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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday,
July 22,
2014, Vol. 14, No. 143
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
There is a war of words in Jacó as DayStar Properties Management S.A. is being challenged by a new management company called Lost Beach. DayStar of course, is the firm of Patrick Hundley, who happens to be in preventative detention on an unrelated fraud allegation. Lost Beach appeared on the scene Friday when it sent out messages to news people and to those who own properties that have been under the management of Day Star. Lost Beach is operated by David Byker of Grand Rapids. Michigan, and his partner, Denny Cherette, They said Friday that they were taking over management of properties at Diamante del Sol, Bahia Encantada, Bahia Azul, La Paloma Blanca and The Palms. Byker, himself, owns 25 condos, he said. The message was critical of DayStar management. Monday DayStar fired back and said that it has continued to function completely in Hundley’s absence, offering the services of rentals, sales, management and maintenance of condominiums to any clients requesting service. The firm also said that Lost Beach misled clients and employees and directed some to another work location that was not DayStar's. Both communications allege what amounts to criminal activity. A.M. Costa Rica's policy is to report on criminal activity only when there is a formal complaint filed with authorities or when editors have to verify the fact independently. Good drivers get license discounts By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The driver's license agency has a deal for good drivers. Those who renew a license and who have not accumulated more than four points due to traffic violations get the license at half price. That is 5,000 colons. In addition, good drivers are able to renew a license for six years. On the other hand, drivers who accumulate more than four points have to pay 10,000 colons, about $19. And they can renew for just four years. They also have to go to a driver safety course. A driver can earn a quick four points by going through a red light or failing to keep a child in an appropriate car seat. Licensing officials also said that the agency will now accept renewals three months before a license expires. Public position is key in defamation case By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A decision Monday that acquitted a businessman of a criminal libel allegation approaches the U.S. standard in public officials and defamation. The fact that the person bringing the allegation was Laura Chinchilla figured heavily in the verdict. Costa Rica continues to maintain the crime of defamation while many other countries have eliminated defamation as a crime and, instead, treat slander and libel as a civil matter. The three-judge panel appears to be swayed by the position that Ms. Chinchilla held at the time, president. In U.S. courts a public official seeking a civil settlement faces the very high standard of actual malice. That is, that the public official claiming the injury must show that the person who uttered the libel knew or should have known that the allegation was false. That standard is so high that few public officials go to court. A few U.S. states still have criminal libel on the books, but that crime usually is reserved for silencing someone who has become unwelcome to officialdom. An example would be someone who attends public meetings to harangue public officials or who writes defamatory flyers. The actual malice threshold in the United States also is the standard for public figures, like movie stars. The businessman, Alberto Rodríguez Baldi, made comments about Ms. Chinchilla on a Facebook page. The comments about land ownership are believed to be false. But the court also seemed to adopt a concept from Illinois law that if an innocent meaning exists for the statements involved, the innocent meaning should be assumed. That position might be made more clear when the full decision is released. The Chinchilla case points out that the increased use of the internet, Facebook and other social media opens the door for libel and other false statements. The writer of a Facebook comment does not have to submit the words to an editor. The individual is free to make the most outrageous comments. The Electronic Frontier foundation has a legal guide for bloggers online HERE! Ms. Chinchilla also has another real problem with her case. She sought 100 million colons in damages. Her lawyers would have been hard-pressed to show any damages based on an obscure Facebook posting. She still has the option of appealing the verdict.  University of Cincinnati
photo
Brooke Crowley poses with a
mammoth mandible.Mammoths
and mastodons stayed home
By the University of Cincinnati Creative
Services
The famously fuzzy relatives of elephants at the end of the last ice age were not big travelers, according to research from the University of Cincinnati. A study led by Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology, shows the ancient proboscideans were not nomadic migrants as previously thought. Mammoths and mastodons even had their own preferred hangouts. Ms. Crowley's findings indicate each species kept to separate areas based on availability of favored foods at the southern edge of the Last Glacial Maximum's major ice sheet near Cincinnatti. "I suspect that this was a pretty nice place to live, relatively speaking," Ms. Crowley says. "Our data suggest that animals probably had what they needed to survive here year-round." Learning more about the different behaviors of these prehistoric creatures could benefit their modern-day cousins, African and Asian elephants. Both types are on the World Wildlife Fund's endangered species list. Studying how variable different types of elephants might have been in the past, Ms. Crowley says, might help ongoing efforts to protect these largest of land mammals from continued threats such as poaching and habitat destruction. "There are regionally different stories going on," Ms. Crowley says. "There's not one overarching theme that we can say about a mammoth or a mastodon. And that's becoming more obvious in studies people are doing in different places. A mammoth in Florida did not behave the same as one in New York, Wyoming, California, Mexico or Ohio." For their research, Ms. Crowley and colleague Eric Baumann looked to the wisdom in teeth – specifically museum specimens of molars from four mastodons and eight mammoths from Southwestern Ohio and Northwestern Kentucky. Much can be revealed by carefully drilling a tooth's surface and analyzing the stable carbon, oxygen and strontium isotopic signatures in the powdered enamel. Each element tells a different story. Carbon provides insight into an animal's diet, oxygen relates to overall climatic conditions of an animal's environment and strontium indicates how much an animal may have traveled at the time its tooth was forming. "Strontium reflects the bedrock geology of a location," Ms. Crowley says. "So if a local animal grows its tooth and mineralizes it locally and dies locally, the strontium isotope ratio in its tooth will reflect the place where it lived and died. If an animal grows its tooth in one place and then moves elsewhere, the strontium in its tooth is going to reflect where it came from, not where it died." Their analysis allowed them to determine several things: * Mammoths ate more grasses and sedges than mastodons, which favored leaves from trees or shrubs. * Strontium from all of the animals (except one mastodon) matched local water samples, meaning they likely were less mobile and migratory than previously thought. * Differences in strontium and carbon between mammoths and mastodons suggest they didn't inhabit the same localities. * Mammoths preferred to be closer to the retreating ice sheet where grasses were more abundant, whereas mastodons fed farther from the ice sheet in more forested habitat.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by A.M. Costa Rica.com Ltda. 2014 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 143 | |
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| Old photos of the former liquor factory will be displayed
until Aug. 22 |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A photo display of the old Fabrica Nacional de Liquores will be available at the Biblioteca Nacional until Aug. 22. The Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud, which now has its offices in the old factory, inaugurated the photo show Monday. There are 29 photos. The ministry is celebrating its 43rd anniversary. Personnel at the press office of the ministry reported they spent three years assembling the photos. They said the photos might also be on display at the Feria Internacional del Libro. The liquor factory went up in 1853 at the order of President Juan Rafael Mora Porras after the central government gained control of the production of alcohol three years earlier. The Fabrica Nacional de Licores is outside of town since 1996 on the Bernardo Soto highway in Grecia. Ministry officials said that the photos also illustrate the working conditions of those who had jobs at the facility. The photo exhibit is free and open to the public from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday at the national library. |
 Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud photo
This 1970 photo shows the ornate
entry to the compound. The entry exists today. |
| Man jailed after defending himself with knife from robber |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A man was detained Sunday after police said he stabbed a person who attempted to rob him. Identified by the last name of Mena, the man was walking through the center of San José when the individual later identified by the last name of Mendoza tried to rob him at Avenida 9 and Calle 0, according to a Fuerza Pública report. In apparent self defense, Mena stabbed Mendoza in the chest, leaving him in critical condition, according to police. Mendoza was taken to a hospital and Mena was detained. Monday afternoon press representative for prosecutors said she believed Mena was still in criminal detention. |
This is the second
time in nearly a week that police have detained a
person reportedly defending himself from an attack. Randall Alberto
Torres Gómez was arrested July 12 in Ipis de Guadalupe after
police
said he tried to stop a suspected robbery taking place in the middle of
the day. When the assailant then took out a gun with the apparent intent of shooting, Torres pulled out his gun and fatally shot the presumed robber who was a 17 year old. according to a report from the Judicial Investigating Organization. Police confiscated Torres' registered .38-caliber pistol and the legal documents that he was carrying for the weapon. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 143 | |||||
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| Genetic study shows why tiny marmosets are prone to multiple
births |
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By
the Baylor College of Medicine news staff
A team of scientists from around the world led by Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University in St. Louis has completed the genome sequence of the common marmoset. This is the first sequence of a New World monkey, and the study provides new information about the marmoset’s unique rapid reproductive system, physiology and growth, shedding new light on primate biology and evolution. The team published the work in the journal Nature Genetics. “We study primate genomes to get a better understanding of the biology of the species that are most closely related to humans,” said Jeffrey Rogers, associate professor in the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor and a lead author on the report. “The previous sequences of the great apes and macaques, which are very closely related to humans on the primate evolutionary tree, have provided remarkable new information about the evolutionary origins of the human genome and the processes involved.” With the sequence of the marmoset, the team revealed for the first time the genome of a non-human primate in the New World monkeys, which represents a separate branch in the primate evolutionary tree that is more distant from humans than those whose genomes have been studied in detail before. The sequence allows researchers to broaden their ability to study the human genome and its history as revealed by comparison with other primates. Marmoset are found mostly in South America, but some have been spotted in Central America. The sequencing was conducted jointly by Baylor and Washington University and led by Kim Worley, professor in the Human Genome Sequencing Center, and Rogers at Baylor. "Each new non-human primate genome adds to a deeper understanding of human biology," said Richard Gibbs, director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor and a principal investigator of the study. |
 Baylor College of Medicine photo
Relatives usually care for
marmoset offspring.The study revealed unique genetic characteristics observed in the marmoset, including several genes that are likely responsible for their ability to consistently reproduce multiple births. “Unlike humans, marmosets consistently give birth to twins without the association of any medical issues,” said Ms. Worley. “So why is it OK in marmosets but not in humans where it is considered high risk and associated with more complications?” It turns out the gene WFIKKN1 exhibits changes associated with twinning in marmosets. “From our analysis it appears that the gene may act as some kind of critical switch between multiples and singleton pregnancies, though it is not the only gene involved,” said Rogers, who added the finding could apply to studies of multiple pregnancies in humans. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 143 | |||||||
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| Catholic saint from México becomes patron of illegals By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A Roman Catholic saint who is a figure of devotion for those crossing the border into the United States is attracting believers concerned about the plight of undocumented immigrants. Toribio Romo González was a priest who died in the so-called Cristero War, a rebellion against Mexico's anti-clerical government of the 1920s. Canonized as Saint Toribio in 2000, many Hispanic Catholics have come to view him as the patron saint of migrants. An ankle bone from the priest, housed in a small wooden statue in his image, is on loan from Mexico and has been making the rounds of churches in southern California. It has struck a responsive chord with immigrant Catholics in one suburban church, including Peruvian-born Lucy Castro. “When my children were five years old, the immigration took my husband for about one month,” said Ms. Castro. After a month in detention, her husband was released pending an immigration hearing. Ms. Castro believes Saint Toribio helped the family through the crisis. The relic has drawn those worried about the plight of tens of thousands of migrant children from Central America who have fled to the United States and are awaiting detention hearings. Sunday, thousands attended a Mass at the Los Angeles Catholic cathedral to venerate the relic and hear testimonials, including from a Honduran woman, who described her escape from violence and arrival in the United States six weeks ago with her young son. Jersey Vargas, a 10-year-old U.S. citizen, told of her visit to Rome to meet Pope Francis in March. She told the pontiff about her father, who was then in detention in the United States. Days later, her father was released, pending an immigration hearing. “I want him to please give us immigrant reform because many families are suffering. And I already suffered the same situation and I don't want it to happen again to anyone,” Vargas said. Joshua Oliveros, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, knows that the immigration issue is divisive, but said he believes in miracles. “Hopefully, Barack Obama he will bring this opportunity, not only for a few people, but for everyone because I believe that people who come from different parts of the world can make a difference,” he said. Church leaders call the plight of undocumented migrants a humanitarian crisis. They say something must be done for the millions separated from families by their immigration status with help from a Catholic saint and political leaders in Washington. Texas government to send guard troops to the border By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The governor of the U.S. state of Texas said he is planning to send 1,000 troops from the state's National Guard to its southern border with Mexico to boost security during a surge in illegal immigration by children. Gov. Rick Perry said Monday the guard troops are necessary because the influx of unaccompanied children illegally entering the United States has diverted resources away from the federal border patrol. He said the decision was made after repeatedly asking the Obama administration to send National Guard troops to the region and getting no positive response. More than 57,000 children, mostly from Central America, have illegally crossed into the United States since October, triggering a political and border crisis in the country. Perry is regarded as a potential Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential race and has been a vocal critic of the White House's response to the influx of child immigrants. Earlier this month, President Obama asked Congress for $3.7 billion in emergency funding to deal with the immigration surge of unaccompanied children. Republicans in Congress have not approved the money and say Obama's immigration policies have encouraged the flood of children across the border. The president, along with the U.S. Senate, has championed immigration reforms that would allow the 11 million immigrants already in the United States illegally to eventually obtain American citizenship. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is opposed and says it will not vote on the issue this year.  Voice of America photo
Ryan Pitts receives the
medal from the president.Survivor of
worst firefight
received the Medal of Honor By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. combat troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, on pace to leave the country by the end of this year. But Monday, U.S. President Barack Obama took time to honor a soldier whose actions while under fire in Afghanistan earned him the Medal of Honor. It was a brutal assault that has gone down as one of the bloodiest for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, a July 13, 2008, attack near the northeastern village of Wanat. Setting up at a new outpost, former Staff Sgt. Ryan Pitts and his fellow soldiers faced a pre-dawn onslaught from about 200 Taliban fighters. “Almost instantly every one of them was wounded," Obama said. "Ryan was hit by shrapnel in the arm and both legs and was bleeding badly. Already three Americans in that valley had fallen, and then a fourth.” Obama said the terraces near the outpost erupted, with more fire and grenades coming from the village itself. Pitts fought back, holding off the Taliban, helping to call in air strikes even as the attack claimed the lives of nine fellow soldiers. “It is remarkable that we have young men and women serving in our military who day in day out are able to perform with so much integrity, so much humility and so much courage," the president said. "Ryan represents the best of that tradition.” The Battle of Wanat, as it came to be called, was not without controversy. The mother of Cpl. Jason Bogar, who died in the attack, claimed the Army made huge mistakes leaving her son, Pitts and the other soldiers needlessly exposed. “The Afghan villagers told them you're going to be attacked. And then the predator drones were pulled the night before," Carlene Cross said. The Army has changed its tactics as a result. And Pitts, now working for a software company is the proud father of a 1-year-old boy. Like the other Afghan War veterans to receive the nation’s highest military honor, he says the medal does not belong to him alone. “The honor belongs to every man who fought at Vehicle Patrol Base Kahler, especially to those who made the ultimate sacrifice that allowed the rest of us to return home,” he said. Marathon bomber's buddy convicted of interference By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A court has convicted a friend of Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev for impeding the investigation into last year's deadly blast. Azamat Tazhayakov, a foreign student from Kazakhstan, was found guilty of conspiracy and obstruction of justice in Boston. Prosecutors said three days after April 15, 2013, bombing, 20-year-old Tazhayakov and another college friend removed Tzarnaev's backpack from his dormitory room at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. The bag contained altered fireworks the friends threw away. Tazhayakov faces up to 20 years in prison for the obstruction of justice charge and a maximum of five years in jail on the conspiracy charge. His sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 16. Twin bombs exploded near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 260 others. Police say that two ethnic Chechen brothers who had lived in the United States for a decade, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, carried the bombs in backpacks to the Boston street near the finish line before detonating them. Days later, Tamerlan was killed in a gun battle with police and Dzhokhar was found hiding in a boat parked in the backyard of a suburban Boston home. Authorities say he left a hand-scrawled confession inside the boat that said the bombings were retaliation for the U.S. killing of Muslims in American-led wars overseas. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now 20, is in a U.S. prison awaiting trial on multiple charges, including use of a weapon of mass destruction. Economic experts report there is more optimism By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A survey of key U.S. business leaders finds sales and employment grew in April, May and June, after the economy faltered at the beginning of the year. The National Association for Business Economics is made up of economic experts who work in companies across the nation. Most respondents said sales were growing during the second quarter and an increasing number said employment also was expanding. Survey analyst Ken Simonson said his fellow economists think the overall economic outlook is improving. At the same time, profit margins grew at fewer firms and costs for wages and price increases were more widespread than in previous quarterly studies. Fast food firms in China hit with supplies of bad meat By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. fast food chains McDonald's and KFC in China faced a new food safety scare Monday while authorities investigate a report that alleges a supplier sold them expired beef and chicken. McDonald’s Corp. and Yum! Brands Inc., which owns KFC and Pizza Hut outlets, said they have stopped using products supplied by a local meat processor after a Shanghai regulator halted the firm's operations Sunday over food safety concerns. Other customers included Burger King, Papa John's Pizza, coffee chain Starbucks and sandwich maker Subway, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported Monday. The move is a potential concern for the two brands, which are both now conducting their own investigation into the matter, since the pair were hit hard by a food safety scandal in China late in 2012. Yum, which apologized to Chinese consumers for any inconvenience caused in the latest case, suffered a sharp dive in profits early in 2013 after the safety concerns. The Shanghai food and drug administration halted the operations of Shanghai Husi Food Co., Ltd, a meat supplier suspected of providing meat that had passed its expiration date to China branches of McDonald's restaurants and Yum's KFC and Pizza Hut outlets, the Xinhua news agency reported Sunday. The food and drug administration inspected Shanghai Husi Sunday evening after a report by a Shanghai television station alleged Shanghai Husi reprocessed and sold old meat and used poor hygiene practices in a local factory. A statement by the food and drug administration said police were investigating and threatening severe punishment in the future. China has been rocked by a series of food and product safety problems, due to lax enforcement of regulations and corner-cutting by producers.  Voice of America photo
This is a British square of
the type that stopped the French calvary at Waterloo.Waterloo in
miniature cost
Army vet 20,000 hours By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Next year marks the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, when French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by an international force led by England and Prussia. Just in time for the observance, a retired U.S. military officer is recreating the battlefield in miniature, with a quarter-million tiny hand-painted soldiers. “Each soldier is approximately six millimeters high or one quarter of an inch,” said Steve St. Clair, who has been painstakingly painting those tiny figures for 20 years. So far he has 250,000 of them. ”Actually it is one of the most decisive battles in military history. It ended the Napoleonic era, number one. Number two, it had units from so many different countries in so many different uniforms. I thought that will be very interesting to paint,” he said. St. Clair grew up in a military family and served in the Army for 25 years. He says painting figures is a way to balance his life. “One of my specialties was anti-terrorism, which was a very stressful job. And when I come home, this was a way to relax because you can literally turn your mind off and just paint the figures,” he said. The soldiers are recreated in precise historical detail, down to the colors of ornaments on their uniforms. ”I am painting the plumes on the top of the helmets of the soldiers from grenadier companies. They would have red plumes,” St. Clair said. “Painting the figures actually is one step of rather long process. First of all, quite a bit of time is spent on research knowing what the units wore. The most complicated figures are Scottish Highlanders with their plaid kilts.” The Waterloo pieces are stored in a chest of drawers in his basement. St. Clair said, so far, he has put 20,000 man hours of work in the collection. “Compulsive maybe but not obsessive. There is a bit of difference," he said. "Obsessive means I have to paint every day and do this exclusion of other things. I have a lot of different hobbies.” An estimated 200,000 soldiers fought at the Battle of Waterloo. St. Clair painted the extras so he could stage multiple battle poses. The figures laid out on this model terrain represent about 4 percent of his entire collection. St. Clair says he would need an area about 190 square meters to put everything on display. “There are no other collections in the world of a quarter-million figures. By the end of this year all of the extra should be done,” he said. St. Clair wants to donate his creation to a museum but so far has no takers. But he hopes his tiny troops will find a home and can be on display for the bicentennial celebration of the Battle of Waterloo next year. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, July 22, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 143 | |||||||||
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 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública
The bulk of these bottles
are untaxed name brands.Police
sweep turns up bad booze
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fuerza Púbica officers went on a hunt for untaxed alcohol, but they managed to turn up 325 bottles of what they called adulterated products. Basically these contain bootlegged alcohol. Police said that officers from Coronado and San José participated in the sweep of 13 establishments that sell alcohol. They found bottles that they believe to have been brought into the country without the appropriate tax being paid. Officers were accompanied by representatives of the Fábrica Nacional de Licores. They said the adulterated alcohol was dangerous. The contents were mostly guaro, the sugar cane alcohol. The investigators from the alcohol factory destroyed the adulterated alcohol, police said. |
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| From
Page 7: Country posts an increase in exports By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Costa Rica exported more than $4.8 billion worth of goods during the first half of the year, according to a report from the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior. Despite some potential losses in the manufacturing sector, most notably the departure of Intel's main production plant, Costa Rica has seen a 4 percent increase in exports from the first semester last year. “These figures are very positive,” said Alexander Mora, the commerce minister. “The departure of Intel's manufacture plant has had an evident effect on exports, however the efforts that are systematically being carried out to promote exports and diversify the markets are managing to soften any downturn.” Free trade exports, excluding electronic products, grew 6 percent from last year to reach more than $2 billion worth of goods. Foreign sales saw a similar hike, topping $2.7 billion since January. Francisco Gamboa, the director of commercial intelligence for the trade promotion organization Promotora del Comercio Exterior, said the country's ability to steer its industries towards multiple export markets has created these sales boosts. “Our principal market, the United States, grew by 4 percent, but we also consolidated destinations like Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic,” he said, mentioning further markets explored in South America and the Caribbean. “To the same effect, exports to Europe increased as did Asian markets like China. This shows a diversification of locales that Costa Rica has on hand and that there are opportunities in many regions.” An estimated 841 businesses exported their products to the United States during the first semester. And more than a thousand Costa Rican companies exported to neighboring Central American countries, according to the statistics. In analyzing the data by industry, the country has seen a significant 5.5 percent increase in agriculture, livestock products, and fish exports. In addition, sales of medical devices went up 16 percent, electric cables by 14 percent, pineapple by 12.7 percent, banana by 7.4 percent, melon by 18.8 percent |
