The Junta de Protección Social is not for sale, this group says of the lottery agency.

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

Egyptian deities recalled
with new NASA project


Two ancient Egyptian deities are set to rendezvous in space later this decade, but it's a meeting of a scientific, not mythological, kind.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, announced Wednesday that Asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 has been renamed Bennu after an ancient Egyptian deity that is often depicted as a gray heron. 

Bennu will get a visit from a NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx, more formally known as Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer.

The spacecraft's arm will collect a sample of Bennu and store it for return to Earth.

The spacecraft shares its moniker with Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld also worshiped for agriculture.  Bennu and Osiris are often connected in Egyptian stories.

The space agency says 8,000 students from more than 20 countries entered a contest to give Asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 a new moniker.  9-year-old Michael Puzio of the southeastern U.S. state of North Carolina suggested the winning name.

In a news release, NASA said Puzio envisioned OSIRIS-REx's sampling arm and solar panels as resembling the neck and wings of the mythical Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx is set to launch in 2016, rendezvous with asteroid Bennu in 2018 and return a piece of the primordial space rock to Earth in 2023.  Scientists say the sample could hold clues to the origins of the solar system.

Asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36's original name indicates it was discovered in 1999, and it was the 101,955th confirmed asteroid.


European Union puts ban
on some forms of pesticides


The European Union has decided to impose a two-year ban on three of the world’s most widely-used agricultural pesticides.

The move follows a report in early April from the European Food Safety Authority that the three pesticides pose an acute risk to honey bees, which are vital to food production. 
 
The targeted farm chemicals, which will be banned for two years starting this Dec. 1, belong to a class of insecticides called neonicotinoids. They are a type of insect nerve agent that has been widely used for more than a decade.

Although the chemicals’ manufacturers say field tests have shown the pesticides pose no threat to bees, a recent British honeybee field study found evidence to the contrary, and that was enough to convince 15 of 27 EU member governments, and the executive European Commission, to support a ban. 

Adam Vanbergen, an ecologist with the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in Britain, says some of the evidence against neonicotinoids is debatable, but much of it is troubling.

“There were abundant laboratory studies that were showing some worrying signs," he said. "It’s sad to say that the evidence wasn’t as strong in the field. But then it is much more complicated to demonstrate cause and effect in field situations.” 

Vanbergen says that in the absence of any systematic monitoring, it will be hard to determine the impact of the ban and whether it can reverse the decline in pollinator populations. 

He directed a study, released last week by the Insect Pollinators Initiative of the United Kingdom, that compiled years of research on threats to pollinating insects. It found that a variety of factors is responsible for the decline, including pesticides, habitat loss, climate change, spread of disease and alien species.
                                                    
“My concern about the neonicotinoid issue is that to an extent it may distract attention from the bigger picture," Vanbergen said. "We really do need to try and manage our landscapes much more sympathically towards biodiversity. And pesticides are a part of that without question. But I’m a little bit worried that people may go away thinking that moratoriums such as this are going to solve the issue.” 

Vanbergen hopes the EU moves forward with new research on how farmers can employ pest control techniques less reliant on toxic chemicals. 

"But also we should be exploring alternatives to better manage pests in agricultural systems and that may well include integrated pest management strategies," he said, "where pesticides are a sort of judicious last resort to outbreaks of pests, and they are not used in a sort of prophylactic way.”

Vanbergen adds that the fate of the bees and other threatened insect pollinators, such as butterflies, wasps, flies and beetles, is a matter of food security, not only in Europe, but around the world.


Obama may name official
to expedite Guantanamo exits


President Barack Obama is considering naming a senior diplomat to work on sending prisoners at Guantanamo Bay home or to third countries as part of a renewed effort to close the detention camp at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba, the White House said Wednesday.
      
If he does so, it would be the first action by the U.S. government since Obama vowed on Tuesday to make a renewed effort to close the camp, where about 100 inmates are on hunger strike to protest against their years in detention without trial.
      
"One of the options available to us that we're examining is reappointing a senior official at the State Department to renew our focus again on repatriating or transferring detainees that we determine can be returned to their home countries or third countries,'' White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.
      
The post at the State Department has been vacant since January.
      
Most of the prisoners have been kept in detention without trial or charge since the prison was set up in 2002 to hold foreign terrorism suspects.
      
Obama's administration also wants to speed up a process for reviewing the cases of the detainees, Carney told reporters during a briefing. The administration has been criticized for allowing these reviews to lag behind schedule.
      
Carney blamed Congress for making it difficult to close the camp. For example, lawmakers have held back funding that would allow the government to transfer detainees to prisons in the United States, he said.
      
"We have to work with Congress and try to convince members of Congress that the overriding interest here, in terms of our national security, as well as our budget, is to close Guantanamo Bay,'' he said.
      
Human rights groups have welcomed Obama's renewed pledge to close the prison camp, but said that he could not blame Congress entirely for the failure to shut it down and should take action on his own.
      
Members of Congress of both political parties have resisted transferring the inmates to the United States, where some lawmakers are concerned they might pose a security risk.
      
"There are things that the president can do administratively, but this will also require congressional agreement,'' Carney said.
      
Obama has said he would examine every option available to close the camp, including actions he can take independently of Congress. He has not said whether he would use executive powers that some legal experts say he has to transfer the detainees.
      
The Guantanamo camp was opened by President George W. Bush, to hold foreign terrorism suspects captured overseas after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.
      
Obama failed to meet his promise to close the prison within a year of taking office in early 2009 and it has become an enduring symbol of widely condemned U.S. interrogation and detention practices during the Bush era.


Bird flu in China considered
to be world health threat


A new strain of bird flu that is causing a deadly outbreak among people in China is a threat to world health and should be taken seriously, scientists said on Wednesday.
 
The H7N9 strain has killed 24 people and infected more than 125, according to the Geneva-based World Health Organization, which has described it as one of the most lethal flu viruses.
 
The high mortality rate, together with relatively large numbers of cases in a short period and the possibility it might acquire the ability to transmit between people, make H7N9 a pandemic risk, experts said.
 
“The WHO considers this a serious threat,” said John McCauley, director of the the agency's Collaborating Center for Influenza at Britain's National Institute for Medical Research.
 
Speaking at a briefing in London, experts in virology said initial studies suggest the virus has several worrisome characteristics, including two genetic mutations that make it more likely to eventually spread from person to person.
 
“The longer the virus is unchecked in circulation, the higher the probability that this virus will start transmitting from person to person,” Colin Butte, an expert in avian viruses at Britain's Pirbright Institute, said.
 
Of the some 125 people infected with H7N9 so far, around 20 percent have died, approximately 20 percent have recovered and the remainder are still sick. The infection can lead to severe pneumonia, blood poisoning and organ failure.
 
“”This is a very, very serious disease in those who have been infected. So if this were to become more widespread it would be an extraordinarily devastating outbreak,” Peter Openshaw, director of the center for respiratory infection at Imperial College London, told the briefing.
 
Scientists who have analyzed genetic sequence data from samples from three H7N9 victims say the strain is a so-called triple reassortant virus with a mixture of genes from three other flu strains found in birds in Asia.
 
Recent pandemic viruses, including the H1N1 swine flu of 2009/2010, have been mixtures of mammal and bird flu - hybrids that are likely to be milder because mammalian flu tends to make people less severely ill than bird flu.
 
Pure bird-flu strains, such as the new H7N9 strain and the H5N1 flu, which has killed about 371 of 622 the people it has infected since 2003, are generally more deadly for people.
 
Human cases of the H7N9 flu have been found in several new parts of China in recent days and have now been recorded in all of its provinces.
 
Last week a man in Taiwan became the first case of the flu outside mainland China, though he was infected while traveling there. The H7N9 strain was unknown in humans until it was identified in sick people in China in March.
 
Scientists say it is jumping from birds - most probably chickens - to people, and there is no evidence yet of the virus passing from person to person.
 
Jeremy Farrar, a leading expert on infectious diseases and director of Oxford University's research unit in Vietnam, said the age range of those infected so far stretched from toddlers to people in their late 80s, a range that appeared to confirm the virus is completely new to the human population.
 
“That suggests there truly is no immunity across all ages, and that as humans we have not seen this virus before,” he said. “The response has to be calm and measured, but it cannot be taken lightly,” he said.


U.S. Fed will continue
keeping interest rate at zero


The U.S. central bank has decided to continue with its aggressive measures to boost the sluggish U.S. economy.

After a two-day meeting in Washington, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday it would continue to buy $85 billion in U.S. Treasury debt and real estate-related securities each month as it attempts to spur job creation in the world's largest economy. It also said it would keep its benchmark interest rate near zero percent.

At the same time, the central bank said it is prepared to reduce or increase the pace of its purchase of securities depending on whether U.S. economic fortunes improve, or falter again.

In a statement, the Federal Reserve said economic activity in the U.S. has been expanding at a moderate pace, and that hiring has shown some signs of improvement in recent months. But it also noted that unemployment remains high.

The U.S. recorded a 7.6 percent jobless rate in March, and analysts are predicting the figure will stay the same when the April jobs report is released Friday. About 11.7 million U.S. workers are unemployed, with millions more working at part-time jobs or filling positions they consider beneath their skill level.


Bolivia's Morales evicting
USAID for meddling, he said


Bolivian President Evo Morales says he is expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development, accusing it of interfering in his country's internal affairs.

Morales said Wednesday during a May Day speech in La Paz that the United States no longer will manipulate the Bolivian economy and its politics.

In 2008, he threw out the U.S. ambassador and officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. deeply regrets Wednesday's expulsions. He called allegations of political interference in Bolivia baseless. He said those who will suffer will be Bolivian citizens, who he said benefit from USAID's work on health, education and the environment.

USAID has operated in Bolivia since 1964. It has spent nearly $2 billion there over the past 50 years.

U.S. relations with Bolivia have been cool since Morales' leftist government took power in 2006. He has nationalized several Western-owned companies. Bolivia also is a major coca producer. The crop not only is the key ingredient in cocaine, but also sustains indigenous farmers and is used for non-drug related purposes.


Press freedom suffering
decline, Freedom House says


A leading U.S.-based human rights group says the number of people living in societies with a fully free press has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade.

In a report issued Wednesday, Freedom House pinned the overall downturn to dramatic new media restrictions in the war-torn West African nation of Mali, as well as new regulations in Greece and parts of Latin America.

The report, Freedom of the Press 2013, says analysts continue to see heightened efforts by authoritarian governments across the globe to put a stranglehold on open political dialogue. It links those crackdown efforts to an authoritarian backlash against the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

The Freedom House document also cites growing pressure on citizen journalists using unorthodox social media tools, including microblogs, social networks and mobile telephones. It says repressive measures employed by authoritarian governments include the jailing of bloggers and the blocking of web-based content and text messaging services during periods of political unrest.

The report singles out China and Russia for using a variety of techniques to maintain tight media controls, and says those techniques include the jailing of critics and the forced closure of websites.

It listed the world's eight worst-rated countries as Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Western Europe was cited for the highest level of press freedom worldwide, even as the report noted the region's average rating underwent an "unprecedented" decline in 2012. The decline was attributed to deteriorating press conditions in Greece and Spain, and to what Freedom House said is Turkey's high number of imprisoned journalists.

The United States was labeled "one of the stronger [media] performers" in the Americas, while the report criticized the "limited willingness" of high-level U.S. officials to provide access and information to journalists.

Burma was cited as having made the greatest progress of any nation in opening up its media environment.


Gangnam Style originator
becomes comic book subject


The story of South Korean rap sensation Psy's ascent to global stardom with his megahit "Gangnam Style" has now been immortalized in full color and with appropriate dramatic flourishes in a comic book.

Fame:Psy, which went on sale in the United States and South Korea Wednesday, focuses mainly on what went into making "Gangnam Style," which catapulted the sunglassed singer with the garish jackets to global fame and became YouTube's most popular song ever with more than 1.5 billion hits.

"Has he fallen from the sky? Has he risen from the earth?" the comic begins, with illustrations showing Psy - in the suits he made famous in "Gangnam Style" and striking poses from his "Horse Riding Dance" - descending from heaven and bursting through the earth.

"It was the end of summer, 2012, when a little-known Asian rapper put his music video on YouTube. It exploded in popularity," continues the 26-page tale, from U.S. publisher Bluewater Productions and South Korean firm "able".

"His stubby build and dynamic stage presence caught people's eyes. Psy's not your typical pop star."

In similarly breathless prose the comic covers the decade of Psy's pre-Gangnam career in Korea, the origins of the video and the dance, and the fame that followed, including scenes of a delighted Psy teaching U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon his dance and performing for U.S. President Barack Obama.

The comic, which also touches on the less happy parts of Psy's past such as being charged with possession of marijuana in 2002, includes a guide that shows readers how to do Psy's dance themselves.

It ends with the release of Psy's second video, "Gentleman," last month. The video has racked up nearly 260 million YouTube hits after smashing the previous record of first-day views for songs, and hit fifth place on the Billboard Hot 100 last week.


Imprisoned spy murdered,
report Pakistan authorities


A convicted Indian spy who was on Pakistan's death row has died from a head injury after two inmates attacked him with a brick.

Sarabjit Singh was hospitalized last Friday after the attack in the Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore.

He was arrested in 1990 and had been convicted of spying and setting multiple bombs in Pakistan that killed 14 people.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says those responsible for "the barbaric and murderous act must be brought to justice."

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs has demanded an investigation and has requested Pakistan release Singh's body for a funeral in India.

The ministry says the "shocking attack" highlights the need for "concerted action" by Pakistan to safeguard Indians in Pakistani jails.

Pakistan's former military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, rejected Singh's mercy petition in 2008.

By the Cornell University Media Relations Office