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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 43
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Police seek to
reduce drug gang murders
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Fuerza Publica said that 73 persons were murder victims already this year. Some 40 died in January, and 33 were victims in February. Police officials attribute many of the killings to drug gangs. There are continual territorial wars and there is lethal punishment for violating gang rules. The totals are not unusual. Police said that Judicial Investigating Organization figures show that 453 persons were murdered in 2014 and 411 died in 2013. The Fuerza Pública said that what it can do best to stem the murder totals is to concentrate on interdicting shipments of drugs. The Fuerza Pública is not an investigative organization, but the sister agency, the anti-drug police, are investigators. Still most of the investigating is done by the judicial police.  Ministerio de Sguridad Públca
photo
The Fuerza
Pública confiscated this lot of watches and costumejewelry from a bus driver at a checkpoint on the Interamericana Sur Monday. Police said there was about $2,000 worth of items here.  Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute photo
This is one of the Bocas del Toro caterpillar
Caterpillar
outbreak is a mystery in Bocas
By the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute news staff
Earlier this month, bloggers in Bocas del Toro drew attention to an island in Dolphin Bay near Bocatorito where red mangrove trees are drying out. “I watched this particular mangrove go from green to brown in a matter of two weeks,” wrote sailboat captain Steven Guling in a note to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute staff scientist Andrew Altieri. “One local kid who often comes to my boat while in Dolphin Bay was describing a worm with teeth but at the time it wasn't quite that clear and I thought he was referring to something in the water.” Altieri has studied crabs that defoliate coastal habitats. “The first question is what is causing the outbreak, and the next question is how the area will recover, which will depend on what is eating the trees and other local environmental factors,” he said. The trees were festooned with spikey, neon-green caterpillars. Based on a couple of photographs, Ilka Feller, a mangrove expert and senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland, identified the suspect as a member of the moth genus Automeris, in the same insect family as the Saturniidae. “I believe that the caterpillar is Automeris io. I’ve found it on the mangroves at a number of locations at Bocas, but never in such large numbers,” Ms. Feller wrote. “Outbreaks like this are difficult to explain because they happen so infrequently. I'm pretty sure this guy only eats leaves. I haven't seen it eating the apical buds. So, if the apical bud is not damaged, after the caterpillars are gone, the trees will leaf out again.” There are more than 125 species in the genus Automeris. And it is a challenge to identify plants and animals based on photos. Distinguishing different species may require counting the number of hairs on a body part or some other detail that is not visible in images. Annette Aiello, a research institute staff scientist whose specialty is the lepidopterans, butterflies and moths, said: “A. io is a good match, though a few more photographs, especially one of the head would be helpful. One has several black marks that lead me to suspect that this individual has been parasitized by wasps.” Wasps parasitize the caterpillars, injecting their eggs into their soft bodies, where they feed and eventually kill their hosts. Another set of photos with close-ups of the head and better photographs of the body brought a different response. “Based on photograph 3047, which shows the dotted pattern between body segments, I will change my diagnosis to either Automeris jucunda or A. tridens,” said Ms. Aiello. “Whatever these guys are, the females lay lots of eggs, and all you need is a few of them to produce an outbreak such as the one you describe, especially if, at the outset, their parasitoids are temporarily in short supply. An outbreak would not be surprising given that mangroves tend to be relatively isolated from other habitats. Mommy Nature will bring them back under control,” she said. Cruz Roja locates drowning victim By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Cruz Roja said staffers found the body of a man missing in the Tortuguero Canal when his boat overturned Saturday. That was Monday. The man was identified as Adelino Muñoz. Another crew in the province of Limón is seeking a man identified as Keneth Baldeespada. He disappeared in heavy surf over the weekend. He is 25. Four rescue workers were seeking him Monday without success. In Cantagallo de Cariari the rescue workers were seeking a youth who fell into a local river while fishing, the Cruz Roja said. Pediatricians report pressure over vaccines By the University of Colorado School of
Medicine news staff
Pediatricians are facing increasing pressure from some parents who want to spread out the recommended vaccine schedule for their children by postponing vaccines, pointing to a need for improved programs that support timely vaccinations, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine at the Anschutz Medical Campus. The study, published in the April 2015 issue of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, found that almost all pediatricians and health care providers encounter requests to spread out vaccines and that, despite risks, increasing numbers of physicians are agreeing to do so. "Many physicians reported tension between the need to build trust with families by being willing to compromise on the schedule while simultaneously feeling they were putting children at risk and causing them unnecessary pain by spreading out vaccines on multiple visits," writes Allison Kempe, professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and Children's Hospital Colorado. In the study, "Pediatrician Response to Parental Requests to Spread Out the Recommended Vaccine Schedule," published online March 2, pediatricians and family physicians responded to email and mail surveys between June through October 2012 on the frequency of requests to spread out the recommended vaccine schedule from parents with children under 2 years of age. In an average month, 93 percent of respondents reported requests from parents to spread out vaccinations and roughly one-fifth of respondents reported that 10 percent or more of parents made such requests. The majority of providers report agreeing to do so either often/always or sometimes, even though the majority (87 percent) of respondents also said those delays put children at risk for contracting vaccine preventable diseases and thought it was more painful for children to bring them back repeatedly for separate injections (84 percent). The majority of respondents also felt that they would build trust with families if they agreed to spread out the vaccines, and if they did not agree, families might leave their practice. Physicians reported a wide variety of reasons that parents reported for wanting to spread out the vaccines, including short- and long-term complications, belief that their child is unlikely to get a vaccine-preventable disease and concern that their child would develop autism. Most physicians reported using many different strategies to convince parents to stick with the recommended vaccine schedule, but few of those were considered effective. Dr. Kempe and her co-authors write that delaying or spreading out vaccines results in higher rates of under-vaccination and puts children and other vulnerable people in the population at risk for vaccine preventable diseases with potentially severe outcomes.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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and may
not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 43 | |
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| After nearly a year, Casa Presidencial vehicles still are
missing |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Shortly after Luis Guillermo Solís took office nearly a year ago, aides noticed that there were fewer vehicles at Casa Presidencial than records said there should be. Solís even mentioned this during his 100-day speech. Now Casa Presidencial has completed a study that finds officials are short 115 vehicles. All that are available are 43 vehicles, said a report. |
Aides are
blaming inadequate controls by previous administrations. A complaint
has been filed with the prosecutor's office. Casa Presidencial also said Monday that a decree had been issued asking other government offices to keep an eye out for the missing vehicles. A summary said that aides do not assume that anything illegal happened, but they do not have any evidence that the vehicles were legally transferred. |
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Neighbors
object to search
and shower agents with rocks By the A.M. Costa Rica staff A policeman's lot is not a happy one especially when a search is required of a León XIII property. That section of Tibás is well known as a problem area. Agents of the Judicial Investigating Organization went to a home there Monday for a search. The neighbors do not like law enforcement, so the judicial agents were showered with rocks. When Fuerza Pública officers arrived in force, they, too, were greeted with rocks and other thrown objects. In all, 11 persons were detained. Five face allegations of throwing rocks at police officers, known in the penal code as aggression against a public official. Six others were held for disorderly conduct. |
 Ministerio de Seguridad Pública
photo
Fuerza
Pública officers arrived in force.
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| Environmentalists seek names on a petition to stop shark
finning |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Most expats and Costa Ricans thought that the prohibition against shark fining was settled. The landing of shark fins and their export were prohibited, it appeared. But now environmentalists are conducting an Internet campaign to prevent the export of 2,000 shark fins. The fins are a premium item in China where the shark product ends up as soup. The Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación has granted a permit for exporting the shark fins. The environmentalists note that the hammerhead shark is endangered. |
In addition,
Costa Rica exported 411 kilos of hammerhead shark fins
last December, said the Programa Restauracion de Tortugas Marinas,
known as PRETOMA. That shipment stemmed from what the conservation organization called an irregular effort by the Instituto Costarricense de Pesca y Acuicultura, the Ministerio de Ambiente, Energía y Mares and representatives of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. That shipment represented the fins of some 59 sharks the organization said. The organization has posted a petition on shark finning on its Web site in English HERE!. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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2015 and may
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 43 | |||||
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| Two climate studies cite danger of California and Syrian
droughts |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It's the kind of scenario that climate scientists have long predicted. According to a new study, climate change helped set off a chain of events leading to the Syrian civil war. Another study in the same issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found the record-breaking drought crippling the most populous and most productive state in the U.S. bears the same hallmark of climate change. The two studies point to the possibility of clear and present dangers from a threat often considered to be far in the future. From 2007 to 2010, Syria was devastated by the worst drought in the country’s recorded history. Crops failed and livestock died, driving an estimated 1.5 million people from their homes. “These people picked up their families and en masse migrated to the urban areas to try and survive,” said climatologist and lead study author Colin Kelley. “They weren’t thinking about the future. They were thinking about the present.” The new arrivals came on the heels of as many as 1.5 million refugees who fled Iraq after the U.S. invasion in 2003. The exodus of internally displaced people “was a very large population shock for these urban areas in Syria that you could argue were on the margin of sustainability in their stress for food and water even before this occurred,” Kelley added. Neglected by the government, these overcrowded and underserved settlements became breeding grounds of discontent that erupted in April of 2011, the study said. Working at Columbia University, Kelley and colleagues studied temperature and precipitation trends since 1931 and climate models of greenhouse gas impacts. They found that the warming and drying the region has experienced since the mid-20th century fits well with the models of climate change. They calculate that global warming has raised the odds of a devastating drought in the region two- to three-fold over natural variation. “We’re not saying that global warming or climate change triggered or caused the uprising,” Kelley said. “What we are saying is that it basically exacerbated the drought that occurred, made it more severe -- the most severe in the observed record. And that this set about a chain of events that ultimately led to the uprising.” “But,” he added, “this was also due to Syria’s acute vulnerability when the drought hit.” He noted that |
government
policies had encouraged farmers to drain groundwater
reserves, leaving them exposed when drought hit. And the country’s
population had been growing rapidly before the uprising, putting more
strain on resources. Meanwhile, another study suggests climate change has made more likely the kind of crippling drought facing the U.S. state of California. One in eight Americans lives in California. The state produces 12 percent of the nation’s GDP, and more than 10 percent of its farm income. A recent study did not find climate change had altered the state’s precipitation patterns. It concluded that the drought is mostly due to natural weather variations. But precipitation is only half the equation, according to study author Noah Diffenbaugh, climate scientist at Stanford University. California has wet years and dry years, Diffenbaugh said, but “we do know from looking at the historical record that low precipitation years have been much more likely — greater than two times more likely — to produce drought if they co-occur with warm conditions. And what we’ve found in California is that there’s been a very clear long-term warming.” That has raised the odds that a year will be both warm and dry, which makes drought much more likely. “That increase in probability doesn’t occur without the human contribution of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere,” he added. And in both California and Syria, the future looks to be warmer and drier still. Diffenbaugh said when global climate reaches 2 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures, which the U.N. has set as the limit of tolerable warming, every year will be warm or exceptionally warm in California. That means that regardless of whether precipitation patterns change, drought will be very likely in those years with little rain. Climate models also predict that Syria and the surrounding region will get drier in the coming decades. “From a farmer’s point of view, it doesn’t bode well for the future if what the climate models are predicting is true,” he said. And, he added, it raises questions about future civil stability if the trends continue. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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2015 and may
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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Netanyahu has deep roots in U.S. and many friends By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a deep bond with the United States and Americans. And as he prepares to give a controversial speech to the U.S. Congress in Washington today, he knows the halls of political power in America as well as many home-bred U.S. politicos. The man nicknamed “Bibi” was born in Tel Aviv in 1949. But seven years later, his father brought the family to the suburbs of Philadelphia. Professor Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a Jewish historian and staunch Zionist, was no stranger to the U.S. During the 1940s, the elder Netanyahu had spent eight years in the U.S. as the executive director of the New Zionist Organization, lobbying for the creation of an Israeli state and the rescue of Europe’s Jews. Ben-Zion is credited for having convinced the Republican Party to adopt into the GOP platform a call for “refuge for millions of distressed Jewish men, women, and children driven from their homes by tyranny” and establishment of a "free and democratic" Jewish state. The Democrats followed suit a month later. The Israeli state that the elder Netanyahu envisioned did not include dividing then-Palestine, but creating a single Israel that would include present-day Jordan. Ben-Zion’s views were uncompromising. “The Bible finds no worse image than this of the man from the desert,” Time magazine quoted him in a 2009 interview. “And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases … His existence is one of perpetual war.” Observers say the younger Netanyahu was raised on a fear of the enemy. It was almost inevitable, they say, that the son would cling to his father’s ideology. “To a considerable degree, Bibi Netanyahu’s internal struggle as prime minister is a struggle between an inherited ideology and the tug of political contingencies,” columnist David Remick wrote in the New Yorker in May, 1998. “His dilemma is always to what degree he can, or should, remain true to the ideals, the stubbornness, of his father.” Just as his father had, the younger Netanyahu seemed to split his time between the U.S. and Israel. In 1967, he returned home to join the Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli Defense Force's elite special forces unit. In 1972, he was discharged from the Israeli Defense Force and returned to the U.S. to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In October 1973, he returned to Israel for 40 days to fight in the Yom Kippur War. He then returned to the U.S. and spent the next four years studying at MIT, where he earned two degrees, in architecture and management. A former professor, Leon B. Groisser, would later remember Netanyahu as bright, organized, strong and powerful. “He knew what he wanted to do and how to get it done,” the professor said in June 1996. “He's not the flippant, superficial person I keep reading about in the newspapers. He was organized and committed.” In May 1976, he began work on his doctorate in political science, but left the U.S. abruptly after his brother Yonatan was killed in June 1976 during an Israeli rescue operation to free passengers of an Air France airliner being held in Uganda. Upon another return to the U.S., he was recruited as a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in Massachusetts, working at the company between 1976 and 1978. He developed a good friendship with one of his colleagues there, future U.S. presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Romney later said Netanyahu had a strong personality with a distinct point of view. It was during the 1970s that Netanyahu, now in his 20s, changed his name to Benjamin Ben Nitay, after a Talmudic sage by the same name. Netanyahu said he changed his name so that it could be more easily pronounced by Americans, but critics in Israel later said that he was more American than Israeli. He was only 28 when he appeared in a debate on Boston public television about the Middle East. Introduced as a “graduate of MIT, an Israeli, and a man who has written widely about the Palestinian issue,” Netanyahu said he thought the U.S. should oppose the creation of a Palestinian state: “It is unjust to demand the creation of a 22nd Arab state and a second Palestinian state at the expense of the only Jewish state,” he said. “I believe we should fight for our survival. If I have to, I will fight again, but I hope not to.” Devastated over the loss of his brother in Uganda, Netanyahu helped form the Jerusalem-based Jonathan Institute of Peace with a purpose, he later wrote, “to educate free societies as to the nature of terrorism and the methods needed to fight it.” He organized two international conferences on terror in Jerusalem, which were attended by a number of leading U.S. political figures, including George P. Schultz, former FBI director William Webster and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick. In those conferences, Netanyahu detailed how, he believed, the Soviets were training Muslim terrorists, and, it is said, strongly influenced the way the U.S. crafted its war on terror. When former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Moshe Arens came to Washington, he appointed Netanyahu as his information minister. From this point on, the young diplomat’s rise was meteoric. In 1984, Netanyahu was appointed Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. Returning to Israel in 1988, he was elected to the Knesset on the Likud Party list and was appointed deputy minister of foreign affairs. He became one of Israel’s most effective and recognizable spokesmen. During the first three days of the 1991 Gulf War, he gave 50 television and radio interviews to international media. “With Netanyahu, the American television viewer was provided with someone who looks and sounds like us and who markets a tried-and-true product: Israel, the American ally, securing Washington's interests in the Middle East against radical Soviet-Arab-Muslim terrorist bogeymen,” commented political analyst and journalist Leon T. Hadar that year. Netanyahu has given many speeches in Washington. But two stand out in particular. In January 1998 during his first premiership, Netanyahu addressed hundreds of Christian and Jewish supporters at a Washington, D.C., hotel. He also met with Christian evangelical leader Jerry Falwell, an avowed Bill Clinton-hater who had accused the U.S. president of drug peddling and even murder. “By stressing his alliance with some of the administration's fiercest critics, Netanyahu steered the pro-Israel effort — traditionally and obsessively bipartisan — in the direction of the partisan wars,” read one commentary at the time. In a speech to the U.S. Congress in 2011, Netanyahu got 20 standing ovations for his comments. “Israel will not return to the indefensible boundaries of 1967,” he said. It was clear, the Christian Science Monitor noted, that Congress stood with Israel, not with U.S. President Barack Obama. Today Netanyahu will address Congress once again, this time to try to block a nuclear deal with Iran. News reports say more than 30 Democrats plan to boycott the event. One poll shows that almost half of all American voters say that Congress should not have invited Netanyahu to speak without first notifying the President Obama. “It’s important for us to maintain these protocols, because the U.S.-Israeli relationship is not about a particular party,” Obama said, explaining why he would not be meeting with Netanyahu this time around. “The way to preserve that is to make sure that it doesn’t get clouded with what could be perceived as partisan politics.” But in a Monday morning speech in Washington to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, Netanyahu expressed boundless gratitude to both parties in the U.S. Congress for their long-term support of the Jewish state. Islamic State losing allies over brutality, top spy says By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The top U.S. intelligence official says the Islamic State’s penchant for publicizing beheadings and other brutal forms of punishment is hurting the terror group’s bottom line. “These brutalities, publicized brutalities by ISIL, beheading and immolations and the like, have really had a galvanizing effect even in the Mideast,” The U.S. director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said at an appearance Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Clapper said intelligence officials have seen a big decline in donations to the Islamic State, saying donations were reduced to “less than one percent of their total revenue from last year.” He said some of the decline in donations was also due to increased oversight from governments, especially in the Middle East, sometimes with help from the United States. U.S. officials have said previously most of the Islamic State’s money has come from robbery and extortion, oil sales and ransom payments for kidnapping victims. But just last month, a top U.S. Treasury official said Washington had been having some important successes in denying the Islamic State access to revenue and in limiting its ability to use the money it did have. Profits from selling oil on the black market, once estimated to net the Islamic State several million dollars per week, has been especially hurt by targeted air strikes by U.S. and coalition warplanes, the officials said. Still, Clapper said the effort to defeat the Islamic State still faces numerous challenges, none more difficult than finding ways to counter the group’s narrative in the Muslim world, “given the general lack of popularity of the United States in many of these countries.” “In the end, our ability to do that and to really influence change in attitudes and change in worldview is only going to come about when the people there, themselves, do that,” he said. Clapper also noted difficulties in countering the Islamic State in Syria, which he said is “compounded by the fact that we're actually not there." Death penalty is possible in Boston bombing trial By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
With opening arguments scheduled to begin Wednesday in the Boston Marathon bombing trial, prosecutors have made a strong case in pre-trial evidentiary filings tying the lone survivor, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to the blasts that killed three and maimed scores. If prosecutors can persuade a jury that Tsarnaev is guilty, however, it’s an open question whether jurors can be convinced that he deserves death, experts said. “Executions are hard to get at because of a lot of related issues. Because the length of appeals, lethal injection is causing a lot of problems now,” said Richard Dieter, of the non-profit Death Penalty Information Center in Washington D.C. “We have a lot of states that don’t have the death penalty, so it is not a consensus in our country.” The jury selection process alone, which took two months to complete, underscores the difficulties of a death penalty trial. Prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred repeatedly in front of U.S. District Judge George O’Toole trying to winnow the initial pool of more than 1,300 down to 18: 12 jurors plus six alternates. Citing public opinion in Massachusetts, defense lawyers argued that it was impossible to seat an impartial jury, never mind one that would not be automatically committed to executing Tsarnaev. Last week, the court finished up the selection process, and set opening arguments for Wednesday. Defense lawyers have also sought to have the trial moved out of state, arguing again that the jury in Massachusetts will not be impartial. A federal appeals court on Friday rejected that request. The legal skirmishing is being held at Boston’s federal courthouse, just a few miles from the finish line of the Marathon, where two pressure-cooker bombs exploded on April 15, 2013. A massive manhunt four days later shut down many towns in the greater Boston area before police captured a wounded Tsarnaev. His older brother, Tamerlan, was killed in the hunt. Federal prosecutors petitioned U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for the death penalty. Holder, who openly opposes capital punishment, last year agreed, stating: “The nature of the conduct and the resultant harm compel this decision.” Capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1976, after a Supreme Court-ordered hiatus. While many states have executed inmates since that time, the federal government has tried and executed only three people: Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, drug smuggler Juan Raul Garza, and kidnapper Louis Jones. Currently, 61 federal prisoners are on death row in the United States; some have been on for more than 15 years, as various appeals make their way through the courts. By contrast, the state of Texas, one of 32 states that allows for capital punishment, has executed 72 people since 2010 alone. Massachusetts state law does not allow for the death penalty. “This was aimed at this symbolic national event,” Dieter said. “And then of course there are some international potential to -- you know, who are the defendants? Where are they from? Why did they do this— that I think evoke federal concerns.” Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty to the 30 charges he faces, and his lead lawyer, Judy Clarke, has made a name for herself in federal death penalty cases -- gaining life in prison for her clients instead of execution. Clark is known for masterfully humanizing her clients in the courtroom and softening up the jury during the guilt or innocence phase, experts said. “Mr. Tsarnaev has hit a gold mine by having Judy on his side,” said Jon Katz, a criminal defense lawyer who has met and admired Ms. Clarke for many years. “I doubt he could do any better.” “When a jury remembers that every single criminal defendant starts as an innocent baby, has a beating heart, has blood running through their veins, the jury has less trouble realizing this is not a monster,” Katz said. Once underway, the trial should unfold in two phases. The first will determine guilt or innocence for Tsarnaev for the 30 charges, not all of which mandate the death penalty. During the second phase, the same jury will decide whether he should be executed or face lesser punishment. The death penalty requires a unanimous vote from all 12 jurors. “The country I guess was waiting for a response from Washington. What are you going to do so that this never happens again?” Dieter said. “I am not sure that the death penalty succeeds in accomplishing that, but it is a response.” Bill Gates still richest man in Forbes annual listing By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates kept his spot as the world's richest man, a rank he has held for 16 of the past 21 years, Forbes magazine said Monday. The Microsoft co-founder's fortune increased $3.2 billion since last year to $79.2 billion, the business magazine said, despite a $1.5 billion gift of Microsoft shares to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in November. In second place is Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim Helu, with a net worth of $77.1 billion. Forbes said a record 290 newcomers joined the billionaires list in the last year. Nearly 25 percent of this year’s first-time billionaires hail from China, which produced a world-leading 71 newcomers. The United States came in second, with 57, followed by India with 28 and Germany with 23. Of the record 197 women, the highest-ranked was Wal-Mart Stores heiress Christy Walton, who was eighth at $41.7 billion. France's Liliane Bettencourt, who got much of her wealth from cosmetics company L'Oreal SA, was 10th at $40.1 billion. The most famous to join the list is U.S. basketball superstar Michael Jordan, thanks to his ownership of the NBA's Charlotte Hornets and payouts from his Nike brand. Jordan had a net worth of $1 billion, the magazine said. The world's youngest billionaire was 24-year-old Evan Spiegel, the CEO and co-founder of mobile messaging company Snapchat, with a net worth of $1.5 billion. Snapchat's other co-founder, 25-year-old Bobby Murphy, had the same net worth as Spiegel. Other tech billionaire newcomers were two co-founders of taxi ordering app Uber and one of its executives. Three co-founders of Airbnb, the vacation home rental Web site, also made the list. Of the 1,826 members of the Forbes billionaires ranking, 46 are under the age of 40, and just under half of them owe their fortunes to technology. The average fortune of this year’s newcomers is $1.8 billion. Altogether, they are worth $518 billion, another record. U.S. has to cut its staff at its Venezuelan embassy By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Venezuela's government has given the U.S. two weeks to slash the size of its embassy staff in Caracas to 17 diplomats as tensions between the two nations rise. Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez made the announcement Monday after a meeting with the top American diplomats in Caracas. She said it is up to the U.S. to decide which of an estimated 100 diplomats it wishes to send home. The move came after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro lashed out Saturday at what he called U.S. conspiracies against his socialist government and ordered the foreign ministry to reduce the number of officials at the American embassy from 100 to 17. He also imposed a visa requirements for American tourists. Maduro claimed that Venezuela has detained American spies, including one he said was a U.S. pilot of Latino origin. The Venezuelan president often criticizes the United States for what he says is meddling in his country's affairs. The United States has not exchanged ambassadors with the South American country since 2010. Meanwhile, four American missionaries from North Dakota, detained and deported from Venezuela last week, are recovering on the nearby island of Aruba. It is unclear whether the missionaries were the Americans Maduro was referring to when he said the government had arrested U.S. citizens engaged in espionage. Loud music's danger to teens draws World Health warning By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The World Health Organization says more than 1 billion teenagers and young adults risk losing their hearing by listening to loud music. To mark International Ear Care Day today, the U.N. agency is urging young people to turn down the volume to prevent irreversible damage to their hearing. Few things get the blood pumping and the adrenaline flowing like a Bruce Springsteen concert. The Boss’ dynamic rendition of “Born in the U.S.A.” gets his teenage audience thumping and swaying like nothing else. This joyous experience can have serious consequences for young people, however, as World Health specialist on hearing impairment Shelley Chadha explained. “When this exposure is particularly loud, prolonged or habitual, the sensory cells are damaged permanently leading to irreversible hearing loss,” said Dr. Chadha. Studies in middle-and high-income countries show nearly 50 percent of teenagers and young adults aged 12 to 35 years are exposed to unsafe levels of sound from personal audio devices, and around 40 percent are exposed to potentially damaging levels of sound at concerts, nightclubs and other entertainment venues. The World Health Organization says unsafe levels of sound vary. It can mean noise levels of 85 decibels for eight hours a day or 100 decibels for 15 minutes. Dr. Chadha said when the intensity of sound increases by three decibels, safe listening time goes down by half. “If a person takes a subway to go from one place to the other for half an hour in the morning and a half an hour in the evening, and every day has to turn up the volume on his device because there is so much of noise of the train and everything around, and is listening to -- let us say 100 decibels for one hour every day, his hearing is going to get irreversibly damaged in a few years, in a couple of years time for sure,” said Dr. Chadha. Dr. Chadha said there are simple measures to protect people from unsafe sound levels. She said young people who wear earplugs during concerts can feel as much of a rush from the music at 90 decibels as they can at 110 decibels. “The fact that earplugs may look uncool may be true today, but if there is a change in behavior that may not necessarily be true in the future and wearing earplugs may actually be cool rather than not," she said. The World Health Organization advises young people to keep the volume down on personal audio devices and limiting use to less than one hour a day. It says smart phone apps can help monitor safe listening levels. The U.N. agency estimates 360 million people suffer hearing loss due to various causes, including noise, genetic conditions, infectious diseases and aging. It noted half of all cases of hearing loss are avoidable. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 3, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 43 | |||||||||
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 Hidden Garden Art Gallery
photo
Rebeca Alvarado Soto and one of her works.
Dancing
painter's expo opens Saturday
Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Artist Rebeca Alvarado Soto opens her newest exhibit "Tropics" Saturday at the Hidden Garden Art Gallery in Liberia. "Tropics," presents the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature, with the colors demonstrative of Guanacaste. More information is available from the gallery at 2667-0592 / 8386-6872, or by email at hiddengarden.thevanstonegroup.com. Gallery Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Delicate combinations of textures and colors on canvas are focal points of the vivid and pulsating artworks created by Ms. Alvarado, the gallery said in a release. Much of her focus includes activities relating to her ballet, having most recently performed in "Desde de Sur" at the Teatro Nacional in San Jose. The artist was born in Costa Rica and formally educated as a psychologist. She has had careers in psychology, dance and choreography as well as art. "Ballet makes me see the human body in special way, because dancers use body language to communicate special things to the world that maybe can't be defined with words or writings," she was quoted as saying in a gallery release. "Dancers have a sensibility to share and feel strong emotions, as to painters: each has a special connection with their souls and minds. Dancing allows me to transfer all of that to the canvas … in colors and textures. Each discipline influences the other." "Every time I am in front of a canvas, it invades and transforms me, and it's amazing," she said. "I don’t think when I paint; I let myself be carried away, and my thoughts and feelings appear on the canvas." When she paints, she dances, and when she dances, she paints. They are interrelated, and cannot be separated, she said. |
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| From Page 7: Proposed U.S. tax system described in video By the American Citizens Abroad news staff
American Citizens Abroad Global Foundation released Monday a new video aimed at breaking down the merits of residence-based taxation in a clear and simple way for key decision makers and the public. The video, entitled "21st Century Taxation of Americans Abroad: Citizenship-based Taxation vs. Residence-based Taxation" is timely and important as the issue of how to tax Americans living and working overseas is gaining attention during congressional review of comprehensive U.S. tax reform. The video is available for viewing on the ACA Global Foundation’s home page. “Having a rational discussion of our outdated and uncompetitive current tax policy versus sound alternatives such as residence-based taxation will help inform congress in their development of new tax legislation,” said Charles Bruce, chairman of the foundation. In the video Michael Kirsch of Notre Dame University presents the rationale for citizenship-based taxation while Bernard Schneider, teaching fellow at Queen Mary University of London School of Law presents recommendations for residence-based taxation. “Significant research and education is needed to bring these issues to the attention of the American public and Congress,” said Jackie Bugnion, tax team director of American Citizens Abroad, “and our organizations have taken the lead in sponsoring informed debate and better understanding of these issues.” |
