 |
 |
Costa Rica Your daily |
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
|
|
 |
| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 31 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
 |
 |
 |
|
 Teatro Nacional flyer for the
midday program
Midday theater
scheduled
again at Teatro Nacional By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Teatro al Mediodía debuts again this year with a dance performance Tuesday. This is the first of some 36 productions that will be presented this year. The innovative programing has proved to be popular for lunch hour Costa Ricans and tourists. The presentation Tuesday will be “Pendulum” by the Danza Abierta group of the Universidad de Costa Rica. The performance is based on the human relations among youngsters, said the Teatro Nacional, where the performances will be held.. The following Tuesday, the theme is the environment when Árbol de Pie is featured. This is a group of young musicians whose objective is to present a message of protection of the environment, said the theater. “Las 3 Marías” is scheduled for Feb. 28 with the dance presentation “Interruptus.” The group is composed of professional dancers. The men's chorus “Bucaneers” is scheduled March 6. The following week no performances are scheduled because the Teatro Nacional will be participating in the Festival Internacional de las Artes 2012. Burglars target pharmacy By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Burglars visited a pharmacy in Desamparados late Saturday or early Sunday. An employee discovered the entry about 6 a.m. Sunday. The business is an outlet of the Farmacia Chavarría chain.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 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, Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 31 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo Stuart |
| Pacific quake zone produces a flurry over
the weekend |
|
|
By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A series of earthquakes took place in the Pacific this weekend at the point where the Cocos tectonic plate goes under the Caribbean. This is a highly active area. One of the quakes was estimated at a healthy 4.8 magnitude and was listed among such events by the U.S. Geological Survey. It was one of three that took place at nearly the same point about 30 kilometers (19 miles) off the Pacific coast at Dominical. The strongest of the three quakes was the first, and it took place at 2:43 p.m. Saturday, according to the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica, which estimated the magnitude slightly less at 4.5. A second quake took place Sunday at 12:41 p.m. The magnitude was estimated at 3.1. Less than an hour later at 1:39 p.m., the third quake of 3.4 magnitude took place. The Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico reported another quake that took place Sunday. This one was farther west in the Pacific, about 194 kilometers (about 120 miles) southeast of Puerto las Playa de Golfito. The magnitude was estimated at 4.5. Another Sunday quake took place off the northern Pacific coast. That was at 5:03 p.m. The epicenter was estimated to be some 67.2 kilometers (about 42 miles) west of Tamarindo. The magnitude was set at 4.4 by the Laboratorio de Ingeniería Sísmica at the Universidad de Costa Rica. An other quake took place further south and just five minutes |
 Observatorio Vulcanológico y
Sismológico de Costa Rica graphic
Arrow
shows where the flurry of quakes took place.
later at 5:08 p.m., according to
the Laboratorio. The magnitude was
estimated at 3.7. The epicenter was about 30 kilometers (about 19
miles) off the coast and north of the Osa Peninsula.
That is roughly the same location as the three quakes Saturday and earlier Sunday. There were no reports of damage from the sea quakes, and the earthquake watchers said most persons along the Pacific coast did not feel them. Most of the data comes from automatic sensing stations. |
| Search for missing French couple fails to
produce any evidence |
|
|
By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial police initiated a large-scale search Friday for the bodies of a missing French couple after agents received information as to where their bodies might have been buried. The search involved canine units and teams of agents combing a rural region near Quepos, called San Antonio de Damas. After beginning at 8 a.m. and searching until about 1:30 p.m. officials called off the search, vowing the investigation would continue but that no more large scale efforts were planned. Agents from the regional Judicial Investigating Organization participated as well as several agents from San Jose. About 60 officers participated in the search that covered more than 50 hectares (about 125 acres), the agency said. The search came after agents received confidential information about the possible location of the married couple. The |
informant, according
to a judicial press agent, disclosed that the couple had been murdered
and buried in the remote location after they were possibly tricked by
fake tour guides. But agents would not release any further details or
confirm further questions. No arrests have been made in connection with
the couple’s disappearance. The couple, Claude and Gerard Dubois, both 65, vanished while vacationing in Manuel Antonio Beach in March 2010. Afterward their credit cards were used by someone else and their passports were discovered in a trash can near Jacó, about 50 miles north of where agents found their car. Their rental vehicle had been vandalized and parked near Río Naranjo. Only last month the French government and the family of the victims put pressure on agents to make headway with the case. The French ambassador here in Costa Rica requested permission to allow French investigators to look at the case and was outspoken about seeing results in the case. |
 |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 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, Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 31 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
| The next big holiday, Semana Santa, is
just seven weeks away |
|
|
By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Tourists and those with businesses in Costa Rica have about seven weeks to prepare for the next vacation, Semana Santa. A substantial part of the public and private workforce will be on vacation, and there will be little chance of doing any public business from about March 29 to April 10. The dates are not set yet by the various public agencies, but public employees usually combine the two public holidays of Holy Thursday, this year April 5, and Good Friday, April 6, with vacation time to get a week or more off. And then some agencies declare the entire week of Semana Santa to be a vacation period. This is a great time for tourists because there are church processions all over the country that are highly photogenic. They are marking the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Wednesday, Feb. 22, is Ash Wednesday, the start of the |
Christian period
of fasting, penance and reflection. Only in Puntarenas is there the
traditional pre-Lent carnival. The big ones are in Rio de Janeiro and
in New Orleans, where the celebration is called Mardi Gras. Another
carnival in Costa Rica is in Limón, but it takes place in
October. The
canton of Desamparados has had a successful carnival for several years
on Dec. 27. That was the date of the discontinued San José
post-Christmas carnival. The tourism high season runs through Semana Santa or Easter week, and the religious celebrations are great subjects for photographers. For years, however, tourism operators have complained of the dry law that is enforced Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Many tourism hotels and restaurants got around the law by using paper cups and other techniques, usually with the approval of the local police. Lawmakers passed in January on first reading a law to eliminate the prohibitions, but the law gives the municipalities the power to enforce a Holy Week dry law. So that situation still is up in the air. |
| Coffee grounds turn out to be a super
filter for sewer gas |
|
|
By
the The
City College of New York news staff
For coffee lovers, the first cup of the morning is one of life’s best aromas. But scientists have found that those leftover grounds could eliminate one of the worst smells around, sewer gas. In research to develop a novel, eco-friendly filter to remove toxic gases from the air, scientists at The City College of New York found that a material made from used coffee grounds can sop up hydrogen sulfide gas, the chemical that makes raw sewage stinky. Teresa Bandosz, a City College professor of chemistry and chemical engineering develops and tests materials that scrub toxic gases like hydrogen sulfide from air in industrial facilities and pollution control plants. Much like the grains of charcoal packed into the filter of a tabletop water pitcher, her filters use a form of charcoal called activated carbon. Carbon producers already use materials like coal, wood, peat, fruit pits, and coconut shells to make filters. Professor Bandosz realized that the modern coffee culture could supply an abundant source of eco-friendly organic waste. But coffee grounds also come equipped with a special ingredient that boosts their smell-fighting power. Caffeine, the stimulant that gives coffee its energy jolt, contains nitrogen. This element cranks up carbon’s ability to clean sulfur from the air, a process called adsorption. “We should not neglect the natural biomass that is rich in this element,” she and colleagues assert in the Jan. 30 issue of the |
Journal of Hazardous Materials. The
National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office funded the
research. Usually, making carbon adsorbents more reactive to toxins requires treating the original with a nitrogen-rich chemical such as ammonia, melamine, or urea, the main nitrogen-containing substance in mammal urine. “All of these,” the researchers note, “significantly increase the cost of adsorbents.” To make their new filter, Professor Bandosz and her colleagues carbonized old coffee grounds, essentially turning them into charcoal. To do so, they prepared a slurry of coffee grounds, water and zinc chloride, a chemical activator. The team then dried and baked the mixture at temperatures of up to 800 degrees C (more than 1400 F). The process of activation fills the carbon with scores of minute holes about 10-30 angstroms in diameter, roughly equivalent to 10-30 hydrogen atom-widths across. These densely packed pores are blanketed with nitrogen, perfect to capture hydrogen sulfide molecules passing through. Hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) isn’t just a smelly nuisance for sewage plant neighbors. It can be deadly. Human noses are so sensitive to the rotten-egg scent of this toxin that it can overwhelm the sense of smell, Professor Bandosz explained. “When someone is exposed to high concentrations of H2S, the nose will stop detecting it,” she said. “There have been cases in which workers died of H2S exposure in sewer systems.” Professor Bandosz suspects that the coffee-based carbon could also separate out other pollutants from the air and water. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 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, Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 31 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
 |
| Capriles
will face Chávez as opposition candidate By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Venezuela's opposition coalition says Henrique Capriles has won its primary and will be the sole candidate to challenge President Hugo Chávez in the October presidential elections. Opposition officials announced Sunday that Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, earned about 62 percent of the vote, more than double his nearest rival, Pablo Pérez. The election board said 2.9 million people voted, a higher turnout than some had predicted, but still a small percentage of the pool of 18 million registered voters. The 57-year-old Chávez, who is seeking a third six-year term in office, remains popular. Opinion polls show Chávez leading Capriles, who is 39, in a prospective contest. But Capriles got a boost from a popular Venezuelan politician, Leopoldo López, who dropped out of the primary race last month and endorsed him. Chavez underwent chemotherapy in Caracas and Havana last year and now says he is cancer-free. He was first elected in 1998 and then won elections in 2000 and 2006. Chávez is a vehement critic of the United States and an ally of Communist-ruled Cuba. Shining Path rebel chief reported captured in Perú By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Peru's president says an alleged leader of the Shining Path rebel group has been captured deep in the Peruvian jungle. President Ollanta Humala said Sunday that Florindo Flores, known as Artemio, was shot and badly wounded before his arrest last week. Initially, Humala said Flores had died, but authorities now say the guerrilla leader is still alive. The Maoist Shining Path rebels began their insurgency in 1980, eventually killing tens of thousands of people. Violence declined sharply after its founder, Abimael Guzmán, was captured and convicted in 1992, but the rebels continue to carry out smaller attacks. Attacks have occurred primarily in remote areas used to produce coca, the raw material used in cocaine. Police in Brazilian city vote to end their strike By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Police in one of Brazil's largest cities have ended their nearly two-week strike that unleashed a spike in murders. Officers in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, voted to end the strike Saturday. They had been demanding higher wages. Officials say a crime wave claimed more than 130 lives in the Salvador metropolitan area during the strike. Meanwhile, authorities say police may soon suspend their short-lived strike in Rio de Janeiro. Rio's residents were spared the violence that erupted in Salvador. The strikes renew concerns about Brazil's readiness to host the World Cup in 2014. Rio and Salvador are among the cities selected as venues for the soccer games. Rio will host the Olympics in 2016. Europeans stage protests against trade agreement By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Tens of thousands of Europeans braved bitterly cold temperatures to rally against a controversial treaty intended to protect intellectual property. Anger spilled into the streets of European cities, from Sofia and Vilnius to Prague and Paris to voice displeasure with ACTA, the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The treaty had been under negotiation for years, and countries like the United States, Japan and South Korea say it is needed to protect the rights of musicians, filmmakers and even clothing and pharmaceutical companies. But in the past few months it has come under increasing criticism from young people in Europe who say it will lead to online censorship. Some protesters, like Jan Hulek in Prague, also voiced complaints over how the treaty has been ratified. "The main issue why I am here is because ACTA was accepted without people knowing it. We didn't know ACTA was going on, and there should be discussion before we accepted it. There wasn't," Hulek said. Others, like Act Up Paris President Frederic Navarro, say the treaty's negative impact will be felt throughout the world. "Eighty percent of Africans who have AIDS are treated with generic medicines made in India. If this agreement is signed, they won't have any access to generic medicines and will die while the pharmaceutical laboratories are making profits on our lives," said Navarro. Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States signed ACTA this past October. And more than 20 European Union members approved the deal last month. But several countries, including Germany, have pulled back from officially signing onto the treaty as the protests have begun to intensify. Last month, several of the world's best known Internet sites staged an online blackout to protest anti-piracy legislation before the U.S. Congress. Critics at organizations such as Wikipedia and Google said the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act would censor the Web and threaten freedom of expression. U.N. devotes a day to mark free expression via radio Special
to A.M. Costa Rica
The role of radio as a facilitator of education, freedom of expression and public debate will be celebrated as World Radio Day is observed for the first time today by the U. N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). With the ability to reach up to 95 per cent of the world’s population, radio is the most prevalent mass medium which has the ability to reach remote communities and marginalized groups at a low cost, said the U.N. agency. It has also proven to be highly resilient as its scope and distribution platforms have grown with the development of new technologies, it added. The observance of the day on Feb. 13 also marks the anniversary of UN Radio, which was launched in 1946. However, the U.N. agency noted that worldwide, up to one billion people still do not have access to radio. In Nepal, for example, almost one fifth of the people live in areas without radio coverage. |
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 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, Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 31 |
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
 |
Latin America news |
 Ministerio
de Gobernación, Policía
y Seguridad Pública/Paul Gamboa The
two new patrol boats.
Two speedy boats
ready
to patrol the Pacific By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas is putting into service two $200,000 patrol boats that are supposed to be capable of speeds up to 93 kph (about 58 mph). They have three 200-horsepower motors, and are designed to be interceptors. The boats were presented over the weekend in Puntarenas. Each is 11.5 meters (about 38 feet) and can carry four persons. The security ministry to which the coast guard agency is attached, said the boats would be used for fighting illegal fishing and drug trafficking. Colombian drug smugglers typically use similar open boats with three outboard motors. They are capable of high speed and usually are first intercepted by helicopters. The Guardacostas also received a catamaran donated by Mar Viva, the environmental group. It will be used to patrol the area around Isla de Coco. Armed men invade complex By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Three men with guns invaded a complex of six apartments Saturday morning in Cartago. The Judicial Investigating Organization said that the men forced the front gate about 11:30 a.m. Only one occupant was home, agents said. He was pistol whipped. The apartments are occupied mainly by university students. The intruders broke into each apartment. What the men took has not been determined because all of the occupants have not been interviewed, agents said. Newcomers seeking adventure By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Newcomer's Club has begun an adventure group that organizes day and weekend trips. The group is holding its first meeting Tuesday at 9 a.m. The meeting will be at a guarded condo in Escazú. More information and directions can be obtained at 4030-1644 or by emailing atjessicamarzban@aol.com. |
|
Latin
American news feeds are disabled on archived pages.
|
|
| Costa Rican News |
AMCostaRicaArchives.com |
Retire NOW in Costa Rica |
CostaRicaReport.com |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
Jo
Stuart |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
James
DeRoy
