 |
|
||||
 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for more details |
A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
 |
|
|
San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 7,
2014, Vol. 14, No. 155
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The nation's finance ministry is stepping up its campaign to have citizens file complaints against those who do not give them a receipt for purchases. The agency, the Ministerio de Hacienda, said that there have been 777 complaints filed since the beginning of the year. Not all involve presumed failure to report sales tax. Some complaints involve untaxed merchandise, said the ministry. In one case, however, the ministry said a U.S. dental patient filed a complaint against a dentist who did not provide a receipt, called here a comprobante or factura. Many merchants will not provide official receipts because if they do they usually have to pay sales tax and add the sale to their annual income for tax purposes. Many buyers are happy not to pay sales tax, which is 13 percent. The ministry notes that the season of major purchases is coming. The announcement referred to the Día de la Madre, the Día del Niño, Christmas and New Year's. Complaints can be made to the ministry's Web page www.hacienda.go.cr or regional offices. There is no economic advantage for making a complaint because Costa Rica does not pay a premium for such information. However, in the past the ministry ran raffles to award money prizes to randomly selected complainants. Vitamin D emerges as Alzheimer antidote By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Simply taking a daily vitamin D supplement may be enough to ward off Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, according to medical experts. Researchers caution, however, that the results of a large, recently published study do not demonstrate that low levels of vitamin D necessarily cause dementia. Still, they are encouraged by the link between the affliction and vitamin D deficiency. An estimated 50 percent of older individuals have low levels of the nutrient, according to the study, published in the journal Neurology. If there is, in fact, a connection between depleted vitamin D levels and dementia, including Alzheimer’s, it may be possible to prevent or even treat the brain disorders with a simple supplement. “It’s an open question whether you could reverse the impact on peoples’ memory and other aspects of their ability to think clearly. What we’re hoping is, obviously, that we can at least slow down the accumulation of disease in the brain. Or if we could stabilize things, that would be great,” said David Llewellyn, a clinical epidemiologist with Britain’s University of Exeter Medical School. He is co-author of a study involving just over 1,600 elderly American adults over the age of 65. Participants in the six-year study were dementia-free when researchers measured their vitamin D levels. After a half dozen years, 171 of the adults developed dementia and 102 had clinical signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Investigators found that low levels of vitamin D increased the risk of dementia by 53 percent. Those with severe deficiency had a 125 percent increased risk of dementia compared to those with normal vitamin D levels. In addition, people who were deficient in vitamin D were 70 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Those who had severe deficiency were 120 percent more likely to develop Alzheimer's, compared with people whose vitamin D levels were adequate. “We were surprised by this because the association was about twice as strong as we predicted from our previous research. So the risk of dementia was more than doubled in those who had the lowest levels of vitamin D,” Llewellyn said. Other studies have linked vitamin D deficiency to stroke, autoimmune disease and the health of nerve cells. The best sources of vitamin D are exposure to sunlight and a diet rich in oily fish, like salmon. Llewellyn says people in northern climates tend to be at higher risk of deficiency. But there’s a fair amount of vitamin D deficiency in countries where people cover up to avoid over-exposure to the sun and skin cancer. There may be a vicious cycle among people who develop dementia. Their vitamin D levels can become even more depleted as they tend to eat poorly and become less physically active, according to Llewellyn. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| 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 |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 155 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| Jocote producers planning two weekends to promote the fruit
in Aserrí |
|
|
By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Those who attend the Feria Nacional del Jocote in La Uruca de Aserrí will be able to tour a plantation where the fruits are raised and also see production facilities where products are created for the store shelves. The jocotes are those little, green, kind of sour, addictive balls that are coming into season now. The festival runs two Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in a row, and there will be lots of jocote products for sale as well as typical fiesta offerings. La Uruca de Aserrí styles itself as the center of jocote production. The Asociación de Productores de Jocote said some 10,000 visitors were expected. The festival is supported by the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo. Those who attend also will be able to hike on some of the trails in the area including one to Cerro Candalaria and the Reserva Caraires. The event actually begins Friday at 2 p.m. when sales will begin at the local fairgrounds. Then there is karaoke at 6 p.m. Saturday the program begins at 8 a.m. with tours of production facilities in the afternoon. Sunday the tours are in the morning with concerts and a dance in the evening. Aug. 15, the following Friday, there is a concert for the Día de la Madre. The day also is a public holiday. Then Aug. 16 and 17 the tours are in the morning with concerts in the afternoon and evening. Fireworks closing the celebration is planned for Aug. 17 at 7 p.m.. That is a Sunday evening. For Pacific coast residents, Friday and Saturday is when the II Festival Gastronómico del Mar will be held in Puntarenas. The location is the Universidad Técnica Nacional. Planned are workshops in food preparation, drink mixing and sales of such products. More information is at the festival Web site. |
 Instituto Costarricense de Turismo photo
Another bounty of Costa Rica.
Bring salt. |
| Osa searchers come up empty in quest for missing U.S. tourist |
|
|
By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Officials have suspended the search for a missing U.S. tourist, Cody Roman Dial, in Parque Nacional Corcovado. Carlos Herrera, the Cruz Roja chief in charge of search efforts, said Wednesday from Puerto Jiménez that a new search would only begin again if revealing facts or pieces of evidence come to light. Authorities have been looking for Dial since July 24 in the dense and rugged jungle terrain located on the Osa peninsula, but Herrera said there has been no trace of the 27-year-old Dial after a complete sweep of park grounds. “There are no clues for us to follow,” said Herrera by telephone. “We searched the entire park and have not found a thing.” Based on an email to his father in mid-July, Dial was thought to be kayaking and camping in the park. Authorities said that if Dial passed through the park at all then he is expected to have entered |
via
the Río Conte, as he did not register at a park ranger station. Roman Dial, the missing man's father, has been in Costa Rica since the search began. Herrera said the elder Dial is now in contact with the U.S. Embassy in coordinating a subsequent plan of action to find his son. An embassy spokesperson said they were unable to comment on the matter and referred to it as an ongoing investigation. “We've been in very close contact with the local authorities as well as the family regarding this investigation,” he said. A representative from the Judicial Investigating Organization said agents have not been assigned to the case. Dial was said to have been last seen by a taxi driver July 22 in a sector of Osa known as El Tigre. The Dials live in Anchorage, Alaska, where the father is a professor at Alaska Pacific University and a well-known adventurer and part of the National Geographic Explorers team. |
 |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| 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's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 155 | |||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| European space probe is now in place orbiting its target, a
comet |
|
|
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It's a proud moment for the Paris-based European Space Agency. After a decade-long six-billion-kilometer chase, its Rosetta orbiter made history Wednesday, finally catching up with Comet 67P halfway between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. The agency's $1.7 billion probe is the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet. After entering orbit 100 kilometers above the surface of the 67P/Churymov-Gerasimenko comet early Wednesday morning, at a distance of more than 400 million kilometers from Earth, images soon emerged that showed the vessel heading toward a massive rock spinning in the starry dark. Rosetta will escort Comet 67P for the next year and observe it as it heads towards the sun. The highlight of the mission will come in November, when Rosetta will release a small probe that will attempt to land on Comet 67P — the first ever spacecraft to accomplish such a feat. For recently retired mission manager Gerhard Schwem, reached by phone from the agency's operations center in Germany, Rosetta's rendezvous on Wednesday is not only a first in space history, but a career milestone. "For me it's a great day," he said. "I've been working on this cometary cornerstone, as it’s called in the agency, since '85. It's the span of my professional career ... so it's quite great that I started with something that's now basically accomplished." For Stephan Ulamec, Rosetta project manager, the landmark achievement, for all of its technological sophistication, is about addressing very basic questions. "The challenge is that we know almost nothing about the comet, and we knew even less when we built the probe," he said. "We didn't know how the surface looks like, whether it is soft or hard like ice. The day-night cycle is fairly known. But until recently we didn't even know what the comet looks like, what shape it has." "And that is the big difference to missions where we land on the moon or on Mars, where we have a pretty good notion of the body we intend to land on," he added. Scientists believe comets contain the origins of life on Earth. The Rosetta probe is named after the stone that helped unlock the hieroglyphic language of the ancient Egyptians. |
 European Space Agency graphic
Here is a graphic that shows the
configuration of the probe.The theory is that
comets delivered water and other essential components as they slammed
into the planet's surface.
According to Schwem, the project's ultimate goal is to dig back in time, a sort of space archeology, to the very origins of the Solar System. "Comets are not only fascinating objects ... when it's bright enough and you see the tail in the night sky, but comets for us are very, very important," Schwem said. "They can contain the material that has been preserved, like in a deep freeze, since the planets and sun formed 4.6 billion years ago." With the probe now orbiting around 67P, Rosetta's scientists will begin mapping the comet's surface with a range of instruments. They'll also begin studying the composition of gas emitting from its surface as the comet draws closer to the sun. If Rosetta's small lander successfully touches down this fall, tools aboard the 220-pound landing unit will analyze material below the comet's surface along with its internal temperature fluctuations as it hurtles through space. Although the Rosetta mission is officially expected to wrap up by the end of 2015, Schwem says the probe's 31-month hibernation, which technicians concluded in January, conserved enough energy to allow the craft to produce new information and updates into 2016. Rosetta has traveled over six billion kilometers since blasting off from earth in March 2004. It made a series of fly-bys of Mars and Earth so it could pick up speed and positioned itself into the same orbital path as Comet 67P. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA, also contributed experts and instruments to Europe's Rosetta mission. |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| 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's Fifth
news page
|
||
 |
 |
|
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 155 | |||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| U.S. border a grim place for illegals shoved across By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Over the last 16 years, according to U.S. government records, more than 6,000 people have died after crossing the U.S. border illegally from Mexico and finding themselves in a dangerous environment. Yet illegal immigrants, mostly from Central America, continue to cross the border in south Texas, where temperatures are soaring. In south Texas, the Rio Grande that marks the border with Mexico is fairly easy to cross. But once across, the undocumented immigrants find little water, heavy brush and many small creatures with nasty bites. U.S. Border Patrol agent Jason Owens said smugglers often leave people on their own here. "The guides that bring them across, if they can't keep up, they leave them behind; they walk around lost… no water, no idea where they are supposed to go, no form of communication. This close to the river a lot of people can find themselves in trouble and die," said Owens. Owens said the human smugglers are part of a Mexican criminal world that includes drug trafficking cartels responsible for killing thousands of people. "Among the smuggling groups you see infighting with the cartels, the cartel fighting with the Mexican authorities, who are doing their best over there to get control of the situation, and then they come over here and a lot of times you have the same thing," continued Owens. Hundreds of unidentified bodies have been discovered in south Texas. Many of them were dug out of the ground by a volunteer forensic team from Baylor University. Those who come from Central America are fleeing drug gang violence and poverty in countries like Honduras. On the long journey through Mexico, many are robbed and abused, including children who travel alone. Border Patrol spokesman Peter Bidegain said that once they cross, the child immigrants often seek the protection of the agents and confide in them. "A lot of times when you ask them about their journey, they start to cry. It is very emotional; it is emotional for the agents, it's emotional for the kids," said Bidegain. Tony Payan, who heads the Mexico Center at Rice University's Baker Institute, said child smugglers face little danger of being caught. "What these guys do is take the child to the U.S./Mexico border and then they push them across the river without having to cross themselves, so they are not exposing themselves to being arrested and detained," said Payan. As long as many people are able to make it across the border and stay, experts say people in Central America will continue to pay smugglers thousands of dollars per person. Despite the dangers, Payan said what many immigrants face at home is worse. "Enormous, very deep poverty in Central America, and hopelessness, and when people are hopeless, they are going to move. It has been the history of mankind," said Payan. Voter interest seems low for November U.S. election By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll paints a grim portrait of the U.S. political landscape. President Barack Obama’s approval is down to only 40 percent in the latest survey. Only 36 percent of those asked approve of his handling of foreign policy. Republicans don’t fare much better. Only 19 percent view them favorably while 54 percent have a negative view. Congressional Democrats got a favorable rating of 31 percent compared to 46 percent negative. Other numbers in this survey suggest Americans are still suffering what might be called a hangover from the recession that ended five years ago. Seventy-one percent of adults in the poll believe the country is on the wrong track, and 76 percent say they are not confident that their children will have a better life than they do, an all-time high for this particular survey. Whichever party can address the long-term economic anxieties is likely to have an advantage not only this November, but in the 2016 presidential election as well. U.S. presidential elections present candidates and political parties their best opportunity to present a vision for the future, and the public usually rewards those who are best able to tap into the fears and hopes of American voters. The bleak public outlook reflected in this latest poll comes with less than four months to go until the midterm congressional elections Nov. 4 and President Obama and his Democratic allies are scrambling to minimize expected losses. The stakes for the president are huge. Loss of Senate control to Republicans for the final two years of Obama’s tenure would likely prevent him from doing anything substantial to burnish his presidential legacy before he leaves office. And Republican control of both the House and Senate would ensure that political gridlock would remain with us at least through the 2016 presidential elections. So President Obama has plenty of reason to hit the campaign trail for Democrats over the next few months. During a recent speech in Kansas City, Missouri, Obama ramped up his rhetoric against Republicans in Congress in the wake of the latest failure by Congress to do anything substantive to deal with the wave of young immigrants on the U.S. southern border. “Stop just hating all the time,” the president told the partisan crowd. “I know they’re not happy that I’m president, but that’s okay. I got a couple of years left. C’mon, then you can be mad at the next president!” It’s clear that election fever is setting in in Washington, and there will be more political wrangling when Congress returns after its summer recess in September. The recent inability of Congress to do much on the immigration issue is classic election-year politicking. Both sides refused to budge. Democrats stood firm against Republican attempts to roll back a 2012 program that deferred deportations for many immigrants who had been brought into the country as children, a popular stand with the growing class of Hispanic voters that Democrats look to count on in future presidential elections. Republican congressional leaders heeded conservative wishes to trim back the amount of money the Obama administration wants to deal with the border crisis. Conservatives want to avoid any moves that could be seen as supporting the president’s immigration policy. For both parties in the end, politics triumphed over the need to address the crisis on the border. Democrats will continue to try and mobilize Hispanic voters to take part in the November midterms, well aware that they are more likely to turn out in presidential election years. Republicans also point that most of the key Senate races this year, with the exception of Colorado, are in conservative-leaning states where Hispanic voters are less of a factor that they would be in other states. Most political analysts believe Republicans will hold or slightly expand their majority in the House of Representatives this year, where all 435 seats are at stake. The real battle is for control of the Senate, where 36 of the 100 seats are being contested and Republicans need to gain six seats currently held by Democrats to claim a bare majority. Republicans appear to have an excellent chance because nine of the 12 states with the most competitive Senate races are states that Republican Mitt Romney won in 2012. Republicans are already favored to win Democratic seats in South Dakota, Montana and West Virginia, which would get them halfway to their goal assuming Democrats don’t win any seats currently held by Republicans. Democrats are hoping for possible upsets in two Republican-leaning states -- Georgia and Kentucky, where Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell faces a credible Democratic challenger in Alison Lundergan Grimes. The most intense Senate battlegrounds this year will be in Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, New Hampshire and North Carolina. All are states with Senate Democratic incumbents facing strong challenges from Republicans. If Republicans can pick off three Democratic incumbents from that list, combined with the other gains they are counting on, they will hold a majority in the Senate come next January, ensuring the two parties will have to either find a way to work together in the final two years of the Obama presidency or resort to gridlock and political paralysis. Senior officer interviewed ex-Afghan POW Bergdahl By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. military was to question freed prisoner-of-war Bowe Bergdahl Wednesday about the circumstances that led to his 2009 capture in Afghanistan by the Taliban, his lawyer said Tuesday. Investigating officer Maj. Gen. Kenneth Dahl was to question Bergdahl, an Army sergeant, at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, where he has been stationed for the past several weeks. "He is looking forward to having all of this over and done with, and being able to move on to the next chapter of his life," lawyer Eugene Fidell said. Fidell declined to speculate on what Bergdahl will say to the general but said his client will cooperate. Bergdahl, 28, was released in May after nearly five years in captivity in exchange for five Taliban prisoners who were transferred to Qatar from the Guantanamo Bay U.S. prison in Cuba. Critics have questioned whether the Obama administration paid too high a price and whether Bergdahl had deserted his combat outpost in Afghanistan before his capture. Greg Rinckey, a military attorney who has been involved in several hearings similar to this one, said the meeting would take place in a conference room, not in a courtroom, and that it will be informal and not adversarial. "This ... general is going to be talking to Sergeant Bergdahl, asking him several questions with his lawyer present," Rinckey said. "It is really not an interrogation, it's more of an interview." There was no announcement late Wednesday about what took place. Some members of Bergdahl's former unit have indicated that he was absent without leave or may have deserted his post when he was captured by the Taliban. Fidell, a well-known lawyer and military justice expert, said his client has been vilified by some people, but the public should not leap to conclusions before the Army finishes its investigation into how and why the soldier left his post in Afghanistan before being captured by the Taliban. "There are people who have vilified Sgt. Bergdahl, there are people who attempted to turn him into a kind of piñata," said Fidell, who teaches at Yale Law School. "On the other hand, there are people of good will who have communicated with me their sympathy for the experience Sgt. Bergdahl has had to undergo, the ordeal really." About two weeks ago, Bergdahl was returned to active duty in an administrative office at Fort Sam Houston. At the time, a Pentagon spokesman, Col. Steve Warren, told reporters in Washington that Bergdahl would be doing administrative work, essentially a desk job. A senior Army officer has said the purpose of the probe was to determine facts and circumstances surrounding Bergdahl's disappearance up to the point of capture. However, the Army has not ruled out disciplinary action against Bergdahl, who was promoted during captivity, from private first class to sergeant, as a matter of standard procedure. Dahl's finding and recommendations will be presented to the director of Army staff, who is not bound by the conclusions and who could issue his own determinations and recommendations. When asked about what penalties Bergdahl may face as a result of the interview, Fidell said in the ABC News interview: "I don’t think any reasonable person would want to send someone who’s already been held captive for five years by the Taliban to jail." Fidell added that Bergdahl is looking forward to having this entire matter behind him, and that the soldier has a lot of faith in the common sense of the American people. He said Bergdahl also is deeply grateful that President Barack Obama saved his life. Another insider shooting involved Afghanistan cops By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
An Afghan police officer killed seven colleagues in central Afghanistan Tuesday night, the third deadly insider attack in 24 hours. The assailant fled after opening fire at a checkpoint in Tarinkot, the capital of Uruzgan province. The attack followed a shooting at a military training facility near Kabul that killed a U.S. general and injured about 15 others, including a German general. In a third incident Tuesday, an Afghan police guard died in a gunfight with allied troops in the eastern Paktia province. In recent years, there have been dozens of instances in which Afghan forces turned their weapons on coalition forces, killing scores of troops from the U.S. and elsewhere and creating mistrust between the joint patrols. The American major general, Harold Greene, was the highest ranking U.S. official to be killed in Afghanistan in the 13-year conflict. He was reportedly shot at close range by a gunman dressed in an Afghan military uniform during what a Pentagon spokesman called a routine site visit by senior officers to the Marshal Fahim National Defense University. The insider attacks come as Afghanistan prepares for the withdrawal of foreign troops by the end of the year. France considers banning aggressive Jewish group By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The conflict in Gaza is unleashing strong and sometimes violent passions in France, home to Europe's largest communities of Jews and Muslims. It is also feeding fringe groups such as the small, radical Jewish Defense League. As French authorities consider banning the movement, its strong tactics are earning praise from some Jews, who feel embattled in their own country. It’s a summer of unrest in the Middle East and in France, where tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters have taken to the streets. Not all the protests have been peaceful. Demonstrators have clashed with police and, in the Paris area, some have attacked Jewish businesses and synagogues. But the aggression goes two ways. A group of tough, young Jews is fighting back. They call themselves the Jewish Defense League, taking their name – and inspiration – from outlawed movements in Israel and the United States, where the FBI says the U.S. group has engaged in terrorist activity. In France, the decade-old LDJ has a Facebook page and Web site. It uses the emblem of Israel's banned far-right Kach party: a raised fist inside a black Star of David. One posted video pans from Hamas activists to pro-Palestinian protesters, with a tagline: "France under the influence." The league did not respond to interview requests. But in a January interview with Israeli TV posted on YouTube, one member said French police were incapable of protecting the Jewish community from anti-Semitic attacks. That, he said, is why the league exists. Many do not agree. Critics claim LDJ members beat up young Muslims and attack Jews critical of Israel. Among those petitioning to abolish the group is Abdallah Zekri, head of the Observatory Against Islamophobia, a branch of France's Muslim Council. He said the league preaches hatred and insults Islam, on its Web site, as a religion of violence and of killers. He called that kind of rhetoric unacceptable. Jews are also critical. French Jewish Union for Peace member Richard Wagman, who joined recent pro-Palestinian rallies, described the LDJ as a far-right, racist group. "The Jewish Defense League doesn't defend too many people and certainly not the Jews,” Wagman said. “So we don't have anything to do with that group, and they don't have much to do with the Jewish people.” Roger Cukierman, president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, dismisses the league as a marginal group with only a few hundred members, at most. "Their methods do not apply to a community like ours, which needs moderate people at its head,” Cukierman said. “We don't want to enter into that kind of situation." But some Jews quietly cheer on the league on. The last decade has witnessed a spike in anti-Semitic attacks in France, coupled with an equally worrying rise of radical Islam. The gang killing of a young Jewish man outside Paris in 2006, the 2012 shooting deaths of four Jews in Toulouse, and May's attack on a Brussels Jewish Museum have cemented feelings among some Jews that they are no longer safe in France. Those views were on display last week at a pro-Israel demonstration in Paris. Under tight police protection, several thousand Jews waved French and Israeli flags and sang the two national anthems. Business owner Marc Ben Attar, who joined the rally, said he is no fan of militia groups. He said the Jewish Defense League acts in unconventional and illegal ways. But in France, young people are attacked every day and the community needs to defend itself, he said. Jean-Yves Camus, an expert on far-right groups, said Jews also remain haunted by the Holocaust. "Since 1945, there is a feeling among the Jews in the diaspora that had Jews been united and able to set up a self-defense organization …maybe the genocide would have taken place, but more youth could have been saved," Camus said. The situation is very different today, but the need for self-defense remains strong. Still, while the LDJ's popularity is growing, Camus said it remains nasty, strident – and small. As the Gaza conflict simmers, other fringe groups are gaining traction in France. Some call themselves peaceful. Other protesters have brandished banners embracing radical Islam. French authorities are considering whether to ban the LDJ and other groups viewed to be problematic. For years, the government has warned against the risk of importing the Middle East conflict to France, but, in some ways, that may have already happened. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Some of our other titles: |
|||||
| A.M. Panama |
A.M. Colombia |
A.M. Guatemala |
A.M. Honduras |
A.M. Cuba |
A.M. Nicaragua |
| A.M. Venezuela |
A.M. Central America |
A.M. Dominican Republic |
A.M. Ecuador | A.M. El Salvador |
A.M. Bolivia |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| 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's sixth news page |
|
||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 7, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 155 | |||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
||
|
 University of Michigan/Joseph Xu
Image of Marilyn
Monroe appears when researcher fogs it.Plastic
trick can protect from fake drugs
By the University of Michigan news service
An outline of Marilyn Monroe's iconic face appeared on the clear, plastic film when a researcher fogs it with her breath. Terry Shyu, a doctoral student in chemical engineering at the University of Michigan, was demonstrating a new high-tech label for fighting drug counterfeiting. While the researchers don't envision movie stars on medicine bottles, they used Monroe's image to prove their concept. Counterfeit drugs, which at best contain wrong doses and at worst are toxic, are thought to kill more than 700,000 people per year. While less than 1 percent of the U.S. pharmaceuticals market is believed to be counterfeit, it is a huge problem in the developing world where as much as a third of the available medicine is fake. To fight back against these and other forms of counterfeiting, researchers at the University of Michigan and in South Korea have developed a way to make labels that change when someone breathes on them, revealing a hidden image. "One challenge in fighting counterfeiting is the need to stay ahead of the counterfeiters," said Nicholas Kotov, a professor of chemical engineering who led the Michigan effort. "We use a molding process," Ms. Shyu said, noting that this inexpensive manufacturing technique is also used to make plastic cups. The labels work because an array of tiny pillars on the top of a surface effectively hides images written on the material beneath. Ms. Shyu compares the texture of the pillars to a submicroscopic toothbrush. The hidden images appear when the pillars trap moisture. "You can verify that you have the real product with just a breath of air," Kotov said. The simple phenomenon could make it easy for buyers to avoid being fooled by fake packaging. Early morning quake reported By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
An earthquake estimated at a magnitude of 4.7 took place in the hills northeast of Quepos about 2:50 a.m. today. Central Valley residents who were up at that time felt the shaking. The epicenter was relatively shallow, estimated at 20.5 kilometers by the Laboratorio de Ingeniería Sísmica at the Universidad de Costa Rica. That is about 13 miles. The area of the epicenter is not heavily populated. The Laboratorio said the epicenter was 11.8 kilometers south southeast of Sabanilla de Acosta and 16.5 kilometers north of Damas de Quepos. |
| Costa Rican News |
AMCostaRicaArchives.com |
Retire NOW
in Costa Rica |
CostaRicaReport.com |
| Fine Dining
in Costa Rica |
The CAFTA Report |
Fish
fabulous Costa Rica |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Food |
|
| 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 | ||||||
| From Page 7: Tomato producers told to be wary of moth By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
An invasive species of moth could wreak havoc on Costa Rica's agriculture, according to an updated order sent out from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. The agency has advised Costa Rica and other Latin American nations to take a series of actions to prevent the Tuta absoluta moth from spreading and being sent to the U.S. through tomato exports. Tuta absoluta, also known as Meyrick, is the strain of moth that is known for aggressively feeding by its larvae on tomato plants. It is capable of destroying entire plantings of tomatoes. The federal order from the U.S. agency serves as a warning to regional countries to prevent having the Tuta absoluta introduced. The small insect provides a massive threat to farmers as it reproduces at a rapid rate. According to the North American Plant Protection Organization, the moth species originated in South America and has been responsible for 80 to 100 percent losses in tomato plantations. Gina Monteverde, head of Costa Rica's pesticide certification department, said farmers and distributors will have to follow a few new guidelines as a result of the U.S. order. All exports must come from areas free of Tuta absoluta, she said. The products must also be treated with bromomethane pesticide, among additional steps for further exporting. Although the Mideast has most of the confirmed cases of the moth, a monitoring service says there have been two confirmed sightings in Costa Rica and also some in Colombia. |
