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José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 1, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 128
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 Consejo Nacional de Vialidad
photo
Sign says that this bridge over the Río Guayabo was in bad shapeeven before the rain. Now it is closed. President
signs flood disaster decree
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The government formalized its emergency decree Tuesday and designated the province of Limón and the cantons of Turrialba and Sarapiquí as locations where aid would be expended. The decree by President Luis Guillermo Solís includes all the cantons of the province of Limón. The decree allows more flexibility in distributing aid money. The action had been promised since Sunday. The government said Tuesday that some 150 rivers still were running strong as a result of a week of rain. The emergency is not over. The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional said Tuesday night that a high pressure area was creating strong winds in the country and that up to an inch of rain had fallen in the northern zone and on the Caribbean coast. The weather institute predicted double that amount of rain into the early morning hours. Heavy rains and winds caused power outages Monday night on the Nicoya Peninsula and in the area served by the Parrita substation in the central Pacific, said the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad. Some 50 technicians were working to restore power Tuesday afternoon, the firm said. The Nicoya substation was the one at Santa Rita, Nandayure. The Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo said that some pipelines were damaged by the ríos Lajas and Torito in Talamanca. The national road agency said Tuesday morning that Ruta 32 has been reopened after landslide debris was cleared. There still is a problem with Ruta 4 that joins with Ruta 32 at Río Frio. A section of bridge collapsed. In all some 11 bridges were damaged by the week of rain. The damage to the petroleum pipelines also could be considered bridge problems because the pipes cross the rivers on narrow spans. Solís was supposed to inspect the Ruta 32 slide site at Kilometer 29 early today and then take a plane three times during the day to fly over affected areas in the northern part of the country. He plans to do the same in the southern part of the country Thursday, Casa Presidencial said. Obama to announce Cuban embassy deal By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A senior U.S. official says the United States and Cuba have reached agreement to reopen embassies in each other's capitals for the first time in more than 50 years. The White House says President Barack Obama plans to make a statement on Cuba today from the Rose Garden, while Secretary of State John Kerry will speak in Vienna, where he is taking part in nuclear talks with Iran. Cuba's foreign ministry says the chief of the U.S. interests section in Havana, Jeffrey DeLaurentis, will deliver a note Wednesday from Obama on reopening embassies. Kerry is likely to travel to Havana during the week of July for a flag-raising ceremony to reopen the American embassy. The White House will disclose the exact timing, a U.S. official said. Obama made history in December when he said he wanted to end the long-standing U.S. trade embargo against Cuba with an eye on reestablishing diplomatic ties. Delegations from both sides have been holding talks in Washington and Havana ever since. In one significant sign of the diplomatic thaw, Cuba recently came off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Obama announced on April 14 that he would delete Cuba from the list, initiating a 45-day review period that expired on May 29. Obama said isolating Cuba through trade and travel embargoes has achieved nothing and did not bring about a democratic and prosperous country. He said it is time for a new approach. But opponents of diplomatic relations with Cuba, including many refugees from the island, say it would be rewarding the Castro government. Both countries can now upgrade their so-called interests sections in Havana and Washington into full-blown embassies, with ambassadors to be appointed later. The State Department must give Congress a 15-day notice before opening an embassy. Even after embassies are opened, the U.S. and Cuban governments still face a number of sensitive issues, including U.S. demands for more human rights for Cubans. Restoration of relations would be the latest phase in a normalization process, which is expected to move slowly because of lingering problems over issues such as Cuba's human rights record. A U.S. embargo will remain in place, and only Congress can lift it. Cuba once thrived on U.S. tourism and investment and was for a long time a playground for the rich with numerous hotels, casinos and beachfront resorts. U.S. women move to World Cup final By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. women's soccer team has advanced to the championship game of the World Cup tournament in Canada for the second straight time, beating Germany in a semifinal match Tuesday, 2-0. The second-seeded Americans upended the top-seeded Germans at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, Quebec, on second-half goals by midfielder Carli Lloyd and defender Kelley O'Hara. Ms. Lloyd scored on a penalty kick in the 69th minute after the referee ruled that Germany's Annike Krahn had obstructed striker Alex Morgan. Replays showed the penalty took place just outside the box. In the 85th minute, Ms. O’Hara scored from close range past German goalie Nadine Angerer after taking a perfect centering pass from Ms. Lloyd. Germany had an opportunity to score first in the second half, but Celia Sasic missed a penalty kick in the 59th minute, hooking the ball to her left just outside the post. The United States now heads to the championship game in Vancouver on Sunday seeking its third World Cup title, with previous wins in 1991 and 1999. The U.S. team will play the winner of the other semifinal game pitting defending champion and fourth-seeded Japan against sixth-seeded England in Edmonton, Alberta, on Wednesday.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 1, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 128 | |
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| U.N. agency urges advertising restrictions on unhealthy food
for kids |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The United Nations Children's Fund urged a blackout or at least limits on publicity of what it called unhealthy foods directed at children. The ban on advertising should extend to all media, including the Internet, the agency said. It said children lack the critical senses to evaluation publicity. The recommendations are contained in a report released Tuesday in San José. The report covers research done in Costa Rica, Argentine and México. The U.N. agency says that unhealthy food causes children to be overweight. Unhealthy foods were defined as those that contain sugar, salt and fats. The U.N. agency worked with the Instituto de Nutrición de Centro América y Panamá. Four schools were visited in each country and interviews were done with executives of food marketing firms, school officials, parents and others. What the research showed was predictable. There are many advertising pitches on all media directed to children. There are a number of methods, including the use of sports figures and fantasy figures. The study also came out against advertising directed to parents. Costa Rica has had a rule since 2012 that vendors inside schools cannot offer what the U.N. agency sees as unhealthy foods. But some did, according to the study. The report also called for more studies. The report stopped short of connecting the advertising and the foods sold with obesity. It assumed that was the case. It |
 The text says 'The promotion and publicity increases the consumption of unhealthy foods that jeopardizes the fundamental right to grow and develop in a healthy manner.' noted that in Costa Rica children between 6 and 11 had 29.1 percent fat in their bodies, according to an unrelated survey. The report also urged food producers to adopt their own rules about advertising and children. The various ministries of education were urged to keep advertising out of the schools and restrict the type of food that is available for children. The report also urged the public at large to discuss the topic and campaign for the benefit of children. The survey showed a lot of promotion exists on the social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and various computer applications. |
| New U.S. ambassador demonstrates that he does speak Spanish |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The new U.S. ambassador demonstrated his command of Spanish Tuesday when he met with some reporters in what the embassy called a formal introduction. The ambassador is S. Fitzgerald Haney, and he apologized for lacking practice in Spanish at the beginning of his talk. The apology seemed unnecessary as Haney handled a series of questions for mostly Costa Rican reporters with only a few lapses when he reverted to English words. The diplomat also showed that he was well briefed because he responded with long-time U.S. positions on drugs, foreign investment, the environment and gay marriage. |
Haney also
pointed out that he has been an international business man. He also
speaks Hebrew and Portuguese. The embassy reported that Haney visited the Museo Nacional to get a grip on Costa Rican history. One place he will not be visiting is the July 4 picnic Saturday at the Cervercería Costa Rica picnic grounds. Haney and his rabbi wife, Andrea, are Conservative Jews who observe shabbat, keeping holy the seventh day of the week, an embassy spokesperson said. Haney spent a year awaiting confirmation by the U.S. Senate. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 1, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 128 | |||||
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| Entire pygmy sloth species confined to one island in
Caribbean |
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By the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute
news staff A Smithsonian scientist found that pygmy sloths wander inland in addition to inhabiting the mangrove fringes of their island refuge. He realized that the population size of the pygmy sloth was underestimated. A new, higher estimate for the number of sloths on Panama’s Escudo de Veraguas Island points to how little is known about the species, and it underscores the need to conserve the sloths’ isolated home, he said. Found only on a tiny island in the southern Caribbean, the threatened population of the pygmy three-toed sloth (Bradypus pygmaeus) does not have much room to grow. Fortunately, the world’s smallest sloth species is less fussy about habitat than initially thought. Once believed to live only in the mangroves that edge Panama’s Escudo de Veraguas Island, a new paper in the Journal of Mammalogy shows that the sloths also inhabit the island’s forested interior. This suggests that an estimate of fewer than 500 individuals based on the most recent census of pygmy sloths, 79 individuals counted in the mangroves, may have fallen considerably short. Bryson Voirin, a former fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, placed radio collars on 10 sloths in mangroves and tracked their unhurried movements at three- to six-month intervals over three years. Only three sloths remained entirely within the mangroves. Five moved past the mangrove edge into other tree species, and four moved more than 200 meters inland, quite far for a sloth. Coupled with population density estimates and extrapolated across the island’s 430 hectares, Voirin reached a high-end estimate of almost 3,200 individuals, according to the report. “The actual population size is most likely somewhere between these two, perhaps 500 to 1,500 individuals,” said Voirin, a researcher at Germany’s Max Planck Institute of Ornithology. “In any case, this is extremely small number for an entire species.” Voirin warned against too much optimism for the pygmy sloth’s critically endangered status. Escudo de Veraguas is only nominally protected, and developers have the island in their crosshairs. One proposal calls for turning the place into a semi-autonomous tax haven boasting a marina, airstrip, casino and hotel. “Declaring the island a wildlife refuge or national park would protect not only the pygmy sloths, but also the other unique species found on the island,” said Voirin. Escudo de Veraguas is also home to an endemic hummingbird species and an endemic bat species. Its beaches are important for nesting sea turtles, and its flora remains understudied. Currently, the island falls under the jurisdiction of the |
 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
photo
An
example of the isalnd's pygmy sloth
indigenous
territory of Ngäbe-Buglé Comarca, and it is also threatened
by
unregulated timber harvesting.
The pygmy sloth was first
described in 2001 by researchers at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History as separate from its
mainland sister species, B.
variegatus. It
is about 40 percent lighter in body mass and 15 percent shorter in
overall body length. Rising seas isolated Escudo de Veraguas about
9,000 years ago, and the sloth appears to have followed the process of
insular dwarfism, by decreasing in size over time. Voirin and
colleagues also found that because there are no sloth predators on the
island the pygmy sloth exhibits different sleep-and-wake patterns from
its mainland relative.
Future pygmy sloth research will involve deeper analysis of the species’ genetics and the diverse microbial community that lives on its fur. Voirin also hopes to better understand the sloth’s diet and population trends. “Further scientific research on the pygmy three-toed sloth is much needed, and we hope we will continue to yield new insights into its life history,” he said. “Such research will not only help us to better understand the species, but will enable us to ensure that it persists into the future.” |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 1, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 128 | |||||||
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| Immigrant rights groups say border agents collude By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Immigrant rights organizations are accusing federal agents and their unions of colluding with groups that advocate restricting immigration in order to sway America’s national debate on undocumented workers and immigration reform. In a report issued Tuesday, the Center for New Community alleges some union officials and agents of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement violate their duty to impartially enforce the law by working hand-in-hand with immigration opponents. In doing so, the report says they “lend an undeserved credibility to the organized anti-immigrant movement and, dangerously, assist its efforts to advocate for policies that malign immigrant communities and obstruct future immigration.” “Should police be setting policy in a democracy?” asked Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center in a teleconference highlighting the report’s release. “That seems absolutely antithetical to the basic ideas of democracy. Police carry out public policy in a democracy, they do not make it. We are not East Germany, we are not a country run by the Stasi.” The report alleges multiple instances of federal agents and their unions leaking information to immigration opponents, and even appearing at their private events, practices that “call into question the ability of some to uphold their responsibility as stewards of the country’s immigration system.” As an example, the report points to a recent Twitter posting by the Border Patrol union thanking two of its agents for providing a border tour to an advocacy group and showing the truth on the border. The U.S. Border Patrol declined to comment on the report, and the union did not respond to a request for comment. Others were eager to speak out, including one of the advocacy groups accused of collusion, the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which urges more-restrictive U.S. immigration policies. Director Mark Krikorian scoffed at the report’s allegations. Far from denying contact with law enforcement officers, he defended agents’ actions as a well-intentioned check on what he sees as the Obama administration’s information blackout on illegal immigration. “They are performing an important function in preventing this administration’s obsessive secrecy from stopping information getting out into the public that people need to know,” said Krikorian. “The Nixonian pathology that permeates this administration causes them to prevent the release of public information. So we not only don’t apologize, but we are proud of the fact that we are able to get information that ought to be publicly available out into the public,” he said. As for taking sides in the immigration debate, Krikorian said it is the White House that has aligned itself with immigrant rights groups and attempted to squelch a fact-based national discussion. “The activist groups complaining about this are proxies for the administration,” he said. “The administration is politicizing immigration information in a way that is outrageous, and all the information that we get is public release. This is information that, in an honest administration, would simply be posted to the Web.” In the conference call, Potok accused the Center for Immigration Studies and other groups of thinly-veiled racism and a quest to preserve a mostly white nation. Krikorian said the true extremists are those who push for a dismantling of immigration laws and want to punish honest Border Patrol officers. “At best they are ambivalent about enforcing immigration laws. At worst, they are hostile to them,” said Krikorian. “And therefore, people who insist on fulfilling their oath of office as Border Patrol agents must be exposed and destroyed, if possible.” The finger-pointing comes at a time when immigration reform legislation is stalled on Capitol Hill and President Barack Obama is attempting to take matters into his own hands via executive orders, some of which are being challenged in court. Internet displays its impact with string of hate crimes By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Hate groups of various kinds are using the Internet for distributing propaganda and recruiting, and a Jewish human rights organization that monitors these groups says their influence is growing. The messages may be different, but the calls to hatred or violence are similar, as were the results: Last week, a young Islamic extremist killed nearly 40 tourists in Tunisia, and a suicide bomber killed 27 at a Shi'ite mosque in Kuwait. In January, there was the massacre in Paris of 12 people at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said the acts are celebrated on the Internet and on social media sites used by extremist groups like the self-described Islamic State. “They are showing remarkable agility in applying the cutting-edge technologies of the Internet in order to mass market and also in order to get to specific parts of the population,” he said. He said the Islamic State group has a sophisticated propaganda and recruitment effort that includes videos from the battlefront and a slick online magazine. It even uses social media to connect its online visitors with its front-line fighters. The Internet is also a force in U.S. hate crimes. Dylann Roof, who is charged with the recent killings of nine African-Americans at a Charleston church, absorbed his white supremacist ideology online. Former neo-Nazi skinhead Tim Zaal, who works with the Wiesenthal Center, said he sees the advocacy of messages similar to those he once believed. He said today's extremists often share a list of perceived enemies: “Zionism, the evil tyrannical Jew. Number two was the United States government, and the transnational corporations.” Zaal said he used to meet with skinhead friends in a suburban park, where he met with a reporter. He said that today the Internet speeds the spread of hatred. “Somebody can be in the middle of South Dakota . . . and still have access to the narrative and the propaganda,” he said. Cooper said the Web has produced an online echo chamber. “It gives a sense of empowerment," he said. "It gives a sense of community: You are not alone. If you are thinking this way, you are not alone.” Zaal said extremists hear the rhetoric of hate, but need to hear the other side of the story. “There needs to be that voice," he said. "And I think the most important voices are voices of people such as myself and other former violent extremists who are doing what they can to bring about that counternarrative.” The Wiesenthal Center’s Cooper said Internet social sites that host online hate speech need to be be part of the solution. Hate can be marginalized, he said, and online posts that cross the line from hatred to terrorism should not be tolerated. NSA is back in business collecting telephone data By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A U.S. court has ruled that the National Security Agency can temporarily resume its bulk collection of Americans' telephone records. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Monday ruled that the NSA could resume gathering millions of Americans’ phone metadata, call times, dates and durations, to scan for links to foreign terrorists. The program was suspended after an appeals court in May ruled that the U.S. Patriot Act had never authorized the NSA to collect such data. A new law, called the Freedom Act, which substantially reformed and narrowed the bulk phone data program, was signed by President Barack Obama a day after the existing program lapsed June 1. The ruling late Monday allows the program to resume for 180 days, in compliance with the new law. The six month period was designed to give the NSA time to set up an alternative system in which the data is stored by the phone companies. The U.S. Justice Department welcomed the decision. "We agree with the court's conclusion that the program is lawful, and that in passing the USA Freedom Act, Congress provided for a 180-day transition period for the government to continue the existing collection program until the new mechanism of obtaining call detail records is implemented," said Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle. More Mrs. Clinton emails released by State Department By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. State Department Tuesday night released hundreds of more pages of emails from the account of former secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in order to fulfill the order of a federal judge. Clinton, the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has been criticized for her use of a private email address for her official correspondence while in office between 2009 and 2013. Her Republican rivals contend that Clinton used the private account in order to keep it out of the public record. A federal judge ordered the department to adhere to a timetable for the rolling release of 55,000 pages of emails sent and received by Mrs. Clinton while she was the top U.S. diplomat. A first batch of emails was released in May. The goal is for the department to publicly unveil 55,000 pages of her emails by the end of January 2016. The emails are being redacted using Freedom of Information Act standards, blocking any information related to national security, personal privacy, privilege and trade secrets. Republicans have seized on the email controversy as they press their case that the Obama administration was unprepared for the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador there. Several administrative and congressional investigations have highlighted security vulnerabilities at the U.S. mission in Libya while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of State. Republicans, insisting that the Obama administration sought to conceal the terrorist nature of the attack, have created a special Benghazi committee in the House of Representatives. Mrs. Clinton's allies say the panel is merely a political tool to disrupt the candidate on her quest for the White House. State Department spokesman John Kirby said at a news briefing Tuesday that the latest batch of emails covers March through December 2009. Mrs. Clinton has said she wants the department to release all of the emails as soon as possible. Extremists behead witches, rights watch group says By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Islamic extremists in Syria have executed more than 3,000 people in the past year, and this week they added to the death toll by beheading two women after accusing them of witchcraft and sorcery, a rights watch group says. The women’s husbands also were executed, the latest in a long line of barbaric killings carried out by the terror group that has drawn international condemnation. This marks the first time women have been executed for witchcraft by the group. But in February militants beheaded an elderly man for allegedly invoking magic in a village west of Raqqa, Islamic State headquarters. That killing was witnessed by a large crowd of onlookers, and photographs of the execution were posted on social media accounts associated with supporters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based rights group that relies on activists for its information, reports the women and their husbands were killed over the weekend, the first couple on Sunday in Deir al-Zor in eastern Syria and the second in al-Mayadin Monday. Rami Abdel Rahman, theobservatory's head, said it was “the first time his monitoring group had documented women being beheaded” by the extremists. Kurdish defenders of the Syrian border town of Kobani, however, accused Islamic State fighters of beheading one of their female fighters last year, although it isn’t clear whether the fighter was decapitated after being killed in a firefight. In October, as Islamic State forces closed on Kobani, there also were accusations the extremists beheaded seven men and three women to frighten locals to give in to their offensive. The witchcraft allegations are bizarre even for a terror group immersed in a Dark Age view of the world. The Quran does contain references to evil spirits and the evil eye, and it says witchcraft and sorcery are condemned by Allah, but it adds that those who practice witchcraft or sorcery cannot harm people against the will of God. The Quran does not ordain capital punishment for sorcery nor does it mention punishment except to say offenders will be denied a place in the hereafter. Last autumn, Iraq’s public broadcaster started airing a sitcom lampooning the gratuitous violence of radical Islam. The satire, called "State of Superstition," set out to ridicule the violent extremist group and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as a gang of misfits with the al-Baghdadi-inspired character named the "Beheader." The terror group has in the past stoned women to death or shot women on allegations of adultery. The Srian rights observatory says of the 3,000 people the terror group has executed, 800 were civilians, including 86 women and 74 children. The group also has killed men for homosexuality. Rami Abdul Rahman, from the monitoring group, said the executions of the alleged witches likely were carried out to terrify the local population and to keep it cowed and subservient. That often is done through its treatment of women. The Islamic State has been accused of sexually brutalizing women in the self-declared caliphate straddling Syria and Iraq. In August 2014, the Islamic State distributed 300 captured Yazidi women to its fighters in Syria, according to local activists. The women were considered by the group as spoils of war. Nazand Begikhani, an adviser to the Kurdistan regional government and researcher at the University of Bristol Gender and Violence Research Center, estimates the Islamic State kidnapped more than 2,500 Yazidi women after they were separated from male relatives, who were shot. Some Yazidi women have managed to escape or the Islamic State has ransomed them off. But Yazidi women still are being traded, according to the observatory, 40 recently in the city of al-Mayadin with the purchase price ranging from $500 to $2,000. In Raqqa, as opposed to other towns in territory controlled by the Islamic State, activists say the extremists have been noticeably reducing the number of public executions for transgressions of its moral code. Amir Salamah, who served until a month ago as a Red Crescent worker in Raqqa, said he believes the extremists are anxious for civilians to stay in the city and not to flee, seeing them as a possible protection from coalition air strikes. “They are not killing the people in the way they were in the pubic squares,” he said. “They want to use them as human shields.” He said killings are continuing, but are being done more secretively, with the bodies being disposed of in a pit in the north of the city. Another activist group, a network that goes by the name Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, said the Islamic State has mounted a vigorous campaign to root out dissidents and has increased its surveillance of Internet cafes in the city. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, July 1, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 128 | |||||||||
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A controversial government agency that helps U.S. companies export goods officially went out of business at midnight, but supporters think they can rescue the U.S. Export-Import Bank in a week or so. Without a charter from Congress, the bank cannot make new loans or sell the insurance that protects American companies if a foreign customer does not pay for an order. The bank will continue to service existing contracts. Lawmakers left Washington for a July 4 Independence Day holiday break without voting on continuing the Export-Import Bank, something Rep. Maxine Waters called unconscionable. Waters, Rep. Steny Hoyer and other Democrats say they are confident they can win approval of the bank if they can get both houses of Congress to bring the issue to a vote. In a conference call with journalists, Democratic supporters of the bank said they plan to use parliamentary maneuvers to attach the bank’s reauthorization to a piece of unrelated legislation that most members view as vital to their districts. Ssupporters say the bank supports thousands of exporters, including some of the largest U.S. companies and many small businesses. They argue that the agency helps support thousands of U.S. jobs, and note that rival nations like China, Germany and many others do even more to support exports. The bank has been targeted by some of the most conservative Republicans in Congress, who say the agency is corporate welfare that allows bureaucrats to choose economic winners and losers in a process that would be better left to market forces. Rep. Jeb Hensarling says most of the bank’s help goes to a few huge corporations that don’t need and should not get government aid. Smuggling case leads to 12 raids By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Tax police engineered a dozen raids Tuesday to detain five persons. Four face allegations that they have been smuggling millions of dollars of merchandise through the Paseo Canoas border crossing. More detentions are expected. The merchandise is mainly cigarettes and alcohol, although electronic devices and flat-screen televisions were confiscated, too. The fifth individual faces a drug charge. Raids were in Cartago, Escazú, Tres Ríos and Curridabat. Man loses left hand in argument By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A motorcyclist confronted a man chopping vegetation because the vehicle was hit with some rocks. In the argument that followed, the motorcyclist lost his left hand to a machete blow. The amputation took place in Barrio San Isidro, Nicoya, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. The man who had been cutting vegetation was detained on an attempted murder allegation. The 41-year-old victim was flown to a hospital in the metro area. |
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| From Page 7: Trade report notes Dec. 31 deadline Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Many countries have designed incentive policies to attract foreign direct investment and promote exports based on special exportation areas or free-trade zones. A new publication by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean analyzes these tools and offers proposals to replace them, taking into consideration that several of the current incentives should be dismantled by the end of 2015 because they violate World Trade Organization rules. The study "New-Generation Public Incentives for Attracting Foreign Direct Investment in Central America," prepared by Jorge Mario Martínez, chief of the commission's International trade and industry unit in México, identifies good practices globally with emphasis on support mechanisms for services and incentives for research and development and those related to the environment. Upon analyzing the cases of Costa Rica, Panamá, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, China and countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the report seeks alternatives in light of World Trade Organization regulations that prohibit some of the existing incentives, such as tax exemptions that depend on export performance or on the use of national products by companies located inside free-trade zones, since they have a direct impact on the terms of trade and are considered subsidies, the international trade organization. As small economies and developing countries, Central American nations obtained a transition period to adapt their incentives to comply with the international rules. However, this period ends Dec. 31. So there is a need to assess the different economic policy options available to replace these prohibited subsidies in such a way that they do not affect direct investment or exports, but instead foster a greater link between companies in free-trade zones and the national development agenda, the study says. According to World Trade Organization figures, tax exemptions and fiscal stimuli represented as much as 5.6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product and 1 percent of Costa Rica’s in 2005. The publication proposes new-generation incentives that balance the need to attract foreign investment with adherence to the global organization’s regulations. These include special incentives such as subsidies to services, the sector that has grown the most in recent years — even more than trade in goods. |
