 |
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for more details |
A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
|
|
|
San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 23
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
|
 |
|
This is the new Costa Rican
stamp that honors the Organismo
Médico Forense, the country's crime lab, on its 50th anniversary. The 360-colon stamp carries the image of Alfonso Acosta Guzmán, who promoted the crime-solving techniques here. 7% of gas containers had leaks, report says By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Despite the emphasis on safety involving liquid petroleum gas, the nation's regulatory agency said 7 percent of 17,280 gas containers inspected in 2014 had leaks. The leaks were found in containers from all three gas vendors, Gas Nacional Zeta, Super Gas and Gas Tomza. The leaks ranged from 10 percent at Gas Tomza to 6 percent at Gas Zeta, the agency, the Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos, said. There was a public focus on gas containers after a small Alajuela restaurant exploded with four fatalities in early 2013. Many Costa Ricans use gas containers for cooking and heating water. The agency said that during inspections, some 7 percent of the metal containers were found with holes due to rusting. The testing was not very sophisticated. The agency said that inspectors just applied soapy water to the tanks. Ministry promises housing after four years By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Contractors who face mountains of regulations that slow down their projects will be happy to know that the same problems faces the government. Calle Lajas is the section of San Antonio de Escazú that was wiped out by a landslide from Pico Blanco Nov. 5, 2010. 24 persons died. Now after more than four years, the government said that new housing for the survivors would be ready in two weeks in an area out of harm's way. The homes have been finished and standing empty for months but technicalities with utilities have held up occupancy. The project is being done by the Ministerio de Vivienda y Asentamientos Humanos. Now officials say just a couple of more weeks. Snow hits northern U.S. once again By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The northeastern United States again is facing a major snow storm. The area from Chicago to New York and north Boston saw up to a foot of the white stuff. Thousands of airline flights have been canceled. The storm follows a blizzard that buried the northeast last week. The rest of the country is not being spared. The U.S. National Weather Service said that cold, arctic air will surge through the northern Plains today and continue to spread south and east through Wednesday dropping temperatures in its wake. U.S. tightens Venezuelan sanctions By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The United States tightened its sanctions against Venezuela again Monday when it imposed visa restrictions on more officials there. The action came a day after President Nicolás Maduro accused Vice President Joe Biden of trying to depose him. Maduro did this on national television. ". . These allegations are baseless and false," said Jen Psaki, the spokesperson of the State Department. "Such allegations distract from Venezuela’s own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela. The Venezuelan government should focus on the legitimate grievances of its people, which include repeated violations of the freedom of speech – of freedom of speech and assembly as well as due process under the law." The U.S. government will not specify who are the targets of the visa restrictions, but they are supposed to be those who have been involved in abrogating the rights of citizens there. When Maduro was in Costa Rica last week, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States passed a declaration that rejected the use of what the organization called coercive methods against Venezuela. In December U.S. President Barack Obama signed the first sanctions against Venezuelan government officials who violated the right of protesters. The action, which was approved by the U.S. Congress, denies U.S. visas and freezes assets held in the United States.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Ro Colorado S.A 2015
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 |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 23 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
Tribute
to Jairo The murdered sea turtle protector Jairo Mora Sandoval is being remembered all over the country even though a court declined to convict suspects in his death. This mural is in San Ramón and was finished Friday by two artists known locally as Roy and Pucho. The pair have extensive works all over the community, said a local expat. Mora died May 30, 2014, when he was ambushed by turtle egg thieves near the Moín beach in Limón. Seven men were acquitted by a Limón judicial panel Jan. 27. This outraged many Costa Ricans and others. |
 A.M.
Costa Rica/Dean Killian
|
| Reducing damage to citrus crops said to require regional
efforts |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Expats who are trying to protect their citrus trees from a disease called greening or huanglongbing better make sure that their neighbors are doing so, too. And that includes distant neighbors. In Costa Rica, the disease is called dragón amarillo. The Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería has declared an agricultural emergency over the problem. Right now the main way of fighting the disease is to spray against the Asian citrus psyllid (Diaphorina citri), a tiny bug that sucks on leaf sap and leaves behind bacteria. Costa Rica has spent more than $1 million in prevention, training and the creation of a lab. The cost of insecticides against the insect carrier is many hundreds of dollars a hectare, officials have said. The situation has become so bad in Florida that some citrus growers have abandoned their fields, leaving their trees untended, which can have dire consequences for neighboring growers, said an entomology professor at the University of Florida. A new article in the Journal of Economic Entomology shows that the insect can travel at least two kilometers in 12 days, and that they are able to traverse potential geographic barriers such as roads and fallow fields. |
 Entomology Today/David Hall
The Asian citrus psyllid“The Asian citrus psyllid moves many kilometers,” said Lukasz Stelinski, the entomology professor and one of the co-authors. “If you control a small area and the other person does not, the psyllids will infest your area and can come from abandoned groves.” He was quoted on the Entomology Today Web site. The researchers used a non-toxic chemical like soy protein to mark the insects in one grove. When the marked insect showed up in other groves, the distance traveled could be measured, noted the researchers in a summary prepared by Entomology Today. The bacteria is Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus, and the Chinese name reflects the fact that the disease was found in that country in the early part of the 20th century. After being infected, the leaves of citrus trees turn yellow and fall off. The disease also causes green and misshapen fruit. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.
2015 and may
not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
 |
 |
||||
| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 23 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Central American smoke boosted tornadoes in U.S., study says |
|
|
By the University of Iowa news staff
Can smoke from fires intensify tornadoes? “Yes,” say University of Iowa researchers, who examined the effects of smoke — resulting from spring agricultural land-clearing fires in Central America — transported across the Gulf of Mexico and encountering tornado conditions already in process in the United States. The study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, examined the smoke impacts on a historic severe weather outbreak that occurred during the afternoon and evening of April 27, 2011. The weather event produced 122 tornadoes, resulted in 313 deaths across the southeastern United States, and is considered the most severe event of its kind since 1950. The outbreak was caused mainly by environmental conditions leading to a large potential for tornado formation and conducive to supercells, a type of thunderstorm. However, smoke particles intensified these conditions, according to co-lead authors Gregory Carmichael, professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, and Pablo Saide, of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research. They say the smoke lowered the base of the clouds and increased wind shear, defined as wind speed variations with respect to altitude. Together, those two conditions increased the likelihood of more severe tornadoes. The effects of smoke on these conditions had not been previously described, and the study found a novel mechanism to explain these interactions. “These results are of great importance, as it is the first study to show smoke influence on tornado severity in a real case scenario. Also, severe weather prediction centers do not |
 National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration/Brad Pierce
Red lines represent tornado
tracks in the United States April 25 to 28, 2011, and yellow dots
represent fires in Central America and México.include atmospheric particles and their effects in their models, and we show that they should at least consider it,” says Carmichael. “We show the smoke influence for one tornado outbreak, so in the future we will analyze smoke effects for other outbreaks on the record to see if similar impacts are found and under which conditions they occur,” says Saide. “We also plan to work along with model developers and institutions in charge of forecasting to move forward in the implementation, testing and incorporation of these effects on operational weather prediction models.” |
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
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.
2015 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
|
||
 |
 |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 23 | |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
 |
| Obama budget is greeted with predictable opinions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama’s proposed $4 trillion federal budget drew predictable praise from Democrats and equally predictable scorn from Republicans on Capitol Hill. The fiscal blueprint would boost taxes on top earners and some corporations while canceling automatic spending cuts, investing in infrastructure and helping America’s struggling middle class. At best, presidential budgets are greeted by lawmakers as a serious point of departure for months of congressional deliberations on spending and taxation. In recent years, budgets submitted by the White House have generated a week’s worth of hyperbolic commentary on Capitol Hill -- before being cast aside and forgotten almost entirely. It is that latter fate that appears to be unfolding for President Obama’s 2016 federal budget in the new Republican-led Congress. In a statement, House Speaker John Boehner blasted the fiscal blueprint as more taxes, more spending and containing no plan to foster growth and create jobs. Similarly, the Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, described the budget as “another tired, tax-and-spend manifesto.” “It focuses on growing the bureaucracy instead of opportunity. It does not balance - ever. And because it is not designed to pass Congress, of course it doesn’t,” he said. By contrast, the House’s top Democrat, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, described the president’s proposal as forward-looking, fiscally responsible and contributing to America’s long-term economic growth. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, agrees. “I am particularly gratified the president has strongly supported our national defense as well as domestic needs, and investing in our roads, bridges and other infrastructure that is so very, very important to our future,” he said. Republicans control both houses of Congress and have pledged to pass a budget that reflects their priorities: constraining domestic spending while boosting entrepreneurial activity. Finding common ground with the White House on budget specifics will be a challenge in the months to come. The current budget expires at the end of September. On a day of heightened partisanship in Congress, at least one lawmaker stood apart. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a frequent critic of the president, had this to say when approached by reporters: “I really owe the president the courtesy of reading his budget before commenting on it.” State Department's slice is $50 million for efforts By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Obama administration is seeking just over $50 billion to support diplomatic and aid efforts that would maintain America’s global leadership and leverage, a senior U.S. State Department official said Monday. "Our budget request reflects what is needed to ensure that the United States remains powerfully engaged on the myriad issues that directly impact the security, prosperity and values of the American people," Deputy Secretary Heather Higginbottom said. The request is part of President Barack Obama’s $4 trillion spending plan for 2016, introduced Monday. The proposed $50.3 billion allocation includes a base request of $43.2 billion to support ongoing and emerging national security challenges, security commitments to allies and partners, conflict prevention, weapons nonproliferation and global peacekeeping activities. Another $7 billion is being sought for overseas contingency operations, to respond to immediate and extraordinary national security requirements, Higginbottom said. She said the funds "will support critical programs and operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, as well as exceptional costs related to our efforts to fight ISIL" – an acronym for the Islamic State militant group – and "respond to the conflict in Syria and support Ukraine." Ms. Higginbottom added that the budget request represents a 6 percent increase over last year. But Jennifer Harris, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out that the State Department portion of the federal budget comes in at less than 10 percent of the $534 billion base budget requested for the Defense Department. Ms. Harris said that ratio is wildly incompatible with the threats and challenges in the world. "It’s not clear to me that the greatest challenges the U.S. faces in the world today are predominantly military in nature," she said. "Putting 90 percent more dollars to more military hardware when it seems like an area where the U.S. already has hyperdominance is not necessarily the best return on investment." The news headlines, Ms. Harris said, missed a broader trend in which a lot of countries, such as China, are using economic tools as a first resort to flex their political muscle in the world. Obama has said the problems in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and other regions afflicted by violence cannot be fixed with military might alone. But Harris also cautioned that simply increasing State Department funds is not necessarily the answer. Bureaucratic hurdles and contentious relations with Congress, she said, in the past have led to missed opportunities in places like Egypt. Flexibility in how the State Department and Pentagon are allowed to use funding is more important than the sheer sums involved, Ms. Harris said. Obama’s spending plan is expected to face stiff opposition from the Republican-led Congress when it comes to voting on the numbers. Families gets compensation for GM's faulty switches By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
At least 51 families are getting damage settlements from the biggest U.S. automaker, General Motors, because of deadly crashes caused by defective ignition switches on small cars it manufactured a decade ago. Seventy-seven injured people have also been awarded undisclosed compensation by independent administrators of a fund created by GM. The automaker knew about the ignition problem in 2.6 million vehicles for more than a decade, but did not recall the cars until early last year. When the ignition switches malfunctioned, the vehicles' power steering, air bags and other electrical features were disabled. The number of payments could increase significantly in the coming months. Nearly 4,200 motorists and their families filed for the ignition switch damages by last Saturday's deadline and their claims will now be reviewed. Super Bowl broadcast called most-watched TV show By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Sunday night's broadcast of the National Football League's championship game, the Super Bowl, was the most watched television program in U.S. history. The dramatic 28-24 victory by the New England Patriots over the defending champion Seattle Seahawks was seen by 114.4 million American viewers, according to NBC, which telecast the game played outside Phoenix, Arizona. That is 2.2 million more than the previous record viewership set by last year's Super Bowl when Seattle beat the Denver Broncos outside New York City. NBC Sports Group Chairman Mark Lazarus said this year an additional 600,000 watched the game with Spanish-language announcers on the NBC Universal cable network. Seven of the eight most watched shows in U.S. history are Super Bowls. Sunday's ratings showed that the highest number of viewers tuned in during the fourth quarter when New England rallied from a 10-point deficit and stopped a final Seattle drive with an interception on the goal line to seal the victory. Because of the huge audience the Super Bowl reaches, a record $4.5 million was paid by advertisers this year for a 30-second commercial. New photo of Fidel Castro published in Cuban paper By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Cuba has published the first photographs of former President Fidel Castro since last August, amid new speculation that his health was failing. The photos, published Monday in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, depicted the 88-year Castro talking to a student leader at his home, which the newspaper said was taken last month. A Brazilian theologian who met with Castro last month said he found the ex-leader thin, but in good health and lucid. Fidel Castro relinquished power in 2006 to his younger brother Raúl due to poor health, and has made infrequent public appearances and statements over the years. His last public appearance was more than a year ago. The elder Castro recently broke a lengthy silence on the historic announcement made last December by his brother and President Barack Obama that Havana and Washington would end over 50 years of Cold War-era hostility and restore diplomatic ties. Fidel Castro said he did not oppose the recent diplomatic breakthrough. Amazon has three methods to use competitors, study says By the Lappeenranta University of
Technology news staff
Online-selling pioneer Amazon.com has utilized three individual business models, by means of which it engages in productive cooperation with its competitors. By harnessing its competitors within its own business operations and by looking strategically at customer value, Amazon.com has managed to raise the size of its current markets and to create entirely new markets both for itself and for its competitors. Through its competitor cooperation-driven business model, Amazon.com utilizes the existent resources most effectively because it involves competitors in distributing the expenses incurred by business operations. These results emerge from the research conducted at Lappeenranta University of Technology by Paavo Ritala and his Swiss research partners Arash Golnam and Alain Wegmann, and published in the Industrial Marketing Management journal. Amazon.com's three business models in which it has strongly involved its competitors, are named as follows: Amazon Marketplace, Amazon Services and Amazon Web Services, and Amazon Kindle. Amazon Marketplace gives Amazon.com's competitors the chance to use the company's own market venue. In other words, when Amazon.com sells, for example, some book on its Web site, competitors are also permitted to offer the same product there – even more cheaply. If the competitor purchases the book concerned from a competitor via the Amazon.com Web site, Amazon.com is permitted to keep part of the sale proceeds. Amazon Services and Amazon Web Services on their part offer the online shopping platform and server capacity to their competitors. For example, Amazon.com helped the Borders book retailer as well as Netflix, which distributed films and TV series on the Internet, to the extent that they obtained their own marketplace within Amazon.com's infrastructure: i.e. they operated by using Amazon's servers or Web site base. Amazon.com obtains revenues from operating the service and from its advancement for its competitors. Amazon Kindle, an electronic reading device, enables coopetition – collaboration between competing firms – to the extent that it distributes its content to various competing platforms. For example, the Apple iPad consumer obtains Kindle application content without having to obtain an Amazon.com reading device separately. This way Amazon.com sells its own content also on competitors' platforms, thereby obtaining extra customers. "Amazon.com's method of doing business with its competitors is rare on this scale. The company's strategy is to be the world's most customer-centered business enterprise. Consequently, Amazon.com's mindset is not competitor-centered, as is often the case with companies. The digital business model excellently enables this sort of business action," Ritala declares. California ponzi scheme gets woman 151 months Special to A.M. Costa Rica
A San Jose, California, woman who was convicted of running a ponzi scheme that bilked over 200 victims out of more than $24 million was sentenced Monday to serve 151 months in federal prison. The woman, Bich Quyen Nguyen, 60, received the sentence from U. S. District Judge Josephine L. Staton, who said the crime caused physical, emotional and psychological harm to victims who, in some cases, lost their entire life savings. In addition to the prison term of more than 12½ years, Judge Staton ordered Ms. Nguyen to pay $24,517,482 in restitution. Ms. Nguyen was found guilty conspiring to commit wire fraud in December 2013 by a jury that heard about her investment scheme, which offered purported certificates of deposit issued by a Swedish financial institution that she supposedly ran. The evidence presented during a six-day trial showed that Nguyen told victims that she was the chief executive officer of Sun Investment Savings and Loan, which guaranteed annual returns of more than 30 percent on one-year certificates of deposit involving at least $1 million. Ms. Nguyen told victims that she used trading platforms and made trades at a high frequency and velocity to achieve the high rates of return. She told victims that their investments were safe because the victims’ money would be in blocked accounts. She further told victims that she had prepared for the 2008 financial crisis so their returns were still protected and guaranteed. While claims about the investment were bogus, Ms. Nguyen’s “false promises did persuade the victims to give up their life-savings,” according to court documents filed by prosecutors. “Because of . . . fraud, the victims were forced to put off their retirements and stretch their remaining resources to simply make ends meet.” To get the rates that Nguyen fraudulently promised, victims from southern California and Nevada organized private investment clubs to pool the required $1 million. Several of the victim investment clubs were located in Anaheim and Rialto. During the second half of 2008, Ms. Nguyen and co-conspirators made presentations to victims across the region, with some of the presentations taking place at churches. In the Spring of 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission obtained orders from U. S. District Judge David O. Carter that prevented Ms. Nguyen and her co-conspirators from continuing to offer these investments. Following the issuance of the injunctions, a receiver and forensic accountant reviewed records and determined that the victims’ money was never safe, in part because it was commingled with other victims’ money. Some of the victims’ money was used to make ponzi payments to other investors; and the promised investments were never made. Despite Judge Carter’s orders, Ms. Nguyen in May and July 2009 continued to offer investments in Las Vegas and overseas, prosecutors said. In sentencing papers that described Ms. Nguyen as being relentless in the execution of her fraud, prosecutors cited numerous false promises to victims, lies she told during her trial (including blaming a dead man for the scheme) and a complete lack of remorse. Ms. Nguyen has failed to take any responsibility for the over $24 million that victims lost due to her fraud, according to one sentencing memo. “Defendant’s ‘pass-the-buck’ attitude cannot be ignored when there are over 200 victims due to her fraud,” it added. Ms. Nguyen has been in custody for over a year after being remanded by Judge Staton when the trial concluded. Previously in this case, another member of the conspiracy, Johnny Edward Johnson, 70, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Johnson, who faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison, is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Staton Feb. 27. |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.
2015 and may
not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
|
||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 23 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
||
| Costa Rican News |
AMCostaRicaArchives.com |
Retire NOW
in Costa Rica |
CostaRicaReport.com |
| Fine Dining
in Costa Rica |
The CAFTA Report |
Fish
fabulous Costa Rica |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A.
2015 and may
not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
||||||
| From Page 7: Public projects called priority for growth By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The president's economic council met Monday and decided that the economy of the country could be boosted with pushing the execution of public projects that have internal and foreign funding. The council also said that it needs to promote foreign investment in conjunction with the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior. Finally it said that the government has to institute plans to promote employment. The public projects include those for roads and for health and education, said Casa Presidencial. In addition to the highway projects, the council also decided to stress agricultural development and citizen security, said Casa Presidencial. The council is seeking to see the economy grow by 4 percent this year. |
