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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 107 | |||||||||
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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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Our readers' opinion
Our sense of entitlementis twisted and ironic Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I am not sure whether you intended to be ironic with your May 26 editorial note that suggests that Americans living in Costa Rica should be provided with Medicare, but not have to pay taxes. It is too similar to the Tea Party protesting health care reform with their signs “keep the government’s hands off my Medicare.” This type of twisted sense of entitlement perfectly encapsulates the views of too many that wants government to provide a broad array of services, but doesn't want to pay for any of them. Steve Young
San Isidro de Heredia EDITOR'S NOTE: The note was at the foot of the daily digest and not in the newspages. Reader says call directly and do not count on 911 Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Advice That May Save Your Life in Costa Rica Recently a Costa Rican friend of my daughter had a fire in their home. They made the fatal error of calling 911 and were told help is on the way. After 35 minutes and no response, fortunately a neighbor called the closest fire station directly, who did respond rapidly. Unfortunately, due to the 911 delay, the firemen did not arrive at the house until 40 minutes after the fire started. Of course everything in the house was destroyed. This was a horrific tragedy. They lost everything and calling 911 first actually made things much worse after being given a fatal false sense of security. If you have an emergency in Costa Rica, do not rely on only calling 911. Find out where the closest police station is to your house, visit them in person and ask for their direct phone number. Find out where the closest fire station is to your house, visit them in person and ask for their direct phone number. Call the Red Cross and get the best phone number for their ambulance service, which is the best in the country. Write down all three numbers and leave them next to the phone as well as carrying them with you at all times. When you have an emergency, always call them directly first. If you wish go ahead and also call 911 afterwards, but do not rely on just making one call to 911. Edward Bridges
20 Years In Desamparados Headline adjective unsupported because report is not hidden Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I searched the story you published about the Haiti statistics and found not one reference to the report being "hidden" nor otherwise inappropriately kept from publication. Apparently the report is in a preliminary stage and is being finalized. Was it editorial pique which promoted the headline writer to insert an unsupported adjective in the headline? Or just inner anger at the Obama-Clinton administration? If either, when does your publication cross the line from being news to instead being an instrument of political persuasion? Greg Russi
Rifle, Colorado
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 107 | |||||||||||
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| Prosecutors interrogate archbishop and Rodrigo Arias |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Two leading figures in Costa Rican society showed up at prosecutor's offices Tuesday to submit to formal questioning. One was Rodrigo Arias, the brother of the former president and a presidential candidate himself. The other was Archbishop Hugo Barrantes, the highest Roman Catholic churchman in the country. Arias was there to answer questions about how the Óscar Arias administration handled some $2 million that came from the Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica. Rodrigo Arias was minister of the Presidencia, basically chief of staff for his brother. The Arias brothers have said they did not consider the funds from the Banco Centroamericano to be public money. They distributed the money as purported consultancy payments that appear to have been designed to grease the skids for the |
Central American Free Trade Treaty
with the
United States. Barrantes is 75 and has just tendered his resignation to the Vatican. He retains his position until someone else is appointed. His problem is a fund that was managed by the Conferencia Episcopal de Costa Rica, the conference of bishops, from 2004 through 2006. The fund, Servicios Pastorales, made loans and has been accused by government financial officials of illegal banking. Both the situation with Rodrigo Arias and that of the Catholic Church were exposed by the La Nación daily newspaper in unreleased news articles. Arias is facing an allegation of mismanaging public funds. His interview by prosecutors Tuesday was confirmed by the Poder Judicial. He told reporters afterwards that his statements were about the same as those he delivered to a commission of lawmakers last month. |
 Comisión Nacional de
Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias photo
This is the dike that protects 4,500 homes
from the Río Parrita at left.
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| As rains arrive, emergency officials focus on Parrita dike |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Parrita is the central Pacific community perhaps best known for being covered by flooding from the river of the same name. Every year and sometimes twice in the same year heavy rains hit the central Pacific coast and Parrita Centro and nearby communities are submerged. In November 2010 nearly three feet of water fell in a few days. In October 2008 Parrita Centro was evacuated when a dike burst flooding 1,500 homes. Each round of flooding generates more work by emergency officials. Now the Comisión Nacional de Prevención de Riesgos y Atención de Emergencias said that the river channel needs to be dredged and that more work needs to be done on the dike. About 4,500 persons in the communities of La Julieta, El INVU, Pueblo Nuevo and Parrita Centro count on the dike to keep the river at bay. Emergency officials said that one problem is that the canton lacks a plan regulador or master plan, and people have put up dwellings in flood plains. Emergency officials said they have put up a series of |
monitoring stations to keep watch on
the river. Another project that is
at the bidding stage is a topographical study that will pinpoint places
where dredging is needed, said the commission. In the meantime, the
commission will try to clean the channel from Ruta 34 to the river
mouth. Also planned is the addition of some 70,000 cubic meters to the existing dike to raise it. There also is a plan to strengthen the dike at places where breeches appeared during Tropical Storm Tomas in November 2010. The commission said it already had completed three separate projects on the dike. The nation is entering the rainy season now, and the first taste of problems appeared Monday night and Tuesday in the northern zone where the commission declared a low-level alert. The ríos Cuatro Bocas, Niño, La Muerte and Frío ran out of their banks and flooded some communities. Some 50 homes were flooded in the Canton of Upala, and residents were placed in a public shelter. There were 100 more flood refugees in Cartago Norte and 125 more in Cuatros Bocas. Some 32 persons were being housed in the Escuela Moravia Verde in Guatuso. The commission said that some damage was reported in the Central Valley in San José, Heredia and Desamparados mostly from blocked storm sewers that flooded. The heaviest rains there were Friday and Sunday. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 107 | |||||||||
| Keeping languages separate is easy, Kansas
professor says |
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By the University of Kansas news service
How do people who speak more than one language keep from mixing them up? How do they find the right word in the right language when being fluent in just one language means knowing about 30,000 words? That’s what science has wondered about for decades, offering complicated theories on how the brain processes more than one language and sometimes theorizing that bilingualism degrades cognitive performance. But University of Kansas psycholinguist Mike Vitevitch thinks that complicated explanations of how the brain processes two or more languages overlook a straightforward and simple explanation. “The inherent characteristics of the words — how they sound — provide enough information to distinguish which language a word belongs to,” he said. “You don't need to do anything else.” And in an analysis of English and Spanish, published in the April 7 online edition of Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Vitevitch found few words that sounded similar in the two languages. Most theories of how bilingual speakers find a word in memory assume that each word is labeled with information about which language it belongs to, Vitevitch said. But he disagrees. “Given how different the words in one language sound to the words in the other language, it seems like a lot of extra and unnecessary mental work to add a label to each word to identify it as being from one language or the other. “ Here's an analogy. Imagine you have a bunch of apples and oranges in your fridge. The apples represent one |
 language you know, the oranges represent another language you know and the fridge is that part of memory known as the lexicon, which contains your knowledge about language. To find an apple you just look for the round red thing in the fridge and to find an orange you just look for the round orange thing in the fridge. Once in a while you might grab an unripe, greenish orange mistaking it for a granny smith apple. Such instances of language mixing do happen on occasion, but they are pretty rare and are easily corrected, said Vitevitch. “This process of looking for a specific piece of fruit is pretty efficient as it is — labeling each apple as an apple and each orange as an orange with a magic marker seems redundant and unnecessary.” Given how words in one language tend to sound different from words in another language, parents who speak different languages should not worry that their children will be confused or somehow harmed by learning two languages, said Vitevitch. “Most people in most countries in the world speak more than one language,” said Vitevitch. “If the U.S. wants to successfully compete in a global economy we need people who can communicate with potential investors and consumers in more than one language.” Vitevitch is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. |
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| Lawmakers give final OK to free trade
treaty with China |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Asamblea Legislative approved on final vote Tuesday a free trade treaty with the People's Republic of China. Only 13 of the 45 lawmakers present voted against the treaty. The agreement, which may go into effect as soon as July 1, permits 99.6 percent of Costa Rican exports to enter the giant Asian economy free of import duties, said the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior. The vote was a victory for the Laura Chinchilla administration. Her Partido Liberación Nacional made up the bulk of the favorable votes. Francisco Chacón González, a lawmaker of that party, said there are many reasons to support the free trade treaty and that many products, such as frozen orange juice, fresh flowers, plants, yucca and palm hearts are among the imports desired by China. Luis Fishman of the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana said he voted against the measure because China still has to |
complete the minimum with regard to
respect for human rights. He said China was pushing for the treaty, not
Costa Rica. Other opposition
lawmakers said most residents would not benefit. The commerce ministry negotiated the treaty over two years, starting in 2008 shortly after the country dumped Taiwan for the People's Republic as diplomatic partners. The products, like coffee, live fish, milk products and some fresh fruits that are not free of duty now will be within 10 or 15 years, said the commerce ministry. It also said that the treaty will encourage Chinese investments here. Trade with China was $91.1 million in 2000 and $1.3 billion in 2010, the ministry said. The legislative path of the treaty had none of the protests and confrontations that typified the Central American Free Trade Treaty with the United States. In that case, the country even had to vote if it wanted to adopt the treaty. Passage took nearly seven years. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 107 | ||||||||||
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| U.N. expresses concern about killings of prosecutors Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The United Nations human rights office Tuesday sounded the alarm on the recent killings of public prosecutors in Guatemala and Honduras, as well as the increasing vulnerability of human rights defenders in the two Central American countries. “We are extremely concerned about an apparent new trend of targeting public prosecutors in Central America, apparently by organized crime groups,” said Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. He spoke at a news briefing in Geneva, Switzerland. “Over the past week, public prosecutors have been murdered in both Guatemala and Honduras in the course of their duties, amid growing insecurity and violence in both countries,” he said. May 24 in Guatemala, Allan Stwolinsky, the local auxiliary prosecutor in Coban in the Department of Alta Verapaz, was found decapitated in a plastic bag in front of the governor’s house, he said. Both the attorney general and the interior minister blamed the murder on the Mexican drug cartel Los Zetas and linked it to the seizure of 453 kilograms of cocaine, which had been coordinated by the auxiliary prosecutor. Colville noted that this killing took place in the aftermath of the brutal massacre of 27 land workers in Peten, allegedly also by Los Zetas. In Honduras, Raul Reyes Carbajal, a public prosecutor in the city of San Pedro Sula, was gunned down Sunday by several armed men who shot at him from another vehicle as he was driving home from work. According to eyewitness reports, after Reyes was hit in his car, he lost control and crashed into a bus. His attackers then got out of their vehicle and shot him again to ensure he was dead. Reyes had been coordinator of the public prosecutor’s office in Puerto Cortes for one month and had previously coordinated a special unit against organized crime. The killing comes at a time when the public prosecutor’s office in San Pedro Sula had decided to investigate the killings of seven youths, reportedly linked to gangs, during a police operation a few days earlier. Television station in Chile says Allende was murdered By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Chilean state television has reported that newly disclosed military documents support the theory that president Salvador Allende may have been assassinated during the 1973 coup that brought Gen. Augusto Pinochet to power. Monday's report was broadcast days after Chilean authorities exhumed the late president's remains to determine the circumstances surrounding his death. Allende's family requested an investigation to determine whether the elected president committed suicide or was killed during the coup on Sept. 11, 1973. Allende's daughter, Isabel, now a Chilean senator, has called the investigation tremendously important because she says it could dispel any doubts or speculation about how the president died. The exhumation is part of a widespread inquiry into 726 alleged abuses during the rule of Pinochet. President Allende was found dead in the presidential palace as soldiers supporting the coup closed in and warplanes bombed the building. Official reports said he had killed himself. His family was not allowed to see the body and there was no official investigation at the time of his death. Questions arose shortly after the coup about how Allende died. A physician who was a member of Allende's medical team, Patricio Guijon, says he witnessed the president commit suicide with an AK-47 given to him by Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Guijon has said that by the time Allende committed suicide, the presidential palace had been rocked by hours of bombings and machine gun fire. Pinochet died in 2006 while under investigation for alleged corruption, torture and murder. His government is blamed for at least 3,000 killings of political opponents, including murders of those who disappeared. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, June 1, 2011, Vol. 11, No. 107 | ||||||||||
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Latin American news Please reload page if feed does not appear promptly |
of dead man's ex-wife By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A divorced woman has won the right to receive money due to the work-related death of her ex-husband because she was receiving what amounts to alimony and was economically dependent on the man. The case was decided by the Sala II high labor court. Although two lower courts rejected the woman's claim, the Sala II said she had a right to receive an annual payment because it was vital to her maintenance. The money has to be paid by the man's employer, the Instituto Nacional de Seguros, according to a summary of the decision released by the Poder Judicial. Had the pair remained married, there would have been no question as to her right to receive the money. $20 million high rise going up in Rohrmoser By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A Colombian firm is investing $20 million to build an 18-floor high rise in Rohrmoser not far from the home of former president Óscar Arias Sánchez. The project is on the west side of Parque Perú and is being developed by Grupo Leumi. Contractors have started moving dirt, and the plan calls for 124 one- and two-bedroom apartments. The location also is within walking distance of the new national stadium n Parque la Sabana. The anticipated price range is between $148,000 and $290,000. The project is called Vistas de Nunciatura because it is within sight of the location occupied by the diplomatic representative of the Vatican. Traveler faces drug count By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A 48-year-old Italian traveler has been detained because anti-drug police said they found 190 small packages of cocaine in his luggage Monday. He was identified by the last name of Biacchi. He was traveling to Madrid and then to Italy, officers said. Power cut today in Escazú By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Compañía Nacional de Fuerza y Luz said it will be cutting power today from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in a small section of Escazú in the vicinity of Servicios Técnicos Itskatzú, the appliance repair firm, for maintenance. |
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James
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