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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 53
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 Alianza
Francesa
photo
Photo of home that became Alianza Francesa's headquartersAlianza to mark
50 years in Barro Amón
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Alianza Francesa plans an open house of its headquarters for 50 years in Barrio Amón Saturday as well as a tour of the famous neighborhood directed by architect and historian Andrés Fernández. Alianza, the French cultural organization, noted that it moved into one of the historic homes in Barrio Amón in 1965. Fernández is well known for giving walking tours of the city and other parts of the country. The event begins at 9 a.m. Barrio Amón is called the first San José suburb, and it is well known for the many early 20th century homes that are there, according to newspaper files. The barrio was where the better-off citizens of the community began making their homes after Frenchman Amon Fasileau Duplantier began subdividing his property at the end of the 19th century. The barrio of Amon quickly became Barrio Amón. Fasileau came to Costa Rica in 1885 to be in the coffee business. He would not be the last expat to be lured into the real estate business. He installed sidewalks and other infrastructure and began selling lots before the turn of the century. The area had and still does have a view of the central mountains and volcanoes. Just like today, the developer had his political problems. There was a long-time public laundry facility at the Río Torres to the north, and the developer wanted to remove it for aesthetic reasons. No way, the municipality said, and it was years before the washing area and the lines full of clothing were eliminated. Guanacaste band to mark 1856 battle By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Banda de Conciertos de Guanacaste will mark the 159 anniversary of the Batalla de Santa Rosa Friday with a concert at the Parque Nacional Santa Rosa. The time is 8 p.m. The program is patriotic music. The battle of Santa Rosa was the first engagement of the Campaña Nacional and was successful in chasing troops of William Walker from Costa Rica. Walker was the U.S. filibuster who became president of Nicaragua and sought to unite all of Central America under his banner. A military unit from Guanacaste participated in the battle of Santa Rosa in 1856 and the unit had a small band. After Santa Rosa and on April 11, 1856, the Costa Rican military were in Nicaragua and engaged Walker's troops at Rivas. They were successful but failed to follow up on the victory. The troops returned to Costa Rica and carried with them cholera, which devastated the country. April is the patriotic month in Costa Rica, and public and private buildings will be decorated with the national colors. This year, April 10, a Friday, is a national holiday. Sea Shepherd reports a detention Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The internationally blacklisted poaching vessel, Kunlun, has been detained in Phuket, Thailand, on fisheries-related violations, Sea Shepherd said early today. The action comes just over two months after the vessel was caught by the New Zealand Navy engaged in illegal fishing in Australian waters, and just over a month after it was intercepted by the Sea Shepherd ship, Sam Simon, in possession of banned fishing equipment, again in Australian waters, said the organization. The Kunlun, which is one of six vessels that are known to still engage in illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing for toothfish in the Southern Ocean, was detained in a coordinated effort between International Policing Organization, Interpol, and law enforcement authorities in Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. Since 2008, the vessel has changed names at least 10 times. In January, the Kunlun was issued with an Interpol purple notice for illegally fishing for toothfish inside an area regulated by the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources. Capt. Sid Chakravarty of the Sea Shepherd ship, Sam Simon, said, “The Australian government has both a legal and moral responsibility to defend its waters from poachers who wish to exploit it. Yesterday, in cooperation with Interpol, and the Thai and New Zealand authorities, they showed that they take those responsibilities seriously.” The Kunlun is one of three fishing vessels that have been intercepted by Sea Shepherd since the commencement of Operation Icefish in December, 2014. Dec. 17, 2014, the Sea Shepherd ship, Bob Barker, intercepted the Nigerian-flagged Thunder, on the Banzare Bank in Antarctica. Despite attempts by the poaching vessel to flee, the Bob Barker has maintained a continuous pursuit of the Thunder, which today enters day 90, off the coast of Namibia. On Feb. 2 the Sam Simon intercepted the Kunlun along with another poaching vessel, the Yongding, in Australian waters. The Sam Simon then engaged in a pursuit of the Kunlun, chasing the poaching vessel out of its hunting grounds in the Southern Ocean. Captain Peter Hammarstedt of the Sea Shepherd ship, Bob Barker, said, “Over three months, the Sea Shepherd ships have intercepted three of the six remaining toothfish poaching operators. We have shut down the most notorious of those poachers, the Thunder, and we have chased another, the Kunlun, out of its hunting grounds, into the hands of law enforcement authorities. Operation Icefish has shone a spotlight on these criminal operators, ensuring that they can no longer hide-out in the shadowlands of the Southern Ocean and demanding that governments take action against their illegal activity.” Study validates effects of zinc on colds By the University of Helsinki news service
According to a meta-analysis published in BMC Family Practice, high dose zinc acetate lozenges shortened the duration of common-cold associated nasal discharge by 34 percent, nasal congestion by 37 percent, scratchy throat by 33 percent, and cough by 46 percent. The common cold is an infection caused by over a hundred viruses, and it is a major cause of days off school or work and visits to a doctor. A previous meta-analysis of three randomized trials found that high dose zinc acetate lozenges shorten the duration of colds by 42 percent. Since all of the three studies reported the duration of diverse respiratory symptoms and of systemic symptoms such as muscle ache and headache, Harri Hemilä from Helsinki, Finland, and Elizabeth Chalker from Sydney, Australia, decided to investigate whether there are differences in the effect of zinc lozenges on different common-cold symptoms. When zinc acetate lozenges dissolve in the mouth, zinc ions are released into the saliva of the pharyngeal region where the levels are consequently high. Therefore the effects of zinc lozenges might be greatest on symptoms of the pharyngeal region such as sore throat, and less on nasal symptoms. However, when Hemilä and Ms. Chalker pooled together the results of the three studies, they found no evidence that the effects of zinc lozenges are less for nasal symptoms compared with respiratory symptoms originating from lower anatomical regions. According to the calculations by Hemilä and Ms. Chalker, high dose zinc acetate lozenges shortened the duration of nasal discharge by 34 percent, nasal congestion by 37 percent, sneezing by 22 percent, scratchy throat by 33 percent, sore throat by 18 percent, hoarseness by 43 percent, and cough by 46 percent. Furthermore, they found strong evidence that zinc lozenges also shortened the duration of muscle ache by 54 percent. On the other hand, there was no evidence of zinc effect on the duration of headache and fever. However, the latter two symptoms were infrequent in the three studies and therefore no definite conclusions can be drawn on headache and fever. Adverse effects of zinc were minor in the three studies. Therefore Hemilä and Ms. Chalker conclude from their research that “zinc acetate lozenges releasing zinc ions at doses of about 80 mg/day may be a useful treatment for the common cold, started within 24 hours, for a time period of less than two weeks.”
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and may
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 53 | |
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| Inspections around Turrialba volcano turn up cases of animal
disease |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Animal health workers have uncovered 44 cases of brucellosis in cows grazing around the Volcán Turrialba. The infected animals present a danger for persons who drink their unpasteurized milk. The Servicio Nacional de Salud Animal said its workers checked 348 animals as part of the response to the eruptions of the nearby volcano. The animals were on 19 separate farms. The area around the volcano in the province of Cartago is the location of many dairy farms. The infected animals were found on three farms, and workers marked the animals so they can be slaughtered. The farms also were placed under quarantine. Brucellosis can cause abortions in cows and is highly contagious. It is a bacterial infection. Humans who become infected face a lengthy treatment with antibiotics and may carry the bacteria for the rest of their life. The type of brucellosis that infects cows also can infect bison and elk. Other strains can infect pigs and even dogs. |
 Servicio Nacional de Salud Animal photo
If these cows were
infected, they would have a yellow S painted on their cheek.The disease is endemic in Costa Rica, said the animal health agency. Brucellosis can be prevented by a vaccination. Humans also can get the disease by having infected milk spill on a cut or wound, said the agency. |
| Officials hope to have a temporary dock at Naranjo by Semana
Santa |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Contract workers have begun building a temporary dock for the Gulf of Nicoya ferry at Naranjo. Government officials said they hope the job will be done by Semana Santa, which begins for many March 27. The temporary dock will cost some 67 million colons (about $127,000), said Luis Fernando Coronado, the director of the División Marítimo Portuaria, in release. The firm Constructora |
Náutica
J y J S.A. is doing the job, he said. Playa Naranjo is on the Nicoya peninsula and the ferry runs to there from Puntarenas. This is a major access route to the upper part of the peninsula. A second ferry route docks at Paquera to the south. The contract also must clean the site because there are pieces of the former dock that may cause damage to the ferry hulls. The wind and high seas destroyed the previous dock. |
| Food industry kicks off two days of an expo to promote
business |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some 2,000 national and international food buyers are expected to attend the two-day convention that starts today and hosted by the Cámara Costarricense de la Industria Alimentaria and the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería. The event, Expo CACIA, is at the Hotel Wyndham Herradura. |
The purpose
of the event is to generate more businesses for providers of food and
drink. Banco Nacional said that 15 of its smaller businesses will be represented, too. Machinery for the production of food items also will be on display, said an announcement. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 53 | |||||
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| La Niña in Pacific linked to severe storms in the
continental U.S. |
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By the Columbia University news staff
Climate scientists can spot El Niño and La Niña conditions developing months ahead of time, and they use this knowledge to make more accurate forecasts of droughts, flooding and even hurricane activity around the world. Now, a new study shows that El Niño and La Niña conditions can also help predict the frequency of tornadoes and hail storms in some of the most susceptible regions of the United States. The study appears in the current issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. "We can forecast how active the spring tornado season will be based on the state of El Niño or La Niña in December or even earlier," said lead author John Allen, a postdoctoral research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a naturally occurring climate cycle in which sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean fluctuate. When waters are warmer than normal, as they are currently, it is described as El Niño; when cooler, La Niña. Allen and his coauthors show that moderately strong La Niña events lead to more tornadoes and hail storms over portions of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas and other parts of the southern United States. El Niño events act in the opposite manner, suppressing both types of storms in this area. While the information can't pinpoint when and where storms will wreak havoc, it will nevertheless be useful for |
 Columbia University/John Allen
A tornado brews near El
Reno, Oklahoma, in May 2013.governments and insurance companies to prepare for the coming season, Allen said. In recent weeks, researchers from the International Research Institute and other institutions said El Niño conditions over the Pacific, implies that this spring will be a relatively quiet one for severe storms in the southern United States. Last year, 47 people died in tornadoes. But in 2011, a La Niña year, tornadoes killed more than 550 people, higher than in the previous 10 years combined. Hail storms and tornadoes cause an average estimated $1.6 billion in insured losses each year in the United States, according to the insurer Munich RE. Powerful, isolated events such as the 2011 Joplin, Missouri, tornado can smash that average. That storm alone caused several billion dollars in damage and killed 158 people. |
Here's reasonable medical care
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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contents of
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2015 and may
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New email system gives more privacy and security By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Clicking through a clogged inbox overflowing with spam and unanswered messages, it may begin to feel that email is more nuisance than help in these days of instant texts and Snapchats. Still, email remains a primary communications tool both for global business and personal matters. Ensuring its privacy and security is of paramount importance, as seen in news last week that former secretary of State Hillary Clinton used non-government email services. Email is much less secure than people think, analysts say. Phishing, trojan horses, injection, spoofing, these are just a few of the many ways email continues to prove itself easily compromised. Now, a partial solution might be at hand It’s called ProtonMail, and while it isn’t foolproof, it puts genuinely sophisticated encryption tools at hand of even inexperienced web users. “Many of us probably think, well, one email, there's nothing in there, right?” asks Andy Yen, co-creator of ProtonMail in a recent TED Conference presentation. “But if you consider a year's worth of emails, or maybe even a lifetime of email, collectively, this tells a lot,” he said. “It tells where we have been, who we have met, and in many ways, even what we're thinking about. And the more scary part about this is our data now lasts forever, so your data can and will outlive you.” For decades now, the basic structure of what we call email has remained the same as when first developed by researchers in the early 1980s, long before the multiplying cyber-threats of today. In those days the priority was inter-operability, meaning that a message sent by any one person could be read by any other person. Privacy was a non-issue, with the result being that emails even to this day are constructed in a way that largely lets anyone in the data chain read the message. While it’s true that some tools allow users to robustly encrypt their email, they’re often universally time-consuming and difficult to use. Joined by his colleagues Wei Sun and Jason Stockman at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, Andy Yen decided to build an email system that was made robust privacy easy. The result is ProtonMail, a somewhat cheeky reference to their research work smashing atoms at the Large Hadron Collider. “After the revelations by Edward Snowden, a lot of us in the scientific community at CERN felt compelled to take action because no good solution existed for email encryption,” Yen said. “This was something that really drove us to take action because if we realized if we don't fight for privacy, nobody is going to do it for us.” What sets ProtonMail apart from other email services is where the messages are encrypted, and who holds the keys. Many large email services, like Gmail, already encrypt the contents of an email once they enter the cloud. But they also hold the key to decrypting it. That essentially means your unencrypted emails sit on Google’s servers, and are subject to governmental requests to review the content of the email, often without notice. ProtonMail messages are encrypted directly on the user’s computer, and as long as a user sends it to another ProtonMail user, the message never exists on the Internet in an unencrypted form. ProtonMail users can also, if they choose, encrypt messages to non-ProtonMail users by using a special pass phrase that the sender privately gives the receiver. Additionally, ProtonMail uses a dual-key system, one public, the other private. This zero-access model means that emails stored on ProtonMail’s servers are fully encrypted and cannot be decrypted by anyone including ProtonMail itself, but the user. ProtonMail servers are set in Switzerland, whose government has perhaps the highest level of privacy protection in the world. Still, Yen cautions that ProtonMail is not foolproof. “ProtonMail, like any other security system is not a magic bullet, as there is no such thing as one hundred percent secure,” he said. While ProtonMail will help keep personal or business email communication private, the company makes clear that email communication, at its core, is vulnerable. “If you are Edward Snowden, or the next Edward Snowden, and have a life and death situation that requires privacy, we would not recommend using ProtonMail,” reads one post on the company’s blog. “For extremely sensitive situations, it is simply not a good idea to use email as a medium for communications.” The trend of increasing zero-access encryption has alarmed some American and British law enforcement agencies. FBI chief James Comey, recently warned that the growing use of encryption puts the bad guys outside the reach of intelligence services. Encryption, he warned, threatened "to take us to a very dark place.” But for Yen, encryption helps the good guys as well as the bad ones, and, he says, there are far more good guys than bad guys online today. “The argument for surveillance is always ‘terrorists will kill your children’,” he said. “However, the loss of privacy comes with its own dangers.” “If corporations or governments have access to all of our private data, we are giving them immense power over our lives,” he said. “We see this trend in other countries today like Russia, Iran, or Syria where it is impossible to even speak out against the government. In many ways, privacy and freedom go hand in hand.” Assessment of damages on Vanuatu is continuing By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Relief workers and disaster management officials were trying to access the outer islands of Vanuatu Tuesday in order to reach those affected by a powerful cyclone. Poor weather, limited communications and the geography of a country made up of many islands have made it difficult for crews to assess the damage and provide aid since the storm struck late Friday. The United Nations humanitarian agency said 11 people are confirmed dead, downgrading its earlier total of 24, but officials expected the toll to rise. Another 3,300 people were sheltering in evacuation centers. "This is a very devastating cyclone in Vanuatu," President Baldwin Lonsdale said Monday during a visit to Japan for a U.N. disaster conference. "I term it as a monster, a monster. It's a setback for the government and for the people of Vanuatu. After all the development that has taken place, all this development has been wiped out." The cyclone destroyed homes and buildings and leveled trees as it crossed the South Pacific island chain with winds up to 270 kilometers per hour. Derek Brien is in Port Vila, the capital city, where he works for the Pacific Institute of Public Policy. He said everything has been wiped out and that is "the most frightening thing because most people here rely on their gardens for food." Brien said all the fruit trees and crops have been destroyed. Lonsdale said Monday the state of emergency that has been issued is only for Port Vila, where 90 percent of the buildings and houses have been destroyed or damaged. He said another state of emergency will be enacted for the other cluster of islands that make up Vanuatu once communications have been re-established. Vanuatu is an archipelago of some 80 islands located about 2,200 kilometers off the northeast coast of Australia. Just how Islamic is IS, academics, experts wonder By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It was called the Iconoclastic Fury when Protestants went on a rampage through churches in the Low Countries and elsewhere in 16th century Europe and smashed statues they considered idolatrous. Sound familiar? Militants in Iraq have been destroying priceless treasures deemed un-Islamic, giving many people around the world the sense of living in a time warp. “This is not 1015. This is 2015,” Lindsey Graham, U.S. senator from South Carolina, last week told a Senate hearing that focused on the Muslim militants’ killing of Christians and other minorities. “As I speak, people are being crucified, people are being burned alive, they’re being beheaded,” he said. The hearing, titled “Protecting Religious Freedom Abroad,” focused on how America should respond to Islamist militant groups. There is, however, a broader debate in the United States about whether the militant group that calls itself Islamic State should be seen as a natural outgrowth of Islam or as a perversion of the faith. “I think we’re making a mistake if we say this is not part of Islamic theology,” said conservative Christian activist and talk show host Jay Sekulow, who testified before the panel. He said Islamic State’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claims to be the khalifa, or caliph, of a re-established medieval Muslim empire. “That’s what they call themselves,” Sekulow said after the hearing. “They call themselves the caliphate. Khalifa Ibrahim believes he’s the leader of worldwide Islam. So, whatever we want to call them, in one sense, is irrelevant, because that’s who they are.” An Islamic studies professor, John Esposito, disagrees. “From my point of view, what you’ve got is the hijacking of religion,” he said in an interview at Georgetown University. Esposito, who directs the university’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, said militants have taken the injunction in the Quran to “slay the unbelievers wherever you find them” out of context. “When that scripture was uttered, it had nothing to do with Christians and Jews at that point,” he said. “It had to do with pagan Meccans who were at that point persecuting Muslims. And God in the Quran was saying to them: If they’re fighting you, you have a right to fight back.” Others argue that Quranic passages about warfare are being used to justify violence by militant groups that rely on mainstream teachings. “The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic,” wrote Graham Wood in The Atlantic magazine. “Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe; but, the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.” Some commentators argue that Muslims need to reject traditional interpretations of scripture in the same way Protestant leader Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. In an article titled “ISIS is the Islamic Reformation,” in Religion Dispatches magazine, Ed Simon of Lehigh University recalled that the iconoclastic rampages of the 16th century were triggered by the reformers’ own interpretations of the ban on graven images in the Ten Commandments. Esposito said those calling for an Islamic Reformation are really saying, “Genocide ought to take place, or close to it, because we think of the Reformation as the Enlightenment and we forget the Hundred Years Wars.” European history certainly had its share of sectarian conflicts, as well as a cooling of religious zeal after the bloodshed. But, one thing that cuts across the boundaries of time and faith, Esposito said, is the use of religion to legitimize political power — and warfare. Hacker groups report silencing online terrorists By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Internet activist hacker group Anonymous and several other collaborators have published the Twitter handles of what it says are 9,200 Islamic State supporters in an attempt to draw the attention of the social media sites' leadership and curb the militant group's online presence. Several of those reviewed include the images of the black-and-white Islamic State flag, and have been active within minutes or days, while others have been suspended. Hundreds of users and several activist groups contributed to compiling the list, according to statements from participants. Twitter user @CtrlSec, which participated in the account round-up, last week said that of 11,660 accounts it had linked to Islamic State, Al-Qaida, or other terror groups, about 2,000 remained active, while the remainder had been shut down. "The more attention it gets the more likely it becomes. Twitter takes action in removing these accounts and making a serious impact on the ability of ISIS to spread propaganda and recruit new members," read a statement by XRSONE, which describes itself as a "cyber security firm specializing in digital counter-terrorism." "This is historic amongst the digital world as it's the first time these groups have come together for something this large," a member of Anonymous told the International Business Times UK. Earlier this month, Twitter suspended thousands of accounts linked to the Islamic State. And in February, Anonymous took credit for shutting down hundreds of users on the Web site that the hacker group said were affiliated to Islamic State supporters. Subject of TV exposé charged with murder By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
An eccentric millionaire from one of America's richest families was charged with murder in Los Angeles Monday in the death of a one-time confidante who was killed in 2000. The man, Robert Durst, could face the death penalty. The charges came a day after the last episode of a documentary based on his life ran on American national television. In the final scenes of "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst," he is heard in a bathroom mumbling to himself, "What the hell did I do? Killed them all of course." The film detailed Durst's life of privilege and links to three deaths: his friend and confidante Susan Berman; his wife Kathleen Durst, and Morris Black, an elderly neighbor in Texas. Durst was apparently unaware his wireless microphone was still on, even though the camera was not, when he used the bathroom. His extradition to California may be delayed by new charges in Louisiana. A police report said the 71-year-old heir to a New York real estate fortune was carrying a revolver when FBI agents arrested him without incident at a New Orleans hotel before the final episode. It was not immediately clear if Durst had the required gun permit. Durst has been at odds with his own family for years. Durst's brother Douglas, president of the family's multi-billion-dollar real estate conglomerate Durst Organization, said he hopes his brother "will finally be held accountable for all he has done." The Durst family members together are worth an estimated $4 billion. Cultural artifacts are back in hands of Iraqi officials By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it has returned more than 60 Iraqi cultural artifacts to that country's government following an investigation into antiquities smuggled into the U.S. In a statement Monday, the department said the items were found during investigations in several U.S. cities, including New York, Baltimore, and Austin. The investigation led to the identification of an international network dealing in illicit cultural artifacts, the statement said. It said one of the most significant items returned is an ancient limestone statue depicting the head of Assyrian King Sargon II. Customs agents in New York seized the statue after it was shipped by an antiques dealer based in Dubai. Other objects returned Monday include gold-plated items that were looted from the private palace and airport of executed former president Saddam Hussein. Also returned were bronze and glass antiquities and clay reliefs. The Department of Homeland Security said it was first alerted to an early Sumerian bronze ax from a listing on the Internet site Craigslist. It said the seller had no importation documentation. The department says its Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit has returned more than 1,200 items to Iraq since 2008. Germany flexes muscles in the international realm By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Germany, Europe’s economic behemoth, has never been as prosperous, secure and free as it is today. It is the world’s fourth largest economy and one of the world’s top exporters. Twenty-four years after its reunification, Germany has become America’s most valuable European partner, says Annette Heuser, executive director and founder of the Bertelsmann Foundation, the Washington-based arm of a German-based organization promoting trans-Atlantic ties. Heuser repeated a question attributed to Henry Kissinger, the German-born former U.S. secretary of State, about which country served as the locus of European power. "'What is Europe’s phone number?' I think we can give Henry Kissinger a very solid answer now. The number is in Berlin," Heuser said. Despite its growing influence, Germany has been reluctant to take the lead in larger global affairs, said Stephen Szabo, a scholar of U.S.-European relations and author of the book "Germany, Russia and the Rise of Geo-Economics." "The whole idea is that Germany is an economic power, not a military or strategic power," said Szabo, executive director of the Transatlantic Academy research institute funded in part by the German Marshall Fund. "Will Germany stop being a big trading state concerned only about trading, or will it now begin to rebalance and have a real foreign policy, not just an economic policy?" Szabo said. He acknowledged that Germany’s road to great power status is strewn with obstacles. The 2009 Eurozone debt crisis has been managed on Berlin’s terms, but five years of wrenching austerity measures shifted Europe's political landscape by giving rise to left-wing radicals and right-wing populists. Their sole common ground is resistance to Germany’s solutions, Szabo said. "I think there has been certain arrogance: 'We have the right way – you should just follow our way,'" he said of German leaders. "This is something that they will have to address." Germany’s rise is occurring as the West confronts Russia over Ukraine and tries to stem security risks emanating from Islamic extremism, said Daniel Hamilton, director of Johns Hopkins University’s SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations. "All the turbulence associated with Russia, and the whole turbulence in the Middle East, could intersect at some point and affect Europe per se," Hamilton said. "All of this can replay back into Western Europe either in flows of people or flows of all kinds of nasty things affecting core Europe." The crisis on Europe’s doorstep has led Berlin to step up its security presence. Reinhard Bütikofer of the German Council on Foreign Relations said the German military is playing a major role in a new rapid response force created in reaction to Russia's moves in Ukraine. "And the Germans, who are never eager to get involved militarily, have put troops into some of the Baltic countries, helping countries that have weak military defenses of their own," Bütikofer said. Ending another post-World War II taboo, Berlin is providing arms to Iraqi Kurdish forces battling Islamic State fighters. Experts say Germany’s global economic reach depends on the stability of an international political order underpinned by Western strategic power, to which it is now contributing readily. Italian producers worry about saving trademarks By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Food producers in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy are worried that cheap imitations of their famous Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma ham from other parts of the world could ruin the reputation of their refined products. The original Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese is made from raw cow's milk according to an 800-year-old tradition. It can take two years for the cheese to age and get ready for consumption. Parmigiano is the Italian adjective derived from Parma, the city, and Reggiano stands for the region of Emilia. The cheese is known internationally as parmesan. "Parmigiano-Reggiano comes from here and can only be made in this way and in this region, and the process all starts with milk produced by cows reared on local vegetation," said Igino Morini, spokesman for the Parmigiano-Reggiano Consortium. European law classifies the original name, as well as the translation parmesan, as a protected indication of geographic origin. "The European Court of Justice has declared that the Parmesan appellation, like all other similar appellations, can only be used for genuine parmesan," Morini said. "And for us it's very important. It represents a historic judicial decision that says that all false appellations within the EU are forbidden." But in many other countries, including the United States, Canada and Brazil, the name parmesan is often used for similar cheeses that are produced in a cheaper and faster way. Since the 2012 earthquake that hit the Emilia region, more of these cheeses have been produced overseas than in Italy, and they have reached Italian markets. Parma ham producers also complain. "Our ham is a product that also has some problems related to fakes," said Carlo Leporati, marketing director for the Parma Ham Consortium. "But the biggest problem, mostly abroad but also in Italy, is the misuse of the Parma ham appellation. . . . The use of these names suggests that the products come from Italy and from the Parma area." The European Union is working to widen marketing protection for foods from specific regions, such as Italy's Parma ham, France's Roquefort cheese, Portugal's Madeira wine and many others. The debate on the scope of these geographical indications has pitted the 28-nation bloc against the United States, Australia, Argentina and others in global trade talks. The argument that parmesan is a common noun, rather than an indication of origin, has been dismissed by the European courts. But for Parma food producers and exporters, this is not enough. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 53 | |||||||||
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 National Oceanography Centre/Adam Stilton
Monserrat volcano as seen
from the JOIDES Resolution vessel.Monserrat
volcano tsunami size reduced
By the National Oceanography Centre
Tsunamis triggered by the partial collapse of the Caribbean Monserrat volcano, 13,000 years ago, would have been much smaller than previously thought, according to research soon to be published in Geochemistry, Geophysics and Geosystems. The collapse of a volcano can lead to explosive eruptions or tsunamis, the size of which depends on the dynamics of the failure. For example, the abrupt collapse of a large volume of material into the sea will cause larger tsunamis than a gradual or submarine landslide, although this relationship has been the subject of vigorous debate. It is also important to determine where the slide material comes from. Material that falls a long way from the above ground part of the volcano will create a bigger tsunami than failure of sediment layers around the submerged base of the volcano. It was previously thought that a large submarine deposit of sediment at the base of the Monserrat volcano was the result of the abrupt, large scale collapse of the volcanic island into the sea. Therefore it had been thought that a high magnitude tsunami must have followed. However, by analyzing sediment cores drilled during the International Ocean Discovery Programme expedition to Monserrat in 2012, this research shows that the deposit was in fact largely seafloor sediment. This finding infers that an initial landslide from the volcano triggered much more extensive failure of submarine sediment layers, around the base of the volcano. This would have generated a much smaller tsunami than if all of the material had fallen from the main volcanic edifice. The drilling was by the JOIDES Resolution research vessel, which has been a frequent visitor to Costa Rica as its crew conducts research of the Pacific coast. An international team of geologists including Peter Talling, who leads a group dedicated to studying submarine mass movements and their associated hazards, helped to collect and describe these cores. This involved noting the coarseness and nature of the material in each layer of sediment within the cores and describing the nature of the contact between each layer. In addition, the various physical properties of the sediment were measured, the sediment chemistry was analyzed, and specific layers were dated using fossils. From this information the team was able to deduce that the deposits mostly comprised seafloor sediments, and not coarse volcanic debris from the subaerial volcano. This mission was the first time that sediment from the large-scale collapse of a volcanic island has been successfully drilled for scientific purposes. |
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| From Page 7: Updated regulations said to protect citizens By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The economics ministry said that an update has been published of regulations of a law that supposed to protect citizens from excessive requirements. The law is 8220 that is called in Spanish Ley de Protección al Ciudadano del Exceso de Requisitos y Trámites Administrativos. Among other changes, the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio said that regulations must have a cost-benefit assessment so that the cost of implementing the regulation is not more than the benefit. The changes also say that agencies cannot seek documents that have been issued by their own offices and that they also cannot have unnecessary requirements. The ministry assumes a supervisory function. The changes go into effect April 1. A second regulation to place proposed rules online for public comment goes into effect Feb. 1. |
