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A.M. Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday |
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San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 15, 2016, Vol.
17, No. 52
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Caja putting health workers on motos By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
The national health agency has purchased 176 motorcycles, quadracycles and scooters to bring services to remote areas. The agency, the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, said it spent 439 million colons, about $830,000, for the vehicles. They are supposed to be energy efficient. Some 159 of the new vehicles are motorcycles and 112 are quadracycles, mainly for the native reserves, said officials. The five scooters will be used in urban areas. Helmets are included in the deal. Caja health workers make routine house calls.
Big holiday
week is fast approaching
By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
Many workers are looking toward Friday afternoon when they can begin their Samana Santa holiday. Some with available vacation days already are packing the car for a trip to the beach. Police agencies and the Cruz Roja have outlined their holiday plans, which are about the same as for other vacations. About 300 Cruz Roja workers will be manning 139 aid stations starting Saturday. Some 689 traffic police officers will be on duty along the nation’s highways. There will be at least 148 speed traps. Traffic officers will be concentrating on the La Fortuna area as well as the metro area, the highway that connects San Vito with Limoncito and the Caribbean coast highway between Limón and Bribri, said officials. Naturally one of the priorities will be drunk drivers. Traffic officers will begin their holiday efforts Saturday, too. Last year during the Easter holidays they handed out nearly 8,000 traffic tickets and handled 1,644 accidents. Eight persons lost their lives in traffic mishaps during Semana Santa, the agency reported.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this
Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Ro
Colorado S.A 2065 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 15, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 52 | ||
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| Taxes
often are overlooked when discussing the rights of
consumers |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Costa Rican officials will be celebrating World Consumer Rights Day through Friday. Today there is a ceremony organized by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio in the Colegio de Abogados in Zapote. A series of roundtables will last through Thursday. Friday there will be displays at the various malls. The day came to be after then-U.S. president John F. Kennedy enumerated the rights of consumers in 1962, according to the Consumer International organization. Despite the efforts of the consumer agency that is part of the economics ministry, consumers have an uphill fight for rights in Costa Rica. A number of news stories have outlined the high interest rates that some credit card providers charge. In some cases the rates are in the 60 percent range. The economics ministry does surveys and reports the rates periodically. Workers there also report that the number of credit cards and the credit debt of Costa Ricans continues to rise. There have been no successful efforts in the legislature to cap credit card interest rates. Consumers, when they make most purchases, face a 13 percent sales tax. The government seeks to make this a 15 percent value-added tax with promises of rebates to officially designated poor people. An argument could be made that the government has a major interest in retail sales. Gasoline prices, for example, are half taxes. |
 Some expats have been blindsided by a big jump in the marchamo or road tax that is levied annually on motor vehicles, boats and aircraft. Then there is the luxury home tax that has a still-undefined impact on home sales. When a motor vehicle is imported into Costa Rica, the Ministerio de Hacienda usually assesses an amount that might be 80 percent of the vehicle’s value. That is why cars are so expensive here. The import duty then becomes part of the vehicle’s value, so when the marchamo comes around, the government really is charging taxes on the import duty it already charged. The same is true of all imports. Most are hit with a 14 percent import tax that is then incorporated into the retail price on which a 13 percent tax is levied. Not much of this will be discussed by officials this week. |
| Lawmakers
expect to begin construction of their tower later this
year |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The legislature is about to give the go-ahead to a new tower for that branch of government. The project is on the current legislative complex. Legislative leaders said that construction would begin in the middle of the year. The price is estimated to be 52 billion colons or about $100 million. The structure will be 17 floors with offices for the 57 lawmakers and their staffs. Completion is expected by the end of 2018, lawmakers said. |
Rafael
Ortiz Fábrega, president of the Asamblea Legislativa,
said that now legislative staffers are housed in 14
different buildings in various parts of the downtown.
Many are rented. Efforts to build a new home for lawmakers has been on a rocky road. First officials hoped to rent a large office building in Zapote. Then officials at the Centro de Investigación y Conservación del Patrimonio of the Ministerio de Cultura rejected plans that included demolishing some buildings on the legislative complex. Lawmakers have been under a Ministerio de Salud order to vacate some of their buildings due to the condition. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this
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Colorado S.A. 2016 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's Fourth News page | ||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 15, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 52 | ||
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| Obama
promises Ladies in White to raise rights issues with Castro |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
U.S. President Barack Obama promised in a letter to the prominent Cuban dissident group Ladies in White that he would raise human rights issues with Cuban President Raúl Castro during his visit to the island nation later this month. Obama said he understood the struggles of the Ladies in White, but defended his policy of seeking to normalize relations with Cuba. Ladies in White, a group made up of wives and children of Cuban political prisoners, has strongly criticized the president's policy change. The group said the Castro regime continues to suppress anti-government dissent and maintains a monopoly on the media. They also said authorities have cracked down more since the two countries announced plans to normalize relations in December 2014. "We take seriously the concerns you have raised," Obama wrote in English. "I will raise these issues directly with President Castro," he said, praising the Ladies as "an inspiration to human rights movements around the world." "I fully understand the obstacles that ordinary Cubans face in exercising their rights," Obama wrote. "The U.S. believes that no one in Cuba or anywhere else should face harassment, arrest, or physical assault just because they are exercising a universal right to have their voices heard." The White House confirmed the letter. Ladies in White leader Berta Soler, who read the letter to about two dozen members and other supporters in Havana, told the Latin Post, Obama's missive was positive feedback and the group greatly appreciated it. |
Obama will
visit the Caribbean nation Sunday through next Tuesday. It
will be the first visit by a U.S. president since Fidel
Castro's rebels overthrew a pro-American government in
1959. On Monday, Obama told U.S. diplomats at the State Department that his upcoming trip to Cuba would begin a new era in relations with the country. President Calvin Coolidge, in January 1928, was the last U.S. president to visit Cuba. The Ladies in White hold weekly anti-government protests during Sunday Mass at the Santa Rita Church in Havana. In a well-practiced choreography, officers stand by until the women shout “Freedom!” and try to sit on the street outside the church. The protesters are then whisked off to police stations and empty schools, held for hours, released and driven home. They return the following week. They plan to protest when Obama visits on March 20. Last week, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, one of the architects of Obama's Cuba policy, traveled to Miami as part of a listening tour ahead of the president’s historic trip. Rhodes spent Friday meeting with Cuban-American students, activists, members of Cuba's civil society, exiled Cubans and journalists. He said he told the groups the White House goal isn’t to topple the Castro government, but to open up society through diplomatic and trade relations. "The fact of the matter is we don't have any expectation that Cuba is going to transform its political system in the near term," Rhodes said Friday. "Even if we got 10 dissidents out of prison, so what? What's going to bring change is having Cubans have more control over their own lives." |
Here's reasonable
medical care
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 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's
Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 15, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 52 | |||||||
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that son was with jihadists By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Mohamed Khweis’s parents were awakened Monday morning by a reporter and cameraman at the family’s townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia. The newspeople told them something they never expected to hear: their son was a member of the Islamic State and he had surrendered to Kurdish forces in Iraq. "We thought he was in Canada lately,” said a woman who identified herself as Khweis's mother. “We also know he has been traveling to Turkey.” But the parents had not been in contact with the son for a long time. They had no idea he was in Iraq or had ties with any extremist groups. The parents said they are of Palestinian background. The father said he came to the U.S. in 1988. When shown a published photo of Khweis in Kurdish custody, the family said they were not certain it was him. “The guy in the picture is not my brother,” insisted Tamer Khweis, a college student and a younger brother of Mohammed Khweis. “There are similarities, but I can’t confirm because the picture isn’t clear,” his mother said. Khweis' personal belongings might have been stolen and have ended up in Iraq, the family suggested. Sarbaz Hama Amin, a Kurdish Peshmerga commander in Iraq, said his forces noticed an odd figure while on patrol Monday in northern Iraq, near the town of Sinjar. “Our Peshmergas who were patrolling the frontline said they saw something unusual and started firing at it. That thing disappeared after we fired at it but our Peshmergas started looking for it. After it became light after 5 a.m., he screamed at us and told us in English, ‘Who can talk to me? I want to come to you.’ But our Peshmergas didn’t understand English,” Amin continued. “He spoke a very limited Arabic and asked if anyone spoke English. After Peshmergas made sure he had no explosives on, we arrested him and took him to the camp where he said he wanted to surrender.” Amin added that the suspect told them his father was Palestinian. A picture of the suspect’s Virginia state driver’s license, sent to VOA, identifies him as Mohamed Jamal Khweis. “The fighter might possibly have come from the Talafar town controlled by IS because that place is the closest frontline to us,” Amin said. “He had Turkish money and some dollars. He also had a visa card and an American driver’s license.” Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga Gen. Hashem Sitayi said the man traveled through Turkey to Syria to join the Islamic State. “It looks like it's still far too easy to get into Syria from Turkey,” Patrick Skinner said. Skinner is an intelligence officer now with The Soufan Group, a strategic security intelligence consultancy. “It shows how hard it is to control or detect movement in places where so many people are moving both in terms of fleeing but also in terms of normal life.” Skinner added it will be important to get his information on his points of contacts before he traveled and on other American citizens he might have seen. Later in the morning the father, Jamal Khweis, in an interview, said he tried to get more information from U.S. authorities. “I went to the State Department to inquire about my son. They didn’t help. I heading home now,” he said. “My wife said there are cameras and many reporters outside of my house. I won’t talk to reporters until the U.S. government confirms my son’s capture.” A U.S. State Department official said “We are aware of reports that a U.S. citizen that was allegedly fighting for Da’esh has been captured by Peshmerga forces in northern Iraq. We are in touch with Iraqi and Kurdish authorities to determine the veracity of these reports.” Spokesman John Kirby said Monday that over the past several weeks, there have been reports of increasing defections from the Islamic State. "Fighters are becoming disenfranchised, certainly disenchanted with the effort that they claimed they signed up for and are, in increasing numbers, deciding to leave the group." Kirby added that reports indicate the Islamic State is increasingly relying on child soldiers. Originally, he said, child soldiers were used as suicide attackers, and "now we get more reports about them using children . . . in actual engagements, you know, side by side with adult fighters." Obama aides soon to decide on genocide designation By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Pressure is growing for the Obama administration to formally determine whether the Islamic State group is committing genocide against Christians, Yazidi and other religious and ethnic minorities in the Middle East. The U.S. State Department faces a Thursday deadline set last year by Congress, whose lower House of Representatives on Monday will vote on a Republican-led resolution on the violence in Syria, Iraq and Libya. Secretary of State John Kerry is said to be leaning toward the rare determination, but likely will miss that deadline while awaiting the results of a legal review. Such a designation, which the United States previously has invoked just once during an ongoing conflict, carries unclear political and legal implications. "A genocide designation will raise international consciousness and compel the international community of responsible nations to act, setting the preconditions for the reintegration of ancient ethnic groups and faith traditions into their ancestral homelands," Nebraska Republican Jeff Fortenberry said in a statement last week. He had introduced the House legislation in September. A 1948 United Nations treaty on genocide requires signatories, including the United States, to undertake to prevent and to punish acts intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group . . . ." In 2004, then-secretary of State Colin Powell determined that the mass rape and slaughter in Sudan’s Darfur region was genocide. He reached that finding after State Department lawyers determined the United States was not legally compelled to prevent genocide occurring outside its own boundaries. Powell urged the U.N. Security Council to create a commission to investigate whether the crimes constituted genocide and to act accordingly. With a genocide determination against the Islamic State, Kerry also probably would refer the matter to the Security Council for possible prosecution by an international tribunal. Kerry last month testified before Congress that the atrocities must meet the legal standard of genocide and that he’d asked State Department lawyers to evaluate and re-evaluate evidence. He promised a response soon. Last week, the international Catholic fraternal group Knights of Columbus and the U.S.-based nonprofit In Defense of Christians released a report citing witness accounts of atrocities such as beheadings, crucifixions, rapes and sexual enslavement. The report listed 1,131 Christians killed in Iraq and 125 churches attacked there from 2003 to 2014, according to the Religion News Service. The report noted support for the findings from groups such as Genocide Watch and the Hudson Institute. An unnamed State Department official was quoted by Religion News Service as saying that, "regardless of whether Da'esh’s conduct satisfies certain legal definitions, including genocide and crimes against humanity, the United States has been clear that our interest in accountability for perpetrators remains undiminished." Front runners are favorites in U.S. primaries today By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
U.S. political surveys show the two presidential front-runners, Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, are poised to move closer today to winning their parties' presidential nominations as voters head to the polls for nominating contests in five more states. Two new polls Monday showed Trump, a real estate billionaire who has never held elective office, with a commanding lead in the battleground southeastern state of Florida. He easily tops his nearest home state challenger there, Sen. Marco Rubio, and holds even bigger leads over Texas Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. One poll, by Quinnipiac University, showed Republican voters favoring Trump by a 46-to-22 percent margin over Rubio, while a Monmouth University poll pegged Trump's lead at 44 to 27 percent. Florida's winner-take-all primary is the biggest prize in Tuesday's Republican voting, with the victor collecting 99 delegates to the party's national nominating convention in July. Polls show Trump with smaller leads in North Carolina, Missouri and Illinois, with Cruz his closest competitor in these states, where national convention delegates will be apportioned according to the vote counts. Trump, a one-time television reality show host, is locked in a close race in another winner-take-all contest with Kasich in Ohio, the Midwestern state he governs. Trump boasted at one rally Sunday, "If we can win Ohio, we're going to run the table, folks." The party's losing 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, joined Kasich at campaign stops in Ohio in an effort to keep Trump from winning the 66 convention delegates at stake in the state. Mrs. Clinton has a commanding lead in the race to secure the Democratic presidential nomination over her lone challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist who has focused his campaign on growing income inequality and the clout of Wall Street financial chieftains. Polling shows Mrs. Clinton with big leads among Democratic voters over Sanders in Florida and North Carolina, with closer contests possible in Illinois, Ohio and Missouri. None of Tuesday's Democratic contests are winner-take-all. Tuesday's voting is coming after days of acrimony at Trump campaign stops, where some of his supporters and those opposed to his candidacy have engaged in heated name-calling, pushing, shoving and an occasional hand-to-hand fight. Trump at times has called for his supporters to physically engage demonstrators and regularly tells security officials to "get them out" when protesters shout at him when he is speaking. But he said he wants peace, not trouble at his campaign events. Trump's political foes have blamed his rhetoric for the confrontations, while he claims the Sanders campaign has dispatched supporters to Trump's rallies to disrupt them. Sanders has denied that contention and called Trump a pathological liar. Mrs. Clinton has called Trump a political arsonist. One unknown in the Democratic race is the the federal government’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton for use of a private email server and allegations that she used her State Department position to generate massive amounts of money for the foundation she and her husband run. WhatsApp faces challenge to its encryption system By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Popular messaging app WhatsApp is reportedly in a battle over encryption with the U.S. government similar to the one involving Apple. According to The New York Times, a federal judge has approved the monitoring of messages made via the Facebook-owned app in a criminal investigation, but end-to-end encryption makes it difficult. Some officials want to see the company decrypt information related to the case, but it’s unclear if that is even possible. Apple has been asked to allow investigators access to the encrypted iPhone that belonged to one of the San Bernardino Islamic killers. WhatsApp is believed to have nearly one billion monthly active users, but the Times says WhatsApp founder, Jan Koum is strongly against surveillance due to his background in the Soviet-controlled Ukraine. The specifics of the case are not known, but it has been reported that it is not terrorism-related. Earlier this month in Brazil, an executive with Facebook was jailed over a similar dispute in which Brazilian authorities wanted access to messages in a drug-trafficking case. Twitter, Facebook and Google have also said they are standing by Apple and against creating so-called back doors to their devices. In polling, Americans have been split on what Apple should do. Americans are hard workers, international surveys report By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
No matter who you ask, it’s pretty clear that Americans work more than just about anyone else in moderately rich countries. Americans are also 400 percent more productive today than in 1950, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The percentage of full-time workers has dwindled in the United States since 2007, but the number of hours worked each week has held steady at about 47, according to Gallup. U.S. residents worked about 1,789 hours in 2014, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. That’s about 100 hours more than many European counterparts like England, France and Germany. In 2014, full-time U.S. workers reported logging an average of 47 hours per week. The traditional American work week is eight hours a day, five days a week for a total of 40 hours. Just 8 percent of full-time workers say they work less than 40 hours weekly. Only one in five Americans actually takes a lunch break. Most opt to eat at their desks. And 28 percent say they don’t take any kind of break at all. All of which means Americans are working longer, taking fewer vacations and retiring later. Having a strong work ethic is a proud American tradition. American parents often try to instill it in their children by discussing the value of money and hard work. All of this work also leaves less time for play. A recent report from two Stanford University researchers observed, “Leisure was higher in France . . . the average person in France works less than two-thirds as much as the average person in the U.S.” WalletHub decided to break down the data in the 116 largest U.S. cities in order to identify where the hardest-working Americans live. The personal finance site found the hardest-working major American city is Anchorage, Alaska, where people work an average of 40.1 hours per week and workforce participation is almost 79 percent. The lowest-ranked cities include Burlington, Vermont (average hours worked: 33.1, workforce participation: 70.67 percent), Detroit, Michigan (average hours worked: 36, workforce participation: 61.36 percent) and Providence, Rhode Island (average hours worked: 35.6, workforce participation: 70.12 percent). February temperature seen as new record by NASA By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Global surface temperatures in February were 1.35 degrees C warmer than average, according to new data released by the NationalAeronautics and Space Administration. The rise, which is compared against the baseline average from 1951 to 1980, beats the old record, which was 1.15 degrees C above average in January. According to Bob Henson and Jeff Masters of the site Weather Underground, the data was “a true shocker, and yet another reminder of the incessant long-term rise in global temperature resulting from human-produced greenhouse gases.” One explanation for the rise is El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, but according to The Guardian newspaper, the February temperature broke the record set during the last El Niño in 1998. Chip Knappenberger, the assistant director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute, says, “Global temperatures were especially warm in February, largely as a result of a strong, ongoing, and all-natural El Niño event.” He added that after El Niño events, there are often La Niña events, which “can lead to cooler than normal conditions.” “Natural variability is acting on top of a slow warming pressure that is being added by emissions of greenhouse gases from human-activities,” he said in a statement. “The result is a slow background rise in temperatures punctuated by shorter-term rises and falls.” The Guardian cites Stefan Rahmstorf from Germany's Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research and a visiting professorial fellow at the University of New South Wales, as saying the data represents “a kind of climate emergency now.” Knappenberger says he disagrees with that assessment. He says instead that the rise is “a temporary blip superimposed on a slow, modest rate of warming.” |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 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 sixth news page |
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 15, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 52 | |||||||||
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Courts warned on fining, jailing the poor By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The U.S. Justice Department warned state court systems in the country Monday against imposing punitive fines on impoverished people and jailing them if they can not pay, saying the practice is unconstitutional and also erodes trust in local communities. The top U.S. law enforcement agency said local court systems should not operate as for-profit ventures, using a raft of fines against people living in their communities to fund government operations and then issuing arrest warrants for some people who are too poor to make the payments for relatively minor offenses. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said, the warning sent to courts across the United States is aimed at ensuring that "our legal system serves every American faithfully and fairly, regardless of their economic status." Ms. Lynch, the country's top law enforcement official, said, "The consequences of poverty are not only harmful, they are far-reaching. They not only affect an individual's ability to support their family, but also contribute to an erosion of our faith in government." Vanita Gupta, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, and Lisa Foster, who directs the department's Office for Access to Justice, said in the letter that "to the extent that these practices are geared not toward addressing public safety, but rather toward raising revenue, they can cast doubt on the impartiality of the tribunal and erode trust between local governments and their constituents." The Justice Department warning came after a Washington conference in December showed some communities rely heavily on the imposition of fines as a source of government revenue. The government had found the practice particularly prevalent in Ferguson, Missouri, a small community in the central part of the United States where there were days of street protests after a white policeman shot an unarmed black teenaged assailant to death in 2014. Highway lanes being closed at night By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The highway agency says that it is closing the eastbound lanes of the Autopista General Cañas from the vicinity of Juan Santamaría airport to from 10 p.m. to 5 p.m. through Friday. The highway also is Ruta 1, the Interamericana. The Consejo Nacional de Vialidad said the closing is necessary while crews cut trees in danger of falling along the highway shoulder. |
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| From Page 7: Reversal sought for cruise ship decline By the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
Costa Rican tourism officials are trying to reverse a trend that has cut cruise ship arrivals by nearly 45 percent since 2009-2010. The Instituto Costarricense de Turismo reports that in the 2009-2010 season 270 cruise ships docked in Costa Rican ports. In 2014-2015 the number was 150. The tourism institute said that its staffers are displaying at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, show this week in an effort to attract cruise customers and cruise line commitments. Mauricio Ventura, the minister of Turismo, has pointed out the need to improve the facilities in ports on both coasts. The possibility of crime and costs are among the reasons cruise chips might skip Costa Rica. And for a time there was labor unrest in Limón. There is another factor, and that is Cuba. Major cruise ship lines are anxious to dock at Cuban ports. They are reported awaiting approval from the Cuban government. Some lines already have approval. The Communist island will be a major competitor with Costa Rica in the future. Costa Rica usually is considered an intermediate stop for cruise captains after transiting the Panamá Canal. The arrival of cruise ships means more business for hundreds of merchants and land tour operators in Puntarenas and Limón. Costa Rican officials said they are being joined by representatives from the national firms Asuaire Travel, Swiss Travel Costa Rica and Transocean Expeditions in Florida. |
