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A.M.
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Published Friday, May 6, 2016, in Vol. 17, No. 89
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, May 6, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 89
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By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
Expotur, the tourism marketplace, kicks off Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. in the Teatro Nacional. This is the exhibition put on by the Asociación Costarricense de Profesionales en Turismo that brings foreign buyers to Costa Rica to meet representatives of some 250 firms in the tourism industry here. This is the 32nd year for the show. The event runs through Friday, a week from today, at Centro Kölbi de Parque Viva, in La Guácima de Alajuela, American football bowl is Saturday By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
The championship game for the 2016 American football season will be Saturday at the Estadio Ernesto Rohrmoser in Rohrmoser-Pavas. This is the American Football Federation of Costa Rica-sanctioned First Division National Championship, called the Super Tazon CR VIII. Kickoff is at 2 p.m. with general admission set at 2,000 colons. One team is the The Cartago Leones F.C., which finished the regular season 7-1. The Leones will meet the Bulldogs F.A, which has a 7-2 record. There were seven teams in the league this season. HERE is a map to the stadium. Seven teams participated in the 2016.
Police raid
small marijuana operation
By the A.M. Costa
Rica staff
Police still are making raids where they believe individuals are growing their own marijuana. Such a raid took place Thursday morning in Los Anonos, Escazú, and resulted in the arrest of a 55-year-old Cuban national with the last name of Ruiz. The Policía de Control de Drogas said they found eight plants, each about a meter tall, and 690 grams of processed marijuana in baggies. The man had a climate-controlled growing area for the plants, said agents. A judge in Alajula absolved a local lawyer there of a similar offense on the grounds that there was no law against growing marijuana for self consumption. That claim is the subject of an appeal. Meanwhile, police continue to crack down even on small growers.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Colorado S.A 2065 and may not be reproduced anywhere
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, May 6, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 89
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| Tourism
institute extends SavetheAmericans/Canadians campaign |
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By Rommel Téllez
Special to A.M. Costa Rica The Save the Americans and Save the Canadians tourism campaigns have been extended until the end of the year, according to Alejandro Castro, marketing director of Instituto Costarricense de Turismo. The campaign promotes Costa Rica as an escape spot for overworked Americans and Canadians. To attract visitors, it relies on videos, social network interactions and special activities like building giant sand animals in strategic cities. It was intended to finish last January, however, it will keep running until December. By then, the campaign will have cost $6 million. From that amount, 85 percent will be invested in the United States market and 15 percent in the Canadian one, according to Castro. “We will be extracting as much juice as possible from it.” Castro said, using common Costa Rican slang. “That's how we face the challenge of competing against countries like New Zealand and Ecuador, and the American states of Hawaii and Alaska, which are all well positioned among North Americans.” he added. According to Alexa, an internet search engine that provides data on website traffic, SavetheAmericans.org has 1.5 daily page |
views
per visitor, who spend 2.32 minutes on it. In the case of SavetheCanadians.org, the engine provides no data except that there is one daily page view per visitor. Despite the numbers, Castro admitted that there is no way to accurately measure how many direct bookings the campaign has generated. He said that it promotes the country as a whole, for the benefit of the entire industry and not just hospitality. “We seek people to know about the country as a destination.” he explained. The government said that in 2015, 2.6 million visitors arrived to the country, creating at least 150,000 jobs and accounting for 5.4 percent of the Domestic Gross Product. However, the official data has been challenged as inaccurate, for it reports all visitors and does not filter those who are actually tourists and those who are not. “Tourism figures are very positive and for that we all cheer, but they create a distance of what's really going on,” said Karla Prendas, legislator of Partido Liberación Nacional. “And yes, we are going through a momentum in tourism thanks to the high value of the dollar. However, we are below the region´s tourism growth index. What´s going on,” she asked, while addressing fellow lawmakers Wednesday. |
| Government
said shrimp fishermen subsidies reach 118 million colons |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The government’s main social welfare agency said Thursday that it has spent 188 million colons, about $355,000, providing help to unemployed shrimp fishermen and their families. The agency, the Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social, said there were 545 families involved. Some 500 are in Puntarenas and 45 are in Guanacaste, it said These are the fishing crews and their families that have been forbidden to trawl for shrimp by an August 2013 Sala IV constitutional court decision. The court cited environmental reasons. The central government has been trying to pass a bill that gets |
around
the court decision, and environmentalists generally
support the prohibition because trawling damages coral
and kills many unwanted fish and even turtles. The Instituto Costarricense de Pesca y Acuicultura, was told not to issue any more licenses and to allow existing ones to expire. At the time the estimate was that there were 27 active licenses but not all were being used. There still are plenty of shrimp in the marketplace, and some street vendors even sell them despite the health considerations that presents. The Instituto Mixto said that each family of shrimp fishermen is getting 115,000 colons a month, about $217. |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, May 6, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 89
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| Worldwide
annual cost of dengue put at $8.9 billion in new study |
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By the Brandeis University news
staff
Researchers report that the global cost of dengue infections is $8.9 billion. The economic analysis comes from Brandeis University and covers 141 countries and territories where dengue transmissions have been identified. The price tag for dengue exceeds that of several other major infectious diseases such as cholera, rotavirus gastroenteritis, canine rabies and chagas, notes lead author Donald Shepard. Dengue is the world’s fastest growing mosquito-borne disease, currently threatening about half the world’s population or almost 4 billion people and leading to an estimated 60-100 million symptomatic dengue cases every year. The disease’s common nickname in the tropical and subtropical countries where it is found is ‘break-bone fever,’ which attests to the degree of suffering it can inflict. Since it is transmitted by four distinct types of viruses, dengue can hit the same individual up to four times. Dengue fever is prone to resource-intensive outbreaks that tend to hit hardest in the urban growth centers of countries, like Brazil, Indonesia and India. In this way, dengue can literally break the back of local healthcare systems and lead to intensive associated costs, related both to medical care and lost productivity, said researchers. But dengue fever is not a highly fatal disease and, therefore, it does not typically garner as much attention in terms of traditional measures of disease burden as malaria, for example, they added. Shepard and this team are an exception, however, as they published their first paper on the economics of dengue in 1993. Since then, they have also published several studies on the economic burden of dengue at the level of individual countries where dengue is a major public health threat such as India, Malaysia, Mexico, and the Philippines. “The dearth of population-based data for many elements was the biggest challenge for us. For important parts of the tropics, especially South Asia and Africa, almost no such studies exist, in fact,” notes Shepard. The study provides both global and regional estimates on the cost of dengue, broken down by country and various short- and long-term costs. By putting a value on the size of the dengue problem, these estimates will help governments and donors make better-informed decisions around their dengue programs, researchers said. “In every country the public purse has more demands than it |
 Brandeis University graphic
can satisfy,” said Shepard. “Defining dengue in monetary terms means the disease can be compared with other economic problems. Public health systems can then leverage that information to secure resources from their Ministry of Finance – and possibly the donor community – to control the disease.” Shepard is with the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at the university. |
Here's reasonable
medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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A.M. Costa Rica's
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, May 6, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 89
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has disputed admissions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A U.S. Navy officer with access to highly sensitive intelligence allegedly admitted to spying and patronizing prostitutes. The acknowledgement came during a two-day interrogation following his arrest at an airport in Hawaii last September. The revelation is the latest in a series of twists and turns in the case of Lt. Cmdr. Edward Lin, who has been in U.S. custody for eight months but whose case only became public following a hearing April 8. The 39-year-old naval officer is a Taiwanese native and fluent in Mandarin who moved to the U.S. when he was 14 and, according to his family, became a U.S. citizen in 1998. According to the charging document, Lin faces two counts of espionage and three counts of attempted espionage. He is also accused of patronizing a prostitute and adultery. The document says only that Lin shared secret information with a foreign government, though officials suspect him of working for Taiwan or China, or possibly both. In an audio recording of the preliminary Article 32 hearing held at Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia, and played for members of the media Thursday, Lin is heard saying little more than "Yes, sir" when advised of his rights by the hearing officer, Cmdr. Bruce Gregor. Still, Navy prosecutors pushed for the hearing officer to recommend the case for a full court martial. They said 11 hours of video from the interrogation in Hawaii, combined with information given to an FBI informant, emails and additional evidence collected from Lin's home, leaves little doubt as to his guilt. But Lin's lawyer contended the evidence is anything but clear, alleging the government has engaged in a nefarious scheme to entrap his client. "He was never given his rights," said Larry Youngner, with the Washington-based law firm Tully Rinckney. "Perhaps purposefully." Youngner argued that because of the failure to advise Lin of his rights, much of the evidence, including emails collected from Lin's home, should be suppressed. He also raised doubts as to whether the secret information Lin is accused of sharing was actually secret, saying much of it was easily available from so-called open sources on the internet. As for what Lin supposedly told the FBI informant, his attorney said most of it amounted to standard talking points. "He is proud to be an American citizen," Youngner said. "He was doing the same thing he was trained to do, with all of his classmates, at the Naval War College." Neither side called any witnesses during the almost two-hour preliminary hearing, about 30 minutes of which was held behind closed doors. Lin could face a court martial or lesser, administrative actions. In the meantime, Lin's family has come to his defense, with a website proclaiming his innocence. It accuses the U.S. government of concocting an "easy-to-digest, sensationalized tale of espionage, misdirection, and sexual perversion." Sex assaults stay constant despite smaller military By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Although the U.S. military population has shrunk by thousands, the number of reported cases of sexual assault within the military dropped by only 1 percent last year. The Pentagon's annual report on sexual assault in the military, released Thursday, showed that service members continued to report such incidents at a high rate. There were 6,083 total reports of sexual assault in 2015, although some incidents occurred in prior years. Service members filed 5,240 reports. Of those victims, 504 reported incidents that occurred before they entered into military service. Maj. Gen. Camille Nichols, director of the Pentagon's sexual assault prevention and response office, said the number of reports per thousand service members remained the same. “As you know we have a much smaller force than we had last year,” she said. Military officials said nearly 20 percent of the reports were from military men. “Still, men remain less likely to report crime than women. Encouraging their involvement in prevention and reporting efforts remains a high focus area for us. . . . We do continue and encourage and have massive efforts across services to get people to come forward,” Gen. Nichols said. Military officials said reporting the crime is essential to the branches’ ability to provide services for survivors and hold offenders accountable. Allegations of inappropriate behavior must be treated with the utmost seriousness, Gen. Nichols said. The report called for creation of a sexual assault prevention plan of action, the increase of reporting through leadership engagement, and creation of a plan to address male victimization. Despite the substantial increase in reporting over the past 10 years, the report estimated, a significant number of sexual assaults go unreported. Some victims may choose to cope in other private ways. “We stay committed to eliminate these crimes from our ranks,” Nichols said. Establishment Republicans are slow on backing Trump By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Billionaire businessman Donald Trump may have garnered enough votes in the primaries to become the Republican party’s presumptive presidential nominee but he can't seem to transfer that enthusiasm from the voting booth to the party leadership. The highest-ranking Republican office holder, House Speaker Paul Ryan said Thursday he is not ready to support Trump as the nominee. Ryan previously criticized Trump for saying that if he did not win the nomination, his supporters might riot at the Republican National Convention in July. "I hope to support our nominee, I hope to support his candidacy fully," Ryan said on CNN. "At this point, I'm just not there right now." To which, Trump responded: "I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan's agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people." According to the Wall Street Journal, only 12 of the 300 Republicans serving in the House and Senate, and three of the 31 Republican governors, have endorsed the New York businessman. The party's last two White House occupants, President George H.W. Bush and his son, President George W. Bush, say they will sit out the 2016 campaign and not even comment on it. The party's last two losing presidential nominees, Sen. John McCain of Arizona in 2008 and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in 2012, both said they, like the Bushes, also plan to skip the party's July national convention where Trump will be officially nominated. Other Republican heavyweights are going even farther than Ryan and the Bushes. Mark Salter, an adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said on Twitter that he would rather vote for Democratic presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump. Conservative pundit Ben Howe did the same. Another longstanding Trump critic, Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said on Twitter: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed . . . and we will deserve it.” Trump begins major effort to raise campaign funds By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
After largely self-funding his run to the U.S. Republican presidential nomination, billionaire Donald Trump is starting efforts to raise money for his race against the likely Democratic nominee, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Trump said he contributed about $44 million to his months-long campaign to capture the Republican nomination, while collecting another $12 million in relatively small donations from supporters. But Thursday, he named a campaign finance chief, Steven Mnuchin, chief of a private investment firm, to oversee a national fundraising effort for what could be a billion-dollar campaign. Trump often bragged to his supporters that he was the only 2016 presidential candidate who was self-funding, even if it was somewhat of an exaggerated claim since he also accepted donations. Now he has acknowledged that he would have to sell some of his extensive real estate holdings, something he says he does not necessarily want to do, to muster the hundreds of millions of dollars needed for the national campaign against Clinton. Even so, Trump said in a statement that he would be "putting up substantial money toward the general election." Numerous wealthy individuals who normally contribute to Republican presidential candidates have been slow to embrace Trump. Nearly all of them have been supporting contenders whom Trump defeated. Trump is a political novice who captured the hearts and votes of a sizable portion of the Republican electorate in state nominating contests, but establishment party figures have given him tepid support. Trump, a brash, onetime television reality show host, said he is putting together a committee to help him choose his vice presidential running mate. Mrs. Clinton has not clinched the Democratic nomination, but is significantly ahead of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her lone challenger. Sanders says he has no plans to quit before the final primary votes have been cast in June. He would need to win a huge majority of the vote in the remaining states in order to catch Mrs. Clinton, who leads him by about 300 pledged delegates to the party's national nominating convention and has hundreds more superdelegates, mostly party officials, pledging to support her. A number of polls show Mrs. Clinton favored to beat Trump if the election were held now. U.S. FDA bans e-cigarettes for those younger than 18 By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is banning the sale of e-cigarettes and some other tobacco products to people under age 18 for the first time, a move designed to prevent a new generation from being addicted to nicotine. In addition to e-cigarettes, the FDA announced a ban on the sale of pipe tobacco, hookah tobacco and cigars to minors. The FDA already regulates cigarettes, smokeless tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco products. E-cigarettes have grown into a $3 billion industry, as their use rises among middle and high school students. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA say 3 million middle and high schoolers reported using e-cigarettes in 2015, an increase from around 2.5 million the year before. The new rules, which take effect in 90 days, require makers of the tobacco products to submit them for regulatory review, provide a list of ingredients and place health warnings on packages and in advertisements. If U.S. House Republicans have their way, however, the new regulations will have limitations. A bill approved by the House Appropriations Committee on April 19 would prevent the FDA from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarette products introduced after 2007 and exempt some premium and large cigars as well. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Robert Aderhold, a Republican from Alabama, was included in an agriculture spending bill. The legislation is akin to "driving a bus through public health protections, said Erika Sward of the American Lung Association. Gregory Conley, president of the American Vaping Association, said the FDA pre-market review requirement would hurt manufacturers of the tobacco products. "There are thousands of small business and tens of thousands of jobs on the line," Conley said. The FDA began focusing on e-cigarettes in 2009 as they began appearing on store shelves in the United States. That same year, President Barack Obama signed into law a measure that gave the FDA authority over the previously unregulated products. Congress also gave the agency the authority to assert jurisdiction over them. African health workers face shortage of yellow fever shots By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Angola is battling a yellow fever outbreak amid a global shortage of the vaccine. Cases have also been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda and China. Health experts worry about further spread. There is no treatment. Mass immunization is the only way to stop yellow fever, but producing more of the vaccine is not easy. The Institut Pasteur de Dakar is one of four places in the world that make the yellow fever vaccine. Recording is prohibited inside the institute, but there is nothing to hear. The halls are quiet. Two walls of windows separate visitors from the sterile labs where technicians work in head-to-toe protective gear. Each week, a carton of special, pathogen-free chicken eggs arrives from Germany. Technicians inject the embryos, one by one, with the live virus. That’s a first step. What follows is weeks of extraction, mixing, incubation and safety checks. It can take up to six months to produce a batch of usable vaccine. Globally, around 80 million doses of yellow fever vaccine are made each year. The Institut Pasteur can produce up to 10 million doses. Antoine Marie Diatta is the quality control manager for yellow fever vaccine production at the institute. He said unfortunately production capacity can’t always meet the global needs. It’s the same for other manufacturers, he said. This can be a problem when there is an epidemic, he said, because then there is an immediate need to vaccinate a large number of people. It can be hard to predict how much vaccine will be needed. Yellow fever vaccines can be stored for up to three years, but manufacturers can't afford to over produce, as Diatta explained. He said money is invested to make each batch of vaccine and firms must wait for a return. It’s not easy. He said while you wait to sell, you still need to pay salaries and update equipment, but your money is tied up. Yellow fever is endemic to 34 countries in Africa. It is spread through the bite of an infected mosquito. A single dose of the vaccine can protect a person for life. Nearly 2,000 cases have been reported in Angola since the outbreak began in October. A mass vaccination campaign was launched in February, using 6 million doses from emergency stockpiles. Increasing an additional 10 million doses were made available in late March. While this has slowed the spread of the virus, the World Health Organization warns that if the outbreak spreads to other countries, the now-depleted stockpiles could impact routine vaccination campaigns, putting millions more at risk. Three other labs in the world produce yellow fever vaccine. They are in Russia, France and Brazil. The Institut Pasteur said plans are under way to open a new facility on the outskirts of Dakar by 2020 to increase production here. New credit rule would give consumers the right to sue By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The top U.S. consumer financial regulator proposed a rule Thursday that would make it easier for ordinary consumers to file class-action lawsuits against their banks, rather than seek a resolution through mandatory arbitration. Most U.S. bank customers relinquished their right to sue when they signed credit card agreements, bank accounts and insurance policies without reading the fine print. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, wanting to put a stop to that, proposed a rule that would ban arbitration clauses. The ban would only apply, though, when consumers want to join or create a class-action lawsuit. If adopted, the rule could cost the financial industry hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. "Many banks and financial companies avoid accountability by putting arbitration clauses in their contacts that block groups of their customers from suing them," the protection bureau director, Richard Cordray, said. Such clauses effectively deny groups of consumers the right to seek justice and relief for wrongdoing, he added. Consumer advocates say arbitrators routinely rule against consumers, but the financial industry argues arbitration is a more efficient way for customers to resolve disputes with banks. A bureau study confirmed that arbitration is more efficient but found customers rarely filed lawsuits to settle small claims. The study also showed that when large numbers of customers were adversely affected by the same issue, arbitration hindered their ability to seek relief. The study found that 15 of the largest 20 credit card companies had arbitration clauses in their agreements, and disputes involving about half of all large bank accounts and nearly all prepaid credit cards and payday loans required arbitration. Once the rule is published, the public will have 90 days to comment. The rule will go into effect next year if it is adopted. GM plans to use its Bolts in driverless taxi program By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
According to the Wall Street Journal, American car company General Motors Co. and ride hailing service Lyft, Inc., will start testing Chevrolet Bolt cars as driverless taxis. They could be offering service within a year, the paper reported. The first test will take place in an undisclosed city. GM reportedly invested $500 million in Lyft, and the move is seen as a way to challenge Uber. GM also is planning to buy San Francisco-based Cruise Automation, Inc., for a reported $1 billion. The company has been developing self-driving car technology for two years, the Journal reported. The move is also seen as a way for GM to sell the Bolt, which will be available later this year in a market for electric cars the Journal characterized as soft. It is also seen as a way for GM to make up ground on Silicon Valley’s efforts to build driverless cars. Both Tesla Motors and Alphabet, Inc., Google’s parent company, have been developing the technology for years. Lyft reportedly is also developing driverless cars at its own research center in Pittsburgh. The Wall Street Journal said the company is preparing for autonomous vehicles in its fleet by 2020. The papers said the development of driverless cars is hampered by a patchwork of regulations that govern the use of autonomous vehicles and liabilities. To overcome some of those hurdles, Lyft reportedly will have drivers in the cars ready to intervene should something go wrong. D.C. climate session hears alarming coal prediction By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
If the world's governments, particularly those in developing countries, continue to increase their reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, we are finished. That was the sobering assessment of World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim during his opening statement Thursday at the World Climate Summit in Washington. The two-day gathering, called "Climate Action 2016," is bringing together more than 700 corporate executives, government officials, academics and philanthropists. It is described by organizers as the most significant gathering of sub-national and non-governmental leaders on global climate action this year. Kim says the goal is to move beyond "the fog of success that he said accompanied the historic climate change agreement, COP21, signed in April. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that acting on climate change promises new markets along with better jobs and better health. The summit has a broader goal: keeping the world from reaching the 2-degree C rise in temperatures that climate scientists say is a point of no return regarding warming. The 2-degree target was chosen because temperatures have risen or fallen within the range of 1 degree C. Scientists say that if the average temperature rise hits 2 degrees, sea levels could increase several meters and the world's droughts, heat waves and severe weather could become deadlier and more extreme. The sea level rise would be in addition to the 120 meters of rise since the end of the last Ice Age. The sea level has risen about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880, according to U.S. government figures. As the summit opened, the Science Based Targets initiative, a joint program put together by environmental groups released a list of 155 companies that have agreed to cut their planet-warming emissions. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, May 6, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 89
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Sea Shepherd plans turtle documentary Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has announced the release of its first feature-length, in-house documentary, titled “Why Just One?” The documentary addresses the dramatic decline in sea turtles and the organization’s efforts to defend them, it said. The announcement corresponds with the launching of an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to raise money to finish post-production on its documentary. Scheduled for release this summer, this documentary will change the way people see sea turtles and those who risk their lives to defend the turtles, the organization said. In Costa Rica there is a war taking place between poachers and conservationists, said Sea Shepherd. The organization gave this description: In the documentary, Sea Shepherd volunteers defend the same beach where 26-year-old Jairo Mora Sandoval was murdered in 2013 while protecting sea turtles. The Sea Shepherd crew endures attacks and braves treacherous conditions to follow in Jairo’s footsteps. They tackle a vexing paradox: trying to prevent the poaching of sea turtle eggs in Costa Rica when the activity is legal in one beach town, Ostional, on the country’s Pacific coast. This legal loophole fuels and enables egg poaching throughout in Costa Rica. In “Why Just One?,” Sea Shepherd said it explores the widely accepted statistic that just one in 1,000 sea turtle hatchlings survive to maturity. Experts, conservationists, government representatives and poachers are interviewed, including one of Jairo Mora Sandoval's closest friends, it said. “On May 31, 2015, we launched Operation Jairo to defend sea turtles in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Florida,” said Sea Shepherd Conservation Society’s founder, Capt. Paul Watson, in a release. “We named the campaign after Jairo Mora Sandoval to honor his memory and continue his work to defend turtles. Without patrolling the beaches, we cannot tackle the problems of poaching turtles and their eggs. And without tackling the problems of poaching, we cannot save turtles from extinction.” Last year, Sea Shepherd's Operation Jairo saved more than 12,000 sea turtles and eggs in its campaign to protect the ancient mariners in Costa Rica, Honduras and Florida, the organization said. By patrolling the beaches at night, Sea Shepherd volunteers were able to stop poaching in Costa Rica and Honduras. In Florida, volunteers ensured that turtle hatchlings made their way into the ocean without being distracted by bright lights, the organization added. Feds sanction Panamá bank and firms Special to A.M. Costa Rica
U.S. Officials said Thursday that they have sanctioned a money laundering operation in Panamá and two of its leaders. They said that the action exposes an extensive drug money laundering network based in Panamá. The action was by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. The agency named Nidal Ahmed Waked Hatum and Abdul Mohamed Waked Fares as narcotics traffickers involved in money laundering. The agency also targeted six associates of the organization and 68 companies tied to the drug money laundering network, including Grupo Wisa, S.A., Vida Panama (Zona Libre) S.A., and Balboa Bank & Trust, said the Treasury Department. The organization uses trade-based money laundering schemes, such as false commercial invoicing, bulk cash smuggling and others to launder drug proceeds on behalf of multiple international drug traffickers and their organizations, said the agency. As a result of today’s action, all assets of these individuals and entities that are under the jurisdiction of the United States or in the control of U.S. persons are frozen, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them, the agency said. |
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| From Page 7: U.S. jobless rate experiences a slight bump By the A.M. Costa Rica
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More Americans than expected filed for unemployment benefits for the first time last week, although the underlying trend still points to declining jobless claims and a strengthening labor market. The U.S. Labor Department reported Thursday that initial claims for unemployment jumped by 17,000 during the week ending April 30 to a seasonally-adjusted 274,000. This represents the biggest gain in initial weekly jobless claims since February of last year. Despite the increase, weekly jobless claims remain below 300,000, a threshold linked to a healthy labor market. The jobless claims report is unlikely to affect what some economists expect to be a strong monthly unemployment report on Friday. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics is expected to report a net gain of more than 200,000 jobs in April, nudging the jobless rate down to 4.9 percent, a slight improvement from the rate of 5 percent the previous month. If the April job numbers fall in line with the first quarter monthly average of 209,000 jobs, it will be welcome news for new college graduates. They will enter the best job market since the Great Recession, said Bankrate.com senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick. Although it will be easier for new college graduates to find a job, they will still confront inconsistent and underwhelming wage growth, he said. |
