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José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 122
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Government seeks to drive up pork prices By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Pork prices have fallen to their lowest level in five years, and the central government has stepped in to help. Pork producers have said that the market price is so low that they cannot make a profit. The government said it is taking action to raise the prices. The Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería and the Servicio Nacional de Salud Animal have prevailed on the meat industry to buy 3,000 more pig carcasses mainly from small and medium producers, the government said Monday. In addition, the government has prevailed on the firm SIGMA Alimentos to purchase this week 600 carcasses to be processed by a major butchering company. Another business also has agreed to buy 600 carcasses a week, which officials said would have an upward impact on price. The Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería and the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Comercio also said that the members of the chamber of sausage makers plan to increase their purchases by 10 percent. The agricultural ministry and the Servicio Nacional de Salud Animal have acted in the past to affect local markets and dabble in command economics. An agency of the agricultural ministry blocked the importation of avocados to benefit local producers. The additional meat purchases will result in more pork in the marketplace, so it remains to be seen if the additional purchases from producers result in higher retail prices.  Museo Juan
Santamaría
photo
This is a march from
a
previous year.1856 route
of march to be experienced
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
When Costa Rican soldiers headed off to war in 1856, they did not have the advantage of highway 27. And buses had not been invented. So they hoofed it with the help of ox carts to carry the heavier goods. The Museo Juan Santamaría will once again duplicate some of the march for the benefit of local history buffs or those who just want to experience what the soldiers experienced. The war was what is called the Campaña Nacional in which the Costa Rican troops served defeats on the troops of William Walker, the U.S. filibusterer. Alajuela was the home of Juan Santamaría, the soldier who distinguished himself in a key battle, so the museum there generally takes the lead in matters related to the campaign No one will be forced to march all the way to the Nicaraguan border, Instead, the museum is setting up a series of five-kilometer hikes starting July 26. The six Sunday outings will be in the Atenas vicinity. In August, there will be two excursions to Puntarenas for a guided tour of the route taken by the army. But these trips will be by bus. Next year, the museum plans to have hikes north of Puntarenas with the help of land engineer Juan Manuel Castro, who has researched the route. The military expedition was under the control of president Juan Rafael Mora Porras, who is honored today as a national hero. Appeal filed over Ruta 32 widening study By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The organization Federación Ecologista said it has filed a Sala IV appeal against plans to widen Ruta 32 for 100 kilometers from Limón to Río Frio. This is the road project that the central government is trying to negotiate with the Chinese government, banks and contractors. The organization said that plans for an environmental impact study in the law violate the constitutional guarantees for a safe environment. A news release said that the Secretaría Nacional Ambiental is being forced to do an environmental study with unreasonable deadlines that would prevent a serious analysis. The organization also notes that the design of the road has not even been fixed. The proposed route crosses many environmentally sensitive areas, including forests, protected areas and aquifers, the organization said. There also are many pipelines and other utility obstacles that need to be considered, the release said. These problems were pointed out to legislators but they were forgotten in the haste and pressure to approve the deal, the organization said. Another virus detected in mosquitoes By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The zika virus can trick sufferers into believing that they have dengue, but this new malady is nowhere near as bad. The virus is spread by mosquitoes of the Aedes species, notes the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. The virus is mainly in West Africa and in Brazil. But the mosquitoes are common in Costa Rica, so the virus may reach here. The most common symptoms of zika virus disease are fever, rash, joint pain, and red eye, said the centers, adding that the illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting from several days to a week. Prevention is the same for zika as for dengue and other more serious mosquito-born diseases: Don't get bit. Use insect repellent, wear long sleeves and pants and stay in places with air conditioning or that use window and door screens, said the centers.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 122 | |
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| Rain continues, and the number of persons in shelters
increases |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The number of persons seeking shelter from flooding in northeastern Costa Rica doubled Monday. The national emergency commission said that there were six shelters with 458 persons. The commission also said that 92 communities were affected in some way in the cantons of Matina, Siquirres, Pococí, Sarapiquí, San Carlos and Grecia. The Instituto Meterológico Nacional said that the rainfall Monday was variable but that there were from 30 to 80 millimeters in some sections of the mountains. That's a bit more than an inch to more than three inches. Rain in the mountains feeds swelling rivers. The weather institute did not have good news for the residents of the affected area. It said that rain would continue overnight with perhaps as much as two inches or 50 millimeters over 12 hours. Rain was expected to continue through Wednesday, it said. There has been a lot of road damage, and even the main highway, Ruta 32, that links the Central Valley with the Caribbean coast was closed. That was at a bridge over the Río Blanco. The Consejo Nacional de Vialidad said the span has become undermined. One of the new shelters was at Finca Platanar de Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí where 124 persons were housed, said the emergency commission. Many of the problems are in communities along the Río Sarapiquí which has flooded outside its banks along with some of its tributaries. Although flooding in May, June and July is nothing new, some of the stricken communities have not had a problem like this for decades. Despite the rain and the flooded rivers, some motorists tried to cross one. The Cruz Roja said that eight cars, a truck and even a boat required emergency attention. The rescue agency also warned against trying to cross rivers with a horse, something that is usually in this area. In fact, to reach many communities a river must be forded by a vehicle or by persons on foot. That is not a good idea now, said the Cruz Roja. |
 National
emergency commission graphic/A.M. Costa Rica
Cantons with problems are shown
with red dots indicating flooding and some road problems.  Cruz Roja photo
Some of the flooded communities
are waist deep in water.Inland, the highways presented dangers of landslides. The Consejo de Vialidad and the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes reported damage to Ruta 126 in the vicinity of the La Paz Waterfall Garden. Ruta 4 in La Tigre was closed due the constant rain, the agencies added. Other routes are open but might just be one lane. There also may be machinery on the road, the agencies said. |
| Milanes fraud trial put off for at least two weeks more |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A fraud trial for Luis Milanes, the operator of the failed Savings Unlimited, has been postponed at least two weeks. The trial was supposed to start July 1, but now the date is July 15. Legal sources said that Milanes has been seeing additional postponements, so far without success. There are some 475 or so individuals who told prosecutors that they put money in his high-interest scheme up until November 2002 when the firm closed and Milanes left town. There were many more customers, but the bulk have ignored the legal proceedings. The casino owner tried to come to some agreement with the investors. Key elements were surrendering the downtown |
Hotel Europa
and the creation of a court-sponsored trust to hold properties
surrendered by Milanes. That has not worked out according to plan either. The trust has tried multiple time to evict Milanes from the hotel where he had been running one of his casinos. The efforts so far has been unsuccessful even though the trust is the technical owner of the hotel. Milanes has creative legal representation. Some last-minute gambit is expected. Savings Unlimited was one of a handful of high-interest schemes the thrived in Costa Rica before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. The attacks resulted in tightening on the controls of transferring money. That constricted the firms that were largely involved in unspecified financial businesses. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 122 | |||||
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| Ancient jawbone reveals Neanderthals and modern humans mixed |
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By the Max Planck Institute for
Evolutionary Anthropology news staff
Genetic analysis of a 40,000-year-old jawbone from Romania reveals that early modern humans interbred with Neanderthals when they first came to Europe Neanderthals became extinct about 40,000 years ago but contributed on average 1 to 3 percent to the genomes of present-day Eurasians. Researchers have now analyzed DNA from a 37,000 to 42,000-year-old human mandible from Oase Cave in Romania and have found that 6 to 9 percent of this person’s genome came from Neanderthals, more than any other human sequenced to date. Because large segments of this individual’s chromosomes are of Neanderthal origin, a Neanderthal was among his ancestors as recently as four to six generations back in his family tree. This shows that some of the first modern humans that came to Europe mixed with the local Neanderthals. All present-day humans who have their roots outside sub-Saharan Africa carry 1 to 3 percent of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes. Until now, researchers have thought it most likely that early humans coming from Africa mixed with Neanderthals in the Middle East around 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, before spreading into Asia, Europe and the rest of the world. However, radiocarbon dating of remains from sites across Europe suggests that modern humans and Neanderthals both lived in Europe for up to 5,000 years and that they may have interbred there, too. In 2002, a 40,000-year-old jawbone was found by cavers in Oase Cave in southwestern Romania, and the site was subsequently studied by an international team led by the researchers of the Emil Racoviţă Institute of Speleology in Romania. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany), Harvard Medical School and the Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins in Beijing, China, have now analyzed DNA from this fossil, which is one of the earliest modern human remains found in Europe. They estimate that 5 to 11 percent of the genome preserved in the bone derives from a Neanderthal ancestor, including exceptionally large segments of some chromosomes. By estimating how lengths of DNA inherited from an ancestor shorten with each generation the researchers estimated that the man had a Neanderthal ancestor in the previous four to six generations. |
 Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology photo
This is the jawbone that provided
the sample.“The data from the jawbone imply that humans mixed with Neanderthals not just in the Middle East but in Europe as well” says Qiaomei Fu, one of the lead researchers in the study. “Interestingly, the Oase individual does not seem to have any direct descendants in Europe today” says David Reich from Harvard Medical School, who coordinated the population genetic analyses of the study. “It may be that he was part of an early migration of modern humans to Europe that interacted closely with Neanderthals but eventually became extinct.” “It is such a lucky and unexpected thing to get DNA from a person who was so closely related to a Neanderthal” comments Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology who led the study. “I could hardly believe it when we first saw the results.” “We hope that DNA from other human fossils that predate the extinction of Neanderthals will help reconstruct the interactions between Neanderthals and modern humans in even more detail” says Mateja Hajdinjak, another key researcher involved in the study. “When we started the work on Oase site, everything was already pointing to an exceptional discovery,” said Oana Moldovan, the Romanian researcher who initiated the systematic excavation of the cave in 2003. “But such discoveries require painstaking research to be confirmed,” added Silviu Constantin, her colleague who worked on dating of the site. “We have previously shown that Oase is indeed the oldest modern human in Europe known so far, and now this research confirms that the individual had a Neanderthal ancestor. What more could we wish for?” |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 122 | |||||||
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| South Carolina's governor would lower Confederate flag By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The governor of the U.S. state of South Carolina is calling for the Confederate flag to be removed from the grounds of the state capitol. The governor, Nikki Haley, changed her position on the divisive symbol Monday, saying that while the flag is an integral part of the state's past, it no longer represents the future. The flag was a symbol of the South during the U.S. Civil War in the 1860s. South Carolina was the first state to secede in that conflict. Gov. Haley said it is her hope that the action of removing the flag from the capitol grounds in Columbia will honor the nine black churchgoers who were killed in Charleston last week. The suspect in the killings is a young white man who allegedly embraced the flag as a symbol of white supremacy. Gov. Haley, a Republican, said that for many the flag stands for traditions that are noble and is a way to honor ancestors. However, she said for others it is an offensive symbol. She said the events of last week "call us to look at this on a different way." She said the state house belongs to all South Carolinians. The governor received loud applause and cheers when she made her announcement. She said if state lawmakers do not take up the flag issue, she would call them back for a special legislative session. Last week, former U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney demanded that South Carolina remove the Confederate flag from state capitol grounds, calling it a symbol of racial hatred. His statement was widely seen as intensifying pressure on current Republican candidates to face an issue of race and symbolism that has long vexed the party and divided the southern state since the end of slavery 150 years ago. Also on Monday, the White House said President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Charleston Friday to attend the funeral services of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in the church shooting. Obama is scheduled to deliver his eulogy. U.S. women's soccer term in World Cup quarterfinals By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United States advanced to the quarterfinals of the Women's World Cup tournament with a 2-0 win Monday over Colombia in Edmonton, Canada. Star forward Alex Morgan, making her second start of the tournament after returning from a knee injury, scored in the 53rd minute on a low shot from the right side that deflected off the goalkeeper's arm up into the top of the net. It was her first goal of this World Cup. Midfielder Carli Lloyd drilled a penalty kick into the open goal in the 66th minute for the second U.S. goal. The U.S. moves on to play China Friday in Ottawa. England also advanced to the quarterfinals Monday with a 2-1 win over Norway. The Norwegians grabbed a 1-0 lead in the 54th minute with a goal by Solveig Gulbrandsen, but England tied the game seven minutes later when Steph Houghton headed in a corner kick. England defender Lucy Bronze scored the winning goal in the 76th minute, sending in a shot from outside the penalty area just over the outstretched hands of the leaping Norway keeper. England will play host Canada Saturday in Vancouver. The other quarterfinal matches feature Germany playing France Friday in Montreal, and Australia going up against the winner of Japan and the Netherlands, who play Tuesday for the right to advance to Saturday's match in Edmonton. California braces for fires due to tinder dry vegetation By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
California is bracing for a serious wildfire season. The west coast U.S. state is in its fourth year of severe drought, and firefighters are getting ready and local officials are urging the public to help. There have already been major wildfires, like the so-called Lake Fire, now burning in the mountains east of Los Angeles, and the Saddle Fire in northern California, which burned more than 600 hectares before it was contained. Regional fire officials in southern California say this fire season, which usually starts in June, got started early and is going to be harsh. “This is the fourth year of an ongoing drought, so we are really concerned about the amount of dead vegetation in our area,” said Daryl Osby, chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department as he joined regional fire officials at a news briefing. The area has received just enough light rain recently to encourage the growth of small brush and grass, which has dried to create potential fuel for fires, says Robert Garcia of the U.S. Forest Service. Mark Ghilarducci , director of the California Office of Emergency Services, said the dry conditions make fire volatile. “And so fires have the ability to start very fast and spread very rapidly, and get out of control very fast,” he said. Firefighters train continuously and say they respond to fire outbreaks in a matter of minutes. But much of the region has homes close to wilderness areas, and homeowners need to stay alert and keep brush cleared from their property, says Ventura County Fire Chief Mark Lorenzen. “We are well trained. We are prepared. We are staffing up," he said. "We are going to augment staffing on high fire danger days. But really the key is a prepared community. They are our partners.” He says that most importantly residents must follow evacuation orders, which not all of them do. These officials say the fires will come, but that through working together, firefighters and the community can minimize the damage. U.S. EPA says warming will cause many fatalities By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says failure to act on global warming will kill hundreds of thousands of Americans by the end of the century and cost the country trillions of dollars. The EPA issued a new report Monday, spelling out the consequences of what could happen if the world's temperature climbed a staggering 5 degrees Celsius by 2100 because of inaction. EPA chief Gina McCarthy said "We can save tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the United States by the end of this century. But the sooner we act, the better off America and future generations of Americans will be." The report was put together by the EPA and several leading independent laboratories. It says tens of thousands of American deaths from extreme temperatures and poor air quality in cities could be avoided each year by taking action. Trillions of dollars in damage caused by storm surges and a rise in sea level could be saved. If nothing is done, the EPA says, California could see more drought, the west could suffer through more wildfires, and the east coast could be battered by heavy rains and storm surges. Most scientists say human activity, including burning fossil fuels like coal and oil, create emissions that cause global warming. They say the cost of doing nothing would be catastrophic for life on Earth. Others say climate change is caused by natural weather patterns that have persisted since the Earth was formed and that drastic action would bring economic disaster. Delegates from around the world will meet in Paris in December to try to hammer out a legally-binding agreement on tackling global warming. The issue drew the attention of Pope Francis who said in a letter to the world's Catholics last week that "Humanity is called to recognize the need for change of lifestyle, production, and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it."  University of North Carolina
photo
Thisis an example of the
patch.Smart patch
sense levels
and delivers insulin shots By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Researchers have developed a smart insulin patch that could improve diabetes care. The skin patch, a thin square no bigger than a small coin, would also do away with painful injections. Almost 400 million people around the world live with diabetes. Some require insulin injections, sometimes many times a day, because their bodies produce little or no insulin, a hormone that’s needed to regulate the levels of sugar in the body. Without the shots, people with so-called Type 1 diabetes would die. But the injections may someday be replaced by a thin smart skin patch, covered with more than a hundred tiny painless needles. The needles have storage units loaded with insulin. Zhen Gu, a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, says the skin patch can be programmed to automatically sense the amount of glucose in the blood and - if blood sugar levels get too high - release a precise dose of insulin through the microneedles, each about the size of an eyelash. It’s a so-called closed-loop system. That means there is a feedback loop that detects sugar levels and delivers insulin automatically. Such a system has long been the ultimate goal of diabetes researchers trying to eliminate human error in the management of the disease. Gu says the skin patch minimizes the risk of taking too much insulin. “Sometimes, if you take too much insulin, it can cause hypoglycemia, which is sometimes even fatal," he said. "So, that’s why we try to develop a closed loop-based system which can mimic the function of the pancreas” The pancreas is the organ that produces and secretes insulin. In healthy people, the pancreas is extremely sensitive to blood sugar levels, regulating them with precise doses of insulin. But people with Type 1 diabetes have to test their blood regularly, to try to figure out exactly how much insulin they need to take. Some patients with more common Type 2 diabetes also have trouble regulating their blood sugar levels with diet and exercise, and have to give themselves insulin shots. After many years of fluctuating blood sugar levels, many diabetics develop severe complications, including blindness, limb amputations and kidney failure. Gu and his colleagues found the smart patch could automatically lower and control blood glucose levels in mice with Type 1 diabetes for up to nine hours. “So, our eventual aim is like one patch – you can maintain blood sugar in the normal range for a couple of days,” he said. The work is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The smart insulin skin patch could potentially make life easier and less painful for Type 1 diabetics and those with advanced Type 2 diabetes. Pope's climate views draw mixed opinions from experts By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
In the 1600s, Galileo angered the Roman Catholic Church for supporting the Copernican system that placed the Sun at the center of the solar system with Earth and other planets circling it. At the time, most people subscribed to the geocentric system, which had Earth at the center of the universe with the sun, planets and stars in orbit. And the debate between those who back Darwin’s theory of evolution and those who believe the Earth and all its creatures were created by God still rages today. Religion and science have had a shaky relationship for centuries. But June 18 they came together in the form of Pope Francis’s encyclical, "Praised Be – the Care of the Common Home." In the encyclical, a letter that’s traditionally sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis issued an urgent warning. He challenged the people of the world to recognize the harm humans continue to inflict on the Earth, take action against it, and take better care of our common home. Pope Francis, who was a chemist before following his call into the priesthood, called for a new partnership between religion and science to fight human-driven climate change. The environmentalist community welcomed and praised the pope’s letter for entering the conversation on climate change. Those skeptical that climate change is real or linked to human behavior remained unswayed and unimpressed. To gauge the reaction of both sides of the climate change conversation to the encyclical, interviews were conducted with climatologist Raymond Bradley at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and James Taylor, a senior fellow for environment and energy policy at Chicago’s Heartland Institute, a think tank that promotes skepticism about man-made climate change. Bradley said that since the issue of global warming and environmental degradation has become so politicized, it was great to have somebody who has no political agenda speak on the topic. The climatologist argued that the pope framed environmental issues as being everybody’s responsibility for the common good – that everybody has to deal with the limited natural resources available on this planet. “I can’t think of anybody with more moral authority than Pope Francis,” he said. Bradley said he believes that Pope Frances presented climate change as a moral and ethical issue. He argued that scientists are confident they know what the problem is and believe there are plenty of technological solutions to address it. But he said politics has prevented that from happening. “So what the Pope is saying is let’s consider this as an ethical issue and let’s try to work together to elevate the problem above the petty politics that we seem to deal with all the time,” said Bradley. But Taylor disagreed, arguing that by saying that current temperatures need to be addressed, the Pope is “missing out on the fact that if you go back over the past several thousand years, temperatures primarily have been warmer than today.” He said while the Pope’s motives are good, he was getting bad advice. “I believe that these actions to address global warming are unnecessary and counterproductive,” said the climate change skeptic. He said most people agree that we should care for our environment and help lift people out of poverty. But he argued that imposing expensive energy sources on people defeats the church’s goal of lifting them out of poverty and will have little, if any, environmental impact. Forcing people to pay for expensive energy, added Taylor, leaves them with less money for better nutrition, health care, education, housing or whatever else is needed to improve their lives. Taylor said he believes the best way for science and religion to come together is to find ways to better the human condition. The full impact of the encyclical will probably take some time to sink in. But the spiritual leader of the world’s estimated 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has provided a view the links science and religion. Scientists say they see trend of new round of extinctions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The sixth mass extinction period on Earth is underway, suggests a new study from three leading U.S. universities, warning humans could be among the first affected. The study from researchers at Stanford and Princeton universities and the University of California-Berkeley say that during the last century, when more than 400 vertebrates disappeared, the rate of extinction was at least 114 times higher than normal. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, are similar to those in a report from Duke University researchers last year. The recent study cites climate change, pollution and deforestation as among the reasons for the current mass extinction. The last mass extinction killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, when it is generally agreed that a large meteor hit the Earth. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, June 23, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 122 | |||||||||
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says democracy advocacy group By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A democracy advocacy group says that freedoms across Europe are increasingly under attack by authoritarian states. In a report released Tuesday, the Washington-based Freedom House assessed 29 countries across Central Europe and Eurasia, and said nearly half suffered downgrades in their democracy scores. Project director for the report, Sylvana Habdank-Kolaczkowska, said "Eurasia's authoritarian regimes tirelessly warn their people that moves toward democracy as seen in Ukraine can only end in chaos, violence, and poverty." She said to counter such measures, the EU and its allies must do more to uphold democratic standards within Europe. Freedom House says Russia earned its largest rating decline in a decade in 2014 because of suppressing dissension at home and seeking to destabilize Ukraine. It said Ukraine received four ratings improvements that year following the collapse of what it called Viktor Yanukovych's corrupt presidency. In the Balkans, four out of seven countries registered declines, including Montenegro and Serbia for threats to media independence. In Central and Eastern Europe, the only country to register an overall score improvement was the Czech Republic, where the report said conditions calmed after political scandals and instability in 2013. Freedom House said conditions remain dire in Belarus, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, which had the lowest scores of the report. Hemispheric health agency sees progress Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Since the early 2000s, Latin America and the Caribbean has seen meaningful progress toward universal health coverage with an additional 46 million people in nine countries having at least nominal guarantees of affordable health care, according to a new joint publication by the Pan American Health Organization and the World Bank. "The report shows that countries have made meaningful progress toward universal health coverage, with increases in population coverage and access to health services, a rise in public spending on health, and a decline in out-of-pocket payments," said Carissa Etienne, Pan American Health director. "Despite the advances, much remains to be done to close the equity gap and address new health challenges in the region." The report, "Toward Universal Health Coverage and Equity in Latin America and the Caribbean: Evidence from Selected Countries," shows that while countries have been expanding population coverage and access to health services, the poor remain underserved, and inadequate attention is paid to noncommunicable diseases that account for most deaths in the region. The study primarily focusses on 10 countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. "The region has increased its spending on health and narrowed the gap between rich and poor on a number of key outcomes: average life expectancy has risen significantly, more children live to see their first and fifth birthdays, and fewer mothers are dying from complications of childbirth," said Jorge Familiar, World Bank vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean. "In a context of constrained resources and lower economic growth, countries now face the challenge of boosting the efficiency of their health systems to continue building on these achievements," he said. The report notes persistent health inequities between and within countries and the failure of some health systems to address changing health needs. |
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| From Page 7: Sound expert to present at July festival By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A Dutch innovator, Merlijn van Veen, will be one of the feature presenters at the Festival de Audio y Acústica Centroamericano July 13 to 26 in several locations in San José. Van Veen is a noted designer of sound systems, and he will present a workshop on the topic, said an announcement. There also are a number of technical presentations and workshops centered around the Universidad Latinoamericana de Ciencia y Tecnología. The festival is directed at design and sonic engineers in Central America. To get the most out of the presentations, those who attend should have a good knowledge of the physical properties of sound, said an announcement. |
