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San José, Costa Rica, Monday, April
21, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 77
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 Olive
Branch
photo
Medea
Benjamin and Ann WrightTwo U.S. peace
activists plan
speeches at local universities By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Two U.S. activists are coming to Costa Rica to further a global movement against militarization. One is San Francisco activist Medea Benjamin, who ran for U.S. Senate of the Green Party ticket. She is a supporter of residents of Gaza and fair trade coffee. A recent book by her is "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control." The second visitor is Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and State Department employee. She also opposes the use of drones. Local sponsors include the Centro de Amigos para la Paz, the Asociación Costarricense de Derechos Humanos, Servicio Paz y Justicia, the Liga de Mujeres Pro Paz y Libertad and the School of the Americas Watch-Costa Rica. The women will be speaking at the Universidad Nacional in Heredia Thursday at 6 p.m. and again at the Universidad de Costa Rica April 29 at 5 p.m. The pair also are scheduled to appear at an event organized by the Committee in Solidarity with Palestine at 2 p.m. Friday at Tin Jo restaurant in downtown San José. Our reader's opinion
Gringo multiplier
effecthelps Ticos purchase food Dear A.M. Costa Rica: 10 years ago one Gringo with a Ph.D in science decided to buy a two-bedroom condo in Escazú for his future retirement plans. He paid property tax transfer at the real value. This now pays the salaries of the clerks at the registry who now buy clothes and food for their children at local stores. Of course the attorney made his fees which enabled him to own a luxury vehicle from which the government received a large tax. The local store owners now pay the national bank payments on their loans. As time goes along, the condo needs some minor repairs and this Gringo pays a worker who now buys food from the local super whose workers now get paid salaries to do the same. At the same time, this Gringo pays the administrator of the complex his monthly fee, and the administrator pays his workers who do the accounting and cleaning of the complex who now buy gasoline to fuel their vehicles from the government refinery. He also pays the property tax to the local municipality which now is able to pave the roads and provide services to all the residents of Escazú. His renter pays the electric and water, so the employees of the AyA and Fuerza y Luz continue in their jobs as members of the unions who want to receive fair wages. At the end of the year he pays the Hacienda for the very small net income he generates, which now services the huge debt the country has run up to the international lenders. Besides that, he has to pay an accountant to prepare the forms since the forms are not available with English translation. Once or twice a year he takes a vacation to this country he fell in love with so the employees of the airport benefit from his entrance tax and, of course, he rents a vehicle from a rental company whose employees now receive part of their salary from his car rental. He opened a bank account here in Costa Rica so he could transfer the payments to the various people, companies, institutes and government offices. Of course, every so often the bank makes it difficult to keep the account active since this creates more busy work for the employees of the bank. He supports the restaurants he dines at and the hotel he frequents since not once in 10 years has he actually slept in this condo. Now, as he nears a decision to retire in Costa Rica, he is faced with more red tape than ever even though he will be using his funds earned outside of the country to support the workers here. My question is why Costa Rica is not supportive of people like this since Panamá, for example, is making it much more friendly to attract people like this. Costa Rica needs to change its policies. Otherwise the real estate market will dry up with the collateral the banks hold moving down, and we know what happened in 2008 in the U. S. when the market collapsed there. After 25 years of appraising property for the banks here it makes me nervous. Angela
Jiménez
Escazú Obama in weekly radio show refects on Holy Week meaning By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
U.S. President Barack Obama used his weekly address to reflect on the meaning of the Holy Week and Easter to Christians. Obama said Saturday the holy days remind us of our "responsibilities to God and, as God's children, our responsibilities to one another." The president said he and countless Christians during the Holy Week and Easter "remember the grace of an awesome God, who loves us so deeply that He gave us his only Son." Obama said this time of year is a good time to remember the "common thread of humanity that connects us all - not just Christians and Jews, but Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs - is our shared commitment to love our neighbors as we love ourselves." In the Republican address, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee says his party wants to enable Americans. He says Republicans believe government should be a platform for opportunity and freedom, while Democrats want to mandate what Americans must do. Venezuelan students burn effigies of their president By the A.M.
Costa Rica wire services
Hundreds of students and anti-government protesters took to the streets of Venezuela's capital, Caracas, to demand the resurrection of democracy on Easter Sunday. Easter marks the day Christians believe Jesus was resurrected from the dead after being crucified. The demonstrators burned effigies of President Nicolás Maduro, shouting that they wanted to get rid of him and send him to Cuba. The effigies of President Maduro and other government officials were burned to symbolize the burning of Judas, an Easter Sunday tradition that also is an expression of public discontent. Demonstrators have been protesting against Maduro's government since February.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, April 21, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 77 | |
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 A.M. Costa
Rica/James Marshall
Apostles, the
Virgen de Soledad
and Veronica with her veil were part of a
procession in Heredia
Saturday. |
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| Semana
Santa holiday marred by 25 violent deaths, Cruz
Roja
says |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Semana Santa ended at midnight and all but the very lucky are expected to be back to work today. The Cruz Roja reported 25 violent deaths for the week as of 3:30 p.m. Sunday. There were 53 water rescues off beaches and in rivers, the emergency agency said. There also were seven water deaths. Police said that over the week officers detained 1,225 persons, 363 of them on drug charges. In addition 223 were held as illegal immigrants and 69 persons were captured in the act of committing a crime, officers said. Juan José Andrade Morale, director general of the Fuerza Pública, is expected to give a more detailed report today. His officers were aggressive during the week patrolling bus stations and tourist locations. More than 37,000 persons were stopped and asked for their papers, police said. Among the vehicle deaths were that of a man and a six-month baby in Abangares Friday night. They died when the car in which they |
were
riding hit a
tree shortly before midnight. Others were injured. A man on a motorcycle died in Barrio Canadá, Ciudad Cortes, when he lost control and hit a drainage system early Saturday. The man was not wearing a helmet, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. A man died in Clínica Marcial Fallas in Desamparados. Saturday after he was gunned down in the Los Guido section while talking with friends. Two men on a motorcycle drove up and one fired the fatal bullets, said judicial investigators. In a similar case in Pavas a man was wounded fatally about 8:15 p.m. Saturday. He died in Hospital San Juan de Dios. Traffic police reported that the flow from vacation spots into the Central Valley was normal Sunday. Visitors to the Nicoya Peninsula reported long waits for the gulf ferry and for buses on the east bank of the gulf. The weekend was one of processions. From the Catedral Metropolitana to the smallest rural church, the faithful took to the streets, sometimes in the daylight and also in the evening. There were Roman soldiers, apostles and others playing the part of New Testament characters. |
| Agents
await autopsy in suspicious death of Desamparados
child, 4 |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial investigators have another case of the mystery death of a child. Agents said that they were called to a home in Jericó de Desamparados early Saturday. There they found the body of a 4 year old. Initially investigators said they found evidence of injuries to the girl's body, and that suggested some form of parental violence. However a later inspection revealed that the injuries were old and that the woman who was caring for the child, her adoptive mother, |
had
only done so
for five months. Cruz Roja attendants arrived first and made efforts to stabilize the child, but they failed to do so. The girl will be the subject of an autopsy as medical examiners try to determine the cause of death. Last week a child died at the Hospital del Niños from what appeared to be inflicted trauma. Both parents have been placed in preventative detention while the investigation continues. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, April 21, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 77 | |||||
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| Red meat, specific genes predispose for
colorectal cancers, study says |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Many studies have shown that eating too much red meat is bad for health, but, a new study has found that eating processed meat significantly increases the risk of colorectal cancer in some people. Eating five or more servings per week of processed meat more than doubles the risk of colorectal cancer in people who have certain variants of a specific gene, according to Jane Figueiredo of the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. Colorectal cancer is a leading form of cancer disease and death worldwide. The findings are based on a meta-analysis of 10 earlier studies involving 18,000 people in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe, which looked at the health effects of eating meats that contain nitrates as preservatives. "It's anything that is cured, dried, smoked, cooked [or] packaged. And so the most common items around the countries we were studying would include bacon, ham, hot dogs, sausages, pate, cold cuts," said Figueiredo. The scientists compared the blood samples of some 9,000 people with colorectal cancer to 9,000 people without the disease, looking at one particular region of the genome. Colorectal cancer is a complex illness with some 30 genetic variations tied to an increased risk of developing it. The researchers found the people with two of the genetic variants that |
were the focus of the
study, and who ate processed meats almost every day,
had the highest risk for colorectal cancer. Figueiredo says the potentially harmful alleles or changes in a specific gene are extremely common. “It happens in one in three individuals; that these individuals are actually at even at higher risk of the carcinogenic effects in processed meat," she said. Does that mean that people with two copies of the genetic variants can eat more bacon and ham than those at the highest cancer risk? “People have asked me that and I think that we should also limit our consumption of processed meat. It still more modestly increases risk at least in individuals that don’t have this variant allele. But it still is a small effect. It's just a much larger effect in individuals that carry certain genetic changes," said Figueiredo. Her team systematically sifted through millions of genetic variants of the study participants, identifying those that are associated with the effects of meat, fiber, fruit and vegetable consumption. Figueiredo says the investigation is the first to look at whether genes modify the impact of food on health. The study by Jane Figueiredo and colleagues is published in the journal PLoS Genetics. |
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reasonable medical care
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| A.M.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, April 21, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 77 | |||||
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NEXT Page! |
 Fundación Gabriel
García
Márquez
para un Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano photo Gabriel
García Márquez
García
Márquez
was always
a reporter and storyteller By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Gabriel García Márquez was a reporter, and that shows clearly in his famous literary works, which are based on his many experiences in Latin America and Europe. Like Ernest Hemingway, another reporter, García Márquez participated in real events, associated with real people and wrote about real people and events disguised in his style of magical realism. Magic and the supernatural dominate Latin life, and, as a reporter, García Márquez drew on the tales around him. But he also created literary figures based on the real people about whom he had written. García Márquez grew up in a Colombia that still suffered from the war between the conservatives and the liberals. He was working in Venezuela when the dictator Marco Pérez Jiménez was overthrown. His book, Cien años de soledad for which he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982 draws heavily on his home town in rural Colombia. García Márquez, 87, died Thursday in Mexico City. One of his major contributions may well be the Fundación Gabriel García Márquez para un Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano. The foundation reflects the concern by García Márquez about the practice of journalism. The author says practical journalism skills and ethics as paramount. The foundation was founded in 1995, and García Márquez said at the time that there was a crisis of ethics in written journalism. He mentioned such problems as unnamed news sources who might not really exist and reporters failing to cite sources that actually deserve the credit. The foundation has continued to prosper and offers classes and seminars to working news people, frequently online. Boxer Hurricane Carter dies in adopted Canadian city By
the A.M. Costa Rica news services
Well-known former U.S. professional boxer Rubin "Hurricane'' Carter has died in his adopted home of Toronto, Canada, from prostate cancer at age 76. Carter's wrongful murder conviction became an international symbol of racial injustice. The African-American spent 19 years in prison for the 1966 murders of three white people at a tavern in the eastern U.S. state of New Jersey. Carter and another man, John Artis, were convicted by an all-white jury, largely on the testimony of two thieves who later recanted their stories. His ordeal and the alleged racial motivations behind it were publicized in Bob Dylan's 1975 song “Hurricane,'” several books and the 1999 film “Hurricane,” starring Denzel Washington, who received an Academy Award nomination for playing the boxer-turned-prisoner. According to Canadian media, Carter, who was from New Jersey, had lived in Toronto since his 1985 prison release, which was aided by a group of Canadian activists. But many had spoken out on Carter's behalf, including former world boxing champion Muhammad Ali. The U.S. District Court judge who oversaw his release wrote that Carter's prosecution had been "predicated upon an appeal to racism rather than reason, and concealment rather than disclosure." Shakespeare without words is hallmark of D.C. troupe By
the A.M. Costa Rica news services
Wednesday marks the 450th anniversary of the birth of famed playwright William Shakespeare. A Washington-area theater company recently marked the occasion with a revival of its original wordless version of Hamlet from its well-regarded Silent Shakespeare Series. Synetic Theater Company's Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili kicked off their independent career in 2002 with this silent version of Hamlet, which earned several major local awards. The immigrant couple from Georgia, Director Paata Tsikurishvili and Choreographer Irina Tsikurishvili, started the Arlington, Virginia-based company 12 years ago. The husband and wife team starred as Hamlet and Ophelia in that first production. Paata Tsikurishvili says that is how Synetic’s critically-acclaimed Silent Shakespeare series started. “Hamlet opened the door for us in a theater community and brought us many awards and recognition. That was a start for Synetic Theater that spread the word about the theater company that we are doing Shakespeare without text which is unusual and the same time very accessible,“ she said. The company uses music, dance and pantomime to tell the story. This time, Irina appeared on stage as Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother. She says that Shakespearian language is universal and allows for a lot of creativity. “We’ve done Shakespeare in many different ways: We’ve done Shakespeare in the Twenties in Twelfth Night; we had also Shakespeare on the sand, it was King Lear; and we’ve done The Tempest in water," Mrs. Tsikurishvili said. For veteran Synetic actor Alex Mills, portraying Hamlet was a challenging experience and an immense responsibility. “For Paata to pass it along to me, having it been a role that he developed originally, in a way it feels like passing along a torch, you know, entrusting me to carry that role in the show,” he said. The role of Ophelia was a childhood dream for 20-year-old Irina Kavsadze, who comes from a dynasty of famous actors. “My first interaction with Shakespeare was silent. Before I started reading Shakespeare on my own or in school, I saw this Hamlet for the first time. I was nine years old; I hadn't read any other Shakespeare," Ms. Kavsadze said. Since its inception, Synetic Theater Company has received 24 Helen Hayes Awards, a prestigious Washington-area recognition, and 92 nominations. Victor Shargai, who chairs the awards, has witnessed the group's success from the very beginning. “What they have done for Washington theater is really very, very important. For the national theater, for the entire country," he said. And in January of this year, Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili were honored as Washingtonians of the Year by Washingtonian Magazine for their contributions to the local theater community.  NASA graphic
Graphic depicts
the Explorer in
orbit above moon.Moon
science
probe crashed
on purpose at mission end By
the A.M. Costa Rica news services
NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer mission had a smashing ending Friday when the US space agency crashed the spacecraft into the moon’s surface. The ground controllers, monitoring the spacecraft’s operations from NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, confirmed that it impacted the lunar surface as planned sometime between 2130 and 2222 UTC on Friday Mission officials said that the spacecraft didn’t have enough fuel to remain in an ongoing lunar orbit or sustain its science operations. And, since the spacecraft’s orbit was already naturally decaying following the mission’s final science phase earlier this month, it was decided that it would be intentionally sent down onto the lunar surface. With the craft flying at less than two kilometers above the lunar surface, mission specialists said that the final science phase allowed them to gather some very unique measurements. NASA said that as it impacted the moon, the vending machine-sized spacecraft heated up several hundred degrees and broke apart or vaporized. The space agency believes that if any material remained after crashing, it’s likely buried in the moon’s shallow craters. At the time of impact, the craft was traveling at a speed of 3,600 miles per hour, about three times the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet, said Rick Elphic, project scientist at Ames. The craft was launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Sept. 7. The spacecraft entered lunar orbit on Oct. 6 and started to gather data on Nov.10. In January NASA decided to extend the mission by an extra month after it finished its very successful primary science phase which took place earlier this month. Throughout its mission the craft was able to collect some very comprehensive information about the lunar atmosphere’s structure and composition, the scientists said. NASA scientists continue to pore through the data gathered throughout the lunar spacecraft’s mission and are hoping that it will provide an answer to a question that has puzzled many since the Apollo moon missions of the late 1960s early 1970s. Was the pre-sunrise glow that was observed just above the moon’s horizon caused by lunar dust that had been electrically charged by sunlight? Thousands of people from around the world shared in the final part of the mission by taking part in a NASA sponsored internet contest called Take the Plunge. The contest challenged participants to guess the date and time the spacecraft would crash into the moon. Those who provided correct answers will win a digital congratulatory certificate. This was a mission of firsts, achieving yet another first by successfully flying more than 100 orbits at extremely low altitudes, said Joan Salute, a program executive, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Although a risky decision, we’re already seeing evidence that the risk was worth taking.” Farmers are getting older, but there are new techniques By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The average American farmer is now 58 years old, and farmers 65 and older are the fastest growing segment of the population. It’s a troubling trend signaling big changes ahead for American agriculture as aging farmers retire. A new report from the U.S. Census Bureau is suggesting what some of those changes might look like and why they might not be so troubling. Adrienne Gibson works a small plot of land in the rolling hills north of Knoxville, Tennessee. She’s something of a novelty in American agriculture. Female and a minority, Ms. Gibson is succeeding in an industry dominated by white men. Gibson makes a living from her tiny operation by using the Community Supported Agriculture, or CSA, model of farming. She raises food for a handful of contract customers who pay in advance. “We have 23 CSA customers. They subscribe to supporting the farm, and in return they get a weekly basket of vegetables from May through October," said Ms. Gibson. New data from the U.S. Census Bureau suggests the number of minority farmers working American soil is expanding rapidly. The data also suggests U.S. farms are getting smaller. Nate Phillips, who teaches horticulture at Middle Tennessee State University, says smaller farms are, in part, a reaction to changes in the way Americans think about their food. “There’s growing interest in where our food is coming from, what is the food quality, things like that. I think we’ll continue to see that increase," said Phillips. Phillips says the interest in where food comes from is also attracting more young people into farming. “I’m seeing a lot more students from Nashville, or the cities, that are coming in that didn’t grow up around agriculture, weren’t from an agricultural background, but had that interest," he said. Just a few years ago, hog farmer Brandon Whitt was one of those young students. His family’s thousand hectare, heavily-mechanized operation dwarfs Adrienne Gibson’s tiny farm, but he’s quickly adapting to the same customer trends. Rather than sell his hogs to commercial packers, he sells them to his neighbors. “We actually take that one step further and actually have the meat processed and sell it directly off the farm, here through our retail store and to local restaurants and grocery stores," said Whitt. Whitt says consumers need to know, not just how their food is produced, but about some of the challenges farmers face putting it on their tables. “Teaching consumers about where that food comes from, and quite honestly just how hard it is to get it there at the end of the day," he said. Phillips considers it a positive development that the people who grow the food are beginning to look more like the people who consume the food. “I think that’s great. It reflects our general society. It reflects what our communities are like around us, and I think that’s a great thing for agriculture," he said. There's one trend that every American farmer can be pleased about. Census data shows that the value of the food they produce rose more than 25 percent in just six years. Vietnamese and U.S.officials see start of dioxin cleanup By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Government officials from the U.S. and Vietnam attended a ceremony Saturday marking the next stage in the cleanup process of one of the Vietnam War's deadliest legacies, Agent Orange. The herbicide was sprayed by the U.S. military as a defoliant to destroy jungle cover for Communist troops. Its highly toxic byproduct, dioxin, has been linked to diseases such as diabetes, cancer and birth defects. The $84 million project, officially launched in 2012, aims to clean up contaminated soil by cooking it at high temperatures. Saturday, a group of visiting U.S. senators and congressmen crowded together at one of 28 so-called dioxin hotspots in the country, the former U.S. air base at Da Nang, in central Vietnam, where Agent Orange was stored. They hit a giant start button to initiate the clean up. "We built a containment structure roughly the size of a football field and filled it with 45,000 cubic meters of dioxin-contaminated soil," said the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, David Shear. "Beginning today the contaminated soil will be heated to extremely high temperatures to destroy dioxin. After approximately four months the soil will be tested to confirm that the project cleanup goals have been achieved," he said. Healing the wounds of war has been an important issue for the two countries since diplomatic relations were normalized nearly two decades ago. The cleanup has become a symbol of progress and cooperation between the two governments. According to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, who led the congressional delegation, the project has four goals. The first is "to eliminate the danger from dioxin to people living here. Second, to show that for so many years, the U.S. didn’t ignore this problem, we returned to take care of it. Third, our two countries can work together on an issue that for more than three decades was an obstacle for better relations. Fourth, to improve services for people with disabilities regardless of the cause, including what may have been caused by Agent Orange," Leahy said. An environmental assessment is now being carried out at another former air base, Bien Hoa. While the U.S. continues to pump money into funding the Agent Orange cleanup and helping people with disabilities in Vietnam, Washington has never admitted liability for health problems caused by dioxin. "America is trying to avoid all the one-to-one compensation cases by arguing the scientific basis is not clear, you have no basis, you don’t know what the genetics of the people were to begin with. That’s what a good defense lawyer would do," according to Carl Thayer, a professor at Australia's University of New South Wales. In 2004 a group of Vietnamese took the chemical companies that produced Agent Orange to court in the U.S., but a federal judge dismissed the case on the grounds that use of the defoliant did not violate international law at the time. The U.S. also helps in programs aimed at dealing with unexploded ordnance and land mine contamination in Vietnam. But neither the United States nor Vietnam has signed the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. Vietnam cited national security concerns, especially border security. One expert who works in the field of ordnance clearance who did not want to be named said this is because Vietnam is reluctant to clear mines on its border with China. While the cleanup project has prompted many to reflect on the wounds of war, Vietnam's Vice Minister of National Defense Nguyen Chi Vinh said it is an opportunity to look to the future. He said he believed the success of the Agent Orange project lies not in the fixing of past issues, but in opening a new road for the future. "President Obama and President Sang inaugurated the new U.S.-Vietnam comprehensive partnership last summer. I can think of no better example for our growing friendship than this project," said Ambassador Shear. Passwords as they are now are an endangered species By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Whether you go online to check your email, use social media, shop or play games, the odds are you have more passwords than you can keep straight in your head and even more scribbled on enough sticky notes to decorate an entire room. And they just keep getting longer and trickier as cyber attacks become smarter and nastier. It is a cyclical race to find shelter in a password system that is creaking under the pressure. Enter “Heartbleed,” a vulnerability in the widely-used security software OpenSSL that allows hackers to bleed or steal passwords, credentials, and other sensitive information from server memory. As Kaspersky Lab‘s principal security researcher Kurt Baumgartner explains, the tricky part about this flaw is that “Heartbleed exploits hitting web servers are not necessarily logged as requests because the sensitive server content can be retrieved prior to requesting a resource from the server.” He says it is unique and extraordinary for data bleeding or theft to occur very early in network communications. “On most web servers, all that may be logged is that a connection was set up, which doesn’t give a defender much to work with,” he said in an email interview. The race is underway to patch the flaw for thousands of Web sites whose customers’ credentials continue to be at risk. One of the early casualties was Canada’s tax system. The Canadian Revenue Agency reports that private information of about 900 people was siphoned through the Heartbleed security hole. Normally, users might buy some time ahead of the next heist by changing their password. With Heartbleed, experts advise consumers to make sure the company has eliminated the vulnerability before they change their password, lest they make the new password available to hackers. Heartbleed “is simply the most recent example of the fact that we cannot trust our online activities to be secure,” said Jeffrey Carr, Founder and CEO of Taia Global, a cybersecurity firm. No matter the safeguards, Carr says “the myth of some future secure network as well as the myth that the government somehow has the power to secure our networks remains popular even though there isn’t any proof to support it,” he said in an email interview. No matter how eager we might be to ditch passwords, they are likely to be around for some time to come. “It really doesn’t matter whether or not passwords, tickets, or keys were used by the authentication process,” said Baumgartner. “The problem is a pre-authentication issue, meaning whatever data the server maintains can potentially be grabbed right out of memory.” That means OpenSSL and similar critical-use software should be much more thoroughly audited and reviewed, he said. “I have seen persuasive arguments for formal verification of critical components like these.” So even if passwords were to be replaced, say with biometrics, “there will always be another way for attackers to compromise valuable data,” said Carr. Biometrics can also be compromised, as demonstrated by a group of German hackers who hacked the fingerprint scanner on Samsung’s Galaxy S5 phone and Apple’s iPhone5S and posted a YouTube video to show how they did it. Baumgartner is hopeful that passwords will be replaced at some point. But he cautions that they “need to be replaced by an altogether stronger scheme.” He says “threat modeling for authentication schemes seems to have been very narrowly defined by developers.” While there have been improvements, Baumgartner says “there are so many incredible weaknesses here. Pass the hash and token re-use techniques have been extremely problematic for almost a decade now; and the situation is beginning to improve.” Where businesses are concerned, Carr says firms need to identify and segregate their most valuable data. Valuable data must be stored on servers that are insulated from unsecured networks, he said, adding that access to that data must be continuously monitored and controlled in real-time by human beings rather than by automated processes.” As for individuals, the advice is the same. “The only real protection that the average citizen has is to retreat from Internet usage for any activity which would cause that person harm if compromised,” he said. “That might be sending confidential or potentially harmful information via email, or using online banking if you’re a small business.” |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, April 21, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 77 | |||||||||
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Boston runners, spectators plan to take back finish line By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Some 36,000 runners from 70 countries take part today in the 118th Boston Marathon. Security is tight at the event, following last year’s bombings near the finish line that killed three and wounded more than 260. An estimated one million people are expected to line the 42.2-kilometer route, from the town of Hopkinton east to Boston’s Boylston Street. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said heightened security will include more uniformed and plainclothes police scattered throughout the race’s route, as well as a ban on backpacks and large containers near the finish line, scene of last year’s deadly bombings. Appearing on the CBS program Face the Nation Sunday, Patrick talked about how safe he expects the race to be. "Very safe. Somebody said it may be the safest place in America tomorrow. But, I will say that we’ve tried to strike a balance between enhanced security and preserving the family feel of this day. One commentator, a friend of ours, Mike Barnicle, described the marathon as a 26.2-mile long block party, and there are no strangers here. So, we want to maintain that spirit, but also have considerably more rigor because of the attention the marathon got last year, and the tragedy that ensued, and the demands that we think are quite reasonable for enhanced preparation for this year," said Patrick. Patrick said there have been no known pre-race threats that would cause concern. Last Tuesday, following a memorial service marking the one-year anniversary of last year’s marathon tragedy, police arrested a man with a backpack near the finish line. It contained a rice cooker and was deemed safe. On April 15, 2013, two pressure-cooker devices allegedly hidden in backpacks by two brothers of Chechen descent, 26-year Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his 20-year old brother, Dzhokhar, detonated, sending metal fragments through a crowd of bystanders near the finish line on Boylston Street. Several people lost limbs. The blasts set off a multi-day manhunt that ended with Tamerlan Tsarnaev dead from a shootout with police and Dzhokhar being arrested in a Boston suburb. He is due to go on trial in November on 30 federal charges and could face the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Scott Kennedy, one of the marathon runners, felt participating in this year’s marathon would send a message. "Just to show the terrorists that they can’t win. I saw a picture a few weeks ago that said ‘We need to take our finish line back,’ and that’s what I think that 36,000 people are going to do tomorrow, is take the finish line back," said Kennedy. Canadian runner Mark Rush said the bad guys are not going to take this race away, while British runner Mark Hazelhurst said everyone is aware of what happened last year and people want to turn out to run, to celebrate running and celebrate the city of Boston. For the top men and women competitors, including the 2013 winners, Lelisa Desisa of Ethiopia for the men and Rita Jeptoo of Kenya for the women, the focus will be on the race. Another runner will be Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to Washington, who said he is taking part to show solidarity with Americans. |
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| From Page 7: English-teaching program expands its scope By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
Global TESOL College Costa Rica said Sunday that it has formed a partnership with the Amistad Institute that expands student experience outside the classroom. Global TESOL College provides the training for those who would teach English as a second language. Amistand Institute is a Spanish immersion and volunteer organization that will offer those services to teaching students. “Many of the students in our month-long program crave a deeper connection with the Costa Rican culture,” said Global TESOL College Costa Rica owner Andre Sigourney in a news release. “They are looking to not only earn a teaching certificate, but to learn Spanish and make a positive impact on the community." Amistad Institute hosts students from around the world who travel to Costa Rica to study Spanish and to volunteer. "We have been very successful over the years with our full-service programs and housing in Heredia. Now we have a new, second location at the beach in the central Pacific town of Jacó," Amistad Institute director, Marco Bolaños, said, also in a release. "Having partnered with Global TESOL College, we are able to offer what many students have always desired: volunteering, Spanish emersion, and accreditation to teach English that is recognized worldwide. These are real life skills that our graduates can take with them forever." |
