing, and climate has always changed," he said. "The hoax is that there are some people so arrogant to think they can change climate. Man cannot change climate.” Our reader's opinion
Ad pro assesses tourism campaignDear A.M. Costa Rica: I am a former advertising executive having worked at such prestigious advertising agencies as J. Walter Thompson, McCann-Erickson, TBWA Chiat/Day and Deutsch. I also led advertising campaigns on travel-related accounts for Portuguese tourism, Iberia Airlines, Aeromexico and Fiesta Americana Hotels. I mention my background because I want to establish my credentials before commenting on the savetheAmericans and savetheCanadians campaigns on your article of Jan. 22nd titled "Travel firm also targets unused U. S. vacation time." As you pointed out "The savetheAmericans.org Web site had a 1,219,717 Alexa ranking earlier today. The Canadian site appeared to have fewer visitors, and it was ranked at 2,028,947 early today." The first rule in advertising is to create AWARENESS. If the message does not get seen or heard often enough it will not be effective no matter how good the message, and from the Alexa statistics that definitely seems to be the case. The reason that this promotion/campaign seems to be focusing only on social media is because a $3 million investment is a paltry sum and the agency made a decision that it has to concentrate the dollars on only one medium however ineffective. Social media is cheaper than mass media. Costa Rica tourism can take solace in saying "Look we are promoting Costa Rican tourism," but in reality they are kidding themselves if they think that this campaign will have any significant impact. As you have written before, these Web sites tend to be looked at by younger and less affluent readers and what Costa Rica tourism needs to be doing is going after older Baby Boomers that have the disposable income to take vacations. In order to reach Baby Boomers, the message has to be delivered by a combination of television and print advertising. The use of social media should not be abandoned, but it should only be used if the advertising budget is large enough. With the small advertising budget, Costa Rica tourism will not be able to get the message out in an effective manner. Let's remember that there are other destinations besides Costa Rica fighting for the share of mind of consumers. The message also has to be compelling enough to position Costa Rica as a place that a vacationer would want to visit. Costa Rica is in a battle with other destinations and it seems to be losing the war with the current strategy. Walter Balan
Fort Myers, Florida
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 16 | |
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| 2014 tourism growth was less than
many Central American countries |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Costa Rica with a 4.1 percent increase in tourism in 2014 lagged behind all but Panamá and Honduras in the percentage of growth. World Tourism Organization figures say that Costa Rica attracted 2,427,941 arrivals in 2014. That's 98,876 more than the previous year. But Belize showed 10.8 percent growth. Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador all had higher growth figures than Costa Rica. Panamá posted a 4.0 percent increase, and troubled Honduras showed just 2 percent. The figures were compiled by the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo, which offered them at a press conference Thursday. The institute said that the total arrivals in Costa Rica really were 2,526,817, a bit higher than the World Tourism Organization figures. But the percentage of increase still was 4.1 percent. During the entire presentation there was no acknowledgement by tourism officials that more than 400,000 of the so-called tourists came from adjacent Nicaragua. This has been a continuing source of confusion with tourism figures. The statistics show that Central American tourism increased 5.8 percent in 2014. Just 67.5 percent of the tourists come from North America, which includes México. |
Europe which
provided 16.5 percent of the nation's tourists showed a
growth of 19.9 percent despite economic woes in the Eurozone. Asian tourism was up 11.9 percent, but there were only 7,017 visitors. The country seeks to attract Chinese visitors, but William von Breymann, the minister, noted that there are no direct flights from the Asian giant to here. The arrival statistics that the tourism institute presented came from the Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería. They showed that 796,405 persons entered the country by land in 2014. The institute considers every foreigner who enters the country to be a tourist. Many of the institute's statistics are gathered by survey takers at the two international airports. The institute reports how long an average tourist stays in the country and how much they spend, although the numbers probably do not have statistical rigor. The Banco Central supplied figures for the total annual income from tourists, which was set at $2.6 billion. Von Breymann fielded a question from a reporter about possible strategies to fight competition from Cuba if the United States loosens travel restrictions on its citizens. He did not outline a strategy but said that all Cuba can offer is sun and sand while Costa Rica has many more diverse attractions. Cuba hopes to attract 3 million tourists this year despite the travel embargo. |
| Midday shootout in downtown San José puts one man in
hospital |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Gunmen cut down a man in downtown San José in midday broad daylight Thursday. The victim, identified by the Fuerza Pública by the last name of Alfaro was being treated for two bullet wounds in the stomach. He was reported to be serious but stable at Hospital San Juan de Dios. The shooting took place on Calle 4 between Avenida 10 and 12. Both judicial investigators and the Fuerza Pública said the man was confronted by four persons who shot him. Three men and a woman were detained as suspects a short time later. The Fuerza Pública officers entered a nearby rooming house and detained the four suspects. They said they located a .22-caliber revolver and an air pistol. They also found drugs, including cocaine, they said. The woman who was arrested had been released recently from prison by a judge, the Fuerza Pública added. |
 Ministerio de
Seguridad Pública photo
Police guard suspects after
arrests Thursday. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 16 | |||||
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| Committee studying procuradora
allegations to meet again today |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The current situation in which President Luis Guillermo Solís finds himself resembles that of U.S. president Richard Nixon shortly after the Watergate break-in in 1972. Many U.S. commentators have said that if Nixon owned up to his responsibility for the burglary early in the scandal, he never would have had to resign. Solís does not seem to be in any danger of resigning, but he and members of his administration have not been candid in the current flap around the procuradora general de la República, Ana Lorena Brenes. A legislative committee decided Thursday to meet again today to determine what members will do. For two days the committee, the Comisión de Control de Ingreso y Gasto Público, has heard the principal figures in the case. In addition to the procuradora, they heard Melvin Jiménez, the minister of the Presidencia, and former vice minister Daniel Soley. Ms. Brenes claims that Soley threatened her or perhaps offered a bribe of an ambassadorship in a Jan. 6 meeting in order to get her to step down. Soley, who has resigned, told the committee Thursday that the woman lied and that he might file a criminal complaint. |
Jiménez
said he did not know much about what his vice minister did and
directed questions toward the president. However, the committee voted
not to call the president in to testify. Jiménez also said
that the
meeting between Soley and Ms. Brenes was of a personal nature and that
he tried not to delve into the lives of his subordinates. One lawmaker reminded him that he is a Lutheran bishop testifying under oath. The complexities of the situation have not been lost on the public which quickly turned to jokes. One reporter was showing a graphic that represented Jiménez as an anchor. Radio talk shows were full of government criticism. The general theme was that citizens thought incorrectly they were electing a new type of government that would make radical and favorable changes. Even the Spanish language La Nación editorialized against politics as usual. Jiménez has said he will not resign, and only the president can make him. The president cannot fire Ms. Brenes because she was appointed by the Consejo de Gobierno for a six-year term and ratified by the Asamblea Legislativa. She has about a year left in her term. The ethical watchdog is part of her staff. One theory is that the president wanted to appoint a new procurador general and sent Soley to sound Ms. Brenes out about a possible ambassadorship. That is what she claims. |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 16 | |||||||
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| Obama threatens a veto on anti-abortion measure By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama has threatened to veto Republican legislation that aims to ensure no federal money is used to pay for abortions, as some conservative lawmakers fear may happen under the president’s health care law. The White House said in a statement Thursday that exactly 42 years after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Roe vs. Wade that abortion is legal, Republicans in Congress want to roll back that constitutional right. The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday passed a bill permanently barring federal funding of abortions. However, the bill was only passed after Republican leaders dropped some harsher anti-abortion language. The bill that was approved, on a mostly partisan vote of 242-179, prohibits federal subsidies for people using health insurance plans that cover abortions. Outside the U.S. Capitol Thursday, thousands of people opposed to abortion being legal in the United States held their annual protest march. Visiting nuns are in luck as they see Mary exhibit By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A group of Benedictine nuns from Massachusetts had just arrived in Washington, D.C., to march in an annual anti-abortion rally, when they saw a sign outside the National Museum of Women in the Arts announcing an ongoing exhibit. “Meet Mary,” it said. The nuns belong to the order known as the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose members consecrate their lives to the woman they call “The Blessed Mother” of Jesus. The rally wasn’t until later, and the exhibit was showcasing more than 60 depictions of Mary, including some by Michelangelo, Carvaggio and Botticelli. “We have to go there!” one of the sisters exclaimed. Another suggested God had led them there. The aim of the exhibit, which runs through April, is to show how the Virgin Mary was humanized by Baroque and Renaissance artists. One painting shows the Madonna tickling the baby Jesus, and in another she is breastfeeding him. But the gallery was criticized for neglecting less adoring depictions by modern artists, such as Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary,” which was made with elephant dung and shows her surrounded by pornographic cutouts. Sensitivity over how religious figures are depicted cuts across faiths. In Islam, it was recently highlighted by the terrorist murder of 12 people at a French magazine that had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as religious figures of other faiths. Indeed, there has been no shortage of outrage over the portrayal of Christian symbols. In 2011, on Palm Sunday, French Catholic fundamentalists armed with hammers attacked “Piss Christ,” a photograph of a crucifix in a glass of urine that triggered much controversy in the U.S. in the 1980s. And when Ofili’s work was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani threatened to cancel funding for the museum. The director of the Washington women’s art museum, Susan Fisher Sterling, says religion and art can be a volatile combination. “I believe that whether it is the Virgin Mary or other religious figures, it is an emotional response,” she said. “And when you talk about things that are so deeply ingrained in the human psyche and in the human heart, and that desire to raise to a higher level, I think it is a fraught subject.” As she studied the masterpieces in the Washington museum’s show, Sister Marie Bernard said other galleries have been wrong to show provocative renderings of Mary, a woman to whom she has devoted her life. “I find it horrifying that that would be allowed, in the public stream of art, to be viewed, when artists throughout the centuries have been trying so hard to depict her so beautifully as they have shown us here,” she said. Dawn spacecraft to probe dwarf planet for life signs By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is set to reach the dwarf planet Ceres in March and begin gathering clues about whether the icy body may have once had conditions conducive to supporting life. Dawn left Earth more than seven years ago on a course to explore two alien worlds in the solar system: Ceres and Vesta, both in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. “This is the first time in more than 57 years of space exploration that we have a spacecraft targeted to orbit any two extraterrestrial destinations,” said Dawn chief engineer and mission director Marc Rayman. Vesta and Ceres are considered protoplanets. They were "in the process of growing to become full-size planets when their growth was terminated,” Rayman said. At the Dawn mission control center in Los Angeles, the flight team sends second-by-second instructions to the spacecraft, directing its every move, including the images it takes of what it sees. Scientists believe Ceres is made of rock covered with a mantle of ice. Dawn will take images and make a comprehensive map of this alien world. It will also examine Ceres’ composition to provide data on how its surface has evolved, said Carol Raymond, the mission's deputy principal investigator. “One of the interests in bodies like Ceres and other icy bodies in the outer solar system is that when objects like that impacted the terrestrial planets, they brought a lot of water," she said. "So there’s a very vigorous debate at the current time as to whether wet asteroids like Ceres — and we know there are other wet asteroids in the outer edge of the main belt — whether they were the dominant source of water in the Earth’s ocean.” Earlier in its mission, Dawn made an unexpected discovery while orbiting the protoplanet Vesta. “Instead of being bone dry, which we expected, there were patches on the surface of Vesta that showed significant amounts of water bound in the rocks and possibly even free water that could have flowed on the surface in the past,” Raymond said. Raymond said that if Earth’s water came from wet worlds like these, then life could have come with them as well. If Dawn reveals that the environment on Ceres could be conducive to life, the finding may spur further explorations with other types of instruments to test that hypothesis. As for Dawn, it will gather information on Ceres until the summer of 2016. Then it will continue to orbit the dwarf planet indefinitely. Doomsday clock is moved forward due to environment By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Unchecked climate change and modernized nuclear arsenals prompted the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to move the minute hand of the symbolic Doomsday Clock forward two minutes. It now stands at three minutes to midnight, reflecting the group's assessment of the current threats to humanity and the planet. This is the first adjustment of the clock in three years. Since it was created in 1947 by scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons, the minute hand of the clock has been moved 18 times. It stood as close as two minutes before midnight in 1953, after the first test of the hydrogen bomb, and was backed off to 17 minutes till midnight in 1991. In announcing Thursday's time change, the organization said "world leaders have failed to act with the speed or on the scale required to protect citizens from potential catastrophe. These failures of political leadership endanger every person on Earth.” It went on to call for quick action to avert catastrophe, including a cap on greenhouse gas emissions, reduced spending on nuclear weapons modernization, a re-energized disarmament process and a plan to deal with nuclear waste.  University of Kentucky photo
This is a charred scroll on
a scale.Computer
detective works
may save ancient scrolls By the University of Kentucky news
service
After working for more than 10 years on unlocking an ancient piece of history, what lies inside damaged Herculaneum scrolls, Professor Brent Seales will accomplish the next step in allowing the world to read the scrolls, which cannot be physically opened. A major development in the venture, Seales is building software that will visualize the scrolls' writings as they would be if unrolled. He is chairman of the University of Kentucky's Department of Computer Science. A breakthrough not only in digital imaging techniques, the first-of-its-kind software could also have profound impacts on history and literature. Seales says that each scroll may well be the only remaining copy as of yet unknown literature from the Classical era. Each scroll is 20 to 30 feet long, and Seales estimates each to contain at least 3,000 words. "The sheer volume of words available for discovery is probably larger than the entire works of Shakespeare," said Seales. The scrolls aren't your typical 2,000-year old papyri manuscripts. they were carbonized in the Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption of A.D. 79, and later discovered as charred clumps in the Villa of the Papyri in the ancient Italian city of Herculaneum beginning in 1752. When others attempted to open them, the artifacts would often shatter beyond repair. To reveal the works inside the remaining intact scrolls, Seales and his research collaborator from the Institut de France, Daniel Delattre, knew that virtual unrolling was the only way. After successfully creating 2-D images of two Herculaneum scrolls in 2009 but not being able to detect the ink in them, Seales' colleagues believe they have recently identified ink in the scrolls after applying an x-ray method often used in the medical and archaeology communities. The method, called propagation-based phase contrast imaging was recently featured in a Nature Communications article, "Revealing letters in rolled Herculaneum papyri by X-ray phase-contrast imaging," by authors Vito Mocella, Claudio Ferrero, Emmanuel Brun and Delattre, citing Seales' work on the scrolls. Seales says the researchers claim to see letters and, in a few instances, whole words. Now that he and his team can see the writings, the next step in unveiling the writings to the world is to organize them. Without unrolling the scrolls, Seales' software will run extremely high-resolution images from the tangled surfaces, making sense of the jumbled letters into words, and words into passages. "The software will combine novel methods for finding the scroll surfaces together with a user-guided interface for correcting mistakes and improving the automatic first-guess," he said. In other words, it will pull out a page that displays writing from the data they currently have, and then identify where that page is inside the scrolls that now resemble charcoal. Because of this, Seales, his team, partners and physicists will be able to optimize the scanning process on site, allowing them to see an entire page "unwrapped" without ever leaving the facility. Eventually, the outcome will be as complete of a manuscript as possible of the remaining Herculaneum scrolls. "We have a ton of data from all of our preliminary work, and from the 2009 to 2010 work. We're using that data to build software so that we can pull out large sections and flatten them," said Seales. "To date, no tool exists that can accomplish that. The software we're building will be the first to visualize data in that way, and it's crucial to uncovering the works inside the Herculaneum scrolls." Supported by a three-year, $500,000 National Science Foundation grant and by Google, where Seales spent his sabbatical in 2012 to 2013, the computer science professor has begun working to develop the software. Seales' sabbatical at Google was crucial to the new imaging method, and he credits Google as the impetus for being unstuck in the project. In addition to UK students, Seales is working with Seth Parker, video editor at the UK Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments, and collaborating with Delattre in France, as well as Roger Macfarlane, a researcher at Brigham Young University. They hope to travel back to Grenoble, France, in the spring to conduct major scans on the two scrolls scanned in 2009. The scans will utilize Seales' software, as well as the new x-ray technique. Seales said the project plan is to release working software and datasets as soon as possible for scholars to examine. "By project's end, the team hopes to have created a software tool and a set of scans of scrolls that together will transform the hopelessly damaged Herculaneum collection into new literary discoveries," he said. Unmasking the Herculaneum writings is only the beginning. Seales hopes the work to uncover and decipher these ancient scrolls will propel other efforts forward, leading to an even greater impact on our understanding of classical history and literature, and revolutionary digital imaging. "I dream of seeing renewed excavation at the Villa of the Papyri. Many believe that a treasure trove of undiscovered scrolls are waiting there to be unearthed. If more are found, these methods could be used to read them," said Seales. U.N. holds first session to talk about anti-Semitism By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy says faulting Jews has become the rallying cry of what he calls a new order of assassins. Levy was the keynote speaker Thursday at the first U.N. General Assembly called exclusively to talk about anti-Semitism. Levy pointed out to the delegates that the U.N. was founded in 1945, in part, to prevent another global catastrophe like the Holocaust. Ron Prosor, Israel's U.N. ambassador, vowed that Israel would safeguard the Jewish people and the Jewish state. U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power condemned hatred of Jews as a monstrous global problem. She said that according to the FBI, two-thirds of religion-oriented hate crimes in the United States have targeted Jews. Delegates also heard from Saudi Arabian Ambassador Abdallah al-Moualimi, who said Islamic countries condemn all words and acts that lead to hatred of both Jews and Muslims. Thursday's meeting was planned before the Jan. 9 terrorist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Paris where an Islamic extremist killed four people and held others hostage before he was killed by police. Automatic teller ponzi nets up to $100 million Special to A.M. Costa Rica
LOS ANGELES – The president of a Calabasas, California, firm that was used to run a ponzi scheme that caused investors to lose more than $100 million pleaded guilty this week to federal fraud charges. The president, Joel Barry Gillis, 74, of Woodland Hills, California pleaded guilty in relation to a 13-year-long scheme that collected hundreds of millions from investors who were told their money would be used to purchase profitable automated teller machines. The second man charged in the scheme related to Nationwide Automated Systems, Inc., Edward Wishner, 76, also of Woodland Hills, who held various titles including vice president, pleaded guilty Jan.13 in the case that bilked approximately 2,000 investors. Gillis and Wishner each pleaded guilty to conspiracy, two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud. As a result of their guilty pleas, each defendant faces a statutory maximum sentence of 80 years in federal prison. Both men are scheduled to be sentenced on March 30 by U. S. District Judge S. James Otero. According to documents filed in court, Gillis and Wishner operated Nationwide, which purported to place, operate and maintain ATMs in high-traffic locations, such as hotels, casinos and convenience stores. Nationwide claimed that it operated approximately 31,000 ATMs and was involved in more than $1 billion in ATM transactions every month. Victim-investors paid a flat amount, typically $12,000, but in some cases as much as $19,800, to buy a specific ATM, each of which was to be installed at a specific location. Gillis and Wishner told victim-investors that Nationwide would lease back the ATMs and pay investors 50 cents for each transaction performed at their particular ATM, guaranteeing annual returns of 20 percent on each ATM. Nationwide did make monthly payments to investors, but that money came from other investors. While Nationwide did operate a small number of ATMs, no more than 250, which were owned by the company and not investors, the overall operation was a sham. Gillis and Wishner prevented investors from discovering the fraudulent nature of the business by providing bogus monthly reports to the investors that falsely detailed the supposed performance of the investors’ ATMs. Gillis and Wishner also included a non-interference provision in the lease agreements that prohibited victim-investors from visiting the locations where their ATMs were supposedly located. The scheme unraveled this past summer. In August, the firm bounced approximately $3 million in checks that had been sent by Nationwide as monthly returns to victim-investors, according to the charging document in the case. By the end of the month, Nationwide had drained its bank account, drawing it down to a balance of less than $200,000, the document said. But, even as the ponzi was collapsing, Gillis and Wishner continued to raise another $4 million from victim-investors. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 16 | |||||||||
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European
Central Bank opts to buy bonds
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The European Central Bank has launched an ambitious stimulus program aimed to stop deflation and boost the ailing, 19-member eurozone. The bank plans to buy billions of dollars worth of eurozone bonds in the coming months. More than a year ago, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said the institution would do whatever it takes to preserve the struggling euro currency zone. Thursday, the bank delivered action. Draghi said the bank will inject up to $1.3 trillion or more into the eurozone economy, buying up government bonds. "We believe that the measures taken today will be effective, will raise inflation, medium-term inflation expectations, and basically address the economic situation in the euro area," he said. The European Central Bank will begin buying nearly $69 billion worth of government bonds each month through September 2016. The measure aims to encourage banks in the eurozone countries to lend more, at lower interest rates. That is expected to push businesses and consumers to borrow and spend more. The European Central Bank has set a target of a less than 2 percent inflation rate. That is well above the current level. Last month, eurozone inflation had dipped below zero. The bank also said it is cutting the interest rate it charges on loans to commercial banks. The bond buying program is known as quantitative easing. The United States and Britain have used this program to recover from the global financial crisis. But Draghi warned the new measures only go so far. "What monetary policy can do is create the basis for growth. For growth to pick up, you need investment. For investment you need confidence. And for confidence, you need structural reforms. The ECB has taken a further, very expansionary measure today. But now it is up to the governments to implement these structural reforms. And the more they do, the more effective will be our monetary policy." The ECB action had been widely anticipated, but Thursday's announcement exceeded some expectations and led to mixed reactions. The European action is controversial. The eurozone's biggest economy, Germany, has opposed the bond-buying, voicing fears that the stimulus measure will give the bloc's weakest economies, such as Greece, less incentive to reform their debt-ridden governments. Speaking before the bank's action, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that no matter what the bank did, Europe's political leaders need to put a framework for recovery in place. |
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| From
Page 7: Construction starts on new border crossing By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Construction has started on a frontier post at the Las Tablillas border crossing in Los Chiles de Alajuela. The border post is expected to be in service by April. The crossing will operate on a temporary basis then until more development takes place. The central government sees the border crossing as an important transport link that will be used for cargo coming from the new Moín container handling terminal. The opening of a bridge over the Rio San Juan in adjacent Nicaragua has created the need for the crossing for individuals, said the government. |
