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San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 18 |
Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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Refugee kids take
to radio
to tell their story to peers Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Young refugees and Costa Ricans are taking to their airwaves to combat intolerance and xenophobia in the Latin American nation as part of a United Nations-backed initiative. An armed group threatened to kill her brother eight years ago, prompting Annye’s family to flee Colombia. “If my father did not pay them a specific sum of money, they would kill my brother,” said the refugee, now 16, in a recording studio in San José. Annye, along with 13 other teenagers, both refugees and Costa Ricans, recorded a series of radio stories – a project of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees targeted at students around the country to give them a better understanding of what it means for a young person to be forced to leave their home country due to violence or persecution. The participants also had a chance to learn the nuts and bolts of radio production from the Radio Netherlands Training Centre. “With Costa Rican and refugee high school students taking part, we were able to hear two sides of the issue: the perception of young refugees on their life in Costa Rica and the reaction of young local people on the life stories, rights and experiences of refugees,” explained Arturo Meoño, a Radio Netherlands producer. Some 40 per cent of young refugees in Costa Rica say they have been the victims of intolerance or insults from their classmates or teachers, according to a survey conducted by the agency two years ago. “For UNHCR, it has become crucial to create a tool to combat xenophobia in schools, to inform children about who the refugees are and why they need our support to integrate into this new community,” said Jozef Merkx, the agency’s representative in Costa Rica. Having children tell their peers about their suffering, it is hoped, will make their stories more relatable and create bonds between young people of different nationalities and backgrounds. Leidy, 16, talked excitedly about her love of Latin American music, while fellow refugee Karen, 15, complained about unfair stereotypes of refugees. “When somebody gets angry with me, they call me a drug dealer,” she said. The United Nations scheme has resulted in an interesting mix of stories and reactions. “Some concentrate on the flight from violence and the challenges of local integration,” said Maria Andrea Araya, a psychologist. “Others prefer to discuss what young refugees in Costa Rica experience in their daily lives.” Alexander, 15, pointed out that unlike in his native Colombia — where the attitude is “don’t get sick because there is no money to pay for the hospital bill” — education and health care are free in Costa Rica. The young people’s stories will also be used as part of an education module, currently under development, to counter xenophobia in schools. They will first be rolled out in April in areas with large migrant and refugee populations, Merkx said. Costa Rica currently shelters 12,000 refugees of some 40 nationalities, with more than 80 per cent of them being from Colombia. The Latin American nation receives approximately 80 asylum-seekers every month, and since 2009, there have been small migratory movements through the country of Africans and Asians trying to reach North America. World growth expected to be 3.9% By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Experts at the International Monetary Fund say the global economy will grow about 3.9 percent this year, which is eight-tenths of a percentage point faster than their earlier predictions. A study published Tuesday says emerging economies will lead the recovery, with China and some other Asian nations expanding the most. Fund experts say financial and political leaders around the world helped the recovery by slashing interest rates, and by spending vast sums on public works and other projects to boost demand.
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San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 18 |
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Child custody cases have
special twists in Costa Rica
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Divorces and custody disputes are grim events around the world. But some special aspects of Costa Rica law frequently surprise expats and those who come to the country in search of an abducted child. The Arias administration, for example, has come down strong in defense of a runaway mom regardless of the facts. Most residents here know that the courts are stacked strongly in favor of women and that a mere word from a woman is enough to have the police eject a man from his home. Dozens of U.S. citizens and citizens of other First World countries have come here seeking to be reunited with a child that was whisked away by the mother. Costa Rica routinely extradites runaway dads, so normally the legal battle here is between a resident woman and an ex-husband or lover. Even supposedly sophisticated newspaper columnists are ignorant of U.S. law. During one custody case, a columnist wrote that if a woman would be extradited she would be forced to return to live with an abusive husband. In fact, she would have gone to jail. Theoretically, there is an international child stealing treaty that says a custody case must be adjudicated by the court of initial jurisdiction. Still, many women come shopping for a legal forum here. Some Costa Rica judicial workers are quick to believe that any woman who is in flight from a spouse or lover must be doing so because the man is abusive. Sometimes, but not always, that is true, but hardly ever do judicial officials check with judges in the First World courts. They set themselves up as adjudicators of human rights in the broadest sense. Even the most basic divorce case here is so complex that many lawyers will not touch them, regardless of the fees involved. When one or both spouses are from another country, the complexities mount. |
For example, when a married woman here has a baby, the child is considered to be the offspring of the husband, even if the woman has not seen the man in years. There are ways for a man to disassociate himself from the newborn, but action must be swift. So an estranged husband can be on the hook for years of support payments for a child that is biologically not his. Equally true is that a man who is the biological father of the child of a woman married to someone else has few rights. Some expats have not let a pre-existing marriage stand in the way of a love affair. Then when a baby is born, they find that he is legally a stranger. Even more interesting are cases where a runaway woman comes to Costa Rica to deliver a child. The husband or lover follows in the hopes of obtaining legal custody of the child. But a section of the Costa Rican Constitution forbids officials from ordering a Costa Rican (the child) out of the country. That holds true even if the child has dual citizenship, if the mother retains custody. |
Ministry discounts claim
that cops were going to feed suspect to crocodiles
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The security ministry insisted Tuesday that two suspected rogue police officers were not going to feed a crook to crocodiles. This is the case of the man who was found tied hand and foot and in which two Fuerza Pública officers were detained. The security ministry only came out with an explanation after El Diario Extra, the popular Spanish language daily, headlined that the policemen were going to throw the man to the crocodiles. The man, identified as a locall repeat offender, appears to have been the suspect in the theft of atelevisionon set from |
the home of one of the police
officers, a woman with the last name of
Ramírez. She was identified by the ministry. The second officer,
a man,
was identified by the last name of Arietta. Both were serving in the
Cantón de Orotina. The ministry did not say what the police officers were going to do with the man. He was abducted from his own house and placed in a car, said the Judicial Investigating Organization Monday. The ministry based its belief that crocodiles were not involved because the victim never mentioned the reptiles. The nearby Río Grande de Tárcoles contains many large crocodiles. the ministry said that the two officers were detained by fellow Fuerza Pública policemen. A judge has released both officers on a conditional basis. The ministry said that action was under way to separate them from the police force. |
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San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 18 |
Municipalidad de Escazú photo
Here is the type of camera that is being installed |
Escazú
giving its policemen extra eyes to fight crime By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Municipalidad de Escazú is becoming another place where police will be monitoring individuals in their daily lives as a crime-fighting mechanism. The municipality said Tuesday that it is installing monitoring cameras that will be watched by members of the Policía Municipal. The cameras will be active 24 hours a day, the municipality said. San José has monitoring cameras in the center of the city, and there has been a plan to put thousands of cameras around the country. But that larger proposal seems to have fallen by the wayside. Although generally adopted as a crime-prevention tool, the cameras have generally become a crime-solving tool. Tapes of criminals are used at their trials. However, many criminals wear masks and as in the case with automatic teller cameras, crooks with masks or baseball caps can stump the observers. Escazú expected to install a total of 40 cameras. |
Election tribunal bans soccer games for
election eve and day |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Tribunal Supreme de Elecciones has ordered the Ministerio de Salud to reject requests for large assemblies of persons Feb. 6 and 7. It also has asked the municipalities to do likewise. The rationale is that such gatherings might prevent voters from getting to the polls. The ban also applies to professional soccer games, the tribunal said. If a second round of voting is needed, the tribunal said that the same rules would apply for April 3 and 4 as well as Dec. 4 and 5 when municipal elections are planned. |
The election
tribunal has banned public assemblies in the past, and no
court cases are known to have been generated. The tribunal also has ordered the mass media not to distribute polling information for several days before the election Feb. 5. This is an unusual prior restraint on the media that also has not generated any complaints. In addition the tribunal has ordered any polling firms to register with it. The tribunal also imposed an advertising holiday during the Christmas vacation when no candidate was allowed to air or publish ads. |
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San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 18 |
Hole
in ozone layer is now considered to be helpful By the University of Leeds news service
The hole in the ozone layer is now steadily closing, but its repair could actually increase warming in the Southern Hemisphere, according to scientists at the British University of Leeds. The Antarctic ozone hole was once regarded as one of the biggest environmental threats, but the discovery of a previously unknown feedback shows that it has instead helped to shield this region from carbon-induced warming over the past two decades. High-speed winds in the area beneath the hole have led to the formation of brighter summertime clouds, which reflect more of the sun's powerful rays. "These clouds have acted like a mirror to the sun's rays, reflecting the sun's heat away from the surface to the extent that warming from rising carbon emissions has effectively been cancelled out in this region during the summertime," said Ken Carslaw of the University of Leeds, who co-authored the research. "If, as seems likely, these winds die down, rising CO2 emissions could then cause the warming of the Southern Hemisphere to accelerate, which would have an impact on future climate predictions," he added. The key to this newly-discovered feedback is aerosol — tiny reflective particles suspended within the air that are known by experts to have a huge impact on climate. Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation from the earth and release it back into the atmosphere as heat, causing the planet to warm up over time. Aerosol works against this by reflecting heat from the sun back into space, cooling the planet as it does so. Beneath the Antarctic ozone hole, high-speed winds whip up large amounts of sea spray, which contains millions of tiny salt particles. This spray then forms droplets and eventually clouds, and the increased spray over the last two decades has made these clouds brighter and more reflective. As the ozone layer recovers it is believed that this feedback mechanism could decline in effectiveness, or even be reversed, leading to accelerated warming in the southern hemisphere, scientists said. "Our research highlights the value of today's state-of- the-art models and long-term datasets that enable such unexpected and complex climate feedbacks to be detected and accounted for in our future predictions," added Carslaw. The Leeds team made their prediction using a state-of-the-art global model of aerosols and two decades of meteorological data. The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council's Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence Programme.
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Latin American news Please reload page if feed does not appear promptly |
Emergency
commission has plan to reduce risks here By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
In the last 10 years, the country has lost $550 million due to natural disasters, according to the national emergency commission. In addition, Costa Rica is in second place on a list of those countries exposed to multiple disasters because it has 36.8 percent of its land surface exposed to the possibility of impact from three or more natural phenomena, the commission added, citing World Bank studies. And, it said, 89 percent of the country's population live in areas that are exposed to multiple risks. The gloomy statistics are a lead in for the Comision Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias to present a national disaster plan. That will take place Thursday at the Colegio de Abogados in San José at 9 a.m. The plan will be in force for six years. The goal is to outline the responsibilities of governmental agencies to the potential natural risks. Representative of some 90 agencies and institutions are expected to attend. Coffee roaster is target of complaint over smells By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A resident of Calle Blancos north of San José did not like the smell of coffee being roasted at the El Dorado S.A. plant in that area. The Sala IV constitutional court agreed to evaluate the complaint and ordered the health ministry to investigate. El Dorado produces, among other trademarks, Triangulo de Oro coffee. The man who complained has an office near the plant and said that he gets headaches and other ills when the company cranks up its roasting process. The ministry will make tests to determine the makeup of the fumes emitted by the plant. Coffee roasting is not an everyday event at the plant, but when the process is started, the smell of roasting coffee can be detected several miles away. El Dorado S.A. has been at its current location in an industrial zone for years. |
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