Find out what the papers said today in Spanish By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Here is the section where you can scan short summaries from the Spanish-language press. If you want to know more, just click on a link and you will see and longer summary and have the opportunity to read the entire news story on the page of the Spanish-language newspaper but translated into English. Translations may be a bit rough, but software is improving every day. When you see the Summary in English of news stories not covered today by A.M. Costa Rica, you will have a chance to comment. This is a new service of A.M. Costa Rica called Costa Rica Report. Editor is Daniel Woodall, and you can contact him  HERE!

From the Costa Rican press News items posted Monday through Friday by 8 a.m. Click a story for the summary

Costa Rican news summaris are disabled on archived pages.

Have you seen these stories? From A.M. Costa Rica

Top story news feeds are disabled on archived pages.

Judicial Investigating Organization photo

Agents are poised to break into a home during one of the Friday raids of a suspected drug gang.

European Union leaders
upset with U.S. bugging


Senior European Union officials have angrily demanded answers from the United States after a German magazine alleged the U.S. National Security Agency bugged EU offices and gained access to its internal computer networks as part of its spying activities.

The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said Sunday that if the reports are true it would have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations. He called for full clarification from U.S. authorities.

Germany's justice minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, accused Washington of using Cold War methods against its allies, saying it is "beyond comprehension that our friends in the U.S. see Europeans as enemies."

Some have called for a suspension of talks on the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement.

Saturday, the German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the NSA placed listening devices in European Union offices in Washington, Brussels and at the United Nations in New York, and infiltrated EU computers to monitor telephone conversations, e-mails and other documents.

It quoted secret U.S. documents obtained from fugitive whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Snowden fled the U.S. to Hong Kong in May and then disclosed key documents about the surveillance programs being conducted by the National Security Agency to thwart terrorism.

Earlier this month, he flew to Moscow and is believed to be staying in a transit zone at the airport while seeking asylum in Ecuador.

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said Sunday that Snowden's fate is in the hands of Russian authorities because he cannot leave the airport without a valid U.S. passport. He said his government cannot begin considering asylum for Snowden until he reaches Ecuador or an Ecuadorian Embassy.

Russia has repeatedly stated that Snowden is not on Russian territory in the airport's transit area and he is free to depart whenever he wants. Russian authorities repeated that position Sunday in response to Correa's comments.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden asked Correa in a telephone call Friday to reject Snowden's asylum request.

According to an NSA document dated September 2010, only a few countries labeled as close friends by the U.S. are explicitly exempted from monitoring. They are Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Der Spiegel reported that on an average day, the NSA monitored about 20 million German phone connections and 10 million Internet data sets, with the rate rising to 60 million phone connections on busy days.

The magazine said that in France the U.S. taps about two million data connections per day.


Priest with ties to Vatican
held in laundering probe


Italian officials say a Vatican cleric has been arrested in connection with an investigation into the scandal-plagued Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Works of Religion.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was arrested Friday, had worked in the Vatican's financial administration.

Authorities say a member of Italy's secret service and a financier were also arrested Friday as part of the probe into the men's involvement in the plot to illegally bring $26 million into Italy from Switzerland.

Scarano, who was recently suspended from his Vatican post, is under investigation in another case by the southern city of Salerno for alleged money laundering.


European Union to tackle
unemployment among youth


The European Union has agreed to a multi-billion dollar fund to tackle its youth unemployment crisis, which has led to warnings of a lost generation. Even as the bloc struggles through the economic crisis, its expansion plans continue with Serbia set to begin formal accession talks in the coming months.

In Spain and in Greece, unemployment among under-25s is running at over 50 percent.

In Portugal, there are lines every day outside the Angolan and Brazilian consulates, as job-seekers look for better fortunes in the country's former colonies.

It is a vicious downward spiral, says John Springford of the Center For European Reform policy group.

"When people have been out of work for a long time they tend to lose the skills that they have, they lose initiative, and also the social problems like drug and alcohol abuse can make them quite difficult to employ again," said Springford.

Meeting in Brussels Friday, EU leaders agreed to spend $7.8 billion over the next two years to tackle youth unemployment. Herman Van Rompuy is president of the European Council.

"We know that reforms take time and results won't be immediate.  So we're also concentrating on launching actions with direct impact," he said.  Fighting youth unemployment and helping small and medium enterprises access credit, are some of the actions, said Van Rompuy.

There are about 5.6 million unemployed young people in Europe and the money simply won't be enough, says economist John Springford.

"We're looking at about a thousand euros per person.  And the thing that we know about youth unemployment is that when unemployment is high generally, then youth unemployment will be even higher.  And so this kind of problem is best sorted out by macroeconomic policy rather than microeconomic tinkering," he said.


Hot summer weather hits
western United States


Dozens of people were treated for heat-related ailments, and cities and towns across the western United States took emergency measures to help residents cool off, as the region sweltered Saturday in dangerous triple-digit temperatures.

At least one heat-related death was reported by authorities in Las Vegas, where a man in his 80s was found dead inside a house that had no air-conditioning.

The victim suffered from other medical issues, but paramedics suspect heat was a contributing factor in his death, said Las Vegas Fire and Rescue spokesman Tim Szymanski.

"It's not unusual for people with medical conditions, their problems worsen when it gets really hot," he said.

Extreme heat enveloped most of California and Nevada and parts of southern Arizona, with a large high-pressure system trapping hot air across the area, National Weather Service meteorologist Todd Lericos said.

"It involves pretty much the entire West Coast at this point," Lericos said, adding that the stifling conditions, which began in some areas on Thursday afternoon, would likely continue through the weekend and linger into next week.

Triple-digit temperatures extended as far east as Texas, with Corpus Christi shattering its all-time high with a reading of 107 F (42 C). In Utah, Salt Lake City hit 105F (41C) at the airport, a record high for the date.

In Los Angeles County, many people have been hospitalized or treated for dehydration, exhaustion and heat stroke, county Fire Department spokesman Keith Mora said.

At an outdoor concert in Las Vegas on Friday, 34 people were taken to the hospital after succumbing to the heat, and another 170 suffered nausea and fatigue.

An elderly man who had been driving through Las Vegas with no air-conditioning was found suffering from heat stroke and was hospitalized in serious condition after he pulled off a highway and called for help, Szymanski said.

Precautions were taken for athletes and animals alike.

The annual Running with the Devil Marathon scheduled for Saturday in the Mojave Desert outside of Las Vegas, a competition in which runners are deliberately challenged to contend with high heat, was canceled.

Tigers at the Phoenix Zoo were fed frozen trout, the monkeys were getting frozen yogurt to eat, and lions and other animals were lounging on artificial rocks and slabs of concrete cooled by piped water, said Linda Hardwick, a zoo spokeswoman.

In California, Nevada and Arizona, air-conditioned cooling centers were set up in community centers, homeless shelters and libraries, and officials warned residents to avoid prolonged exposure to the searing temperatures.

Prompted by concerns that migrants trying to cross into the United States from Mexico would die in the desert, additional border agents were posted on the U.S. side, said Brent Cagen, a spokesman for the Tucson sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

At least three people, maybe more, who attempted to illegally cross the border into Arizona were found dead earlier this week, likely succumbing to the heat, Cagen said.

The scorching temperatures can cause potentially fatal heat stroke, and officials said people with no air-conditioning or who must work outdoors were particularly at risk.

Las Vegas on Saturday flirted with its all-time record of 117F (47C), as the mercury rose to 114F (46C) at the airport, said D.J. Hoffman, a meteorologist for private forecaster AccuWeather.com.

Record highs for the day fell in dozens of cities across the West, from Palm Springs to Oakland in California and on up the West Coast to Medford, Oregon.

The weather was forecast to remain hot on Sunday, with highs expected to reach 116F (47C) in Phoenix and 110F (43C) in Tucson, Arizona, Hoffman said.

"If people are used to the heat out West, this is a bit abnormal for them and even if they are used to it, it's still very dangerous," he said.

In Phoenix, emergency shelters are temporarily adding 150 beds in an effort to safeguard hundreds of homeless.

"Phoenix is a major city with a lot of concrete that tends to hold a lot of that heat in, so it's just like you're in a dry sauna," said Irene Agustin of the Central Arizona Shelter Services non-profit in Phoenix.

Officials in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, said they have installed 13 air-conditioned areas in community centers and homeless shelters, though the majority of them would be closed on Sunday. In 2005, roughly 17 people died during a similar heat wave over a 10-day period in the Las Vegas area.

Firefighters worry about dry conditions, which have ignited several major brush fires across the region recently, and about more blazes ignited by wayward fireworks launched from backyards to commemorate the Fourth of July holiday on Thursday.

Dan Kail, 67, was on vacation in sweltering Las Vegas when he heard about even higher temperatures in California's Death Valley.

He hopped in a rental car and made the 2-1/2 hour drive, yearning to feel air that he later described as a "blast furnace."

"I've never experienced that kind of heat," said Kail, who owns parking lots in Pittsburgh. "It almost burns you as it blows by you. It's amazing."

Death Valley posted a high on Saturday of 124 F (51C), the National Weather Service reported. That's below the all-time world record of 134 F (57 C) set there on July 10, 1913, according to the National Park Service.


U.S. immigration trend
favors Latin America


The U.S. Senate has passed a landmark immigration reform bill, which is now likely to face fierce opposition in the House of Representatives.  Experts say if some form of substantial reform is enacted into law, the immigration population is likely to remain diverse, with a continuing trend of more arrivals from Latin America, Asia and Africa, and fewer than in the past from Europe.

At the Smithsonian's annual Folklife Festival, there were signs of cultural diversity everywhere.  There was African drumming along with Hungarian food, crafts and an exhibit dedicated to saving endangered languages.

Festival-goer Thomas Kurihara from California says his family is from Japan, and he was interned after the Second World War in a U.S. relocation camp for Japanese Americans.  Kurihara says he believes it is time for Congress to pass immigration reform.

"I believe that as a nation of immigrants, there needs to be a means by which immigrants legal or illegal who enter the U.S. should have a pathway to citizenship and not have to wait half a lifetime, half a generation," he said.

Another festival-goer from Virginia, who declined to be named or be interviewed on tape, said she believes it is not fair that some illegal immigrants are allowed to stay, while others, for example from Africa she said, would be deported if they made it to the United States.

Demetrios Papademetriou is president of the Migration Policy Institute.  He says if Congress passes substantial reform legislation, which still includes many of the provisions in the Senate bill, current trends in immigration are likely to continue and accelerate.

"So ultimately what you are likely to see, is a deepening and broadening of migration from Latin America, by that I mean Central America and the rest of the hemisphere.  You are likely to see once more a deepening and broadening of the migration to be from Asia.  You will see a much larger percentage of the migration from Asia to be Filipino," he said.

According to data from the Migration Policy Institute, in 1960, almost 75 percent of the foreign-born population in the United States came from Europe.  In 2011, only 12 percent of foreign-born people living in the United States were from Europe, and almost 53 percent came from Latin America.  The 1965 Immigration Act ended the national-origin quotas that were favorable to Europe.  Immigration from Africa increased from 0.4 percent in 1960 to 4 percent in 2011.

The newly-passed Senate bill would provide visas for high-skilled workers, which Papademetriou says will likely attract many talented people from around the world, including Europeans. "I suspect that many more Europeans will take advantage of this opportunity than they have had in the past," he said.

Papademetriou says he believes that passing immigration reform will be a long and difficult process, but he is optimistic it will happen. "I think that we are a long way from passage, but I think so many people have really invested so much political capital in making it happen this time," he said.

Experts say that regardless of whether immigration reform passes, the United States will continue to become a more ethnically diverse country, and that there is also a trend of more people from different ethnic groups intermarrying and intermingling.


Lemur study put doubt
on value of big brains


As animals go, humans are very smart. After all, humans discovered calculus, general relativity, and fire. Out of all the brains in nature, there is clearly something special about that of humans. But how did it get this way? As Dr. Evan MacLean, a senior researcher at Duke University, says, “What were the problems that nature posed for us that we needed these brains to solve?”

Scientists like MacLean think that being very social, living in large groups and communicating, like humans do, might have led to the development of a bigger, more powerful brain. “When we’re in a social environment there are all kinds of dynamic things that we have to keep track of, like who’s friends with who, who’s enemies with who, and who knows what,” he said. “This kind of information processing is really hard for the brain to do.”

MacLean’s research team at Duke tested this theory in lemurs. These small primates, native to the Indian Ocean island nation of Madagascar, are our close evolutionary cousins. There are many different species of lemurs. Some are more social than others; for example, the colorful ring-tail lemur lives in groups of sixteen or more, whereas the mongoose lemur seldom congregate in groups of more than three. Also, some lemur species have larger brains than others.

In their lab, the researchers tested six species on their ability to steal food from people. In some cases, the person was watching the bait, and would reach out and defend it from grasping lemur paws. In other cases, however, the person’s back was turned. In order to take the food, the thieving lemurs had to know whether the person was watching or not, and choose the right moment to pounce. They had to use what scientists call social intelligence.

“What we found,” said MacLean, “is that species that are characterized by living in large social groups in nature were very adept when it came to figuring out which piece of food they should steal.”

However, when the lemurs were tested on their ability to obtain food in an indirect way, a problem that required planning, rather than interpreting social cues, the relatively antisocial lemurs performed just as well as the species that live in large groups.

In other words, the solitary lemurs were less effective at using social information, but when it came to using general information, they were just fine. And, to the researchers' surprise, the size of their brains barely mattered at all.

“It looks like species that have bigger brains were doing worse on this task, and I never would have really predicted that,” said MacLean.

This says that different kinds of intelligence, like the ability to make decisions, or find food, or communicate and be social, can develop independently of each other. It’s true that humans are really smart, but different animals evolve to be smart in different ways, depending on what they need to be good at in order to survive.

The study also adds to a growing body of evidence that when it comes to brains, bigger is not better. For centuries, scientists measured brain size to compare intelligence between species, but they now know that such measurements may not say much at all about how smart an animal is. Intelligence is complicated, and researchers are continually searching for better ways to measure and understand it.


Bangladesh slapped by Obama
for garment industry ills


President Barack Obama on Thursday cut off longtime U.S. trade benefits for Bangladesh in a mostly symbolic response to dangerous conditions in that country's garment industry that have cost more than 1,200 lives in the past year.
 
“I have determined that it is appropriate to suspend Bangladesh . . .  because it is not taking steps to afford internationally recognized worker rights to workers in the country,” Obama said in a statement.
 
The U.S. sanction does not directly affect Bangladesh's multi-billion-dollar clothing exports to the United States, which came under scrutiny after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in April that killed 1,129 people and the Tazreen factory fire in November that killed 112.
 
But it could influence the European Union to take similar action, which would have a much bigger impact on Bangladesh and its garment sector.
 
“This was not a decision taken lightly,” new U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters on a phone call. “Our goal, of course, is not only to see Bangladesh restore its eligibility for benefits, but to see Bangladeshi workers in safe, appropriate work situations.”
 
Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation, said the decision sent an important message to countries that receive duty-free access to the U.S. market under the Generalized System of Preferences program.
 
“Countries that tolerate dangerous and even deadly working conditions and deny basic workers' rights, especially the right to freedom of association, will risk losing preferential access to the U.S. market,” Trumka said.
 
It also puts American companies on notice they must take meaningful steps to improve conditions for Bangladesh's factory workers, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said in a statement.
 
“No one will want to wear clothing that is made in Bangladesh if it is made on the blood of workers. It's time for American industry to show leadership and work with their European counterparts on a global standard for safety.”

Suspending Bangladesh from the preference program will increase U.S. duties on an array of products the country exports to the United States, such as tobacco, sporting equipment, porcelain china, plastic products and a small amount of textile products.
 
But it will not directly affect Bangladesh's main export, clothing, since garments are not eligible for duty cuts under the program, which was created in 1976 to help economic development in the world's poorest countries and to reduce import costs for U.S. companies.
 
In 2012, Bangladesh was spared about $2 million in U.S. duties on about $35 million worth of goods under the preference program, but it paid about $732 million in U.S. duties on $4.9 billion of clothing exports not covered by the program, said Ed Gresser, a trade analyst with the GlobalWorks Foundation.
 
A European Union decision to suspend trade benefits would have far more impact since Bangladesh's clothing and textiles exports receive duty-free treatment there in contrast to average U.S. duties of around 15 percent.
 
EU officials raised the possibility of suspension in early May in the hope of prodding Bangladesh into action.
 
 
'White House Down' called
an old time action movie


Filmmaker Roland Emmerich, known for his 1996 blockbuster, "Independence Day," is now tackling the destruction of the White House and an impending nuclear attack by terrorists.  The film,  "White House Down," is wildly entertaining with action sequences, brisk dialogue and a heart-rending father-daughter relationship at its core. It is reminiscent of 1980s and 90s action hits without today's darkness.

This is not the first time Roland Emmerich is destroying the White House.  In 1996, he blew it to smithereens in "Independence Day." Back then, the enemy was aliens. Now, it's an inside job.

A terrorist group is planning to take the president hostage and access America's weapons of mass destruction. But all is not lost. John Cale, a soldier fresh out of Afghanistan, is visiting the White House for a job interview.

His estranged daughter, Emily, is visiting with him. What happens next is predictable. In the chaos, John and Emily are separated. Cale races to save his daughter and, of course, the president.

Channing Tatum, as John Cale, is in super shape as he goes through leaps and bounds to protect the commander in chief.

“There is a 25-foot drop I didn't do. But I did most of them. Yeah!" he admitted, referring to the stunts he performed. 

Tatum, who was named the “sexiest man alive” by People Magazine, approaches stardom with humor and humility.
 
“I don't know. I don't sit there pondering that question, really, I just sort...keep working,"  he said.

In "White House Down," Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx plays James Sawyer, the president of the United States. He said it's not a take on President Barack Obama.

“We didn't want to do an impersonation of him because we don't want people to think that's how Obama would react in this situation because we don't know,” Foxx explains.

Filmmaker Emmerich said despite the grand sets and special effects, his film is, at its core, about a father trying to reconnect with his daughter, a throwback to 80s and 90s action flicks.   

"It's not as fun anymore like it was, like with movies such as Indiana Jones," Emmerich said, regretfully.  "'Raiders of the Lost Ark' was one of the most fun movies I have ever seen in my life. These kind of movies are missing.”