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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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Weather turns cloudy with rain in Carribean By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The weather has taken a turn towards clouds and rain. Some rain fell Wednesday in the Cartago and Turrialba areas as well as along the Caribbean coast. More of the same is predicted today with the additional warning that the rains may get heavier. Limón Centro reported three-quarters of an inch of afternoon rain Wednesday. Worshipers at a procession in Cot de Cartago faced sprinkles later in the day. The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional said that an increase in pressure in the Caribbean had brought an increase in the stregth of the winds and generated cloudy and rainy conditions. The weather experts said that rain would be heavier this morning The forecast listed Sarapiquí, Orosi, Cinchona, Tortuguero, Siquirres, Matina, Limón centro, Valle de La Estrella and Sixaola as places likely to get significant rain. The weather institute warned of rising rivers and slides and urged motorists in the mountains to exercise extra care. The institute noted that in April the Pacific and the Central Valley are beginning the transition to the rainy season and that the central Pacific may see thunderstorms this afternoon. Field and woods burning By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Vacationers will be facing forest and field fires in many parts of the country. dozens of small fires are burning, encouraged by the dry weather and the heat. Most are in Guanacaste, although there are several in the northern zone. In some cases, the fires make driving dangerous by covering the highways with thick smoke. Our reader's opinion
Is Costa Rica a police state?Dear A.M. Costa Rica: In reading the following two articles in Wednesday's issue: Page 1 - Arias idea to dump Uruguayan military formalized Page 3 - Police agencies step up the surveillance of roads and drivers suggests the President would do well to check his own back yard before instructing others on whether or not they should have a military given the article on page 3. A police state is a police state whether it be a police uniform or a military uniform. J. H. Penner
Tofino, B.C.
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, April 1, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 64 | |||||||||
| New hotel will get visit from prosecutors, local source says |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial workers from the prosecutor's office in Santa Cruz will be at the new Hotel Riú next week to search for evidence of environmental crimes, said a member of the Consejo Civil de Carrillo. The seven-story hotel with 701 rooms at Playa Matapalo, Guanacaste, has been accused of destroying mangroves, filling in drainage ditches, cutting down trees and damaging the reef in the nearby Pacific. The work of the investigation comes from Edgar Cantón Pizarro, vice president of the consejo, in an e-mail message. The hotel has become a magnet of environmental complaints. When the giant hotel opened, the Partido Acción Ciudadana asked that environmental officials |
investigate. A local
environmental group has
filed a Sala IV case against the hotel operation. The Spanish Ruí firm is a worldwide hotel chain that characterized the Guanacaste property as a five-star facility. The facility in Guanacaste got mixed reviews on the Web from visitors, and locals were unhappy that the contractor for the hotel imported most of the labor and operators of the hotel facilities. The hotel employes about 500 persons. Many locals reject the idea of a Cancun-type hotel opening up in Costa Rica. They complain that the hotel dominates the landscape. In part it is this lack of local public relations that is driving the campaign against the hotel, although locals report that construction did some significant environmental damage. |
| Three suspects caught after Coronado man is knifed at home |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fuerza Pública officers detained three home invading suspects early Wednesday after a homeowner suffered a stab wound from a burglar. The Fuerza Pública said that three men forced their way into a home in the Urbanización Calabria in San Isidro de Coronado about 11:15 p.m. Tuesday. The homeowner, a man identified by the last name of Rojas, found the men inside his home when he arrived a short time later. The men hit him and then stabbed him, then fled, police said. Fuerza Pública officers were able to locate a motorcycle that matched the description given by the homeowner. They detained a Nicaraguan with the last names of Esquivel Nuñez and two Costa Ricans with the last names of Happer Tinoco and Jiménez Cabezas. Police said that they confiscated items that can be used as evidence against the men. Max Apú, the chief of the Fuerza Pública in Coronado, |
said that one of
the men who was detained appeared to be under the effects of some
substance. He said this was the man accused of stabbing the homeowner.
All three men were taken to the Segundo Circuito Judicial in
Goicoechea. The condition of Rojas, the occupant of the home, could not be determined. Police and investigators are taking steps to see if the suspects are linked to a gang of criminals who have been breaking into homes and robbing residents in the area. Late Monday a Santa Ana resident was surprised by three intruders in his home. He struggled and one of the crooks accidentally killed his accomplice while spraying bullets around the home. Two men fled, but police said that such home invasions are not unusual and that they average about one case a day. A 16 year old in San Pedro killed a home invader over the weekend while the man was struggling with the youth's father. |
| Arts festival had a noisy start and end in La Sabana |
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| The Festival
Internacional de las Artes was over Sunday night. A week-long
celebration in the parks, theaters and streets of San Jose and other
towns around the country was closing. For one reason or another I
missed everything except the fireworks. In fact, I only heard the fireworks on opening night. I was sound asleep and suddenly awakened at 11 p.m. by huge explosions. I jumped out of bed and for the first time since I moved to Costa Rica thought, “We are being bombed!” I have seen and heard fireworks and explosions before. Ticos are very fond of them especially for weddings, birthdays and Christmas. But not like those. After running from window to window and not seeing fires, I returned to bed. The last day of the festival (this past Sunday), I went with some friends to Grecia and Atenas on the new highway. Compared to the old roads, the drive was rather boring, but nicely boring. Eventually we had to take some mountain roads that included two prize-winning hairpin curves. For the passengers, sometimes boring is good. Because of a day of too much heat and sunshine, I didn’t have the energy to go to the final night of the festival. However, I was still awake when the fireworks began. The explosions were just as big, but this time I was prepared and managed to watch the results as they burst above the new high-rise. They were truly spectacular. Thousands of stars in clusters, even circles. These were more creative than the ones I’ve seen in the past. They must be another gift from the Chinese, I thought. They are using fireworks instead of firepower (both of which they invented) to conquer the world. Smart people, those Chinese. |
It made we wonder if there will be another great show when the stadium they are building for Costa Rica is finished. I can see an arc of the stadium from my office window. It looks like a part of a roller coaster and is quite graceful. When it was the natural rust color of the original building material and framed by the mountains behind it and the trees in front, I found it lovely. Unfortunately, they are now painting it with aluminum, and the white arc glares at the mountains and the skies – and my window. I wonder if I will hear the cheers coming from there once the stadium is open. Now all I have to wake me up at night are the Yigüirros. They are the national bird and think it is their job to signal the changes of the seasons. To do this, hundreds of them gather in some tree nearby where I cannot spot them and join in a cacophony reminding us that soon it’s going to rain. They start at 3:30 in the morning and continue until almost sunrise and wake me even when I wear earplugs. Finally when they shut up, I get up. This has been going on for weeks, and I am sleep deprived and cranky. In spite of the pageants and parades available in San José, I am now at a point in life when I prefer a cup of coffee, a drink or a meal and conversation with a friend out of the tropical sun. I feel like Andy Rooney in more ways than one. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, April 1, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 64 | |||||||||
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| Scientists chart movements of earth's
tectonic plates |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
and the University of Wisconsin-Madison news service Scientists have created a model that offers a precise description of the relative movements of 25 interlocking tectonic plates that account for 97 percent of the earth's surface. The model offers hope that major earthquakes may be predicted. Costa Rica experiences many earthquakes from the interplay of three such tectonic plates. The model allows scientists to calculate exactly how fast and in what direction the plates are moving. Interaction between and among plates are responsible for mountain building and sculpturing the earth's surface. The model, 20 years in the making, describes a dynamic three-dimensional puzzle of planetary proportions. The scientists have identified every plate on the earth's surface. University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets and longtime collaborators Richard Gordon of Rice University and Donald Argus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, created the model. "This model can be used to predict the movement of one plate relative to any other plate on the earth's surface," explained DeMets. "Plate tectonics describes almost everything about how the earth's surface moves and deforms, but it's remarkably simple in a mathematical way." Tectonic plates are in constant motion, sliding past one another as they float atop the planet's molten interior. The collisions and shifts can cause earthquakes like the ones that struck Haiti and Chile this year. Costa Rica rides on the Caribbean and Cocos plates which interact with the Nazca plate to the south. "We live on a dynamic planet, and it's important to understand how the surface of the planet changes," Gordon says. "The frequency and magnitude of earthquakes depend upon how the tectonic plates move. Understanding how plates move can help us understand surface processes like mountain-building and subsurface processes like mantle convection." The new model, dubbed MORVEL for "mid-ocean ridge velocities," is described in an extensive article available online and slated for the April issue of Geophysical Journal International. The work builds on the collaborators' 1990 paper on tectonic plate velocities that has been cited more than 2,000 times by other scientists. During the past 20 years, the researchers have incorporated more and higher-quality data to improve the model's resolution and precision. About three-quarters of MORVEL's data come from Earth's mid-ocean ridges, the undersea boundaries between tectonic plates. At these ridges, new crust forms constantly as magma wells up from beneath the planet's surface and forces the plates apart. |
 The Cocos (CO) and the Caribbean (CA) plates are responsbile for much of Costa Rica's earthquake activity. To judge how fast the plates are spreading, the team analyzed nearly 2,000 magnetic profiles of the crust formed at mid-ocean ridges in all the major ocean basins. The earth's magnetic field changes polarity at irregular intervals — most recently about 780,000 years ago — and each time leaves a magnetic mark in the crust akin to a tree ring. Measuring the distances between the marks tells researchers how quickly new crust is being formed. Most plate boundaries are currently moving at rates of 15 to 200 millimeters per year, DeMets said. That's about six-tenths of an inch to nearly eight inches. MORVEL also allows scientists to predict future plate movements and identify places where movements have changed over time, areas that are useful for studying the underlying forces that control plate movements, the researchers said. "Along the boundaries where plates meet there are lots of active faults. It's useful to know how quickly the plates are slipping across those faults because it gives you some feeling about how often large earthquakes might occur," DeMets said. "The direction of movement across the faults gives some indication of whether plates are moving toward one another, which gives rise to one kind of faulting and seismic hazard, or slightly away from each other, which gives rise to another kind of faulting and a different type of seismic hazard." The model is accessible online HERE, a site that can be used to show present-day plate movements by choosing any location in the world. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, April 1, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 64 | |||||||||
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Latin American news Please reload page if feed does not appear promptly |
Nations
pledge $5.3 billion to rebuild and improve Haiti By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
More than 50 countries and institutions pledged $5.3 billion Wednesday to help Haiti jumpstart its reconstruction from January's earthquake over the next one and a half years. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who co-hosted the donors' conference along with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Haitian President René Préval, said their actions far exceeded expectations. The conference set out to raise about $4 billion for Haiti's immediate reconstruction needs, but as the U.N. secretary general pointed out, they did even better. "We can report very good news. Member states of the United Nations, and international partners, have pledged $5.3 billion for the next two years and $9.9 billion, in total, for the next three years and beyond," he said. A large part of that came from the United States, which pledged $1.15 billion and the European Union, which promised $1.6 billion. Ban said the pledges are the down payment Haiti needs for wholesale national renewal. But he urged donors' to implement their promises. "We must make sure Haiti gets the money it needs when it needs it. And we must guarantee that it is well-coordinated and well-spent," he said. The money will go to rebuild Haiti's devastated infrastructure, to create new jobs, and to put the country on the path to sustainable development. To finish that massive task, it is expected to take 10 years and more than $11.5 billion. Mrs. Clinton, said donors signaled a new level of global commitment, coordination and cooperation, as did Haiti's government. "We heard from Prime Minister Bellerive a road map for building a new Haiti; A Haiti with a vibrant private sector, accountable and effective government institutions, and international partners that would be working with Haiti -- not separate and apart from Haiti," she said. Haitian President Préval expressed his thanks and said the Haitian people and government would do their part to make Haiti's reconstruction a success.
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