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 Ministerio de Salud photo
Some of the trash and tires collected last week in Osa and
CorredoresAnti-dengue sweep collects
nearly 11 tons of old tires By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some 400 volunteers collected nearly 11 tons of old tires in a sweep last week designed to rob the dengue mosquito of breeding places. The effort was in the cantons of Osa and Corredores, two areas where dengue is a perpetual problem. The area had 2,145 cases of the mosquito-born disease already this year. The Ministerio de Salud said this is a major increase over 2009. About 200 of the volunteers visited 1,800 homes in Ciudad Neilly to collect recyclable trash and tires. Cervercería Costa Rica, the beer company, loaned a truck to transport the recyclable wastes, and Grupo Holcim assisted in collecting the tires, the ministry said. Health officials worry that the incidents of dengue will increase with the arrival of the rainy season and they called on individual residents to check their homes and eliminate mosquito breeding spots. Our reader's opinion
Some real-world questionson crime and criminals Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I have to get in my two bits worth about the crime situation in Costa Rica in general, and youth crime in particular since that was a subject of a recent article and letter. First of all I would like to address the crime situation in general. We all know that Costa Rica has attempted and succeeded, I guess, to hire a lot more policeman. I certainly see a lot more of them, and they are definitely riding around in newer cars or trucks. I understand the vehicles are donated by the Chinese who certainly understand the value of having police to keep their citizens in line. I am not sure what this has done with the crime situation, since everyone I know has been robbed at least once, and several have been robbed multiple times. If it is true, and I think this is somewhat overstated, that the young criminals take over at night in Costa Rica, that this could have a very detrimental effect on the tourist trade. A lot of tourists go out at night. We had better keep that situation quiet. Now we seem to have the problem that many of the people who are apprehended are almost immediately returned to the street to rob or repeat their criminal act again by the judicial system. I do not understand this. Don't the judges have families and friends who are being robbed? Don't they understand the potential harm they are causing the people of their country? Or do they just associate with people that have more and higher razor wire? But calling judges spineless does not help a thing or contribute to solving the problem. Evidently something is going on here that I and many other people do not understand. Is there a problem with not enough jail space? It costs money to incarcerate people. Does the country not have the money? Are most of the people being robbed Gringos so the judges don't care? Do the judges think criminals should all get multiple chances to straighten out their lives? Why do ordinary Costa Ricans allow these crimes to occur (and they do) and then let the judges put the criminals back on the street? In my opinion the situation will not change until these and other real world questions are answered. Guy C. Moats
Playas del Coco
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, March 25, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 59 | |||||||||
| Child welfare agency in pursuit of famous twin girls |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The 4-year-old twins who were separated in a U.S. operation in 2007 are in flight with their parents. The nation's child welfare agency wants to remove the two children from their home because there have been complaints that it is dirty and home to chickens and smokers. The Patronato Nacional de la Infancia, the child welfare agency, said Wednesday that it had received an order from a judge of the Juzgado de Niñez y Adolescencia in San José to remove the children. However, when child protection agents went to the home, the twins were not there. The agency said it had filed a report with the Judicial Investigating Organization. The original complaint seems to have come from the |
Hospital Nacional de Niños.
One of the girls was a patient there two months ago. They still have
medical problems. The description of the home is similar to many households in Costa Rica. Officials are unhappy because some of the adults in the home smoke and that chickens enter the home as do dogs. The Patronato tried to remove the children with the permission of the parents earlier in the week, but the parents would not surrender them. The twins are Yurelia and Fiorella Rocha Arias of Alajuelita, San José. They were joined at birth at the chest and stomach. They shared a single liver and portions of a dual heart. The operation was done at Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital in Palo Alto, California. |
| Intellectual property rights still a matter of dispute |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The concept of intellectual property continues to cause disputes among legislators. The Asamblea Legislativa finally passed on first reading the final measure in the package of bills implementing the free trade treaty with the United States, Central America and the Dominican Republic. That happened late Tuesday. But the Partido Acción Ciudadana is threatening to refer the measure to the Sala IV constitutional court for a review that may take some time. That would prevent a final vote. Marco Vinicio Ruiz, the minister of Comercio Exterior, said he hoped for a final vote before lawmakers go on the Semana Santa holiday March 31, according to Acción Ciudadana. |
Acción Ciudadana
correctly noted in a press release that the law would
fine and perhaps send to prison those who play music commercially
without paying for the right. The political party also said that the measure would force farmers to use trademarked chemicals. The measure only benefits big international producers of music and agrochemicals, Acción Ciudadana said. In fact, the law also protects authors and composers who are Costa Rican. Under Costa Rica's weak rule of law hardly anyone has been paying for musical rights, and radio stations have raised the issue to one of cultural and educational value. Counterfeiting CDs and musical disks is big business, although police frequently bust up street sales. |
| Electric rates are not going up as much as the utility wanted |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Homeowners and commercial users will see an increase in their electric bill the next time one arrives. The good news is that the regulating agency approved an increase that was lower than what the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad sought. The Authoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos said that increase would be about from 10.2 to 11.4 percent with the higher increase going to those who use more electricity. A home that today uses 200 kilowatt hours pays 11,800 colons, about $22.25. With the new rates, the cost would go up 1,200 colons to 13,000 colons, about $24.50. The new residential rates are figured based on the average |
price of 83.48 colons per kilowatt
hour. Commercial rates are slightly higher and based on 107.7
colons per kilowatt hour. The electrical utility had sought increases ranging from 14.87 to 32.30 for generation, transmission, distribution and public lighting. The rate increases that have been approved range from 0 to 17.4 percent. The Defensoría de los Habitantes issued a press release approving the new rate structure, noted that it had intervened at a rate-setting hearing in February and criticized the way the utility was justifying its proposal. The rates will go into effect when the resolution announced Wednesday is published in the La Gaceta official newspaper. That may be five days or more. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, March 25, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 59 | |||||||||
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| New technique revelars loggerhead
turtle secrets |
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By the University of Florida news staff
With loggerhead sea turtle nests in dramatic decline, researchers would love to know more about where the turtles go, and what they eat, so they can better protect the creatures’ habitat. Now, a team of University of Florida biologists from the Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research is teasing that information from turtle shells and reporting some surprising findings. Doctoral student Hannah Vander Zanden writes in Tuesday’s online edition of the journal Biology Letters that analyses of the chemical elements in the shells of 15 living female loggerheads suggests the turtles are remarkably individualistic in their range, diet, or both. The findings are unexpected because loggerheads — named for their large heads — are known to swim thousands of miles and eat 80 types of prey, often including crabs, whelks and many other ocean-bottom-dwelling creatures. ”The fact is, you have this big range of potential things they can eat, and potential places they can go, and it seems that individuals are not using that whole range,” Ms. Vander Zanden said. Although the findings need to be refined, the research could one day help scientists and public policy makers find and protect areas of the open ocean or coastal waters where loggerheads congregate or feed heavily. Such protection may be more and more urgent: March 10 federal agencies proposed upgrading the turtle’s status from “threatened” to “endangered” among seven Atlantic and Pacific populations. Ms. Vander Zanden’s findings also shed light on the turtles’ habits over a span of 12 years, at least three times as long as the longest study involving satellite-tagged turtles — proving the worth of analyzing shells, or similar tissues in other animals, that contain forms of elements known as stable isotopes. “It really revolutionizes our way of looking at these animals that have this kind of tissue,” said Karen Bjorndal, professor of biology and director of sea turtle research center. She noted such animals include whales with tooth-like baleen and mammals with tusks or horns. “This loggerhead research offers the longest records that I am aware of obtained from living individuals.” Ms. Vander Zanden used a small biopsy punch tool to gather pencil-eraser sized shell samples from adult female turtles while they were nesting at Cape Canaveral National Seashore in Florida. Removing the samples, which cut away only the dead tissue of the shell, is harmless and painless to the turtles. She ground the samples into thin layers and analyzed them using a mass spectrometer, a machine that separates stable isotopes according to charge and mass. |
 Univesity of Florida photo
Doctoral student Hannah Vander Zanden displays a shell sample
gathered from a loggerhead turtle.The higher an animal on the food chain, the more heavy stable isotopes it accumulates and the greater the ratio of heavy to light isotopes in its tissue. Different ocean latitudes, meanwhile, have different ratios of light and heavy isotopes, ratios also incorporated into shells or other tissues. So while the analyses revealed that the turtles were surprisingly different in their individual diet or travels — and that they maintained these differences over the dozen years of growth reflected in the shell samples — it did not specify discrete food items or locations. “The problem with stable isotopes is that diet and habitat are kind of confounded,” Ms. Vander Zanden said. “So we can’t necessarily parse out what is causing these differences. Whether this turtle is eating just blue crabs or is eating whelks. Whether this turtle is eating in New Jersey or in the Bahamas.” She said she will seek to sort out that question in the remainder of her dissertation research — with luck filling in major gaps about a species once celebrated as healthy but today viewed as in jeopardy. While population numbers for adult members of the species are somewhat mysterious, it is known that nests in the U.S. have declined 41 percent in the past 10 years, Bjorndal said. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, March 25, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 59 | |||||||||
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Latin American news Please reload page if feed does not appear promptly |
Driver
gunned down in middle of downtown By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A 25-year-old Colombian died in the center of San José early Wednesday when a man on a motorcycle emptied his pistol's entire magazine at the victim. The Judicial Investigating Organization identified the dead man by the last name of Gallego. A companion, a Costa Rican woman with the last name of Trice, suffered a bullet wound to the neck, the agency said. The shooting took place near the La Merced church when Gallego stopped his vehicle at a traffic light about 6 a.m.. Two men on a motorcycle arrived and pumped 15 bullets into the car and driver. Although the killing looks like a hired hit, agents have no motive, the agency said. Investigators have been told that the pair had been in a nearby bar and that Gallego got involved in a fistfight. Agents said they found 1.6 million colons in cash, a bit more than $3,000, in the vehicle as well as $90 in U.S. currency. However, Gallego was not carrying a gun. Book fair planned By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Festival Internacional de las Artes will hold a book fair Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the Centro Nacional de la Cultura downtown. The times are from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday and from noon until 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Book publishers and marketers, writers, writer groups and others will have displays. There also will be magic and musical shows as well as face painting. Writers and poets will present their works at 2 p.m. Saturday, and Club de Libros is organizing a book exchange. The Centro de la Cultura is the culture ministry building just east of Parque España. Porteadores back off By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Faced with a stiff warning from the central government, the porteadores have called off their traffic blockades for today. Rodrigo Arias, the minister of the Presidencia, said Wednesday that Costa Ricans have a right to go to work, school or do other things without interference. The porteadores threatened to block major intersections. Their representatives walked out of a negotiating session Tuesday at Casa Presidencial. These are the contract drivers who are in competition with licensed taxi operators. They are unhappy with proposed laws they say will eliminate their profession. A new law has stiff fines for impeding traffic, and the statement from Arias suggested the government would apply those penalties. |
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