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A.M.
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Pulished
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April 12,
2017, in Vol.
17, No. 73
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San
José, Costa
Rica,
Wednesday,
April 12,
2017, Vol. 17,
No. 73
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Credit card study
finds fault in plans
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Credit card companies are misleading their customers with their special interest plans by not providing accurate and complete information in their contracts, monthly statements, policies and publicity. That's the main finding of the latest comparative study in the credit card market, carried out by Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio. According to the research, the main credit card issuers offer special programs to buy certain products with reduced or no interest at all over a determined period of time ranging from one to 24 months. These purchases are linked to the main credit account of the customers. That is the first problem, since the monthly statements are confusing and it is hard to differentiate the regular interests from the special ones and keep track of a budget, said the study report. In terms of contracts, researchers said they found the existence of abusive clauses. Among them, those who tell the customers that they agree to abide by their contract only and refuse to take any dispute before authorities. In fact, many of the credit card companies hide from customers their right to settle any dispute by using the free legal mediation service provided by the economics ministry, said the study report. Information in regards to commissions, administrative fees and penalties are also unclear, it added. Finally, the document warns about how some of the banks make it hard or impossible to make extraordinary payments to the principal of a debt. “Many cardholders do not know that in case of delayed payment, they might lose the special benefits of those plans and the bank may request full payment. This limits the possibilities of a proper debt management,” said Welmer Ramos, who was the economics minister when the study results were reported. minister. The credit card issuers included in the analysis are: Bancrédito, BCT, Banco de Costa Rica, CrediSimán, Credix, Credomatic, Davivienda, Lafise, Banco Nacional, NovaScotia, Scotiabank y Promérica. According to the report made by the ministry, Credix World accounts for the least compliant entity in terms of providing accurate and easy to understand information in their special programs, followed by Banco Davivienda. As of Oct. 31, 2016, there were 31 credit card issuers in the country, providing 468 different types of them. This means 2,334,437 actual cards are in the hands of customers. The total debt in this financial instrument accounts for 1,005,000 million colons. That's 3.34 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The average debt is 430,000 colons. According to the last comparative report released by Ministerio de Economía on Dec. 21, 2016, the lowest interest rate belonged to the Banco Popular Visa card for small businesses. Its annual interest rate is 20 percent in colons and 10.5 percent in dollars. It is followed by the Banco Nacional’s Small Business card that charges a 20 percent yearly interest in colons only. The third lowest interest rate is offered by Banco Lafise through its Corporate Business Mastercard. It charges 23 percent in colons and 17 percent in dollars on a yearly basis. Credit cards issued by the companies Dos Piños and ANDE have even lower rates but they are not included here because it applies only to its workers and members. On the other hand, the cards with the highest interest rates are those issued by Banco BCT under the name Clásica, Dorada y Empresarial. The yearly interest here is 50.4 percent in colons and 33.6 in dollars. After these, Bank of Nova Scotia charges 49.9 percent in colons and 32.2 percent in dollars each year. Similar case is Banco Davivienda, whose rate is 49 percent in colones and 30 percent in dollars in four of its products. The comparative study also concludes that 80 percent of all credit cards have an annual interest rate between 40 and 50 percent in colons. Talks start on Caja pension system reform By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Talks to define the future reforms of the country's pension system are already underway after a group of 10 representatives of the civil society were sworn in last week by authorities of the Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social. The work group will be in charge of analyzing and proposing changes to assure the sustainability of the Régimen de Invalidez, Vejez y Muerte, which is the country's pension regime that most people are enrolled in. Members of the group come from several different backgrounds to provide a voice to a diversity of interests. Three of them are government officials, three more represent the employers, and the last three speak on behalf of three different workers associations: one for cooperatives, another one for unions and one more speak for the Solidarismo. Solidarismo is a form of employer and employee organization whereby both parties set money apart for a common fund, out of which the workers receive extra payments or loans. The talks will be moderated by another member picked up by the board of directors from Caja. These are expected to go on for 90 days and after that period a general document will be filed to the board of directors which will decide what recommendations will be enforced and which will be pitched. The talks come after a long national discussion about the financial sustainability of the pension system of the Caja, which is at risk of going broke if early measures are not applied, according to a study made by Universidad de Costa Rica last year. The research says that the retirement age in the country should be increased up to 70 years of age and the monthly workers contributions to the regime should reach an average of 26 percent on a 10 years period. As of today, the minimum retirement age is 65 years for both men and women, except for those who have worked for over 40 years, who may apply for retirement at 61.5 years old. Workers under the Caja regime receive a pension equal to 60 percent of the average of their best 240 salaries. If those measures aren't applied, the system will start facing financial problems from 2022 to 2028 and slide into bankruptcy before 2034, the experts said. The financial hardship of this regime has been caused by a sharp decrease in the fertility rates of the country in the last 35 years. According to data from the Caja, 45 years ago, there were 45 people working for each retiree. Today, there are 6.7 active workers for each retiree. Costa Rica also maintains three more retirement regimes. Magisterio Nacional enrolls all workers in the education field, while Poder Judicial has one for its members. The latter has also been on the spotlight for financial hardship, which could force workers to pay a 30 percent tax in their pensions.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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San
José, Costa
Rica,
Wednesday,
April 12,
2017, Vol. 17,
No. 73
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| Law and society divided
over abortions in Costa Rica, professor says |
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By Larissa
Arroyo Navarrete
In Costa Rica, women have had the right to abortion since 1970. Well, more or less. The concept of the “unpunished abortion,” established in article 121 of the penal code, permits the termination of a pregnancy as long as the procedure is consensual, performed by a doctor (or, if necessary, by an authorized obstetrician), and is the only way to protect the life or health of the woman. This is commonly called a “therapeutic abortion”. And while it may be technically permissible, in practice the public hospitals where most Costa Ricans receive care refuse to offer the procedure except when a woman’s life is in imminent danger. As in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, for instance. For many women whose pregnancies constitute a physical or emotional risk, including women carrying deformed fetuses that will never survive outside the womb, rape victims, and pregnant girls, abortion is never an option. This difference between the law and social practice is now the source of a legal battle that is dividing Costa Rican society. The case in question involves a 12-year-old girl known under the pseudonym Andrea, who was impregnated by her father and prevented from terminating her pregnancy. It exemplifies the contradictions of this Central American country. On the one hand, Costa Rica boasts a very low maternal mortality rate, has ratified most international human rights treaties, whose requirements are privileged above its own national constitution), and decommissioned its army in 1948 to invest instead in health and education. On the other, the majority-Catholic country is not secular. And abortion continues to be taboo for healthcare workers. As a result, the reproductive rights of women and girls are not real rights but “blue” laws, or unheeded statutes that exist on paper only. In Andrea’s case, the lack of a technical protocol that provides legal protection to doctors who perform abortions meant that the medical procedure, which isn’t only not criminal but legally guaranteed, was never offered. The girl’s life story started making headlines in February 2017 when her mother, using the only resource at her disposal to try to activate the judicial system, went public about the sexual violence Andrea had suffered from her father. As Andrea’s mother put it, “After she told me about what happened with her father, she became extremely anxious and told me she didn’t want to exist in this world any longer because of everything that had happened.” Andrea is depressed, says her mother, barely eating, suffering extreme nausea from the pregnancy and, critically, says she does not want to have the baby. Rather than call for Costa Rican law to be enforced, the media has offered a platform for religious figures to voice their opinions. The public debate about Andrea’s case is being approached not from a medical or legal perspective but via a Christian viewpoint. Churches and anti-choice organizations have contacted the girl and her mother, trying to convince them not to pursue the idea of terminating the pregnancy. |
But there have also been some
offers of help. The Asociación Ciudadana
ACCEDER, of which I am a member, offered
legal counsel to help Andrea’s family make
her case to the
The country has shown itself immersed in prejudice, stereotypes and traditional gender roles, insisting that women carry a pregnancy to term even when it is clearly affecting their life and health. This goes completely against the recent recommendations from the Organization of American States’ Expert Committee that follows up on the Belém do Pará Convention on sexual violence and child pregnancy. Other Central American countries, including Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua also violate women’s rights by outlawing abortion under any circumstances, even when a woman’s life is in danger. In Costa Rica, we thought we were different from our neighbors who disdain a woman’s life and health. After all, national laws allow abortion to protect not just the life of the woman but also her health as defined by the World Health Organization to cover well-being in the holistic, emotional as well as physical, sense. But it turns out that’s not enough to guarantee access to abortion for those legally entitled to it. Costa Rica is no model state in protecting women’s rights. Strategic litigation will be abortion rights’ groups’ main vehicle for change, as it was in recent years following the cases of Ana and Aurora, two Costa Rican women denied abortions despite having dangerously malformed fetuses. They took their cases to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and described the torture of carrying a fetus that could never survive birth; of having their wombs act as tombs for their unborn babies; and the suffering it was causing not just them but also their fetuses. “He was drowning in my stomach for weeks,” 32-year-old Aurora told La Nación newspaper, “with his lungs outside his body, ripped open by my own organs.” The highly visible international cases of Ana and Aurora have compelled the Costa Rican government to write a technical norm that it insists will further enshrine legal protection for medical personnel who perform an abortion to avoid endangering the life and health of a pregnant woman. And none too soon; stories of dangerous clandestine abortions circulate. As for Andrea, she will become a mother at 13, giving birth to her father’s child. Editor’s Note:
This article originally appeared in The Conversation.
Larissa Arroyo Navarrete is a professor of human
rights at the Universidad de Costa Rica and at
Universidad Nacional.
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page |
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San
José, Costa
Rica,
Wednesday,
April 12,
2017, Vol. 17,
No. 73
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| Study shows 75 percent of deep-sea animals
produce their own light |
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By the Monterey
Bay Aquarium Research Institute
press staff Ever since explorer William Beebe descended into the depths in a metal sphere in the 1930s, marine biologists have been astounded by the number and diversity of glowing animals in the ocean. Yet few studies have actually documented the numbers of glowing animals at different depths. In a new study in “Scientific Reports,” Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute researchers Séverine Martini and Steve Haddock show that three quarters of the animals in Monterey Bay waters between the surface and 4,000 meters deep can produce their own light. You would think it would be easy to count the number of glowing, or bioluminescent, animals in the ocean, just by looking at videos or photographs taken at different depths. Unfortunately, very few cameras are sensitive enough to show the pale glow of many marine animals. Below 300 meters, which is around 1,000 feet, the ocean is essentially pitch black, so animals don’t need to glow very brightly. Also most animals don’t glow continuously because making light takes extra energy and can attract predators. Because of the difficulty in counting glowing animals at depth, most previous estimates of the proportion of glowing animals were based on qualitative observations made by researchers peering out the windows of submersibles. Ms. Martini and Haddock’s study is the first ever quantitative analysis of the numbers and types of individual glowing animals at different depths. The researchers compiled data on every animal larger than one centimeter that appeared in video from 240 dives by remotely operated vehicles in and around Monterey Canyon. They counted over 350,000 individual animals, each of which had been identified by video technicians using a vast database known as the Video Annotation and Reference System. The database contains over five million observations of deep-sea animals, and has been used as a source of data for more than 360 research papers. Ms. Martini, the lead author of the recent study, compared the list of animals seen during the 240 remote controlled dives with a list of animals and animal groups that were known to be bioluminescent. This list was based on a review of previous scientific papers, as well as firsthand observations by Haddock and others. As an indication of the lack of research in this area, the most complete source of bioluminescence information for marine animals was a paper published in 1987, 30 years ago. Martini divided the observed animals into five categories: definitely bioluminescent, highly likely to be bioluminescent, very unlikely to be bioluminescent, definitely not bioluminescent, and undefined where not enough information was available to determine the categorization. Because scientists know so little about deep-sea animals, 20 to 40 percent of the animals seen below 2,000 meters were classed as “Undefined.” Looking through the data, Martini and Haddock were surprised to find that the proportion of glowing to non-glowing animals was pretty similar from the surface all the way down to 4,000 meters. |
 Monterey Bay
Aquarium Research Institute photo
Deep-sea
tomoptorid worm lit by lights on a remotely
operated vehicle (top) and emitting its own
light (bottom).
Although the total number of glowing animals decreased with depth, something that had been previously observed, this was apparently due to the fact that there are simply fewer animals of any kind in deeper water. Even though the proportion of glowing to non-glowing animals was similar at all depths, the researchers found that different groups of animals were responsible for the light produced at different depths. For example, from the sea surface down to 1,500 meters, most of the glowing animals were jellyfish or comb jellies. From 1,500 meters to 2,250 meters down, worms were the most abundant glowing animals. Below that, small tadpole-like animals known as larvaceans accounted for about half of the glowing animals observed. The analysis also showed that some groups of animals were much more likely to glow than others. For example, 97 to 99.7 percent of the cnidarians (jellyfish and siphonophores) in the videos are able to produce their own light. In contrast, only about half of the fishes and cephalopods (squids and octopuses) are bioluminescent. The finding that the proportion of glowing to non-glowing animals is relatively constant at all depths suggests that scientists may be able to estimate the total numbers of animals at specific depths just by measuring the amount of light produced by animals at each depth. Unfortunately, researchers do not yet have instruments that can reliably measure the total bioluminescence from all animals at a given depth. Researchers concluded their paper by writing, “Given that the deep ocean is the largest habitat on Earth by volume, bioluminescence can certainly be said to be a major ecological trait on Earth.” |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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San
José, Costa
Rica,
Wednesday,
April 12,
2017, Vol. 17,
No. 73
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Spicer
forced to backtrack
on Nazi Germany comments By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
There were audible gasps in the White House press room Tuesday when spokesman Sean Spicer appeared to forget about the Holocaust in asserting that the Syrian military's use of sarin gas on civilians exceeded the atrocities of Nazi Germany. With Spicer's credibility already strained, opposition Democrats and others began calling for the White House press secretary to be removed from his position. Spicer, known for previous incidents of clumsy wording on the White House podium, said: "You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons," making a comparison to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's military using chemical weapons on its own civilians last week. When a reporter subsequently asked, "What about the Holocaust?" Spicer responded that he understood the point but said Hitler used chemical weapons in what the White House spokesman termed Holocaust centers. The German dictator, Spicer said, was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing. Indeed, shortly after comments on other cable television news channels, Spicer issued a further written clarification saying he was in no way trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, but rather trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. That explanation did not mollify some. "Sean Spicer must be fired and the president must immediately disavow his spokesman's statement," said the Democratic Party's leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi of California. "Either he is speaking for the president, or the president should have known better than to hire him." Pelosi noted Spicer's statements came on the first day of Passover, the story from the biblical Exodus celebrating the ancient Israelites' liberation from Egyptian slavery. Late in the day, the chastened White House press secretary began making separate appearances on national news programs to apologize for his latest verbal gaffe. “I just want to set the record straight on what was intended,” Spicer said as he shuttled outside the West Wing between live and taped appearances on several television networks. Minutes earlier, on CNN, Spicer said that he mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust. He was apologizing not only to Holocaust survivors but also to anyone who was offended by those comments. It was a mistake and that he shouldn’t have done it, he added. The press secretary was accused of Holocaust denial by Steven Goldstein, executive director of New York's Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect. The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. United Airlines CEO issues new letter regarding incident By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
"No one should ever be treated this way," reads part of a new public statement issued Tuesday by United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz, following Sunday's incident when a passenger was bloodied after being dragged off an overbooked United airliner at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. The incident has gone viral through social media after being captured on other passengers' cell phones. Munoz added that the company will conduct a review of how the airline handles overbooking situations and how it interacts with airport authorities and law enforcement. He said the company will release the results of its review April 30. Munoz released two earlier statements staunchly supporting the crew, saying in a statement late Monday that United attendants followed established procedures when the passenger was forcibly removed. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump has seen what Spicer describes as the troubling video recorded on the United Airlines flight. Besides the global social media firestorm, the incident also has stirred up threats of a boycott. Spicer told reporters at a White House briefing Tuesday the incident was unfortunate but does not necessarily need a federal response, adding there are plenty of law enforcement agencies available to conduct an investigation. Because the Chicago to Louisville flight was overbooked, the crew asked passengers to voluntarily take another flight in exchange for financial compensation. According to media reports, the airline needed to make room for four of its employees. No one volunteered, so the airline randomly selected four people, one of whom refused to leave, which resulting in his forced removal by three men who were identified as Chicago aviation security officers. Video showing the man being dragged from the plane and later returning with a bloodied face was widely circulated on social media, drawing angry reactions. One passenger, Audra Bridges, who posted video of the incident, said the passenger was very upset when he was chosen and explained he was a physician who needed to get home in order to see patients the next morning. Bridges said the man appeared disoriented when he ran back onto the aircraft moments later. Crew members eventually ordered everyone off the plane and did not let them return until the injured passenger was removed again on a stretcher. Bridges said the passengers were shocked and appalled at the incident, which prompted threats of a boycott as the busy summer travel season begins. The online backlash intensified when CEO Munoz used the euphemism re-accommodate in a Twitter posting Monday to describe the forcible removal of the passenger. However, he also said the airline was reaching out to the passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation. In the letter to employees, Munoz said the passenger raised his voice and refused to comply when he was initially asked to leave, and became more disruptive and belligerent in response to subsequent requests. Crew members had no choice except to call Chicago Aviation Security officers to help remove the passenger, Munoz wrote. In a statement late Monday, the Chicago Department of Aviation said the incident was not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officers are obviously not condoned by the department. The statement added one officer involved has been placed on administrative leave, pending a review of the incident. Munoz admitted to employees that the airline could learn from the incident but reiterated on his support of his employees' actions. Russia’s alleged Taliban aid questioned by Afghan state By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
Russia's role in Afghanistan was questioned again Tuesday when the provincial police chief in Uruzgan told Afghan media that intelligence reports showed visiting Russian generals were providing Taliban militants with weapons and training. "Eleven Russians, including two women, dressed in doctor's uniforms and guarded by four armed Taliban, along with an Afghan translator, have been spotted in various parts of the province," Ghulam Farooq Sangari, Uruzgan police chief, said. "They have been enticing people against the government, providing training and teaching how to assemble land mines." Russian military advisers have been spotted twice recently near Tirinkot, the Uruzgan capital, Haji Abdul Bari, a tribal elder in the province, said. Taliban connections with Russia have increasingly come under the spotlight as Moscow seeks to increase its influence in the nation it once occupied and to counter Islamic State expansion from Afghanistan to neighboring Central Asian countries. Mounting allegations of Russian military involvement on the ground in Afghanistan have drawn concern from U.S. and Afghan authorities that Russia is working behind the scenes to help the Taliban battle Afghan forces and militant groups in the country, like IS. Russia has acknowledged political ties with the Taliban. But Russian officials say Moscow is not supplying Taliban militants with arms and training. They assert that their contacts with the Taliban are aimed at facilitating the peace process in Afghanistan. Over the weekend, the Russian Embassy in Kabul issued a statement saying the Russian military was not helping Taliban militants. "It is surprising that statesmen, deputies and high-ranking police officers, based on rumors and conjectures and without providing the public any evidence, allow themselves to publicly make irresponsible accusations against Russia in financing and supporting terrorism," the Russian statement said. But the allegations of Russian-Taliban military ties are growing. The governor of Kunduz province said last month that the Taliban were asking Moscow for weapons and training to counter the expanding influence of Islamic State groups in various parts of the country. Despite the Russian denial, analysts say signs of Moscow's assistance to the Taliban have been felt in Afghanistan. Kabul-based Taliban expert Wahid Muzhda said that Moscow had provided the Taliban with a well-equipped mobile clinic, along with a large supply of medicine to treat injured Taliban fighters in Helmand province, which borders Uruzgan. A number of Afghan lawmakers accused Russia of allowing its military personnel to visit Taliban locations near the border with Pakistan, after a Russian military delegation visited the Waziristan tribal region in Pakistan, a sign of Moscow's deepening relations with Islamabad, which has been supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Afghan Foreign Ministry said it was investigating the reports. Kabul and Washington, increasingly wary of the deepening ties between Russia and the Taliban, say Moscow's alliance with the militant group could complicate an already precarious security situation in the country. "I believe what Russia is attempting to do is they are attempting to be an influential party in this part of the world," General Joseph Votel, chief of U.S. Central Command, told U.S. lawmakers last month. "I think it is fair to assume they may be providing some sort of support to [the Taliban] in terms of weapons or other things that may be there." U.S. naval fleet moves off North Korean coast By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
Despite comments from the U.S. secretary of defense, the Navy says the USS Carl Vinson Strike Group is still participating in planned exercises with the Australian navy. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters Tuesday at the Pentagon that the strike group was set to travel south for joint exercises with Australia but canceled its role there when the warships were directed north to the Western Pacific instead. Mattis said the move north was announced in an attempt to explain why the Vinson wasn't in that exercise. "The Carl Vinson Strike Group has placed scheduled joint operations with Australia on an accelerated timeline in order to facilitate the transit north," Navy spokesman Lieutenant Loren Terry said. The strike group includes its namesake aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, as well as three guided missile destroyers. A military press release Saturday said the Vinson would operate in the Western Pacific rather than executing previously planned port visits to Australia. The press release did not mention U.S. participation in exercises with Australia. Commander Dave Benham, director of media operations for the U.S. Pacific Command's Third Fleet, said the fleet operates to safeguard U.S. interests in the Western Pacific. "The No. 1 threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability," he said. Pyongyang has repeatedly defied international warnings about conducting missile launches and testing nuclear devices. Mattis said the Vinson group was called north to the Western Pacific without a specific demand signal, or threat seen emanating from the Korean Peninsula. On Sunday, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official was quoted on state-run media as vowing to step up the country's defenses to protect itself from airstrikes like the one that the U.S. carried out against Syria last week. Group says slave trade booming now in Libya By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
The International Organization for Migration says that young men from North Africa migrating to Libya or Europe in search of jobs increasingly are being caught up and auctioned off as cheap labor, in what has become a booming slave trade in Libya. Testimony from dozens of young men who have survived their ordeals presents a shocking and destructive picture of a slave trade operated by smugglers in Libya profiting from the misery of others. The organization reports that many young men, mainly from Nigeria, Ghana, Gambia, and Senegal, are targeted as potential victims when they arrive in Agadez, Niger, on their way to Libya. The group says they often pay traffickers several hundred dollars to be transported to Libya and once they arrive, they are handed over to smugglers for sale. In other cases, the organization says, young men are kidnapped en route to their destination, held for ransom and then auctioned off to the highest bidder in Libya. The group’s Chief of Mission for Libya Othman Belbeisi says the migrants are treated as commodities to be bought and sold on the slave market. Belbeisi said the slave trade has been going on for some time, and it has become a flourishing enterprise over the last year. “For example, if you go to the market and you can pay between $200 and $500 to get a migrant that will work with you on your daily jobs or support your work. Many of them escape. Many of them are kept in bondage, and many of them are even imprisoned inside an area where they are forced to work on a daily basis,” Belbeisi says. The agency says that migrants often are abused, tortured, and discarded when they have outlived their value. It says women tend to be bought by private Libyan individuals, and then brought to homes where they are forced to be sex slaves.
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Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
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| A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
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San
José, Costa
Rica,
Wednesday,
April 12,
2017, Vol. 17,
No. 73
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 Federación de Surf photo
Malakai
Martinez rips through some waves to win the
Open.
Teen surfer snags win in
competition
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
A 15-year-old surfer won the weekend’s Copa Lola as part of the surf circuit for Guanacaste this past weekend. In a statement released by Tuesday, Malakai Martinez of Playa Tamarindo won the gold for the major category when his strategy of running the left waves during the final series helped his score. With this recent victory, the young surfer climbs in the rankings that puts him as the favorite to the next title for the Circuito Guanacasteco next month in Playa Negra on May 6 and 7. “The waves in Avellanas were very good and I’m really happy to win the Open for the first time,” Martinez said. Meanwhile, in the women’s Open, the Nicaraguan Valentina Resano scored her second win of the season, organizers said. Truck prohibitions to ease Easter traffic By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Trucks weighing over six tons may need to find an alternative route to enter San José on Easter Sunday. The Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes said that heavy-duty trucks will not be allowed to drive on roads such as Ruta 32 between 2 in the afternoon until 9 in the evening that Sunday. Other routes being restricted will be the Bernardo Soto, General Cañas and Florencio del Castillo highways. According to Mario Calderón, the traffic police head, the fine for violating this rule will be around 51,316 colons. The measure is being implemented, Calderón said, to ensure a quicker return for commuters heading back at the end of the holidays from the beaches. The public works ministry expects that many people will return to the greater metropolitan area on Sunday before the regular work and school schedules pick back up again. |
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| From Page 7: Costa
Rica gas prices among highest in region
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Pain at the pump is something heard throughout the United States ever since gasoline prices by the gallon were raised above $2. Now, many expats and Costa Ricans would agree that they wish that the price would go back to that. Throughout Central America, pain at the pump station is fueled by an increasingly volatile and unstable market of petroleum products. Fostered by the wars and conflict and continued violence in the Middle East, companies have looked elsewhere for places to drill up and refine oil for vehicles. Venezuela is now out due to its own rising political crisis and an economy, reliant on oil, that is in tatters. With that in mind, it seems a no-brainer that gas prices are among the highest of Central America in Costa Rica, which imports all of its oil. In a statement issued by the Ministerio de Economía, Comercio y Industria of El Salvador, the price for a gallon of gasoline in U.S. dollars was estimated to be an average $3.80 for Costa Rica. This comes following a cut in the price back in November 2016 by the nation’s regulatory agency. The agency, the Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos, said it took the steps after the Sala IV constitutional court concluded that the methodology that was being used was permissible. At that time, the price of super was 562 colons a liter. That translates to $3.87 a U.S. gallon. Diesel was 427 a liter or about $2.94 a gallon. Now, both those prices have jumped, according to data from the Salvadoran ministry. The price for diesel fuel was raised to about $3.16 and super fuel, for all those driving certain foreign-made car brands, came out to be a whopping $3.99 a gallon. “Oil markets are saturated, despite efforts by the OPEC to reduce pumping and boost prices, which continue causing ups and downs in reference prices making them impossible to predict,” the ministry concludes. |
