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San José, Costa
Rica, Friday, April 1, 2016,
Vol. 17, No. 64
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Go to Page 5 HERE! Go to Page 6 HERE! Sports is HERE! Opinion is HERE! Classifieds are HERE! Plus useful links |
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Beekeepers getting modern honey facility By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
Beekeepers on the Nicoya peninsula are getting a state of the art honey processing facility, due in part to an investment of some 111 million colons ($210,000) by the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería. The beekeepers themselves through their organization, the Asociación de Apicultores de Jicaral, are putting up 400 million colons or about $756,000. The location, Jicaral, is on the east coast of the Nicoya peninsula overlooking the Gulf of Nicoya. Initially the honey processing plant will service 32 small producers who have 4,300 colonies of bees. The plant will be able to handle the honey production of up to 20,000 colonies, said Casa Presidencial in a release. Government officials are taking a tour of the area through today. The processing plant will allow the honey to meet various international standards for hygiene, said officials. They also noted that the bees do double duty. In addition to collecting honey they are important pollinators for the local agricultural products.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Colorado S.A 2065 and may not be reproduced anywhere
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| A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 1, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 64 | ||
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| Lawmaker
vows to send the cops after any no-show cabinet
ministers |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Relations between the executive branch and the legislature may have reached a new low Thursday. A lawmaker threatened to send the Fuerza Pública to bring in government ministers if the executive branch officials declined to appear before committees on their own. The lawmaker is Juan Luis Jiménez Succar of the Partido Liberación Nacional. He said that some legislative committees were studying proposed laws and they needed the input from various government ministers. He said that lawmakers cannot just wait until the ministers decide to show up. He said that some ministers, all members of |
the
president’s cabinet, have declined to confirm a time
when they had been asked to appear by lawmakers. He made his comments at a meeting of the Comisión de Asuntos Internacionales Thursday. He also extended his threat to vice ministers and other high officials in the executive branch. “If the minister declines to come, we ought to then ask the police to bring him in,” he said in a summary prepared by the political party. Relations between the executive branch and lawmakers have been in decline since it became obvious that most legislators would not support President Luis Guillermo Solís in his effort to pass laws calling for more taxes. |
| Sidewalk
drinking generates tougher proposal for neighborhood
stores |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A proposed law would punish store operators because customers buy alcohol and then drink it outside on the street and aggravate the neighbors. Javier Cambronero Arguedas of the Partido Acción Ciudadana said that his bill also would prohibit the sale of alcohol in residential zones and within 100 meters of schools, day care centers, hospitals and clinics. He said that the current law contained an error in not establishing these distances. A summary of the proposal said that persons consuming alcohol in front of stores where it is sold is a continuing problem in residential areas. |
Frequently
on the sidewalks near minisupers alcohol that is sold in
closed containers to take out is consumed, he said.
“What we have then is a terrible combination of factors
that provoke problems in residential areas and near
educational centers and hospitals,” he said, according
to the summary. He said the purpose of the bill was to protect youth and public health. Lawmakers passed the last alcohol law in 2012. In it supervision of advertising for alcoholic beverages was turned over to a committee. Cambronero said that he wants to undo that decision and revert control of advertising to the Instituto sobre Alcoholismo y Farmacodependencia. He said the mistake was putting members of the industry on the control commission. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced
anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | ||
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 1, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 64 | ||
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| Apple
started the computer revolution 40 years ago with
simplicity |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
When co-founder Steve Wozniak brought the very first Apple computer to a meeting of the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976, everyone was impressed, but not excited. "We all thought it was great, a nice job," said Bob Lash, an engineer, inventor and original member of the Silicon Valley hobbyist club. Wozniak's elegant design fit all the computer's workings onto a single circuit board. "But we were all building our own designs at the time, so it wasn't all that unusual," Lash added. "And nobody at that time had any idea where any of this was going to go." Apple didn't invent the personal computer. Or the mp3 player. Or the smartphone. That's not how it ended up as the world's largest publicly traded company. "What is invention?" asked Dag Spicer, curator at the Computer History Museum. "Do you always have to invent something new, or can you take something that exists and rearrange it and make it beautiful? In a sense, I would argue, that is also invention." It's a form of invention at which Wozniak and co-founder Steve Jobs excelled, Spicer said. Apple turns 40 on Friday in a world it helped create, where computers have been welcomed into our homes, offices, cars and pockets. Beauty and ease of use were Jobs' imperatives, Spicer said. But, that often meant making them hermetically sealed universes of hardware and software that ultimately lost market share to more open ecosystems. The Macintosh is a prime example. Apple didn't invent point-and-click computing. Xerox did, but was slow to make it commercially available. Jobs saw the potential. Working with a computer had meant typing lines of text, and often involved special programming languages. Macintosh's graphical user interface brought the mouse to the masses. It was the computer anyone could use, Apple's ads said. When it came out in 1984, "It was just amazing. Here it was, a sandbox for the mind," said Bruce Damer, who has stuffed practically the entire history of 20th century computing into a barn outside Silicon Valley, called the DigiBarn. The interface was only part of the package, though. The Macintosh also looked different. "It's like a toaster," Spicer said. "It's not like a big, scary computer. It doesn't even look like a computer, really. That was a big psychological decision, done on purpose, very consciously, to make it as welcoming and nonthreatening as possible." A smiling little cartoon Macintosh even greets the user on startup. The Macintosh was designed to change human relationships with computers. |
 Voice of
America photo
The Mac 128 easily captured the
newspaper industry.
"This is your friend," Damer said. The Macintosh was a friend who expected to be accepted as it was. "The Mac was deliberately designed to be a closed system. Steve Jobs did not want people going in there and pulling out parts or replacing boards or upgrading it. … You can't even get into the case" without a special screwdriver, Spicer said. "That was the flip side of the easy-to-use equation," he added. "If you limit people's choices, it does make it easier for them." Then Microsoft Windows brought point-and-click computing to IBM PC-type computers. They were more common and cheaper. More companies made them. And more companies made software for them. Microsoft systems took over and Apple was left with a shrinking market share. Then, Apple invented the iPod and, later, the iPhone. It's "an ecosystem that's controlled and beautiful," Damer said. "But then you have Android coming out, which is an open source, and anyone can make an Android handset." And the same thing is happening. Apple is losing market share. Apple won't be celebrating its 40th birthday Friday. Co-founder Jobs once said, "If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward." The Los Altos garage where Jobs and Wozniak built the first Apple computers is now an unofficial tourist attraction. In a tribute that's fitting, if not entirely welcomed by the current residents, as a steady stream of visitors goes to take pictures of it on their iPhones. |
Here's reasonable
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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|
A.M. Costa Rica's
Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 1, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 64 | |||||||
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 Voice
of America photoThis is Dan, a veteran from
Michigan.
Ex-GIs join
Christian forces
to counter Islamic State By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Directly north of Mosul and face-to-face with Islamic State is a small pocket of bombed and abandoned Christian villages. But across the gravel track from one of the empty villages, abandoned when militants stormed the area in 2014, is one row of houses that still is occupied. Here, a small but determined group of armed Christian fighters are defending what they say are the rapidly dwindling traditionally Christian areas of Iraq. And with them are two Americans. James is a former U.S. infantry soldier from Colorado Springs who arrived about a month ago. Dan is a veteran from Michigan who said he had been deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 with the U.S. Military. He has been here two weeks. Guns in hand and dressed in camouflage fatigues like their militia hosts, they are part of a group of foreign fighters who have come to boost the Christian defense line. There are also four Frenchmen. The one New Zealander who had joined had already left, the militia leaders said. Getting to the militia, known as the Dwekh Nawsha, an Aramaic term for self-sacrifice, required a long ride in a pickup truck past multiple checkpoints. A small cross hung from the truck’s rear-view mirror and the driver and escort proudly wore their Dwekh Nawsha patches on their left arms. James and Dan sat in the back, squeezing their legs around sacks of potatoes and boxes of canned meat. “I came here to hopefully take Mosul back and push Daesh out of Iraq,” Dan said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. Once at the village, he walked up to the roof of the militia’s main house and looked in the distance where dark smoke poured into the sky. The Islamic State was apparently burning tires to hide their movements from coalition aircraft. He pointed to a deep trench a few hundred meters in front of the house, saying it was to keep any Islamic State vehicle-borne suicide bombers from reaching them. Kurdish Peshmerga forces were also nearby, providing firepower. Rusting carcasses of spent homemade rockets line the gravel road in front of the abandoned village like a decorative necklace. Islamic State fighters constantly probe the front line here, and rockets land almost daily at the next village along the line. But the Christian militia members say they won't leave. “This is our land," Col. Sameer Oraha, a militia commander, said in Kurdish. "We have to protect it. We have to keep it from Daesh’s hands because this is our motherland and we have to protect all the lands to get our people back to their homes.” Oraha had previously served with the Iraqi army, and had lived in Mosul, now the Islamic State stronghold in Iraq less than 40 kilometers away. In the faded living room of the house, Oraha and his fighters sat and smoked as they talked. A flag of the Assyrian Patriotic Party, the Christian bloc, covered one wall. In the corner on the table was a small Christmas tree festooned with decorations. On the floor are two of their machine guns. The militia lack both equipment and experience, James said. “They are regular people, some of these people have regular jobs, they come out here . . . they are trying to save their homeland.” And he wants to be part of it, retaking all the land that extremists seized when they stormed the area in 2014. “I have experience, I was infantry for several years and whatever I can do to help them, any knowledge, or with equipment they may have and maybe later tactics on movements, when we slowly move into Mosul, I am here to help,” James said. Ramen Khoshaba, like others who are younger fighters, said he had joined “so people can get to their home, because there are a lot of people . . . have no home now.” “We are here to tell them that the Assyrian guys are here, and we will fight for our land.” U.S. and China plan to sign Paris climate accord in April By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The United States and China have announced they will sign the Paris climate accord in April, a step they hope will spur other countries to formally join the landmark agreement. In a joint presidential statement, Washington and Beijing said Thursday they hope their move will help bring the Paris agreement into force as early as possible. The deal was crafted by nearly 200 countries in December but does not enter into force until it is signed by at least 55 countries representing 55 percent of global emissions. The U.S. and China, the world's top greenhouse gas emitters, will join other nations in signing the bill on April 22, Earth Day, the earliest day that countries may sign the deal. U. N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said earlier this month that he expects more than 120 countries will participate in the signing ceremony at U.N. headquarters. The agreement aims to limit the warming of the planet to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It adds that nations should try to keep warming below 1.5 degrees. The deal was lauded as historic, but its impact is not yet clear. The accord is legally binding, but does not include an enforcement mechanism or penalties for noncompliance. The Union of Concerned Scientists Thursday praised the U.S. and Chinese presidents for signaling their intent to sign the deal quickly. "Their joint commitment to ensure the Paris agreement enters into force as early as possible this year sends a strong signal to other countries," said Alden Meyer, the union’s director of strategy and policy. The organization also praised both countries for announcing additional efforts to steer investment flows away from carbon-intensive technologies like coal and toward renewable energy alternatives. California minimum wage will climb to $15 an hour By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
California's hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, to take effect over the next six years, could help more than five million workers as its effects ripple through the economy, says supporter Ken Jacobs of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Business groups oppose the increase, and analysts are divided. Some say small businesses will struggle with the increase and consumers will be hit with higher prices, while others say the pay raise will boost the economy. California Gov. Jerry Brown announced the agreement between labor and legislative leaders Monday, and legislators are soon expected to pass the bill, and the governor will sign it into law. The measure would raise minimum pay for the state’s workers in increments to $15 an hour by 2022 for large businesses, and 2023 for smaller ones. That's more than double the current national minimum of $7.25 an hour. Cities and states can set their own base wage, and California's is now $10 an hour. Brown’s office says more than two million workers in his state are paid at that rate, and that the pay hike is a matter of economic justice. The agreement is the latest victory in the drive by labor activists to raise the pay of the nation's lowest-paid workers, who are often employed in fast food restaurants or at other service jobs. The effort began with protests and marches in 2012, and has been successful in such cities as Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. California is the first U.S. state to raise its minimum wage to the $15 level, and New York is debating a similar proposal. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups say a higher minimum wage will hurt low-skilled workers by forcing companies to eliminate jobs. They say wage inequality is a complex issue that is better addressed by improving workers' skills to make them more competitive in a global marketplace. Fast food restaurants in California could see their operating costs increase 13 percent as the raise is implemented, said analyst Shon Hiatt of the University of Southern California. He said restaurants owners have three options: raising food prices, shrinking portion sizes, or increasing automation to reduce their labor costs. He says we will likely see a combination of all three. He adds that increased costs for food production on California farms could drive up costs further and that agricultural jobs could be lost from California to Mexico. Analyst Ken Jacobs said the higher wage will keep worker turnover low and productivity high. In a conference call with reporters, he said the net effect will be positive, as workers pay more taxes, contribute to the economy and reduce their need for public benefits. Others say a one size fits all solution does not take account of varying conditions in different communities. The state of Oregon, to the north of California, will raise its minimum wage to just under $15 by 2022 under a law signed March 2. The highest rate applies only to the major urban region of Portland, however. Mid-sized counties and rural areas will have lower minimums, which is important for communities that are struggling economically, says economist Tim Duy of the University of Oregon. He questions whether $15 an hour is the right minimum wage for a more rural community in northeastern California? Lisa Scott, a home care provider for the elderly and disabled in California's rural El Dorado County, earns $11 an hour and says the increase will let her save to visit her 5-year-old grandson in Arizona for the first time. Long Beach janitor Esperanza Velasquez says the pay hike will help pay a $21,000 bill for cancer surgery. Both have been active in the campaign for the wage boost. The national minimum wage has been locked at $7.25 an hour for more than six years, and Republicans in Congress have opposed efforts to raise it, concerned about a dampening effect on the economy. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has embraced the $15 dollar minimum and Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton supports $12 an hour as a national base. The economic effects are far from certain, insists Tim Duy of the University of Oregon, who says there has been so much conflicting research on the actual impacts. In fact, he says, “the fastest way to start a fight in an economics department is to talk about the minimum wage.” The drive for a $15 an hour minimum is spreading around the country. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has included the proposal in his annual state budget, and New York lawmakers are now debating the issue.  Voice of America photo
Donald Trump doing what he does best.Trump’s foreign
policies ideas
are making people nervous By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Deploring the raw deal he believes the U.S. is getting from the framework of international alliances forged after World War II, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is vowing to make major changes if he is elected president in November. If he were to follow through, analysts say, he would bring about a revolution in U.S. foreign policy. Trump says the United States is a nation with crumbling infrastructure that can no longer afford to be the world’s policeman. Wednesday he disparaged the Geneva Conventions, which he says make U.S. troops afraid to fight. At a recent CNN town hall meeting, he challenged another bedrock alliance: "Let me tell you, NATO is obsolete. It was 67 years, or it's over 60 years old. It is — many countries, doesn't cover terrorism, OK? It covers the Soviet Union, which is no longer in existence. And NATO has to either be rejiggered, changed for the better," he said. "I'm not saying — the other thing that's bad about NATO, we're paying too much. We're spending a tremendous — billions and billions of dollars on NATO." Foreign policy expert Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution, a Washington public policy research group, said Trump’s comments belittling NATO and others about the U.S. “paying too much” for Japan's and South Korea’s security were not just casual remarks, but reflected passionate views he has held for decades. “He has a big problem with America’s alliances in Asia and Europe and in the Middle East," Wright said. "He's got a big problem with all of the trade deals and different types of economic engagement the U.S. has engaged with in recent decades. And he’s looking to develop closer ties to authoritarian regimes like Putin's Russia. So that would amount to a revolution, really, in U.S. foreign policy.” Putin is President Vladimir Putin. Trump also startled many when he refused Wednesday in an MSNBC interview to take the use of nuclear weapons off the table in any situation. He has said he might hit the Islamic State terrorist group with tactical nuclear weapons. At a time when President Barack Obama is holding a summit with global leaders in Washington to try to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, Trump said it might be better if countries like Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia had their own nuclear weapons so they would not have to rely on the U.S. for protection. While often expressing resentment of close U.S. allies such as Germany and Japan for not paying for their security, Trump has spoken warmly of Putin: “Putin says very nice things about me. … I think that’s very nice. It has no effect on me, other than I think it’s very nice. If we can get along with Russia, that’s very good.” Trump said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama heads his team of foreign policy advisers, but he has been slow to release names of a full team. Wright said there is one simple reason: ”It’s that the Republican foreign policy establishment does not agree with him. They are shocked and opposed to what he is proposing, and so they don't want to sign on with him. So he's finding it hard to find people, and because of a legitimate disagreement.” Wright argued that, if elected, Trump’s isolationist views could remove a pillar of world stability: U.S. leadership. If former secretary of State Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee, she will, he said, “find herself in the position in the general election of being the flag-bearer, not just for Democratic Party foreign policy, but for bipartisan American foreign policy since World War II.” Nuclear plant cyberattacks called substantial and growing By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The threat of cyberattacks on nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities is substantial and growing, according to a report this week by a prominent industry group. Experts at the Nuclear Industry Summit, gathered in Washington, say attackers are becoming more skillful and dangerous, meaning companies, governments and regulators must make cybersecurity an industry-wide priority. "Cyberattacks on nuclear facilities have happened,” said Anno Keizer of the Nuclear Industry Summit, who is vice chairman of the working group on managing cyberthreats. “It is not a fantasy; it is not a hypothetical situation; it's what happens in real life and which we need to manage in real life. We have also seen that the consequences of an attack can be substantial, both in damaging equipment and disturbing the services that the company delivers to society." A cyberattack against Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power in South Korea saw hackers steal and release information, Keizer says, in what published reports say might have been a bid to raise public concern about the nuclear industry. Other attacks on non-nuclear, major industrial targets also raise concerns. An attack on Ukraine's electric grid left thousands of people without power. That attack used a sophisticated program called BlackEnergy that targeted industrial control systems, according to the report. Hackers also caused massive physical damage to a German steel mill by taking over control processes and blocking the company's efforts to shut down the facility. Experts at the Nuclear Industry Summit say hackers focus on systems that control industrial and safety processes in important industrial facilities because that is the key to causing chaos and damage. The most successful publicly known cyberattack on a nuclear facility saw malware cause serious damage to production equipment at an Iranian plant that was enriching nuclear materials. The virus was called Stuxnet, and apparently prompted the facility's centrifuges to spin out of control and break down. Computer security experts say the Stuxnet incident shows how a determined hacker can overcome cyber protection efforts by taking advantage of vulnerable employees. In this case, small thumb drives, or small data storage devices, loaded with the virus were scattered in areas near the targeted facility. Apparently, someone picked up one and, curious about its contents, put it in a computer that controlled production processes. Like many nuclear facilities, the Iranian one was protected against cyberattack by an air gap, meaning critical computer systems are isolated, and have no physical connection with computers that are connected to the Internet, which are used for routine communication, billing and research. With no connection to the outside world, critical computers were mistakenly thought to be safe from hacking attacks. Ryan Kalember, of the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, says, "The lesson from that is that people are always the weak link in the chain." |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, April 1, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 64 | |||||||||
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Two projects support U.S. war on drugs By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The U.S. Southern Command is investing $1.85 million for a new station for the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas in Golfito. There was a ceremony Thursday for laying the cornerstone. The facility is expected to be ready by January. The facility is being built on land owned by the Instituto Costarricense de Puertos del Pacífico. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in charge of supervision. The work is being done by the Honduras firm Grupo Eterna, said an announcement by the U.S. Embassy. An additional $968,000 of U.S. taxpayer money is going into an addition to the police control point at Kilometer 35 on the Interamericana highway. The United States already paid for a modern facility, but this new work is for inspection areas for containers and other vehicles. Industrias Bendig, S.A. of Costa Rica is doing the job, said the U.S. Embassy. Unlike in the United States, Costa Rican police can inspect vehicles without probable cause, and the Kilometer 35 site is where many persons are caught trying to smuggle alcohol or other goods into the country from Panamá. The U.S. Southern Command and the embassy have an interest in the coast guard station and the highway inspection point for interdicting shipment of drugs. |
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| From Page 7: New blood test
shows if patient has concussion
By the A.M. Costa Rica
wire services
A new blood test has been developed to tell doctors whether someone has had a concussion up to a week after the injury. Head trauma symptoms can often be subtle, and even delayed, especially in children. Treatment in the form of rest is important in helping to heal the brain after injury. The blood test, developed by physicians at Orlando Health system in Florida, detects a biomarker called glial fibrillary acidic protein or GFAP. GFAP is unique to the brain and nervous system and is released after a concussion. Researchers analyzing the blood of 600 patients, found the biomarker was present in those who had sustained a head injury. Concussion, without rest for a few days, can lead to long-term bouts of dizziness, headaches and insomnia. Memory loss, cognitive difficulties and even anxiety have also been reported in concussion patients who try to resume normal activities, like school or work, too soon. Concussion is a common injury in contact sports, and a blood test soon after a head injury could help doctors detect the condition that might otherwise go undiagnosed. A study describing the blood test is published in the journal JAMA Neurology. |
