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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 103
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School strike
continues
even as payment is made By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The public school teacher strike continues today even though the central government was supposed to deposit funds to cover non-payment and under payments. The Sindicato de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores de la Educación Costarricense said Monday night that teachers will gather again at various places in the country today. This may mean more highway and street blockages. In San José the gathering will be sought of the La Merced church, most likely in Paseo Colón. The teacher union noted that the only action that can end the strike would be a decision by all the teachers. These regional assemblies also will provide the union leadership information as to whether teachers have been paid. The union has set up a system of email and other methods so that teachers can report under payments or lack of payments. The Ministerio de Educación Pública was supposed to begin making electronic payments at 8 p.m. starting with the regular salaries. Teachers have complained about lack of payment or underpayments since January. The strike began May 5.  Partido Liberación Nacional
photo
Francisco SeguraDirector
proposes changes
to judicial investigating arm By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The director of the Judicial Investigating Organization presented lawmakers Monday with a new draft of the agency's organic law. The director, Francisco Segura, said among other things, that his employees should have at least a university degree. He also wants to create regional directors and an internal disciplinary tribunal. The presentation was to the Comisión Permanente de Asuntos Jurídicos. The proposal includes the creation of an office of plans and operation that would work closely with the Ministerio Público, the prosecutors. Any additional expense as a result of these changes could be offset by taking a piece of the goods that are confiscated in drug cases, according to the plan. Foreign ministry moving to provide services in Brazil By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
An estimated 4,000 to 6,000 Costa Ricans will be going to Brazil next month for the World Cup soccer championship. So the foreign ministry is setting up temporary consulates in key cities. Right now there is just one Costa Rican consulate in Brasilia and honorary consuls in Curitiba, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. World Cup games are being played in many Brazilian locations, but the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto is setting up the temporary consulates in cities where the Costa Rican national team may play. These include Fortaleza, Natal, Recife, Santos and Belo Horizonte. Another consulate will be in Santos where the national team will practice. Consulates handle problems like lost passports, injured or dead citizens and other situations facing their citizens. Víctor Monge Chacón, the Costa Rican ambassador in Brazil, will represent the country in official activities related to the World Cup, the ministry said. The ministry also is suggesting that Costa Rican citizens carry photocopies of their passport and leave the original in a secure location when they are in Brazil.  Ministerio de Obras Públicas y
Transportes
photo
Workmen were installing this
pipe Monday.Interamericana
Norte open
for passenger cars and buses By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Ruta 1, the Interamericana Norte was closed Sunday and much of Monday at Cerro Cambronero, which is at kilometer 77 of the key highway. The reason was another slide and the loss of part of the asphalt. The Consejo Nacional de Viliada is doing a 600 million-colon job that included putting a large pipe under the highway to solve the problem. This is the site where there have been frequent washouts, and road officials have been designing a solution since a similar slide in March, they said. The roadway was supposed to be opened by Monday night but only to passenger vehicles and public transport. Larger trucks were being asked to use Ruta 27, the Caldera highway. The road closing was not as big a crisis as it would have been five years ago because the Caldera highway is in service. In addition to the drainage pipe, workmen are installing retaining walls and plan to resurface much of the construction site, they said.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 103 | |
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| Contraloría cites concerns with oversight of security firms | |
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By
Michael Krumholtz
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff There are major management flaws with Costa Rica's private security services, according to a Contraloría General de la República report released Monday. The country's government accountability office concluded that privatized security, which is regulated by the Ministerio de Seguridad Pública, is mismanaged and underfunded. A laundry list of faults made up the Contraloría's study, which stated that these oversights greatly increase risks for the general population. Here are some highlighted conclusions: The security ministry lacks crucial resources to ensure the control and supervision of these private firms are matching guidelines set in the regulatory law, the Ley de Regulación de los Servicios de Seguridad Privados. Registration information and records are outdated, hampering customers from receiving crucial information that can allow for timely decision-making. Monitoring instruments used to make inspections do not comply with the law. |
There are no
regular reports on security personnel, facility location, weapon
inventory, and other information necessary for security workers and the
firms' clientele. The study added that no improvements were seen in the last year in areas of control, verification, or supervision of security services. Since the regulatory law was enacted in 2003, private security in Costa Rica has seen exceptional growth. Around 30,000 people and 1,200 companies provide security services, the Contraloría estimated. Authorities from the public security ministry responded by saying this study was largely carried out by 2012, meaning it should not speak to the new administration's abilities. The ministry's press office said many of the faults have already been corrected and that they have revoked licenses and cancelled permits for those security businesses deemed as the worst offenders. Servicios de Seguridad Privados director Elbert González said his team focused on the social area of punishing those that don't comply with laws and making sure security workers are given at least minimum wage. He added that they are working on issues of gun control, including how many registered weapons each security company is permitted. |
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Pre-Columbian life Students from the fifth grade at Saint Jude School receive an introduction to how Costa Ricans lived before Columbus at an educational session in the new Museo de Jade. The students were the first school group to visit the $21.5 million museum, which opened to the public Monday. The location of the new museum is on the west side of the Plaza de la Democracia. Visible in the photo, among other artifacts, are a mano and matate used for grinding corn. |
 Ministerio
de Cultura y Juventud photo
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Two U.S. citizens
are detained
in Liberia on cocaine allegation By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Two United States citizens were arrested in Libería this weekend on an allegation of transporting cocaine in a vehicle. Fuerza Pública officers detained the pair, identified as Jesse Goges and Steve Little, along with three Costa Ricans. One was a 17-year-old girl who police said is involved in a romantic relationship with Goges. Both he and Little are 34 years old, according to a press representative. Officers found 83 grams of cocaine, around 80,000 colons in cash of suspect origin, two knives, and a firearm registered to a security company in the car, according to the police report. The local police chief said police had them under constant surveillance before the arrest and that officers had the Policía de Control de Drogas test the substance with positive results. Both men presented officers valid U.S. passports. They, along with the two Costa Rican men, were taken to the Fiscalía de Libería, while the minor was given to the Patronato Nacional de Infancia. Per fiscalía rule, Goges and Little are temporarily barred from leaving the country. Convictions for crimes of drug transportation and money laundering can merit prison sentences of up to 15 years. |
 Ministerio
de Gobernación, Policía
y Seguridad Púbica photo Police
question one of the two U.S. citizens.
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 103 | |||||
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| Online gambling, legal and illegal,
said to be $1 trillion-a-year industry |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Next month’s World Cup in Brazil will not only bring worldwide cheering. It’s also bound to set off a global betting frenzy – one that now involves international sports of most every kind. “Taking the illegal market, the under-regulated grey market, and the totally legal market together, it’s really close to a trillion dollars annually gambled on sports today,” said Chris Eaton, director of sports integrity from the International Center for Sport Security in Qatar and the Sorbonne in Paris. Analysts say that a billion dollars was bet worldwide on the 2010 World Cup title match. And, the 2014 playoffs are expected to generate a handle even higher than that. Eaton said the betting action on just one football league alone – Britain’s Premiere League – comes to more than a billion dollars a year. Huge quantities of money attract criminal elements. So it is with sports wagering. A Sports Security report says that sports betting is used worldwide by organized crime syndicates to launder some $140 billion a year. It also says 80 percent of the total global sports wagering activity is illegal. The rise of the Internet over the past 20 years has added even more gambling activity, according to the report, which says the web now handles 30 percent of the action. Instead of having to seek out illegal bookmakers or go to legitimate betting shops, such as Britain’s Ladbrokes and William Hill, bettors only need a computer and a credit card. Britain, according to the study, has the greatest number of online gambling licenses – 114 operations. Malta was second, with 86. Along with making wagering easy, the Internet has enabled criminal elements to set up global betting operations that siphon off and send profits to anonymous bank accounts in lax-regulated countries. The report also says legal sports betting is only adding about $6 billion to national tax coffers globally, a tiny fraction of the total take. The ICSS-Sorbonne report says Asia accounts for 53 percent of the world’s illegal gambling, largely because most East Asian countries do not allow legal wagering. That’s why casinos in places such as Macao attract huge numbers of bettors from mainland China. And, it turns out that illicit betting shops – bookmakers - and legal betting houses are linked together in a form of risk management that is similar to what is done in the insurance industry, where big firms backstop the smaller ones. “So, you’ve got dense networks of street bookmakers throughout countries like China and Vietnam,” said David Forrest, a gambling analyst at the University of Salford in Britain. |
 “And those small guys tend to take the stake and quickly pass it on up a chain so they don’t handle the risk themselves,” he said. “And at the top of this chain lie legal bookmakers, who are registered in the Philippines, the five biggest bookmakers in the world.” The Philippines is an international wagering hub because the regulatory environment in that country is relatively weak. Huge amounts of cash can move in and out without much difficulty, analysts say. Illegal gambling has taken on some of the practices of Wall Street where hedge fund traders may take positions both for and against a particular stock or security to help ensure that they win regardless of the outcome. “Illegal bookmakers will collect their bets,” said University of South Florida sports betting analyst Richard Borghesi, “and if they wind up with a negative position on one side or the other, they will lay off their risk by betting on the opposite teams in the legalized gambling market.” Borghesi said legal sports betting in Nevada and other locations has made such hedging relatively easy. But skimming cash from the handle and other illicit activities are not the only fraud paths. Analysts Forrest cites a scam that took place in January 2012 that created a fictitious match between Turkmenistan and the Maldives. The operators posted advertisements for the game to attract bettors, collected cash, and then created a phony play-by-play broadcast of the game so gamblers could follow the action. The final score, Turkmenistan won by 3-2, was an outcome designed to give the perpetrators the biggest possible take. The ICSS-Sorbonne study says the sports gambling industry needs to develop international reporting and accountability systems much like those that have been established in recent decades in the global financial markets. “We need the same sort of cooperative model operating in the gambling side and the bookmaking side of international sports,” said the ICSS’ Eaton. “So we can see exactly who was transacting what – and how – so you can pick the anomalies.” |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 103 | |||||||
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| Pope to meet abuse victims next month in Vatican City By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis has announced that he will meet with sex abuse victims next month at the Vatican, saying he has zero tolerance for those responsible for such crimes. Speaking to reporters on his way back from the Middle East Monday, Francis said three bishops are being investigated for abuse-related reasons. He gave no details, but said there will be no privileges for church officials facing charges. Francis said a priest who abuses a child betrays the body of God, calling it a satanic Mass. This will be Francis' first meeting as pope with victims of sex abuse. The scandal and cover-up is still shaking the Catholic Church more than a decade after many of the victims started going public. Three persons still sought in western Colorado slide By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Rescue teams are searching for three people missing after a large mudslide struck late Sunday in the western U.S. state of Colorado. The mudslide is estimated to be three kilometers wide, 6.5 kilometers long and 76 meters deep in an unpopulated area near the town of Collbran, about 64 kilometers east of the city of Grand Junction. The Mesa County Sheriff’s Department said rescuers raced to the scene, but slowed operations after nightfall. Heavy rain fell on the area during the previous two days, and "likely contributed to the cause of the slide," according to the Sheriff’s Department. The avalanche occurred about two months after a massive mudslide hit the Washington state community of Oso on March 22, killing 43 people. Clippers' owner reported to have transferred team By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
News reports said that Donald Sterling has transferred his ownership stake in the Los Angeles Clippers to his estranged wife, Shelly. The reports – by sources not authorized to comment on the negotiations – said that Shelly Sterling was negotiating the sale of the team but wanted to retain a minority interest. That creates a complicated mix for the National Basketball Association. Commissioner Adam Silver has banned Sterling for life after his secretly recorded racist rant against African American players, including former star Magic Johnson. Sterling has been charged with damaging the league and causing it to come into disrepute through his comments. So far, Sterling has refused to pay the $2.5 million fine, which also violates the NBA constitution and the agreement he signed as a team owner. But a prolonged court fight could be bad for the league as well. Roshini Rajkumar is a licensed attorney and the author of "Communicate That! Your Toolbox for Powerful Presence." She said that the last thing the NBA wants is a drawn-out fight with the Sterlings. “This certainly does not help the NBA in any way," she said. "It reminds us – every time one team gets a strike against it, reporters dig up all the other bad things that have happened in the NBA so you are seeing those anecdotes come back to life because of the Sterling controversy,” Ms. Rajkumar said. Technically, the Clippers are owned by the Sterling Family Trust, in the names of Donald and Shelly Sterling. And Commissioner Silver said the league’s actions were against Donald Sterling only. But players want both Sterlings to lose any control of the team. Miami Heat star player LeBron James said the sooner the Sterlings are gone, the better. “I mean it’s very important," James said. "We don’t want this lingering around our sport. It sucks that it happened, but the players the owners and everyone associated with this game – there’s no need for it so, the quicker it gets done, the quicker we can move on," he added. But moving on might not be as simple as getting rid of Donald Sterling. Last week, controversial Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban told Inc. Magazine that if he saw “a black kid in a hoodie, and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street.” Cuban said he would also avoid what he called “a bald white guy with tattoos on the street.” Cuban has not said how he will vote in Sterling’s case, but many observers have defended his comments because the Mavericks’ owner said to charge someone else with racism while harboring racist thoughts made him a hypocrite. Roshini Rajkumar says that a prolonged court fight with Donald Sterling would not be good for the league’s image. “I don’t know that a lot of owners are going to want to open themselves up to the depositions that could follow if they decide to forcibly oust him," she said. "And then his legal team might come back at them and then fully open up the lids of every other team and other possible racial behavior or misdeeds of the other owners,” Ms. Rajkumar said. LeBron James says that players are hoping the situation is resolved quickly. “I mean we all hoped that it would go fast but we also know the judicial system as well and litigations can go on from time to time to time," James said after a Miami practice. "So obviously you have to be patient with that. But we are all optimistic that it will go faster,” he added. Sterling has to respond to the NBA’s charges by today. He also has the right to appear at a June 3 hearing in New York and to make a presentation to the league before it votes whether or not to terminate his ownership. A three-quarters vote of the league owners is needed to strip Sterling of the team. The league says the same is true if Shelly Sterling owns the Clippers. Gunmen kill U.S. doctor visiting graves in Pakistan By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Gunmen in Pakistan have shot dead a visiting American doctor from the minority Ahmadi sect in front of his wife and toddler son. Two gunmen riding a motorcycle shot Mehdi Ali Qamar numerous times early Monday while he was visiting family graves in the town of Chenab Nagar in Pakistan's Punjab province. Qamar was a naturalized U.S. citizen who lived in Columbus, Ohio. He had just arrived in Pakistan Saturday to visit family and volunteer at a cardiac hospital. The cardiologist and his family belonged to the Ahmadi sect of Muslims whose members were officially declared to be heretics under Pakistan's law in the mid-1970s. Members of the Ahmadi sect follow the self-proclaimed prophet Ghulam Ahmad and consider themselves Muslims. They are forbidden from presenting themselves as Muslims by Pakistani law, and they have long been targeted by Islamic extremists. Qamar's killing is the latest in scores of attacks carried out by hardline Islamists targeting members of minority communities in Pakistan, including Shia Muslims. The attacks are carried out by hardline members of the Sunni Muslim community, which represents Pakistan's majority population. Survey of tree varieties can help assess carbon By the University of Edinburgh news service
Carbon offsetting initiatives could be improved with new insights into the make-up of tropical forests, a study shows. Scientists studying the Amazon Basin have revealed unprecedented detail of the size, age and species of trees across the region by comparing satellite maps with hundreds of field plots. The findings will enable researchers to assess more accurately the amount of carbon each tree can store. This is a key factor in carbon offset schemes, in which trees are given a cash value according to their carbon content, and credits can be traded in exchange for preserving trees. Satellite maps of the world’s forests don’t contain enough information about their carbon content. Developing understanding of this aspect of forests, in the Amazon and elsewhere, could be hugely important. Existing satellite maps of the area have estimated trees’ carbon content based largely on their height, but have not accounted for large regional variations in their shape and density. Researchers from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds, who led the research, say their findings could help quantify the amount of carbon available to trade in areas of forest. This could help administer carbon offsetting more accurately, and improve understanding of how much carbon is stored in the world’s forests, which informs climate change forecasts. Scientists studied a database of thousands of tree species, taken from more than 400 hectare-sized plots across the nine countries of the Amazon Basin, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela. The survey was developed as part of a sister project, known as RAINFOR, involving more than 200 researchers across the region. Their research found that forests in the basin’s northeast on average stored twice as much carbon as those in the southwest, as a result of soil, climate and species variation. The northeast has slow-growing, dense-wooded species, while the southwest is dominated by light-wooded trees with faster turnover. Scientists say this highlights the need to recognize that carbon is not distributed uniformly in the forest. The study, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, was published in Global Ecology and Biogeography. Satellites can’t see species, but species really matter for carbon. This is the big challenge for the next generation of satellite and field scientists, researchers said. New satellites will be launched soon that will be more sensitive to forest structure and biomass, but scientists must ensure we have sufficient ecological ground data to correctly interpret and use them, they said. |
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| A.M. Costa
Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 103 | |||||||||
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 Banco Nacional photo
The final productNew use for
popular fruit
creates jobs in Aserrí By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The limits of what can be done with a jocote have not yet been reached. Workers in Aserrí have shown this by creating a chileras de jocote that is being sold commercially. Chilera is a spicy dressing that usually contains more than one type of fruit or vegetable. The Asociación de Desarrollo Integral de La Uruca de Aserrí generated the idea and Banco Nacional provided the money. Some 80 families produce jocotes, those little green fruits that usually are eaten out of hand. The problem was to locate a place to process the fruit and train the workers to process them. Then there was the big problem of marketing a new product. But chileras were just a start. Now the plant is producing some 25 products, including a jocote shampoo, a jocote ice cream and jocote jelly. The problem with jocotes always has been marketing the gigantic harvests. Some studies suggest that up to 40 percent of the fruit remain on the trees. In 2013 the region generated 2,000 tons of jocotes. The usual season is June through August. |
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| From Page 7: Foreclosures linked to higher suicide rates By
the Dartmouth University news service
The recent U.S. foreclosure crisis contributed significantly to the nation’s jump in suicides, independent of other economic factors associated with the Great Recession, according to a new study by Dartmouth and Purdue University professors. “Foreclosures are a unique suicide risk among the middle-aged,” says Jason Houle, an assistant professor of sociology. The study, appearing in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, is the first to show a correlation between foreclosure and suicide rates. The authors analyzed state-level foreclosure and suicide rates from 2005 to 2010. During that period, the U.S. suicide rate increased by nearly 13 percent, and the number of annual home foreclosures hit a record 2.9 million in 2010. “It seems that foreclosures affect suicide rates in two ways,” says co-author Jason Houle, an assistant professor of sociology at Dartmouth. “The loss of a home clearly impacts individuals and families, and can arouse feelings of loss, shame or regret. At the same time, rising foreclosure rates affect entire communities because they’re associated with a number of community-level resources and stresses, including an increase in crime, abandoned homes, and a sense of insecurity.” The impact of foreclosures on the incidence of suicides was strongest among adults 46 to 64 years old. Those in this age group also experienced the highest increase in suicide rates during the recessionary period. |
