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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 18, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 54
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Civil war leftovers turn up
along the Nicaraguan border By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Policía de Fronteras seem to have located a vestige of the Nicaraguan civil war. The rusted bayonet and other items were found in or with two backpacks on a farm near the border with Nicaragua. From the late 1970s until 1987 the border was a war zone as Nicaraguan units sometimes would trespass into Costa Rica, and Costa Rican police were entrenched defending the country. Police were at first leery of the backpacks for fear they might contain mines. Costa Rica successfully cleared the mines that had been placed along the border, but there could have been others with the find in Cureña de Sarapiquí. The backpacks were partly buried. Members of the Unidad de Zapadores of the Fuerza Pública, who are experts in explosives, checked out the backpacks and declared them safe. Some of the items are so rusted that their exact nature is still unknown. Yoga association planning exposition for the weekend By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Yoga Para Todos returns to San José to spread the relaxing art of yoga to both newcomers and flexible veterans. The weekend festival is put on by the Asociación Costarricense de Profesores de Yoga, which teaches its exercises to others without requirements of age, gender or creed. There will be many different classes and disciplines on display, but much interest has been placed on the Kundalini branch. According to American Sikh Hari Singh Khalsa, the spread of Kundalini first started because the well-known Yogi Bhajan thought the demographic of learners was too small so he brought it to the West. Now it is seen as an effective counter to a stressful pace of life and rewarding way of meditation, Khalsa said. “Kundalini yoga does not focus on holding what may be difficult postures for lengths of time,” said Khalsa via email. “Kundalini uses controlled breathing in smooth flowing motion to gently effect stretching.” Teacher Navjeet Kaur from Playa Flamingo will be leading Kundalini sessions at the festival. A range of other specialty classes are planned, like a session tailor-made for children with Down syndrome. Meditative musical acts and other yoga cultural shows are set to provide entertainment. There will also be a line of stands with food, clothing, and other merchandise. Friday offers free classes at a variety of locations in the metro area. Saturday’s and Sunday’s events will be held at the Centro Nacional de la Cultura from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. 2,000 visitors are expected for the festival’s sixth edition. General entrance tickets are 3,000 colons for each day or 5,000 colons for a two-day pass. Seniors pay 1,000 colons. Alliance for Progress race goes to Flamingo May 3 By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The 4th Annual Ruta la Paz Race is headed in a new direction. Although it will still be divided into a 5-kilometer and 10- kilometer sections, the races are now taking place at Playa Flamingo and sporting a new charity partner. The Alliance for Progress of Education in Guanacaste is made up of a collection of non-profits that strive towards providing opportunities for the region’s youth. All proceeds will benefit the alliance’s members, and the Guanacaste Community Fund has promised to match any amount up to $15,000. “The four non-profits in the alliance are fundamentally transforming the educational offerings in Guanacaste through a comprehensive approach that engages students in all of the central coastal Guanacaste region in meaningful learning in and out of school,” said Abel McClennen, the director of La Paz Community School. The school is a bilingual, non-profit institution with preschool, primary, and high school tracks. Founded in 2007, the enrollment has already grown to 215 students of varying backgrounds. The Saturday, May 3, event hosted by Global Sportx Group will start at Playa Flamingo and lead runners along the northern coast to Playa Potrero. There are expected to be more than 750 runners participating. Pre-registration can be done online and costs $20. Animal adoptions Saturday By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Asociación Animales de Asís will be at the Walmart in Alajuela Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with cats and dog ready to bring home. There is a 10,000-colon donation sought to cover the medical treatments, including vaccination and castration, that have been performed on the animals. Expat rejects food fads and says eat moderately Dear A.M. Costa Rica: So mineral salt is to be the next fad? Your writer is correct when he states that salt is toxic. Everything is toxic. Water is toxic, oxygen is toxic, everything is toxic. It is the dose which makes it so. Conversely, if diluted enough, everything becomes non-toxic. All the experts agree that fluoride is the one factor which had almost eliminated dental cavities. If dentists only wanted to make money, they would be the ones trying to ban it. In my generation, the average person had over 10 cavities, now it is less than one. Both my parents had lost all their teeth by the age of 40, and this was usual. As for iodine, in the county where I was brought up, Derbyshire, the water supply had zero iodine, and thyroid disease was so common it was called "Derbyshire neck." Adding a trace of iodine to salt eliminated it. As for trace minerals, I have never seen anyone suffering from lack of trace minerals. Don't forget we are all living longer, so we must be doing something right. Forget these fads. Eat everything in moderation. You do not need dietary supplements. Dr.
John Cocker
Tres Rios, Osa
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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 A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 18, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 54 | |
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 'With
the exception of one, it has been impossible until now to remove the
bodies of the workers killed in the steamer "San Pablo"'
A larger version is HERE! |
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| World War II was not very pura
vida for Germans, historian notes |
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By
Michael Krumholtz
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff On July 2, 1942 a German submarine sunk a United Fruit Co. boat and killed 24 Costa Rican workers. Two days later a riot targeted shops and homes of German-Costa Ricans, which destroyed more than 100 buildings. In his presentation given to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, scholar Carlos Meissner detailed how these two days fit into a difficult era for the German population in the country. His research work, titled "The German minority of Costa Rica and the Second World War," underscores their persecution during World War II. Now a scholar of the German Academic Exchange Service at the Universidad de Costa Rica, Meissner himself shares citizenship between here and Germany. Even before the boat's sinking or the riots, he said, the bombing of Pearl Harbor led to aggressive measures against the German population in the country. Costa Rica declared war just a day later. According to Meissner, some German Costa Ricans were ordered under house arrest while another portion was taken into custody. "In San José, others were detained in a camp that had been erected next to where the Municipalidad is today or in the penitentiary, which is now used as the Museo de los Niños," he said. Nearly 380 were moved to internment camps located in the U.S., while 235 more are thought to have been sent to Berlin via Washington. Meissner said that most of the anti-German influence in policy making was coming directly from Washington. "The campaign against German Costa Ricans was initiated by the U.S. Department of State, which effectively dictated its policies to the Costa Rican government," he said. "However, San José learned to take advantage of the situation for itself as well." Often the property and businesses of those uprooted were expropriated to pay for public debts or for Costa Ricans to make private profits. Per outside orders, the Costa Rican government created the Junta de Custodia de la Propiedad to carry out the expropriation, Meissner said. The U.S. said it would refuse any sugar or coffee exports from the country if it did not take over the German businesses in these industries, Meissner said in his presentation. German-Costa Ricans not only lost an enormous amount of material |
 Illustration, July 13, 1942, from Novedades: 'They estimate the loss from the actions of Saturday at 3 million colons.' wealth but also experienced the physical and psychological struggles that come with marginalization, he said. In all, more than 4,000 Germans living in Latin America were sent to the U.S. for detainment. His research showed that the month after the war concluded there were still 150 German-Costa Ricans detained in U.S. internment camps. But within Costa Rican borders, Meissner said that after the war's end, the resentment towards Germans had faded. When José Figueres rose to power after the 1948 civil war, his pro-German sentiment washed away the old guard of political elites who organized the initial persecution. This shifted perception allowed people to look back upon the things done to innocent citizens as clear injustices, he said. "Surely, the violence of July 4, 1942, when many German Costa Rican shops were looted and homes attacked, marked a low point," he said. "However, the visible abuses of the Costa Rican government during the conflict allowed for German Costa Ricans to be seen as victims." |
 Diario
de Costa Rica, July 5, 1942 : '76 hurt and 123 buildings stoned during
the riots yestersday in the capital.'
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| Costa Rican picked the wrong day to spray the marijuana
plants |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Usually when anti-drug agents descend on a marijuana patch, no one is there. But when they raided a patch in Piedras Negras in the Cantón de Mora, they found a man hard at work spraying the plants. The man, a Costa Rican, went into custody, and agents of the Policía de Control de Drogas destroyed the crop. There were 1,233 plants up to about 20 inches in height, they said. Agent said they received telephone calls about the marijuana patch. They also said that the man detained had prior arrests for similar crimes and that there was a warrant outstanding for him. There is a good chance that the man will not see any post-conviction jail time. Some of the new lawmakers are considering presenting measures to decriminalize the possession and use of marijuana. The reasons would be to raise money through taxation and also to reduce some of the prison crowding. Some 150 woman have just been released after being jailed for trying to smuggle drugs into prisons. Such woman are eligible for home confinement, due to a measure recently approved. The new legislature that takes office May 1 seems to have a number of members who are not hard liners on marijuana and other drug use. |
 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Públicas
Detained man awaits transport to
prosecutors. |
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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 |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 18, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 54 | |||||
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| New research suggests that muscle mass is an indicator of
longer life |
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By
the University of California at Los Angeles news service
New research suggests that the more muscle mass older Americans have, the less likely they are to die prematurely. The findings add to the growing evidence that overall body composition — and not the widely used body mass index, or BMI — is a better predictor of all-cause mortality. The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine, is the culmination of previous research led by Preethi Srikanthan, an assistant clinical professor in the endocrinology division at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California at Los Angeles, that found that building muscle mass is important in decreasing metabolic risk. "As there is no gold-standard measure of body composition, several studies have addressed this question using different measurement techniques and have obtained different results," Srikanthan said. "So many studies on the mortality impact of obesity focus on BMI. Our study indicates that clinicians need to be focusing on ways to improve body composition, rather than on BMI alone, when counseling older adults on preventative health behaviors." The researchers analyzed data collected by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey III, conducted between 1988 and 1994. They focused on a group of 3,659 individuals that included men who were 55 or older and women who were 65 or older at the time of the survey. The authors then determined how many of those individuals had died from natural causes based on a follow-up survey done in 2004. The body composition of the study subjects was measured using bioelectrical impedance, which involves running an electrical current through the body. Muscle allows the current to pass more easily than fat does, due to muscle's water content. In this way, the researchers could determine a muscle mass index — the amount of muscle relative to height — similar to a body mass index. They looked at how this muscle mass index was related to the risk of death. They found that all-cause mortality was significantly lower in the fourth quartile of muscle mass index compared with the first quartile. "In other words, the greater your muscle mass, the lower your risk of death," said Arun Karlamangla, an associate professor in the geriatrics division at the Geffen School and the study's co-author. "Thus, rather than worrying about weight or body mass index, we should be trying to maximize and maintain muscle mass." This study does have some limitations. For instance, one cannot definitively establish a cause-and-effect relationship between muscle mass and survival using a cohort study such as NHANES III. |
 A.M.
Costa Rica file photo
Vigorous
exercise is possible in middle age, too.
"But we can say that muscle mass seems to be an important predictor of risk of death," Srikanthan said. In addition, bioelectrical impedance is not the most advanced measurement technique, though the NHANES III measurements were conducted in a very rigorous fashion "and practically, this is the best situation possible in a study of this size," she noted. |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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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 A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 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, Tuesday, March 18, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 54 | |||||
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| Online sextortion brings 18 months in federal prison Special
to A.M. Costa Rica
A Temecula, California, college student who hacked into as many as 150 online accounts to extort young females into sending him nude photos and video or submitting to Skype sessions in which he convinced two teens to undress was sentenced Monday to 18 months in federal prison, concluding the latest in a series of federal sextortion cases in Southern California. The student, Jared James Abrahams, 20, was arrested last year by special agents with the FBI, Abrahams pleaded guilty Nov. 12 to one count of computer hacking and three counts of extortion. Abrahams targeted young women he knew, and he identified other victims after hacking into Facebook pages. Using hacking software, Abrahams took control of victims’ email accounts, social media accounts and even their computers, which allowed him to remotely turn on Web cameras and occasionally take pictures of naked victims. Abrahams used the nude photos to extort victims by threatening to publicly post the compromising photos or videos to the victims’ social media accounts unless the victim either sent more nude photos or videos, or engaged in a Skype session with him and did what he said for five minutes. Several teens and women in their early 20s were victimized when Abrahams posted nude photos to their social media accounts. At least two victims consented to the Skype sessions proposed by Abrahams to keep their photos off the Internet. “As digital devices, email accounts, and social media accounts now contain the most intimate details of the public’s daily lives, the impact of this type of hacking and extortion becomes more pronounced, troubling, and far-reaching,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo filed with the court. “In some cases, this type of criminal behavior can be life-changing for the victims – especially for vulnerable victims who may feel it is impossible to rebuild their tarnished reputations. Stated differently, individuals like the defendant have the ability to affect a person’s life in frightening ways by using the broad reach of the Internet.” To avoid becoming a victim of sextortion, everyone should be prudent when posting images online or to any wireless communication (computer, phone, tablet), especially if the images have private or compromising content, investigators said. Victims who receive extortionate threats or whose personal accounts have been compromised are urged to contact a parent, trusted adult, or law enforcement, since the situation will only worsen, they added. The FBI was able to quickly identify Abrahams after a victim reported his extortion attempts. As always, computer users are warned to ensure their passwords are difficult for others to guess, avoid opening unverified attachments, and use reliable anti-virus software with updated definitions, agents said. Lastly, computer users should cover their webcams when they are not in use, they added. In previous sextortion cases investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the U. S. Attorney's Office in southern California, a Glendale man was sentenced in December to five years in prison, and an Orange County man received a six-year prison term in 2011. Technique developed to show precise ancestry via DNA By the University of Michigan news service
Ancestral background has much to do with the likelihood of developing or staving off disease. But separating the associations between other factors and genetic variations that cause disease, can be difficult and often result in false genetic study leads. A new statistical method, developed by researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, can help those who study the human genome better identify ancestry as they go about isolating the genes that cause disease. The LASER (Locating Ancestry from SEquence Reads) software can establish ancestry using very small amounts of sequence data, scattered across 1 to 10 percent of the genome and adding only a few dollars to the cost of a genetic analysis. "You can use our method to describe the ancestry of an individual very precisely, even separating individuals from different parts of Finland," said Goncalo Abecasis, a professor of biostatistics at the university. "In studies of genetic diseases, this information helps separate changes that cause disease from more numerous changes that specify ancestry." A study explaining how the new software program was developed and tested is published online in Nature Genetics. "Estimation of ancestry was previously challenging in many disease sequencing studies where only a small proportion of the genome is sequenced," said Chaolong Wang, who holds a doctorate in bioinformatics from Michigan and now is a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. To test their method, the team used two reference groups with known ancestry and compared these against results from the software. "The accurate ancestry estimates derived from our method allow us to correct for population stratification in genetic disease studies based on sequencing, as well as to carefully match ancestral background when combining genetic data from different sources, increasing our ability to find disease genes," said Wang, who is first author of the paper. Libya thanks U.S. for raid by SEALS on oil tanker By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Libyan government has thanked the United States for a Navy operation that stopped an oil tanker from exporting illicitly obtained crude oil. The U.S. Defense Department said Monday that U.S. Navy SEALS took control of the tanker while it was in international waters near Cyprus. U.S. sailors are taking the ship back to Libya. A Pentagon statement said no one was hurt in the boarding of the stateless vessel seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans. It said the action was requested by the Libyan and Cypriot governments and approved by U.S. President Barack Obama. Cyprus had been monitoring the tanker, called "Morning Glory," which was anchored near its coast. Libya's interim government said in a statement Monday that it thanks all those who contributed to the ship's return, especially the United States and Cyprus. The "Morning Glory" loaded the oil in the Libyan port of As-Sidra, which is controlled by a rebel militia that seeks more autonomy for eastern Libya. The tanker evaded Libyan naval forces, prompting a backlash against Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, who was forced from office by the national assembly. The tanker had been a North Korean-flagged ship. But Pyongyang has denied responsibility, saying the vessel is linked to an Egyptian company. North Korea then revoked the registration of the ship. The Libyan government said it has ordered special forces to deploy within two weeks to bring all rebel-held ports back under government control. The standoff has cut Libya's oil exports by more than 80 percent. Antarctic moss revives itself after being frozen 1,500 years By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Antarctica is the coldest, driest and windiest place on Earth, but plants can take root there and survive, and a new study finds that moss can come back to life after centuries buried in the permafrost. Signy Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula, is one of the richest wildlife habitats on the frozen continent. Each summer when the ice retreats, it becomes a refuge for penguins and sea birds, and plants, especially mosses, return to life. It’s here that Peter Convey, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey, drills through the newly sprouted moss into the frozen ground to extract cores that will help him reconstruct the Earth’s climate history. In this study, Convey’s team wanted to know how far back in time - or down the core - the moss retained its ability to regenerate. Earlier research suggested that frozen plant material could be revived after 20 years at most. “So to look at it, we got a core. We sliced it half down the middle, so lengthways, and put the halves in sterile boxes in a sort of standard growth incubator," Convey said. "And it turned out after about three to four weeks you could see some new growth appearing in parts of the core.” That regenerated moss dated back 1,500 years. Other studies show that only microbes are capable of revival after so many years. Writing in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, Convey reports seeing plant shoots on the entire length of the 1.5 meter core. “And you can go further than that if you really want to," he said. "You can look at leaves on the shoot and the leaves are pretty well perfectly preserved down the core as well. So, one of the beauties of this sort of moss core is that you get a live surface, a growing surface. And then as you go down into the core, very quickly it becomes frozen in permafrost.” The moss survives so long in this deep freeze by building on the tolerance features it developed to flourish in the harsh Antarctic landscape. Convey says that survival mechanism has special relevance now, in the context of climate change, as the polar regions warm faster than any other part of the globe. “Now if we can imagine the situation where a moss bank like this gets covered over by ice, but the moss is viable in the permafrost underneath the ice, then as the ice recedes, you’ve actually got organisms in place that effectively are ready to go as soon as the ice goes away and their habitat becomes available again," he said. "So you’ve got a means of preserving diversity in the region.” And, Convey asks, if moss can survive 1,500 years locked away in the permafrost, maybe it can last even longer, through interglacial periods of 10,000 years or more. That's the subject for another study. Gravitation waves linked to Big Bang creating universe By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Scientists say they have discovered evidence of what blew up the Big Bang. If confirmed, experts say it will be one of the most important fundamental discoveries in the history of science. The new research provides the first solid evidence that the universe went through an extraordinary growth spurt in its first brief moments of being, a period called inflation. This unfathomably rapid rate of growth left ripples in the fabric of space, gravitational waves that Albert Einstein predicted but that have never been detected until now. The force driving that exponential expansion is unknown, but experts say this new evidence that it exists offers a long-sought link between gravity, which acts on everything and quantum mechanics, which governs the subatomic realm. “I think this is going to go down, if it stands the test of time, as one of the greatest discoveries in the entire history of science,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Max Tegmark, who was not involved in the research, “and I really don’t say that lightly.” The researchers studied the universe’s background radiation, the last traces of energy that remain from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. Working at a radio telescope at the South Pole, where the air is dry and there is little human interference, they found extremely subtle irregularities in that radiation. The variations followed a curling, twisting pattern that they say marks the passage of gravitational waves. “Detecting this signal is one of the most important goals in cosmology today,” team leader John Kovac at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said in a statement. Although much of current astrophysics rests on the assumption that inflation happened, the evidence has been lacking. And it wasn’t clear that the signal would be detectable nearly 14 billion years after the fact, added University of Chicago cosmologist Michael Turner. “Looking for the gravity waves from inflation was called, by many, folly or chasing a wild goose,” he said. Turner was not a member of the research team. He said the discovery of gravity waves means scientists can study the force behind inflation, which, he said, “might well have been the dynamite behind the Big Bang.” “One of the reasons why this discovery is exciting is because inflation does require that there’s some new fundamental physics beyond the four forces we know about,” said Johns Hopkins University astronomer Marc Kamionkowski, who was also not involved with the research. He said the new findings fit nicely with theories that unify all of the forces. The new evidence has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Experts who have seen the research said it was compelling, but that other scientists will need to confirm it. Kamionkowski said that if it does stand up to scrutiny, it opens up an exciting new area of research. “It’s as if someone was around at the time of inflation and sent us a telegram encoded in gravitational waves, which then got transcribed on the sky,” he said. “In the forthcoming years, what I’m hoping will happen is, we’ll actually be able to read what this telegram is telling us.” China cuts the rate of TB with aggressive treatments By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Over the past 20 years, China has slashed its tuberculosis rate by more than 50 percent by broadly applying the World Health Organization's strategy for TB elimination. Experts say the outcome is proof tuberculosis can be vanquished through an aggressive treatment program. China is a major contributor to the world's tuberculosis pandemic, with an estimated one million new cases every year. Experts say its infection rate accounts for 11 percent of the global burden. But by extending an aggressive TB elimination strategy from half the country in the 1990s to the entire population, China has dramatically cut the number of existing TB cases. In less than 15 years, they dropped from 170 to 59 people per hundred thousand. That's a 57 percent reduction in TB prevalence between 2000 and 2010. The figure puts China significantly ahead of the World Health's global tuberculosis reduction target of 50 percent by 2015. Giovanni Battista Migliori, director of the World Health Collaborative Center for Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases in Italy, is not surprised at China's success in reducing its TB prevalence. "When a decision is taken in China, it is more likely to be really applied than in Western countries, for example," he said. "So a policy is really applied when the government sends an order to do this." Migliori also says TB is easier to control in China than in other countries because there is relatively little outside migration. A nationwide expansion of the Directly Observed Therapy Strategy, or DOTS, program in China is credited for the dramatic reduction in the rate of TB. Treatment for tuberculosis requires patients to take a number of drugs daily for six to nine months. Adherence to the regimen is difficult, and often uneven. But with DOTS, health care workers visit patients in their homes every day, making sure they swallow each dose of the prescribed pills. Migliori says China's commitment to eliminate TB can serve as a model for other countries with high prevalence rates. The disease is often seen as a co-infection in HIV-positive patients. But even in countries battling a high incidence of AIDS, Migliori believes TB can be dramatically reduced with the proper commitment. Station for unwanted kids overwhelmed and closed By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Authorities in southern China said a station where parents are able to anonymously leave their unwanted children has been forced to close because of an overwhelming number of abandoned babies. The Xinhua news agency reported that the so-called baby hatch in southern China's Guangzhou City has received 262 babies since it began operation in late January. That figures to roughly five babies per day. The report on Monday quotes local welfare officials as saying the facility's rooms, beds, quarantine facilities as well as working staff are facing a shortfall due to the overwhelming baby figures. The officials said the closure is temporary, stressing that it will be reopened once all the abandoned babies, many of whom are sick, receive proper treatment. Since 2011, China has set up 25 baby hatches across the country in an effort to cut the mortality rate of abandoned infants. There are plans to add many more. Those wishing to abandon a baby can walk into the facility, leave the child in a temperature-controlled hatch, and sound an alarm. Medical staff will then retrieve the child five to 10 minutes later. Critics of the baby hatches say they could encourage parents to abandon their children. Supporters say the facilities provide immediate, life-saving care to children who likely would be abandoned anyway. Abandoning a child is against the law in China, but the issue remains a major problem, partly due to a decades-old one-child policy that has created a higher demand for boys than for girls. Beijing says a roughly equal number of boys and girls have been left in the baby hatches. China says its passengers are cleared for terrorism By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
China said on Tuesday that none of the Chinese passengers aboard the missing Malaysia Airlines airliner appear to have links to terrorism, as the massive, multinational search for the jet expanded further. The official Xinhua news agency quoted China's ambassador to Malaysia, Huang Huikang, as saying the determination was made following background checks on all passengers from the mainland. About two-thirds of the 227 passengers on board the jet were Chinese. The ambassador also said China has begun looking for the Boeing 777 in the territory along the northern corridor of the search area. The plane appears to have flown either north toward Central Asia or south, deeper into the vast Indian Ocean after it mysteriously vanished on March 8. Investigators believe the jet may have been deliberately diverted from its initial flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The New York Times is reporting the plane's intended route appears to have been altered by a computer system most likely programmed by someone in the cockpit with knowledge of advanced aircraft systems. Speaking anonymously, U.S. officials told the Times the development reinforces the theory that foul play is involved and will likely increase scrutiny of the plane's pilot and co-pilot. The search has been complicated because the plane's transponder, which identifies it to civilian radar, and other communications devices were disabled or shut off. Authorities are now forced to rely on imprecise satellite tracking data based on automated messages from the aircraft. Twenty-six countries are involved in the search, which now includes water and land in 11 countries and spans tens of millions of square kilometers. The search area is now so extensive that the U.S. on Monday called back the "USS Kidd," a naval destroyer that had been looking for the plane in the Indian Ocean. U.S. officials say it makes more sense to look for the jet using long-range surveillance aircraft. Also on Monday, a United Nations spokesman said neither an explosion nor a plane crash on land or on water has been detected so far by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. The organization records seismic shocks and sound waves around the world to detect nuclear explosions, but it also can detect the explosion of a large aircraft as well as its impact on ground or water. Investigators have refused to rule out any possibility, including a mechanical malfunction, fire, hijacking, terrorism, or pilot suicide.  Voice of America/Adam Phillips
These two girls were cold but
happy at New York's Saint Patrick's Day Parade.Irish face frigid weather
in New York city parade March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, and for millions of Americans of Irish descent, and others in search of a good time, that means a razzle-dazzle parade up New York’s Fifth Avenue. The weather was bitter cold on St. Patrick’s Day, but that didn’t stop an estimated 150,000 marchers and musicians from processing up Fifth Avenue, just as they have every year since 1762. Organizers say the march is the oldest and largest parade in the world. Many bore Irish and American flags, and the banners of their Irish or Gaelic organizations, such as police, firefighter clubs and area high schools. Rick Burns was one of the estimated million spectators at the parade. When asked what was especially Irish about the day, Burns had a ready answer. "Everybody’s a little Irish today, even if you’re not Irish," he said. The size and scope of the event has become an American tradition - and a New York tradition. One group of college boys was proud that the Big Apple boasts a much larger parade than the one in Dublin, Ireland’s capital. “They probably hate us,” laughed one. “New York is everything bigger than anywhere else. It’s the best city in the world. So it does everything bigger!” said another. Two Irish American girls, costumed and made up in the green and orange of the Irish flag, looked especially happy. “It’s our heritage. It’s awesome. A little cold, but awesome.” A reporter asked an Irish tourist what it means to be Irish in America. The reply, “Irish people are happy no matter where they are. They celebrate St. Patrick’s no matter where they are, because it’s part of who we are!" Parade organizers excluded Irish Americans who say they are gay. It’s a controversial position that prompted Guinness, the Irish beer company, to withdraw its sponsorship. Bill de Blasio, New York’s new mayor, also opted out of the march in protest. One lady sympathized with the mayor's position. “I don’t think they should stop them," she said. "Why just pick on one particular group. I would be for it. I think everybody should be allowed the freedom to march if they want. Why not?” Nearby, a man hearing this disagreed. “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. The Bible says seven times against it and the mayor wants to go with it!” Controversy and celebration, music, revelry and complaint. On St. Patrick’s Day and every day in New York, it’s all part of the passing parade. Austin again showcases variety of musical talent By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Austin, Texas, is known as the Live Music Capital of the World, and that reputation is enhanced each year during the South by Southwest Festival. The event, which started in 1987, has grown larger each year and this year offered more than 2,000 showcase performances at venues all over the city. Most musicians come here looking for exposure. If they cannot get it inside a venue, they will go out on the street. There is always music being played on Austin's Sixth Street, with all of its clubs and bars, but during South by Southwest there is even more of it and it comes from all over the world. There are bands here from all over America and from as far away as Japan, South Korea and Azerbaijan. Thousands of fans have poured into Austin to hear them play. Joy Wave, an Indie Rock band from Rochester, New York, played at a venue sponsored by Spotify, an online streaming music service favored by young music fans. Bass player John Donnally and singer Daniel Armbruster are confident that their band will stand out. “There is none like ours,” said Donnally. “It is also not a competition. I think Spotify, like all music, is instantly accessible forever, so everyone can listen to as much music as they want to,” added Armbruster. But many musicians are clearly here hoping for a big break, an idea summed up in a song by New York-based comedic songwriter Jessica Delfino. “I do not know what to do with my life, but I really, really, really want to be famous,” said Delfino. Among the local singer/songwriters who already has a well-established fan base is Eliza Gilkyson. Her new CD, released during the South by Southwest Festival, displays a style of self-expression that has become a model for many younger female singers. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, March 18, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 54 | |||||||||
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Chicken bones
used to track migrations of Polynesians By
the University of Adelaide news service
Did the Polynesians beat Columbus to South America? Not according to the tale of migration uncovered by analysis of ancient DNA from chicken bones recovered in archaeological digs across the Pacific. The ancient DNA has been used to study the origins and dispersal of ancestral Polynesian chickens, reconstructing the early migrations of people and the animals they carried with them. The study, led by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA and published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, reveals that previous claims of contact between early Polynesians and South America were probably based on contaminated results. Instead, the new study has identified and traced a unique genetic marker of the original Polynesian chickens that is only present in the Pacific and Island Southeast Asia. The research team of national and international collaborators, including Australian National University, University of Sydney, and Durham and Aberdeen Universities in the UK, used female-inherited mitochondrial DNA extracted from chicken bones excavated in archaeological digs from islands including Hawaii, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Niue. "We have identified genetic signatures of the original Polynesian chickens, and used these to track early movements and trading patterns across the Pacific," says lead author Vicki Thomson of the Centre. "We were also able to trace the origins of these lineages back into the Philippines, providing clues about the source of the original Polynesian chicken populations." Associate Professor Jeremy Austin, Centre deputy director, says: "There are still many theories about where the early human colonists of the remote Pacific came from, which routes they followed and whether they made contact with the South American mainland. Domestic animals, such as chickens, carried on these early voyages have left behind a genetic record that can solve some of these long standing mysteries." Alan Cooper, Centre director says: "We were able to re-examine bones used in previous studies that had linked ancient Pacific and South American chickens, suggesting early human contact, and found that some of the results were contaminated with modern chicken DNA, which occurs at trace levels in many laboratory components." "We were able to show that the ancient chicken DNA provided no evidence of any pre-Columbian contact between these areas," he said. "Remarkably, our study also shows that the original Polynesian lineages appear to have survived on some isolated Pacific islands, despite the introduction of European domestic animals across the Pacific in the last couple of hundred years," Cooper says. "These original lineages could be of considerable importance to the poultry industry which is concerned about the lack of genetic diversity in commercial stocks." |
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| From Page 7: German business operators here for trade By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
More than 50,000 German tourists visit Costa Rica each year. Now some German investors are here with interest in the country’s potential markets, according to the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto. In coordination with the Costa Rican ambassador to Germany, José Joaquín Chaverri, representatives of 14 German companies have arrived here and will be schooled on pertinent information and business opportunities. The companies plan to hear from the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency, the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior, the Promotora del Comercio Exterior, the Cámara de Comercio e Industria Costarricense Alemana, the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, the Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía, and the association of companies working in renewable energy. Fernando Naranjo, the general manager of Banco Nacional, also will introduce the business leaders to Costa Rica’s industry appeal. A number of private companies that are looking for German collaboration will be on hand as well. The visit also includes hands-on trips to a coffee farm in Alajuela and to some of the high-tech, computer-based companies around the country. |
