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José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 9, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 134
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Sala IV freezes
expat expulsion hearing
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
In what most certainly is a speed record for the Costa Rica judiciary, the Sala IV responded within 24 hours with a nearly 2,000 word order in the case of two expats being haled before the Talamanca council. The Sala IV preliminary ruling froze an effort by the Municipalidad de Talamanca to hold a hearing Wednesday afternoon on expat residents Carol Meeds and Philippe Vangoidsenhoven. As the Sala IV sardonically notes in the Tuesday decision, the pair are accused by the municipality of being environmentalists. The court noted that the municipal council has been trying to declare the pair personas non gratas but that there have been no administrative or jurisdictional procedures to show that they have done anything wrong. The pair's lawyer, José María Villalta, had delivered on Monday a Sala IV appeal over the hearing Wednesday, and the court issued the lengthy decision Tuesday afternoon. Last March 6 the council declared the pair to be unwelcome in the canton. The Sala IV constitutional court quickly reversed that municipal action April 24 and said in passing that the two expats had not been give the right of response. So the council on a motion by the council president, Carlos Cascante, and the mayor, Melvin Cordero, sought to give them what it called the right to defense. That decision was made June 26 and the hearing was set for Wednesday at 1 p.m. Both the expats have been active in making many environmental complaints. The Sala IV noted that in neither case did the municipality make any concrete allegations that could be contested with evidence. It said the bulk of the allegations consisted of 22 pages of a petition signed by other residents. The court decision ordered the municipal officials to remit in three days copies of allegations and evidence that might exists about the pair and warned against perjury. In an unusual twist, it said that the declarations have to be made personally by municipal officials and not their lawyers. So far, the court order said, the municipality's actions lacked due process.  depicts the Puritans landing in America in 1620. Many think God
made U.S. special
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Last year at the U.S. Military Academy, President Barack Obama said, “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” A majority of Americans seem to share that belief. Six in 10 agree with the notion that God has granted America a special role in human history. “Fundamentally, if there is one thing that has been traditionally what makes America unique in the world, it’s this idea that we as Americans have a special relationship with God,” said Dan Cox, research director at the Public Religion Research Institute, which studied the subject, “that we are supposed to make a difference, that we are sort of first among equals in the world and it goes back to the pilgrims really.” The Pilgrims came to North America from England in 1620 to avoid religious persecution and established a colony in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims are credited with leading the way in establishing religious freedom and laying the foundations of American democracy. John Winthrop, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, delivered a sermon declaring that his fellow settlers must establish a city on the hill. This notion of being a beacon of light suggests that the American colonists and the people who followed them were uniquely blessed by God to establish a society that would better all humankind. The concept of American exceptionalism also has secular roots. In his 1776 revolutionary manifesto "Common Sense," Thomas Paine argued America’s difference from the Old World demanded that it be independent from it. He perceived America as a unique land where humankind could begin again, establishing a society built on progressive new ideas. Others believe the idea of American exceptionalism first appeared in the 1830s, when "Democracy in America" author Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.” Whatever its exact origin, for many, the idea of American exceptionalism became, and remains, central to the national identity. “You’ve seen it the second half of the 20th century, espoused by politicians quite frequently,” said Cox. “It’s this belief that, yeah, there’s something unique about being American, that our religiosity, our morality, our economic strength, all makes us something different in the world and you still see people really holding on to that idea, and I think you’ll continue to.” However, not all Americans are on board with the the notion that the United States is inherently unique or exceptional when compared to other countries. One-third do not believe a higher being has given America a special role in human history. Not surprisingly, religious people are far more likely to believe in American exceptionalism than people who consider themselves to be religiously unaffiliated. Eighty-three percent of white evangelical Protestants agree that God has granted the country a special role in human history, while a majority (53 percent) of religiously unaffiliated Americans disagree. South Carolina votes to banish flag By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services Lawmakers in South Carolina's House of Representatives have approved a measure to remove the Civil War-era Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia. The bill passed early this morning by a vote of 94-20 on its third and final reading after more than 13 hours of contentious debate. Opponents of the bill, which was overwhelmingly approved by the state senate on Tuesday, offered more than 60 amendments during the debate aimed at delaying or possibly scuttling its eventual passage. "It is a new day in South Carolina," Gov. Nikki Haley said on her Facebook page, "a day we can all be proud of, a day that truly brings us all together as we continue to heal, as one people and one state." Today's vote caps an intense effort that began after nine parishioners of a black church in nearby Charleston were fatally shot during Bible study June 17. Photos later emerged showing the alleged white gunman, Dylann Roof, holding the Confederate flag, which many blacks consider a symbol of the American South's era of slavery and white supremacy. Gov. Haley had called for the flag's removal after the massacre, rejecting the views of supporters who say it symbolizes the South's history and heritage. The flag will be removed within 24 hours of Gov. Haley signing the bill into law, and it will be placed in a museum.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 9, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 134 | |
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| Government says it has figured out what to do with Chinese
cash |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
When President Luis Guillermo Solís visited Chia, his hosts offered $24 million in aid. Now the central government has come up with six projects for which it will use the money. The government said that the selected projects were ones already planned and ready to be set up, mostly in rural areas. The first is a network of education institutions, mainly technical schools in various parts of the country. |
The second is
storage facilities for water in the parts of the country that are being
ravaged by drought. The third is a metropolitan park in los
Diques de Cartago. The remaining three relate to the country's fishing industry. The proposals are for building a market, setting up a laboratory and developing outlets for fish in several parts of the country. Personnel from the Chinese embassy have considered the proposals and forwarded them to their country. They have proposed starting by the end of the year, Costa Rican officials said. |
| Rare plants form the basis for a new Museo Nacional exhibit |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Museo Nacional is hosting an exhibition of 18 photos of extinct or nearly extinct plants compiled by artist Carolina Guillermet. Some of the photos are of very rare specimens. The museum said that one plant, with the scientific name of Pradosia argentea, was collected in 1799 and 1804 by the famous Alexander Von Humboldt and his associate Bonpland Aimé Jacques Alexandre. The plant was kept in the Berlin herbarium, which was destroyed in World War II, the museum said. Only a single leaf, captured in one of the 18 photos, remains because the plant has not been seen again. The museum maintains its own botanical garden, and it has an extensive collection of plant-related texts, diaries and specimens, some coming from the 19th century. Ms. Guillermet used some of these resources. Although the exhibit covers the world, Costa Rica is |
 Museo Nacional photos
The exhibit and the artistemphasized. Each photo is accompanied by an explanation. The exhibition is open until Oct. 25. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 9, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 134 | |||||
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| Ice cores date centuries of global cooling caused by
volcanoes |
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By the Desert Research Institute news
staff
That large volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability is well-known. However, quantifying these contributions has proven challenging due to inconsistencies in both historic atmospheric data observed in ice cores and corresponding temperature variations seen in such measurement tools as tree rings. Published in the journal Nature, a new study led by scientists from the Desert Research Institute and collaborating international institutions resolves these inconsistencies with a new reconstruction of the timing of nearly 300 individual volcanic eruptions extending as far back as the early Roman period. "Using new records we are able to show that large volcanic eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were the dominant drivers of climate variability, responsible for numerous and widespread summer cooling extremes over the past 2,500 years," said the study's lead author Michael Sigl, an assistant research professor at the institute. "These cooler temperatures were caused by large amounts of volcanic sulfate particles injected into the upper atmosphere," Sigl added, "shielding the Earth's surface from incoming solar radiation." The study shows that 15 of the 16 coldest summers recorded between 500 B.C. and 1,000 A.D. followed large volcanic eruptions with four of the coldest occurring shortly after the largest volcanic events found in record. This new reconstruction is derived from more than 20 individual ice cores extracted from ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica and analyzed for volcanic sulfate primarily using a state-of-the-art ice-core analytical system. These ice-core records provide a year-by-year history of atmospheric sulfate levels through time. Additional measurements including other chemical parameters were made at collaborating institutions. "We used a new method for producing the timescale," explained Mai Winstrup, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle. "Previously, this has been done by hand, but we used a statistical algorithm instead. Together with the state-of-the-art ice core chemistry measurements, this resulted in a more accurate dating of the ice cores." "Using a multidisciplinary approach was key to the success of this project," added Sigl. In total, a diverse research group of 24 scientists from 18 universities and research institutes in the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, and Sweden contributed to this work, including specialists from the solar, space, climate, and geological sciences, as well as historians. The authors note that identification of new evidence found in both ice cores and corresponding tree rings allowed constraints and verification of their new age scale. "With the discovery of a distinctive signature in the ice-core records from an extra-terrestrial cosmic ray event, we had a critical time marker that we used to significantly improve the dating accuracy of the ice-core chronologies," explained |
Kees Welten,
an associate research chemist from the University of California,
Berkeley. A signature from this same event had been identified earlier in various tree-ring chronologies dating to 774-775. "Ice-core timescales had been misdated previously by five to 10 years during the first millennium leading to inconsistencies in the proposed timing of volcanic eruptions relative to written documentary and tree-ring evidence recording the climatic responses to the same eruptions," explained Francis Ludlow, a postdoctoral fellow from the Yale Climate & Energy Institute. Throughout human history, sustained volcanic cooling effects on climate have triggered crop failures and famines. These events may have also contributed to pandemics and societal decline in agriculture-based communities. Together with Conor Kostick from the University of Nottingham, Ludlow translated and interpreted ancient and medieval documentary records from China, Babylon and Europe that described unusual atmospheric observations as early as 254 B.C. These phenomena included diminished sunlight, discoloration of the solar disk, the presence of solar coronas, and deeply red twilight skies. Tropical volcanoes and large eruptions in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes (such as Iceland and North America) in 536, 626, and 939 , for example, often caused severe and widespread summer cooling in the Northern Hemisphere by injecting sulfate and ash into the high atmosphere. These particles also dimmed the atmosphere over Europe to such an extent that the effect was noted and recorded in independent archives by numerous historical eyewitnesses. Climatic impact was strongest and most persistent after clusters of two or more large eruptions. The authors note that their findings also resolve a long-standing debate regarding the causes of one of the most severe climate crises in recent human history, starting with an 18-month mystery cloud or dust veil observed in the Mediterranean region beginning in March, 536, the product of a large eruption in the high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. The initial cooling was intensified when a second volcano located somewhere in the tropics erupted only four years later. In the aftermath, exceptionally cold summers were observed throughout the Northern Hemisphere. This pattern persisted for almost 15 years, with subsequent crop failures and famines likely contributing to the outbreak of the Justinian plague that spread throughout the Eastern Roman Empire from 541 to 543, and which ultimately decimated the human population across Eurasia. This reconciliation of ice-core records and other records of past environmental change will help define the role that large climatic perturbations may have had in the rise and fall of civilizations throughout human history. "With new high-resolution records emerging from ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica, it will be possible to extend this reconstruction of volcanic forcing probably all the way back into the last Ice Age," said Sigl. |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 9, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 134 | |||||||
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| Triple glitches hit market, airline and N.Y. newspaper By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
All trading on the New York Stock Exchange resumed Wednesday after being halted for nearly four hours for unknown internal technical reasons. Top U.S. law enforcement and security officials said they didn't see a link between the outages at the New York Stock Exchange and the temporary grounding of United Airlines flights and the temporary malfunction of the Wall Street Journal Web site. "We do not see any indication of a cyber breach or a cyber attack,'' FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Intelligence committee. As officials and cybersecurity experts scrambled Wednesday to find out the causes of the interruptions, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said his department is aggressively accelerating cybersecurity protective layers. The coincidence of the three glitches demonstrated that the nation’s critical infrastructure is equally vulnerable to system’s failures as well as hacking attacks. Speaking at an event at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, Johnson said protecting the nation from cyberattacks is a complex job. “There is no one silver bullet for cybersecurity. The key is to install multiple layers of protection to best secure our networks,” said Johnson. According to Johnson, the three-layered cybersecurity system called EINSTEIN is steadily expanding its protection of cyberspace borders of federal government’s civilian departments and agencies. EINSTEIN 1 observes and records all activity when someone enters or exits an agency’s network. EINSTEIN 2 detects such activities by known adversaries, while EINSTEIN 3 Accelerated, also known as E3A, is placed with the Internet service providers where it identifies and blocks malicious traffic. Another program called CDM will help civilian agencies identify and fix problems. “Once fully deployed, CDM will monitor agency networks internally for vulnerabilities that could be exploited by bad actors that have breached the perimeter,” said Johnson. Johnson said that he also ordered agencies to fix their own vulnerabilities and share cybersecurity threat indicators among themselves and with the private sector through an automated system that will be initiated in October. The national security chief also called on Congress to ensure adequate legal and financial resources for cybersecurity initiatives. New pollution evaluator sought for California beaches By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The current drought in California means less water runoff from cities and cleaner ocean water for beachgoers. Some beaches, however, are still polluted, including some tourist hotspots. Now, researchers are developing a faster way to check beach water quality. The famous sun and surf of southern California may look glamorous, but what beachgoers cannot see in some of the ocean water is anything but attractive, says Angelo Bellomo of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. “When we have runoff from the urban environment, it could be carrying with it contamination due to animal waste, sewage overflows. And if those enter the beaches through the normal pipes that terminate in the ocean, you want to avoid contact with water during those periods,” he says. Bellomo says a number of infectious diseases could be transmitted in ocean water. Plenty of people, however, play in the water at the beach at Santa Monica Pier, one of the most polluted beaches in California. Public health officials are concerned and are looking at a better way of determining water quality. Water at the beaches is monitored with a lab test. If the quality is poor, a sign is posted, but it does not necessarily reflect what is in the water that day, said Leslie Griffin with the environmental group, Heal the Bay. “Right now it takes 18 to 24 hours to get those water quality results, but we think that that is a little ridiculous because we want people to know the day of when they are going in the water whether or not they can be getting sick,” Griffith says. Researchers in California are developing what they call a predictive modeling system that could speed up the process, says Heal the Bay’s James Alamillo. “It can take 15 minutes to produce a similar result in terms of a public health decision,” Alamillo says. With the help of computers, researchers pull data from the environment and a prediction is made about the water quality of that day. It is called " Nowcasting. Some of the environmental data may include wind speed and direction, wave information and historic bacterial counts, but the beaches are unique in their own way, so the models have to be tailor-made for each one. So far, Bellomo says the predictive modeling looks promising: “We think that the modeling that we have seen so far is generally more accurate than the testing that we are doing, and the reason for that is that even though it is a model and it's predicting water quality, it is more timely.” Hong Kong and the U.S. state of Ohio have similar methods of predicting water quality. The experts on the U.S. West Coast say predictive modeling may be the best tool they have until technology advances and offers a faster way of testing the water in the lab. U.S. officials deplore locks on data in smartphones By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Top U.S. officials said Wednesday that encryption technology on smartphones and other devices is blocking their ability to lawfully access data and communications that could prevent a terrorist attack, thwart cybercrime or help find a missing child. “Increasingly, we are finding that even when we have the authority to search certain types of digital communications, we can’t get the information we need because encryption has been designed so that the information is only available to the user,” said Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillan Yates in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing came at a time of persistent and emerging security threats and heightened public angst over privacy and the security of their personal information in the digital age. Of particular concern for U.S. law enforcement is going dark, a shorthand term for impenetrable data stored on a device or being sent and received in real-time. “I am finding that the tools we are being asked to use are increasingly ineffective,” said FBI Director James Comey. “I don’t come with a solution. This is a really, really hard problem.” Ms. Yates said that even when a court authorizes access to a locked, encrypted smartphone, “it is essentially a brick to us. We can’t access any of the information on that phone.” According to Corney, such data protection, crafted by technology giants like Apple in response to consumer demands for privacy, hampers the fight against communications-savvy groups like Islamic State, which uses Twitter and other platforms to recruit and inspire radicals across the globe. “ISIL is reaching out, primarily through Twitter, to about 21,000 English-language followers,” Comey said. “So it’s no longer the case that someone who is troubled needs to go find this propaganda and this motivation. It buzzes in their pocket.” Ms. Yates and Comey said some smartphone manufacturers have responded to their pleas to find a fix to the data-access barrier, while others have not. The situation puts lawmakers in the difficult position of wanting to act to protect national security while representing an electorate of avid smartphone users leery of government snooping and unnerved by recent government data breaches. “We want our data to remain private. We want it to be secure,” said the committee’s chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Repubican. “But at the same time, these wonderful technologies are also being employed by those who seek to do us great harm.” New legislation governing cybersecurity is needed, according to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who spoke at a separate event Wednesday in Washington. “There is more Congress can do,” Johnson said. “Congress has a role in cybersecurity to ensure that we have adequate resources and budget and the legal authorities necessary to pursue the mission.” The secretary recommended universal federal adoption of a program called EINSTEIN to monitor and protect all federal agency networks, encourage private companies to share information about cyber threats, and deploy a national system for reporting data breaches. “We cannot detect and stop every single intrusion,” said Johnson. “But, my message today is we have increased, and will continue to increase the instances in which attempted intrusions are either stopped at the gate, or rooted out from inside the system before they cause damage.” Not everyone is enamored with the idea of aggressive federal action. This week, a group of elite technology experts issued a report concluding that any solution contemplated by Congress could have vast and damaging unintended consequences. “New law enforcement requirements are likely to introduce unanticipated, hard-to-detect security flaws,” said the report, issued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Beyond these and other technical vulnerabilities,," the report continued, "the prospect of globally deployed exceptional access systems raises difficult problems about how such an environment would be governed and how to ensure that such systems would respect human rights and the rule of law.” Others testifying on Capitol Hill said while technology presents ever-changing challenges for law enforcement and national security, it also arms authorities with unprecedented abilities and a cornucopia of data. “Law enforcement has access to growing and unparalleled evidence due to the technological changes of the past 25 years,” said privacy and cyberlaw expert Peter Swire of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “The balance has, indeed, shifted clearly in the direction of law enforcement having the evidence it never had before in human history.” Head of Baltimore police loses job over riot response By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The mayor of Baltimore on Wednesday fired the city’s police commissioner following criticism of his handling of rioting triggered by the death of a black man in police custody, as well as a subsequent surge in homicides. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake thanked Police Commissioner Anthony Batts for his service and praised the job he had done but said growing criticism of his performance had become a distraction' that was preventing the city from moving ahead. "We need a change,'' the mayor said at a news conference. "This was not an easy decision but it is one that is in the best interest of Baltimore. The people of Baltimore deserve better, and we're going to get better.'' Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, who has been with the department only since January, will serve as interim commissioner, Mayor Rawlings-Blake said. Batts' firing came 2-1/2 months after the city broke out into riots following the death of Freddie Gray, who died in April of injuries he received while in police custody. Six police officers have been criminally charged in Gray's death. After the violence, arrests in the city plummeted and homicides spiked. Tuesday, Baltimore's police union alleged in a report that Batts and the mayor had failed to give rank-and-file officers the training, equipment and support needed to confront rioters. The report from the Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 also said officers were told not to wear protective gear, and to request permission from the department's legal section before making arrests. The union represents approximately 2,500 officers in the Baltimore Police Department. Its report echoed the sentiments of many local civic and religious groups that had called for a change in leadership. Mayor Rawlings-Blake on Wednesday denied that Batts' dismissal was connected with the union allegations. U.S. zeros in on hacker but keeps info a secret By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. homeland security chief says investigators have collected "strong evidence" leading to a prime suspect in the massive cybersecurity breach of government records that compromised personal information about millions of federal workers and people applying for national security clearances. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday the government is not ready to officially disclose who it thinks was behind the attack on its computers earlier this year, although Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, has said Chinese state interests are the leading suspect. In two hacks into Office of Personal Management computers, personal information about 4.2 million current and former government workers was stolen, as well as millions of records about people seeking government security clearances. Johnson told a Washington public policy research group, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the government is making a concerted effort to thwart new attacks on its computers. He said the U.S. has significantly increased the scope of its monitoring throughout the government but not to the degree it wants. "To be frank, our federal cybersecurity is not where it needs to be," he said. He said cyberattacks against the government and American business interests were widespread. "These threats come from a range of actors, including nation-states with highly sophisticated capabilities, profit-motivated criminals and ideologically motivated hackers or extremists," Johnson said. New online data theft group emerges with for-profit aim By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A previously unknown group of highly trained hackers presents a major new digital security risk for corporations, according to a report released by the Web security firm Symantec. Symantec researchers tracked the group, dubbed Morpho, back to dozens of attacks against 49 separate organizations, almost exclusively corporations working in the financial, pharmaceutical, commodities and telecommunications fields, among others. Firms based in the United States represented more than a third of all Morpho attacks, with those based in Europe and Canada coming in second and third. Fourteen other countries were also home to corporations targeted in Morpho attacks. "The attackers focused on obtaining access to specific systems of interest in all of the compromised organizations," the researchers wrote in a white paper. "In most organizations, these systems were email servers: either Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Domino servers. Once the attackers had this access, they presumably then eavesdropped on email conversations and may have been in a position to potentially insert fraudulent emails as well." Report authors said there are "some indications that this group may be made up of native English speakers, are familiar with Western culture, and may operate from an Eastern Standard Time time zone." The attackers are also believed to be small in number but highly capable, creating custom malware and using advanced exploits to infect corporate systems and steal data. Unlike many recent high-profile attacks, which have involved governments as targets or as state sponsors, the Morpho attackers focused exclusively on corporate systems, even targeting security-minded megafirms such as Apple and Microsoft. Given such valuable intellectual property targets, the attacks may be primarily tailored for monetary gain: selling off one firm’s data to a competitor, for example. "A key difference between attacks coming from competitors and state-sponsored attackers is that competitors are likely in a better position to request the theft of specific information of value and make more rapid use of this information than government-sponsored attackers would," the report concludes. Numerous Internet security analysts and professionals have previously said that hacking attacks are, in fact, becoming more numerous globally. That’s due to a variety of factors, including the relatively low expense and ease of launching persistent attacks. "We’re kind of living in what amounts to a digital wild west," said Patrick Eddington, a policy analyst at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. "This is something that folks are going to have to adapt to." |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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 Casa Presidencial photo
U.S. Ambassador S.
Fitzgerald Haney hands President LuisGuillermo Solís his credentials. New ambassadors
present credentials
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Six new ambassadors, including one from the United States, have presented their credentials to President Luis Guillermo Solís. This is a long-time custom in diplomatic circles. In addition to S. Fitzgerald Haney of Englewood, New Jersey, the new ambassadors are: Danilo Sánchez of Cuba, Milos Slenka of the Czech Republic, Alexis Rosado of Belize, Marie Philippe Archer of Haiti and Pál Varga Koritár of Hungary. The ceremony was at the Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Culto. Clothing and medicines confiscated By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Fuerza Pública said that is officers had stopped a man taking apparently smuggled goods to Upala for sale. The shipment included medicines and 70 pieces of clothing valued at about 500,000 colons, nearly $1,000, the police agency said. The man was a passenger in a vehicle stopped by police at a checkpoint in Santa Cecilia, La Cruz, Guanacaste. Officers reported that the man could not show documents proving that the goods had been imported legally. |
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| From Page 7: Greek prime minister vows tax, pension reforms By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Debt-wracked Greece asked its European neighbors for a new three-year bailout Wednesday, pledging to immediately implement tax and pension reforms. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that Athens would produce new concrete proposals by Thursday to meet the demands of European leaders who've grown weary of Greece's debt crisis. With his country's banks near collapse and running out of cash, Tsipras said he is confident of meeting an end-of-the-week final deadline European leaders have given him to reach a bailout deal, and a deal that will keep his country in the euro currency union. However, Tsipras also defended his country's reluctance to agree to new austerity measures in exchange for more financial aid, saying five years of austerity imposed on it by the country's international lenders proved to be a failure. "I think all of us have to accept that this experiment has not been a success," he said. "Over these five years, we have seen a skyrocketing of poverty, unemployment has soared, social marginalization has increased, as has the public debt, which is now 180 percent of the GDP." Leaders from the 28-member EU called a new summit for Sunday, telling Greece there would be a decision then on a new Greek bailout or Athens would likely exit the 19-nation euro currency bloc if no agreement could be reached. "Until now I have avoided talking about deadlines," said European Council President Donald Tusk, "but tonight I have to say loud and clear that the final deadline ends this week." Tsipras was greeted by both boos and cheers as he spoke to the European Parliament Wednesday, just hours after the end of an inconclusive summit in Brussels and just hours before a Thursday deadline for Athens to deliver a credible reform plan to fellow eurozone members. He said any reforms must share burdens among the population, create jobs and encourage entrepreneurship. |
