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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 46 | |||||||||
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More than 200 carretas due
at boyero parade Sunday By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Tourism officials estimate that there will be more than 200 teams of oxen in the parade Sunday in Escazú. But the party really begins Friday when the food tents open at noon in the plaza of San Antonio de Escazú. On the menu will be a host of traditional dishes, including pozol and tamales. Saturday is a day for games and folk dances at the same location. The whole weekend will be great material for amateur photographers. The official designation is the national day of the boyero or oxcart driver. Escazú is the origin of the brightly painted ox carts that are pulled by the bueyes or oxen. Although ox carts have been painted since colonial times, the delicate artwork that sets the Costa Rican carreta apart from others, originated in Escazú in the first third of the 20th century. An Italian immigrant came up with the idea of adorning the carts with intricate colorings in the style that was typical of the Sicilian carts of his home. Although some geometric designs could be seen on earlier carts, historians generally place the flowering of the more ornate vehicles in the 1930s. Best known are the highly decorated wheels. The ox cart even has entered the supernatural realm. The carreta sin bueyes is said to be heard rolling down the street at night carrying its damned ox cart driver. The story is that the driver cursed a priest and tried to drive his oxen and cart into a church. The oxen or bueyes would not enter holy ground and, thus, were spared damnation. Not so for the driver who rolls through the night in a vehicle that could only be propelled by the Devil. Black market peso scheme alleged in an indictment Special
to A.M. Costa Rica
Two men and the import-export company they allegedly used to move millions of dollars linked to illegal activity from the United States to Mexico have been indicted on federal charges of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and structuring cash transactions. According to an indictment returned by a federal grand jury Feb. 13, the three defendants received large sums of cash and worked with peso brokers in Mexico to illegally convert the dollars to pesos. The three defendants named in the 93-count indictment are: • Peace & Rich Import, Inc., a wholesale distributor of silk flowers and other goods, located in South El Monte; • Chaur Hwan Lin, 66, of San Marino, the president and co-owner of Peace & Rich; and • Antonio Pareja, 53, of San Gabriel, the manager of Peace & Rich. Lin and Pareja ran Peace & Rich as an informal money transfer system that, according to the indictment, “was involved in facilitating the transfer of money domestically outside of the conventional financial institutions system.” An investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration in Los Angeles determined that Lin and Pareja used Peace & Rich to receive large amounts of cash derived from illegal activity. The cash – tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the indictment – was typically delivered by couriers working in conjunction with a peso broker in Mexico. In a black market peso exchange scheme, a peso broker works with an individual engaged in illegal activity, such as a drug trafficker, who has United States currency in the United States that he needs to bring to Mexico and convert to pesos, according to the indictment. The peso broker finds business owners in Mexico who buy goods from vendors in the United States, such as Peace & Rich, and need dollars to pay for those goods. The peso broker arranges for the illegally obtained dollars in the United States to be delivered to the United States-based vendors, such as Peace & Rich, where they are used to pay for the goods purchased by the Mexico-based customers. Once the goods are shipped to Mexico and sold by the Mexico-based business owner for pesos, the pesos are turned over to the peso broker, who then pays the drug trafficker in Mexico. The indictment alleges that Peace & Rich took in large amounts of cash and conducted transactions without being registered as a money transmitting business and without filing currency transaction reports, which are required when a business accepts cash payments of more than $10,000. Lin and Pareja allegedly disbursed cash as directed by a peso broker in Mexico to couriers for delivery to other United States-based businesses on behalf of their Mexico-based customers. Additionally, Lin allegedly structured cash deposits – or, made a series of deposits that were less than $10,000 – to avoid the filing of transaction reports by the financial institutions where the deposits were made.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 46 | |
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| Page One is HERE! Page 2 is HERE! Page 4 is HERE! | NEXT PAGE |
| It looks
like a melon but the instructions call for a hammer to prepare it for
the table.
It's the chiverre, a traditional Semana Santa sweet treat. In the photo are three different ways to serve it: chiverre
with pink sugar, with black sugar cane or con tapa de dulce de
caña and finally by using a trapiche or small mill
to create a conserve. |
A.M. Costa Rica/Saray
Ramírez Vindas
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Chiverre is squash that looks like a watermelon, but the shell is very hard. Inside, the texture is similar to that of a pumpkin but colored white. The season for collecting this member of the cucurbit family (Cucurbita
ficifolia) coincides with Holy Week and Easter, and hundreds of
roadside stands have them available. It is a Semana Santa staple. Supermarkets have them now. Costa Ricans use them in many ways, mostly sweet and based on brown sugar, white sugar, in conservas and the famous miel de chiverre or chiverre honey. You can mix prepared chiverre with coconut and you can put in tamarindo seeds, but the basic preparation is the same. Miel de chiverre Ingredients. A lot of patience (Tapas of dulce de caña are the little circular blocks of brown sugar available at every market.) |
Preparation
Make a fire or use a kitchen burner to char as much as possible of the shell of the chiverre. When done, hit the shell with a hammer to expose the contents that looks like Chinese spaghetti or fine hairs. Chiverre, by the way sometimes is called spaghetti squash. Now the contents must be dried. You can use the clothes drier
to reduce the moisture. A clean pillowcase can be used to protect the
chiverre. When the chiverre contents are drier, cook it in a big
pot on low heat. In the pot put your preferred sugar, white or brown. Cover the entire flesh of the chiverre with sugar, tamarindo seeds, cinnamon, cloves (called clavos de olor in Costa Rica) lemon or orange peel and, if desired, coconut. The chiverre will produce enough liquid for this process. Cover the pot and let it cook slowly and reduce for 90 minutes. Don't forget to stir often. This delicacy is available in most of the country's supermarkets if you are not handy with a hammer. Also available is chiverre en conserva (about 800 colons for a 500-gram bottle). That's about $1.70 a pound. This product is used like jelly in empanadas and other dishes
where a touch of sweetness is desired. Written by Saray Ramírez
Vindas and originally published April 7, 2004.
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| Replica firearms sent to the chopping
block by police officials |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Law enforcement officials routinely chop up firearms that have been used in crimes or confiscated from persons without permission to carry them. But Sunday the Dirección General de Armamento of the security ministry chopped up replicas that had been used in crimes. There so-called toy guns are nearly identical to the originals in some cases. In fact, security ministry officials said that replica firearms are |
used in three of every 10 robberies. There were 487 replica weapons on the chopping block Sunday. They had been confiscated and held until judicial officials gave the go ahead for destruction. Government officials also oppose the use by the young of replicas of weapons, although youngsters are attracted to them. Some of the replicas that were destroyed were models of rifles and even AK-47s, officials said. Armory workers used a chop saw to effect the destruction. |
| Five held as suspects in scam involving
state insurance company |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Five persons, two men and three women, have been detained on allegations that they have been defrauding the Instituto Nacional de Seguros. All are employees of the government insurance company and worked in Heredia. The Judicial Investigating Organization said the insurance firm was alerted by bank workers because of continuous deposits of significant sums into one account. |
Judicial agents said that the
individuals are accused of activating old automobile insurance claims
and diverting the settlement money to their own use. The amount involved may be as much as 200 million colons, about $400,000. Agents searched locations in Heredia Centro and San Francisco and San Pedro de Barva as well as other offices of the insurance firm. |
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| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 46 | |||||
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 Original artwork by Danielle Byerley
This image is a reconstruction
of Culebrasuchus mesoamericanus
in its ancient coastal environment in Panamá.© Florida Museum of Natural History Excavations at Panama Canal turn up three new creatures By
the University of Florida news service
Paleontologists have discovered remarkably well-preserved fossils of two crocodilians and a mammal previously unknown to science during recent Panama Canal excavations that began in 2009. The two new ancient extinct alligator-like animals and an extinct hippo-like species inhabited Central America during the Miocene about 20 million years ago. The research expands the range of ancient animals in the subtropics — some of the most diverse areas today about which little is known historically because lush vegetation prevents paleontological excavations — and may be used to better understand how climate change affects species dispersal today. The two studies appear online in the same issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The fossils shed new light on scientists’ understanding of species distribution because they represent a time before the formation of the Isthmus of Panama, when the continents of North and South America were separated by oceanic waters. “In part we are trying to understand how ecosystems have responded to animals moving long distances and across geographic barriers in the past,” said study co-author Jonathan Bloch, associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the University of Florida campus. “It’s a testing ground for things like invasive species – if you have things that migrated from one place into another in the past, then potentially you have the ability to look at what impact a new species might have on an ecosystem in the future.” The research was funded by the National Science Foundation Panama Canal Partnerships in International Research and Education project, which supports paleontological excavation of the canal during construction expected to continue through 2014. “We’re very fortunate we could get the funding . . . to take advantage of this opportunity — we’re getting to sample these areas that are completely unsampled,” said Alex Hastings, lead author of the crocodilian study and a visiting instructor at Georgia Southern University who conducted the research for the project as a graduate student in Florida. Researchers analyzed all known crocodilian fossils from the Panama Canal, including the oldest records of Central American caimans, which are cousins of alligators. The more primitive species, named Culebrasuchus mesoamericanus, may represent an evolutionary transition between caimans and alligators, Hastings said. “You mix an alligator and one of the more primitive caimans and you end up with this caiman that has a much flatter snout, making it more like an alligator,” Hastings said. “Before this, there were no fossil crocodilian skulls known from Central America.” Christopher Brochu, an assistant professor of vertebrate paleontology in the department of geoscience at the University of Iowa, said the caiman fossil record is tantalizing, and the new data shows there is still a long way to go before researchers understand the group. “The fossils that are in this paper are from a later time period, but some of them appear to be earlier-branching groups, which could be very important,” said Brochu, who was not involved with the study. “The problem is, because we know so little about early caiman history, it’s very difficult to tell where these later forms actually go on the family tree.” The new mammal species researchers described is an anthracothere, Arretotherium meridionale, an even-toed hooved mammal previously thought to be related to living hippos and intensively studied on the basis of its hypothetical relationship with whales. About the size of a cow, the mammal would have lived in a semi-aquatic environment in Central America, said lead author and graduate student Aldo Rincon. “With the evolution of new terrestrial corridors like this peninsula connecting North America with Central America, this is one of the most amazing examples of the different kind of paths land animals can take,” Rincon said. “Somehow this anthracothere is similar to anthracotheres from other continents like northern Africa and northeastern Asia.” Researchers also name a second crocodilian species, Centenariosuchus gilmorei, after Charles Gilmore, who first reported evidence of crocodilian fossils collected during construction of the canal 100 years ago. The genus is named in honor of the canal’s centennial in 2014. Researchers will continue excavating deposits from the Panama Canal during construction to widen and straighten the channel and build new locks. Study co-authors include Bruce MacFadden of the University of Florida and Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. |
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| 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 S.A. 2013 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 |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 46 | |||||||||
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 Government
of Venezuela photo
Hugo ChávezSupporters mourn Chávez as country's great leader By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Venezuelan officials say President Hugo Chávez has died after a long struggle with cancer. Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced the death on national television Tuesday. He urged the Venezuelan people to show strength and courage, and to be united and fulfill the expectations of "this great leader." The 58-year-old Chávez had been treated in Cuba for cancer before returning to Caracas last month. Officials say he came down with a severe infection after strong chemotherapy in a Caracas military hospital. Chávez had cancer in his pelvis. He has not been seen in public since December and missed his inauguration for another term in January. The secretary general of the Organization of American States, Jose Miguel Insulza, sent his condolences to the Venezuelan people, calling this a time of great sorrow. The OAS will hold a special meeting in memory of President Chávez. Vice President Maduro Tuesday accused Venezuela's enemies of attacking the president with cancer. He did not say how that could have been done. Also Tuesday, Venezuela expelled two U.S. diplomats, accusing them of meeting with military officers and plotting to destabilize the government. The two diplomats are air attaches, U.S. Air Force officers who are stationed in the embassy. A statement from the U.S. State Department rejected the Venezuelan claim about the diplomats and calls accusations that the United States was involved in causing Chávez's cancer absurd. Chávez once dreamed of becoming a professional baseball player, but instead he entered the world of politics. During his lifetime, the controversial president courted figures such as Fidel Castro of Cuba, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and then-Libyan leader Moammar Gadhadi. As an army paratrooper in 1992, Chávez led an unsuccessful coup against then-president Carlos Andrés Pérez, and he spent time in jail for plotting the failed coup. Chávez's political fortunes later changed. He was elected president of oil-rich Venezuela in 1998, running on a populist platform and pledging to wipe out poverty and corruption. He considered himself a revolutionary and said he was inspired by his political mentor, Fidel Castro, who held power for close to 50 years in Cuba. Critics often accused Chávez of steering Venezuela toward a Cuban-style one-party dictatorship. Political analyst Luis Vicente León says Venezuela became undemocratic under the president's growing authoritarian rule. "We rediscovered the needs of the poor classes, we rediscovered that it was necessary to tend to their problems," he said. "What are the negatives? Well, I think the most important of all is that Venezuela's democracy nowadays is quite a poor democracy." Chávez was a fierce critic of the United States, which he often referred to as "the empire," and he accused the U.S. of supporting coup attempts against him, charges Washington denied. Back in 2006, he famously referred to then-U.S. president George W. Bush as the Devil during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. "Yesterday the devil was here at this very spot. This podium where it is now my turn to speak still smells of sulfur," Chávez said. As president, Chávez nationalized major companies across a range of industries from oil, steel and cement, to electricity and telecommunications. He also directed funds from the country's oil wealth to social programs for the needy. Additionally, he used electoral victories to extend the presidential term to six years and remove term limits. Michael Shifter, an analyst with the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, says the president's leftist policies hurt long-term economic development and contributed to rising crime. But he says Chávez will be remembered as a champion of the people who used his country's vast oil wealth to provide the poor with free housing and health care. "There is nobody around who has the charisma and the ability to connect to Venezuelans the way Chávez did. Chávez as a figure and the memory of Chávez won't disappear. That will help sustain the movement," Shifter said. Chávez also earned the ire of critics by cracking down on the opposition media. The human rights body of the Organization of American States voiced concern about the use of the punitive power of the state to silence opponents in Venezuela. In 2008, Venezuela and Ecuador broke diplomatic relations with Bogota after Colombian troops raided a Colombian rebel camp in Ecuador, killing a rebel commander and several other people. Ties between Venezuela and Colombia soured over accusations that Venezuela harbors rebels. Venezuela denied financing and supporting the rebels. Chávez, however, helped win the release of some Colombians held hostage. In June 2011, Chávez was diagnosed with cancer and subsequently underwent surgeries in Cuba to remove tumors from his pelvic area. He then underwent chemotherapy both in Cuba and Venezuela for the disease. The president did not disclose what kind of cancer was being treated, but insisted he would be ready to run for re-election in October 2012. Chávez won a fourth term, but underwent a fourth cancer operation in Cuba in December. He was not seen in public after that, although a photograph of him with two daughters was released in the weeks prior to his death. Chávez was to have been sworn in this past January, but the event did not occur because he was not well enough for the occasion. Obama statement expresses hope for better relations By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. President Barack Obama has marked the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, saying the United States looks forward to improved relations with Venezuela. Obama's statement on the passing of the Venezuelan leader was brief, one paragraph in all. At this challenging time, Obama said, the U.S. reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with Venezuela's government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, Obama continued, the U.S. remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights. President Obama met President Chávez only once. In 2009, they shook hands in a hotel meeting room on the sidelines of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. Chavez's anti-American rhetoric, which reached a peak during the administration of former president George W. Bush, continued during the Obama administration. After Obama voiced concern that Chavez's government had aided Colombia's leftist guerrillas, Chávez said Obama had the same stench as former president Bush. In written responses last year to Venezuela's El Universal newspaper, Obama voiced concern about Chávez government actions that he said "restricted universal rights, threatened basic democratic values and failed to contribute to security in the region." At the same time, Obama said he hoped to eventually have a better relationship with Venezuela. The Obama administration continued to criticize Chavez's close ties with Iran and Syria, as did critics of Chávez in the U.S. Congress. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republican Ed Royce, issued a statement Tuesday calling President Chavez a tyrant and saying "his death dents the alliance of anti-U.S. leftist leaders in South America." Maduro and Capriles race is likely to fill presidency By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez from an undisclosed form of cancer clears the way for new elections to determine whether his socialist revolution lives on without him. Elections would have to be held within 30 days. Vice President Nicolas Maduro is Chavez's chosen successor, but he could face a challenge from Miranda state Gov. Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chávez in the October 2012 election. The 50-year-old Maduro somberly announced on national television Tuesday that Chávez had died. Maduro was one of the Venezuelan officials who had traveled to Cuba to visit Chávez during the president's medical treatment on the island. Prior to the announcement that Chávez had succumbed to his illness, Maduro held a meeting with the cabinet, military officers and state governors in Caracas. State television said its purpose was "to define strategies regarding various projects for the development of our country." Also Tuesday, Maduro accused Venezuela's enemies of attacking the president with cancer. Maduro is a former bus driver and labor union leader who sports a thick moustache. He held the post of foreign minister for six years. Heavy snow storm moving across U.S. to eastern states By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A late winter storm dumped heavy snow on the midwestern United States Tuesday contributing to numerous highway crashes and flight cancellations as it moved east toward the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic states. More than 1,000 flights were cut in and out of Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports and 107 more were cancelled in and out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, according to the FlightAware.com flight tracking service. In western Wisconsin, a semi-tractor trailer truck flipped off an Interstate 94 bridge and fully submerged in the Red Cedar River in Menomonie early Tuesday, said Christine Ouellete, a Wisconsin Transportation Department spokeswoman. Slick roads contributed to numerous crashes and a slow commute across the border in Minnesota. Driving conditions remained difficult along highways in parts of North Dakota. Roads in northwest Illinois had patches of ice and snow on Tuesday and road crews were bracing in northeast Illinois for the storm, which began dropping snow on Chicago near the middle of the morning rush hour. Chicago was forecast to get 4 to 8 inches (10 to 20 cm) of snow, down about two inches from a previous forecast, according to the National Weather Service. The heaviest snow was expected Tuesday afternoon in the region, up to one inch per hour, and was expected to snarl the evening rush hour. The storm was expected to move eastward over the Ohio Valley and then the central Appalachians and mid-Atlantic states on Wednesday, hitting Washington with its biggest snowfall in possibly two years, the National Weather Service said. Winter storm warnings were in effect for all or parts of 16 states from the Upper Midwest to the mid-Atlantic on Tuesday, National Weather Service spokesman Chris Vaccaro said. The storm was forecast to move across Ohio and the Tennessee Valley and merge with a developing storm off the mid-Atlantic states that could produce heavy, wet snow overnight and through Wednesday into the mid-Atlantic states that could bring down trees and power lines, Vaccaro said. "It will be a wet, heavy, gloppy snow consistent with wallpaper paste," he said. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa
Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 46 | |||||||||
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Public
employee strike possible for Friday By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The government is gearing up for another strike by teachers and other public employees Friday. The complaint is a government plan to adjust salaries. The Asociación de Profesores de Segunda Enseñanza is leading the job action, which will involve a march to Casa Presidencial. The Asociación Nacional de Educadores said it has not yet decided if it will join the strike, but it did issue a blistering statement about the proposal from the government. The organization said that public employees might lose half their salary. The central government is trying to make salaries more uniform throughout the executive branch. A statement Tuesday from the Ministro de Trabajo y Seguridad Social urged negotiations and said that no final decisions have been made on the salary issue. Report on Sámara earthquake is available free and online By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Earthquake fans will have a treat poring over a 134-page report on the Sept. 5 earthquake off the coast of Sámara last Sept. 5. The 7.6 quake was the second strongest ever recorded in the country. The Red Sismológica Nacional at the Universidad de Costa Rica compiled mountains of data, including a summary by location as to how the quake was felt. For example, in Puerto Viejo de Sarapaquí the quake was felt strongly and a metal bridge collapsed. The report also offers a detailed description of what is taking place below the Pacific coast that causes quakes. Also included is a list of many of the 3,833 aftershocks that the quake generated. The .pdf file is free and can be found HERE! Air pistol robbery suspect detained at his home By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Agents said that a bandit used an air pistol to stickup a pedestrian Jan. 31 in San Sebastián in the southern part of the capital. They arrested a suspect Tuesday and made a search of his dwelling. The 25-year-old victim was on his way home at 4 p.m. when he was confronted by a robber, said agents. Air pistols can be an effective weapons if they have sufficient power. Animal adoption fair planned for Saturday in Escazú By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Asociación Animales de Asís plans an adoption fair for dogs and cats Saturday at the Escazú Walmart store. The hours are from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. The organization is accepting a 10,000-colon donation for a castrated or fixed and vaccinated dog and an 8,000-colon donation for a similarly castrated or fixed cat. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica Seventh Newspage |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, March 6, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 46 | |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Immigrant advocacy groups are lashing out at the brother of former U.S. president George W. Bush for writing in a new book that foreign nationals living illegally in the United States should not be given a path to citizenship. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s "Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution," says undocumented immigrants should be allowed to pursue legal residency, but not citizenship. It also proposes that undocumented immigrants could apply for U.S. citizenship, once they go back to their home country. United We Dream, the largest immigrant-youth led network in the U.S., criticized Bush Tuesday for relegating the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country to what it called a second class. “Jeb Bush seems to think my parents, and millions of other hardworking immigrants, should be blocked from ever realizing their dream of becoming citizens, relegating them to a life stuck in second-class status,” said Cristina Jimenez, the group’s managing director. Bush’s book, released this week, surprised members of the immigration reform movement because the politician had long been a rare Republican Party proponent of citizenship. Bush changed that stance as he was writing his book with Clint Bolick last year during the 2012 presidential campaign in which conservative candidates were taking a much tougher line on illegal immigration, with some advocating self-deportation. Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum, suggested Bush may now be alone with his proposal, since a bipartisan group of senators working on immigration reform in Congress have included citizenship in their plans. “Republicans and Democrats alike are following the lead of the American people, who recognize that hardworking immigrants should have a roadmap to citizenship so they can become fully participating Americans,” Noorani said. Republicans lost the Hispanic vote in the 2012 election, prompting the party to revise its stance toward citizenship for undocumented immigrants, many of whom are Hispanic. Bush stood by his own proposed reform Tuesday during an appearance on the U.S. television program "Morning Joe." “If you don’t have a difference between a path to citizenship, or a path to legalization, you’re going to create a magnet going forward for more illegal immigrants,” Bush said, adding that he would support a path to citizenship only if the law governing it didn’t include an incentive for people to come to the U.S. illegally. “I don’t see how you do it, but I’m not smart enough to figure out every aspect of a really complex law,” he said. Members of Congress are hoping to present their reform bill to the public later this month, in a move that could deepen the already tense national debate about how to secure the U.S. borders, stimulate the economy, and address the millions of undocumented immigrants who live and work here. Bush, whose brother and father were both presidents, is rumored to have presidential ambitions of his own. The politician has not said whether he will run in 2016, but is carrying his message across the country through media appearances and book signings.  A.M. Costa Rica file photo
At the Potsdam conference:
Clement Attlee, Harry S. Truman, and Josef Stalin in the
front row. Viacheslav Mólotov, James F. Byrnes, Ernest Bevin and
William D. Leahy are standing.Russians mark
the birthday of Stalin
By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Russians have marked the 60th anniversary of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who holds enduring popularity despite his tyrannical leadership, which killed millions. Hundreds of people gathered in Moscow's Red Square to lay flowers at Stalin's tomb Tuesday near the Kremlin Wall. His body was buried there in 1961 as part of a de-Stalinization process, after being preserved in the Mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Revolution. The head of Russia's Communist Party, Gunnady Zyuganov, attended the commemoration. He praised Stalin as a "distinguished state and political figure," and as a symbol of the nation's great victories. An opinion survey on Stalin in Russia and the ex-Soviet states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia found the former Soviet dictator remains widely admired. The U.S.-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commissioned the report. Carnegie report editor Thomas de Waal said Stalin’s popularity remains high because no proper de-Stalinization program has been carried out in the media or schools. "It seems that Stalin is still there in peoples' minds, not only in Russia but in places like Georgia and Armenia as well, 60 years after his death, even though there are very few visual representations of him, very few statues or portraits," he said. "His shadow is still there." De Waal said the poll also found that people do not fully understand the history of Stalin and his ruthlessness. "I think one of the other things that this poll shows is a much higher level of indifference — not so much opposition, but indifference amongst younger people particularly in Azerbaijan, where 39 percent of younger people said they did not even know who Stalin is," he said. "So maybe Stalin is becoming a bit of a distant figure like Peter the Great or Ivan the Terrible — which is not so great. It would be important for people to have a proper discussion about the recent Soviet past. This poll shows that people are confused, that they do not really come to grips with the history of Stalin, but that they do not really want him back.” Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953 at age 74. Communists and other hardliners credit him with the defeat of Adolf Hitler in World War II and turning the Soviet Union into a nuclear superpower. Critics condemn his tyranny. Historians estimate nearly one-million people were executed during his purges in the 1930s. Millions more died in his notorious Gulag prison camps and in his mass starvation system in Ukraine. Stalin also misjudged the intentions of Adolf Hitler. A 1939 pact negotiated by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Viacheslav Mólotov led to the invasion and division of Poland. Stalin was shocked when German troops invaded Russia in 1941. Stalin's purges also greatly reduced the effectiveness of the Russian military because many seasoned senior officers were killed. The purges were highly effected because they were random, and secret police grabbed whomever they could to fill their quotas. |
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