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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 17, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 140
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Police say they are using all measures at their disposal to find a missing 6-year-old girl. Wednesday, authorities expanded their search for young Yerelyn Guzmán Calvo, who disappeared from her family home in Santo Domingo de Heredia last Friday. An estimated 175 workers from a variety of local emergency units searched through and around the Río Virilla Wednesday. Helicopters from the Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea flew above the heavily forested area to try and locate any signs of the missing child. Fuerza Pública Director Juan José Andrade said officers from the aviation department had their helicopter equipped with an infrared camera to detect signs of heat beneath covered areas. At a press conference Wednesday, the police director was adamant that rescue crews will soon locate the girl. “We will not leave this place until we find the little girl alive or, if it be the case, dead,” Andrade said. All search operations have been extended to 24 hours. Crews on a Tuesday shift searching for the missing child extended their work time into 5 a.m. Wednesday morning until they could proceed no longer when heavy rains and fogs made their search efforts impossible. Search efforts have stretched as far as Pococí and the Caribbean coast where officers are going around with pictures of the girl. Back near Santo Domingo mounted policemen looked through dense coffee farms. The child's relative, also identified by the last name of Guzmán, remains the main suspect in the disappearance. Prosecutors have managed to have the 24-year-old held in preventative detention while the investigation continues. Allegations of sexual abuse have swirled around the girl for months because she was said to be a victim of a sexual assault case in March after her aunt brought her in for medical attention and doctors reported their findings to the police. Rescue teams from the Cuerpo de Bomberos, Cruz Roja, Policía Montada, Unidad de Intervención Policial, Comisión Nacional de Emergencias, the Judicial Investigating Organization, and the Unidad Canina made up the search party Wednesday. Pilgrimage to have environmental touch By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Those making the annual pilgrimage to Cartago before Aug. 2 will have the opportunity to receive some environmental education during their religious trek. Cruz Roja, the country's Red Cross branch, will lead the recycling efforts through the EcoRomería 2014 project. In receiving support from the Catholic Church and Earth University, hundreds of Cruz Roja workers will be stationed at 77 points across the route starting on Aug. 1. The Cruz Roja will present their plan in full next Wednesday at the Casa Arzobispal in San José, sharing the details on what they plan to cover for any interested pilgrims. This is the fourth consecutive year that the EcoRomería will be recycling during the massive pilgrimage to La Negrita, the black Virgin Mary statue, inside Cartago's basilica. European movies featured at festival By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Cine Magaly has begun two weeks of European cinema featuring more than a dozen movies for its Festival de Cine Europeo 2014. Tonight's lineup begins at 4 p.m. with “Certified Copy,” a 2010 French film that stars Juliette Binoche in an award-winning role as a nameless antiques dealer who begins a strange relationship with a British writer over the course of a day. Also airing is the Spanish comedy, “A Gun in Each Hand,” which stars accomplished actor Ricardo Darín and focuses on eight men in their 40s undergoing unique identity crises. To round out the night's movie selection, the 2013 Polish film “Walesa. Man of Hope” plays at 8:30 p.m. The biographical film follows the true life rise of Lech Walesa from an electrician to a spirited politician who led the workers party against Communist powers. Walesa won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was Poland's president from 1990 to 1995. A full schedule of movies is on the Cine Magaly page on Facebook. Up to four movies will be played daily until July 31. General admission is 2,000 colons. Admission for students is 1,500 colons and Ciudadanos de Oro card carriers get in for free. Cine Magaly is located in Barrio California, a block south of the Antigua Aduana. Slide closes highway near Arenal By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Heavy rains in the Arenal area resulted in the closing of Ruta 142 between the Lake Arenal dam and Nuevo Arenal. The Consejo Nacional de Vialidad said a landslide blocked the route. Work crews reported that they hoped to have the stretch open by Wednesday evening, but there was no confirmation that this happened. The highway was the hardest hit of a number of roads that were landslide sites or contained places where the pavement collapsed. In the other cases, the roadway is not blocked completely and traffic is restricted to a single lane. April, May and June were warmest ever By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, average global temperatures in April, May and June this year were the highest since the beginning of official records, in 1891. The Japanese records, released Monday, show that this year’s second quarter was about 0.68 degrees Celsius warmer than the average for the whole 20th century. U.S. space agency NASA uses different methods for calculating average temperature, but its records, released Monday, show almost identical results. In addition, the U.S. Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory reports that the monthly average of carbon dioxide levels in the earth’s atmosphere reached 400 parts per million, the highest in the last 800,000 years. Radio pulse from far, far away confirmed By the McGill University news staff
The discovery of a split-second burst of radio waves by scientists using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico provides important new evidence of mysterious pulses that appear to come from deep in outer space. The finding by an international team of astronomers, published in The Astrophysical Journal, marks the first time that a so-called fast radio burst has been detected using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Scientists using the Parkes Observatory have recorded a handful of such events, but the lack of any similar findings by other facilities had led to speculation that the Australian instrument might have been picking up signals originating from sources on or near Earth. “Our result is important because it eliminates any doubt that these radio bursts are truly of cosmic origin,” said Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysics professor at McGill University in Montreal and principal investigator for the pulsar-survey project that detected this fast radio burst. “The radio waves show every sign of having come from far outside our galaxy – a really exciting prospect.” Exactly what may be causing such radio bursts represents a major new enigma for astrophysicists. Possibilities include a range of exotic astrophysical objects, such as evaporating black holes, mergers of neutron stars, or flares from magnetars -- a type of neutron star with extremely powerful magnetic fields. “Another possibility is that they are bursts much brighter than the giant pulses seen from some pulsars,” notes James Cordes, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University and co-author of the new study. The unusual pulse was detected on Nov. 2, 2012, at the Arecibo Observatory, a National Science Foundation-sponsored facility that boasts the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, with a radio-mirror dish spanning 305 meters and covering about 20 acres. While fast radio bursts last just a few thousandths of a second and have rarely been detected, the international team of scientists reporting the Arecibo finding confirm previous estimates that these strange cosmic bursts occur roughly 10,000 times a day over the whole sky. This astonishingly large number is inferred by calculating how much sky was observed, and for how long, in order to make the few detections that have so far been reported. “The brightness and duration of this event, and the inferred rate at which these bursts occur, are all consistent with the properties of the bursts previously detected by the Parkes telescope in Australia,” said Laura Spitler, lead author of the new paper. Ms. Spitler, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, was a doctoral student at Cornell when the research work began. The bursts appear to be coming from beyond the Milky Way galaxy based on measurement of an effect known as plasma dispersion. Pulses that travel through the cosmos are distinguished from man-made interference by the effect of interstellar electrons, which cause radio waves to travel more slowly at lower radio frequencies. The burst detected by the Arecibo telescope has three times the maximum dispersion measure that would be expected from a source within the galaxy, the scientists report.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 17, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 140 | |
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| Moon landing was a public relations coup that united Latin
America |
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By
Jay Brodell
editor of A.M. Costa Rica The Apollo mission that took off 45 years ago Wednesday was more than just the greatest scientific achievement of the 20th century. The successful moon landing was the greatest public relations event since the Boston Tea party. Latin America figured heavy in the public relations plans. Until just before the Apollo flight, Latin America was not connected electronically to U.S. television feeds. The Military Air Transport Command took care of that. Two C-130 transport planes brought satellite receiving equipment to the still barren air strip that would become the new international airport at Maracaibo, Venezuela. The airport was so new that all that was there was the concrete airstrip and an eight-foot wooden shack. The U.S. Embassy staff in the capital of Caracas arranged a flight to Maracaibo that morning for selected newspeople. They huddled out of the tropical sun inside the tiny shack until the first transport arrived. The airport was so new there was no control tower, so the first plane to arrive provided weather and wind direction to the second, which came in about a half hour later. From that point in northern South America, satellite feeds soon were arriving at every local television station in the continent. That was in April 1969. Less than two months later, July 16, The Apollo 11 spacecraft containing Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins was perched above Saturn rockets in Florida. I remember standing with my wife, Sharon, on the sidewalk in front of the U.S. cultural center in Caracas awaiting the morning launch. Venezuelans crowded around because the center staff had placed a television on a rolling stand at the front door. Venezuelans, who have their own version of Tico time, were most impressed that the giant spacecraft blasted off when NASA officials said it would.  NASA photo
Edwin Aldrin is about to become
the second man on the moon. |
 NASA photo
Venezuelans were stunned at Apollo 11's punctual blastoffAt that time I was a copy editor at the venerable Daily Journal, the Venezuelan English-language daily. These were the days before computers, and the back shop contained journeymen printers who composed the newspaper with hot lead and produced it on an ancient flatbed press. Most of the printers had worked together in Spain before they became a military unit fighting Francisco Franco's facists forces. The soldiers and their families were allowed to leave Spain after Franco won, and they chose Venezuela and the trade they knew. The lead typesetter was known to us as Don Victor. He had been the sergeant and he still ran the print facility with precision. Those who were not communists certainly had leftist and anti-American leanings. They were skilled printers. On the evening of July 20 as Armstrong and Aldrin jockeyed the lunar lander to a spot on the moon, the bulk of the newspaper employees, including the printers, crowded into the newsroom, and the satellite feed from Maracaibo was working perfectly. The nail biting ended with Armstrong's radio message the Eagle lander was now Tranquility Base. We all cheered. I broke out a bottle of scotch I had saved for a safe landing and began doling out small portions in those little conical paper cups. Soon the bottle was empty. That's when the sergeant, Don Victor, stood up, motioned to the copy boy, pressed bills into the lad's hand and ordered up a second bottle from the nearby liquor store. As Armstrong said just a few minutes later, it was a giant leap for mankind, political persuasions notwithstanding. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 17, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 140 | |||||
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| Now it's third hand tobacco smoke that can be a cancer
danger |
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By
the University of York news staff
Research led by the University of York has highlighted the potential cancer risk in non-smokers, particularly children, of tobacco smoke gases and particles deposited to surfaces and dust in the home. Until now, the risks of this exposure known as third hand tobacco smoke have been highly uncertain and not considered in public policy. However, a new study published in the journal Environment International, has estimated for the first time the potential cancer risk by age group through non-dietary ingestion and dermal exposure to third hand smoke. The results indicate potentially severe long-term consequences, particularly to children. The research was carried out by York’s Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, and the Chromatography and Environmental Applications research group at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain. The study, which was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council and the General Research Directorate of the Government of Catalonia, also demonstrates for the first time the widespread presence of tobacco related carcinogens in house dust, even in smoke-free environments. Scientists collected dust samples from private homes occupied by both smokers and non-smokers. Using observations of house dust composition, they estimated the cancer risk by applying the most recent official toxicology information. |
They found that
for children aged 1 to 6 years old, the cancer risks exceeded the limit
recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in three
quarters of smokers’ homes and two thirds of non-smokers’ homes. The
maximum risk predicted from the third hand smoke levels in a
smoker-occupied home equated to one extra cancer case per one thousand
population exposed. Lead investigator Jacqueline Hamilton from York’s Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories, said: “The risks of tobacco exposure do not end when a cigarette is extinguished. Non-smokers, especially children, are also at risk through contact with surfaces and dust contaminated with residual smoke gases and particles, the so-called third hand smoke. This risk should not be overlooked and its impact should be included in future educational programs and tobacco-related public health policies.” Each year 600,000 people die worldwide through passive inhalation of environmental tobacco smoke, also known as second hand smoke. As numerous countries have introduced smoking bans in public places, the home has become the main source of passive smoking exposure. Alastair Lewis, from York’s Wolfson Atmospheric Chemistry Laboratories and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science, said: “Over 40 per cent of children have at least one smoking parent and whereas there is a general public awareness about the harms of second hand smoke, there is little knowledge about the dangers of third hand smoke. Carcinogenic materials can be passed from smokers to non-smokers during shared contact, for example between clothes and surfaces and also enter homes via airborne transport of cigarette smoke.” |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 17, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 140 | |||||||
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| Australian lawmakers kill controversial carbon tax By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Australia has repealed a divisive carbon tax, delivering the government a key victory but frustrating opposition leaders who say the move is a step back in the global fight against climate change. Conservative lawmakers burst into cheers as the Australian senate Thursday voted 39 to 32 to scrap the tax, which forced Australia's biggest polluters to pay a hefty fine for each ton of carbon dioxide they emitted. Prime Minister Tony Abbott rose to power on promises to abolish the tax, which he said was ineffective and cost households hundreds of dollars each year in more expensive utility bills. "You voted to scrap the tax in September last year and today the parliament finally listened. Today, the tax that you voted to get rid of is finally gone. A useless, destructive tax which damaged jobs, which hurt families' cost of living and which didn't actually help the environment, is finally gone," said Abbott. The opposition Labor and Greens parties slammed the move, saying Australia was going against global action on fighting climate change. Labor leader Bill Shorten said Abbott had embarrassed Australians. "History will judge Tony Abbott very harshly for refusing to believe in genuine action on climate change. Tony Abbott is sleepwalking Australia to an environmental and economic disaster," said Shorten. Greens leader Christine Milne called it a "monumental blunder for the nation under a climate-denying prime minister," and said Australia could become an international pariah. It is unclear now how Australia will meet its target of reducing overall emissions by 5 percent, compared to 2000 levels, by 2020. Abbott, who was once a climate change skeptic, favors a plan that would pay Australia's biggest emitters to cut carbon levels. But some independent groups have said the plan will actually lead to a 12 percent increase in carbon emissions. Australia's reliance on coal for electricity and its mining exports make it one of the world's worst polluters per capita. Law protecting illegal kids is at heart of U.S. debate By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. lawmakers are clashing over whether Congress needs to make changes to a law signed in 2008 to protect child victims of sex-trafficking. The William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection act is now providing the legal foundation to halt the immediate deportation of thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America who are crossing the border into the United States. Most Republicans and some Democrats are calling for changes to the law to speed up the deportation process at the border, but others want the law -- and its protections for children -- to stay in place. As unaccompanied children from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras continue to cross the U.S.-Mexican border, debate is heating up in the U.S. Congress about what to do with them. Republicans are blaming Democratic President Barack Obama. “At the end of the day, this is the president’s border crisis. I believe it was his statements and his encouragement that has led to this humanitarian crisis," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp. The president says he is looking for solutions, and has asked Congress for $ 3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the border crisis. But some lawmakers say they will not give the president a blank check, and are calling for changes to the 2008 law. “The first thing we need to do is to change the 2008 law. The intent of the law was not to help the children that are coming to the border right now, but to help children in sex-trafficking cases,” said Rep Raul Labrador, a Republican. Most Democrats disagree, including Rep Sheila Jackson Lee. “That we should give children of any country, contiguous or non-contiguous at least due process rights, because these are children, who in actuality, have fled violence, or human trafficking or sex trafficking, and they are sometimes unable to articulate that in a short period of time,” said Rep. Lee. Proposed new legislation would treat Central American children the same as children from Mexico -- giving all of them a chance to appear before a judge, if they pass an initial screening by border patrol agents. Sen. John Cornyn is one of the authors of the bill. “We need to have immigration laws that protect these children and all of us. And it does not mean that anybody and everybody under every circumstance can qualify to come to the United States and stay. That's simply an invitation to chaos,” said Cornyn, a Republican. A shortage of immigration judges is a big part of the problem, according to Doris Meissner of the Migration Policy Institute. “The fact that the law offers protections to young people of an immigration hearing, and that the immigration hearings and small numbers of judges that are available in the system, that is what is contributing to long delays in the process of making the decisions,” said Meissner. Some children and their mothers have already been returned to Honduras. Ms. Meissner said safety is a concern. “Now of course we do return people to these countries on a regular basis, but they are adults. And we have not been returning kids to these countries," Meissner continued. Pope Francis has also commented on the border crisis, saying the U.S. should welcome and protect the migrant children from Central America. Six Guantanamo inmates being sent to Uruguay By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Obama administration has informed the U.S. Congress that it will transfer six detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the South American country of Uruguay. U.S. news outlets say Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a letter to congressional leaders last week notifying them of the plan. The impending transfer would be the first since five former Taliban commanders were sent to Qatar in May in exchange for the release of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was deserted in Afghanistan five years ago. The exchange angered congressional lawmakers because the Obama administration did not inform them of the transfer within the required 30-day notice. The group -- four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian -- are among more than 70 of the 149 current detainees who have been cleared to be transferred from the military detention center. One of the Syrians, Jihad Ahmed Mujstafa Diyab, has filed a lawsuit against the military over its procedures to force-feed detainees who are on a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department issued a statement expressing gratitude to Uruguay for "this significant humanitarian gesture." Parishioners fear the impact of N.Y. Catholic restructuring By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Some Catholic churches in Manhattan could be closed as the Archdiocese of New York implements a strategic consolidation plan. Shifting populations, limited resources and fewer priests are among the factors driving the consolidation. At one midtown church facing possible closure, parishioners pray for a miracle. The Church of the Holy Innocents is the only church in Manhattan offering a high Latin Mass every day of the week. It is such a rarity that many travel across the New York metropolitan region for the daily 6 p.m. service. Edward Hawkings makes the trek every day despite his disabilities, because the Mass inspires his soul. “The Mass takes us to a different place. We concentrate at the Mass. It requires a great concentration. It lifts us up. It brings us to a different level, removes us from the world,” said Hawkings. But this church, and others in Manhattan, are at risk. A program called "Making All Things New" by the Archdiocese of New York is evaluating the membership, ministry and fiscal solvency of the churches under its jurisdiction. Based on the results, some communities might see their churches closed as part of a consolidation. The potential closure of Holy Innocents signals a larger problem to Thomas Basile, who has been coming to this church since he was a child. “It seems to me almost like someone is intentionally dismantling the Catholic patrimony of this city. This is basically a Catholic city with a Catholic history," said Basile. The parishioners in Manhattan once made up 25 percent of the Archdiocese's population, but now they account for only 12 percent. That and the dwindling number of Catholic priests are just two reasons why the archdiocese has to make hard choices, said communications director Joseph Zwilling. “Any kind of change is always difficult. We understand that it’s difficult especially for people in their parishes who love their churches, who love the way things are, who don’t want to see any change. And we understand that. But we also realize that if that church is going to effectively meet the needs of the people, it has to meet the needs of the people as they exist today,” said Zwilling. But some Manhattan Catholics fear that their historic, city churches - built on valuable real estate - are only on the chopping block to improve the archdiocese’s finances. “The financial condition of the archdiocese somehow may be corrupting decisions to make decisions to sell churches,” said Hawkings. Zwilling denied that claim. He said the archdiocese spends $30 to $40 million dollars a year to subsidize churches that cannot pay their debts, an amount that is unsustainable. The sale of a church will be the last resort, Zwilling said, and even when that happens the proceeds will be used for the parishioners. The Archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, is currently evaluating the program’s final recommendations and is expected to announce a decision in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, the parishioners of Holy Innocents pray for the future of their church. On the Feast of Corpus Christi, an annual celebration of the Eucharist, they took their faith to the streets as proof that the city is still home to a vibrant Catholic community. Actress who mailed ricin gets 18 years in prison By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
An actress from the American television series "The Walking Dead" and the movie "The Blind Side" is off to prison after mailing ricin-laced letters to President Barack Obama and the mayor of New York City. A federal judge Wednesday sentenced 36-year-old Shannon Guess Richardson of Texas to 18 years in prison, the maximum under a plea agreement for possessing and producing a biological toxin. Ms. Richardson sent the ricin-laced letters to Obama and then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg in May 2013. She then went to police and accused her husband of the crime. He had filed for divorce. Inconsistencies in Richardson's accounts led investigators to believe she was the one who sent the letters. She was arrested a month later. Richardson, it was learned, ordered castor beans online to make ricin. Ricin is a toxin that can cause respiratory failure if inhaled. Film explores high cost of U.S. college education By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It’s a hot, muggy day at Port City Brewery in Old Town Alexandria, just a stone’s throw from Washington D.C., but the heat does not slow down Brandon Attilis, a college student who spends summers working for extra cash. The money will come in handy when he is away at college renting a house with two of his friends. “My parents are paying the cost of the house, but I’m paying utilities," Brandon said. "So, between the two, it’s still less expensive than actually living in the dorms.” Brandon has a lot going for him. He has a good work ethic, brains and pre-paid college tuition. “We took care of four years of college education for less than a year’s costs in today’s market,” said Chris Attilis, Brandon's mother. She says she and her husband began saving money for college tuition shortly after each of their children was born. But most college students today are not as lucky. Andrew Rossi’s new documentary, "Ivory Tower," shows American college students drowning in debt. “We see that college tuition has increased by about 1,100 percent since 1978 to today," Rossi said. That's due to many factors, including less government support for higher education because of tighter budgets. Once students graduate, Rossi says half are either unemployed or underemployed. His documentary shows that the tough job market does not deter colleges from hiking tuition fees. "There are certainly those who can argue that certain Ivy league schools have a brand associated with them that might be worth paying a premium for," he said. In their effort to entice students and to raise their prestige, colleges build impressive campuses and students end up paying for those construction costs. Chris Attilis experienced this firsthand when she visited campuses with Brandon. “They put on a good show," she said. "And walking through and looking at the granite sinks in the bathrooms I’m thinking, 'This is not what it was looking like when I went to school.' And we had a conversation saying ‘We’re paying to send you to a country club.’" According to "Ivory Tower," many students choose not to pursue a college education because of the unsustainable costs. Some try online education, but Brandon notes that is not for everyone. “You have to be a real hard worker, you have to really want it," he said. Brandon is thankful he is getting an education without going into debt. He feels life is already like an assembly line, where he has to tackle everything coming his way - getting a business degree, building up job experience to have an impressive resume so that one day, he hopes, he can have a career and a family without the staggering debt from the ivory towers of higher education. Protein gives longer effect for diabetics with insulin By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A single injection of a protein that keeps diabetics' blood sugar under control for several days could become available in the next few years. Researchers believe the discovery could signal a new generation of treatment for Type 2 diabetes, a disease that is skyrocketing around the world. Scientists have known about the protein, called FGF1, for several decades. But researchers discovered the potential of the molecule, which is part of a family of so-called growth factors, when they injected it into mice that were engineered to have Type 2 - or adult-onset - diabetes. The blood sugar levels of the experimental animals were restored to a healthy range for more than two days after a single injection. In the adult-onset form of the disease, the body’s cells do not absorb sugar or glucose derived from food. FGF1 appears to resensitize the body to insulin, which transports glucose into the cells, normalizing blood sugar levels. But Ron Evans, an expert on endocrine-related diseases, stresses that FGF1 is not a cure for diabetes. “So, as a result, the combination of FGF1 and the body’s insulin rebalances the equation and allows glucose to be controlled as if it was normal,” he said. Current treatments for Type 2 diabetes are aimed at boosting the body’s production of insulin in order to lower glucose levels in the blood. But they can have serious side effects. If and when regulators approve FGF1 for the treatment of diabetes, it would have to be injected like insulin every other day. Evans and his colleagues at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies are looking into formulating a longer-acting form of the protein. Worldwide, adult onset diabetes has reached epidemic proportions as carbohydrate-rich foods, particularly fast foods, have become readily available. Excess weight and inactivity usually trigger the disease. Evans is excited about the prospect of a new treatment for diabetes. “It is exciting because it is a new role for an old molecule. And it just shows you that there is a lot to be learned and it is a lesson, because after 30 years to find what may be the true function of this molecule came as a surprise. No one was looking for this,” he said. Salk researchers report their findings in the journal Nature. Evans thinks clinical trials of FGF1, which he said are safe, likely will begin in 12 to 18 months. |
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A.M. Guatemala |
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A.M. Central America |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, July 17, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 140 | |||||||||
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Rape suspects
in La Fortuna set free
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Posted at 2:50 p.m. Wednesday Prosecutors have released the four men suspected of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old female student from the United States, according to a spokesperson at the Judicial Investigating Organization. The men were set free because the woman did not want to pursue with charges, said the spokesperson. The men, Nicaraguans who were working on a construction site in La Fortuna when they were detained Tuesday, were reported to be the last ones seen with the woman before the reported gang rape took place early Sunday morning. Monday reports surfaced that the female student visiting Costa Rica with classmates had said she was sexually assaulted while returning alone to her lodgings from a bar in La Fortuna. The judicial agency spokesperson said Wednesday afternoon that the female was with her group visiting Jacó, as the students have another week left before they return to the U.S. Russia to re-open Cuban listening post By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Russia will reopen an intelligence base in Cuba that closed in 2001, according to Russian media reports Wednesday. The newspaper Kommersant claims an agreement to resume operations at the Lourdes base, which was once a leading source of Cold War-era electronic surveillance on the United States, was made during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Havana last week. The signals intelligence base located south of Havana opened in 1964 to spy on the U.S. during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Only 250 kilometers from the U.S. coast, it had radar capable of intercepting signals from a significant amount of U.S. territory, according to Kommersant. In 2001, Putin ordered the base closed in a cost-cutting move, after repeated requests from the United States, the Russian paper said, citing sources close to the Kremlin. The paper also quoted Raúl Castro as saying that up to 75 percent of Moscow's intelligence on the United States came from the base. Lourdes allowed the Soviet Union to intercept voice and data telephone transmissions relayed from the U.S. by satellite. It was the Soviet Union's largest foreign base, with approximately 3,000 employees. Kommersant did not specify the details of the most recent alleged deal. But Russia agreed to give Cuba approximately $200 million worth of goods like fuel and timber, and military equipment parts, to keep the joint operation open in 1994. According to Cuba's state media, Putin and Castro talked about historic ties between their countries, their economic relationship, and international affairs. After talks with his Cuban counterpart, Putin unveiled a deal to write off $32 billion of old Soviet debt. That is 90 percent of the total. He said the other 10 percent would be reinvested in Cuban development projects. |
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