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San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 164
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 Casa Presidencial
photo
The
former president of Uruguay, José Mujica, in town for auniversity speech, visited Luis Guillermo Solís Wednesday. The former urban guerrilla is highly respected because of his austere lifestyle and because he legalized marijuana in his country. Mujica said he would not give advice to another country. Government agencies fighting each other By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Costa Rican government is struggling to become a member of the Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development, which is pro-tax. However, the Agencia de Protección de Datos de los Habitantes, created by a Costa Rican data privacy law, has issued a decision that runs counter to the government's desires. The Ministerio de Hacienda said Wednesday that the decision is a blow to its efforts to counter tax evasion and money laundering. The decision involves a new web-based system to which large taxpayers are supposed to upload all their financial data. The data protection agency is part of the Ministerio de Justicia y Paz, and that ministry issued a statement Wednesday noting that the decision is being appealed. It also said that the Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development also is in favor of data security. The Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development, the tax collecting agency, is part of the Ministerio de Hacienda. This ministry would like to have access to the ownership information on all the corporations in the country. It says it needs this to prevent tax evasion. The ministry is seeking passage of a bill in the legislature to give it this power. The Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development has scheduled a review of Costa Rica's submissions in September. The organization supports the transfer of tax information from one country to the next to prevent evasion, and also demands a number of actions on the part of Costa Rica. The government said it believes that membership in the organization would enhance the prospects of development. The cost of joining the organization has not been made clear. Limón radio station marks 70 years By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Radio Casino in Limón is marking its 70 years of being on the air. The station, which now is on 98.3 FM, began broadcasting right after World War II on Aug. 18, 1945. The station survived a fire in 1970 that destroyed its building. The station calls itself the La Reina del Caribe and tries to mirror the unique traditions and culture of the Caribbean, it said in a release. Among other programming it broadcast a Roman Catholic Mass each Sunday.  Oregon State University
photo
The Dominican salamanderSalamander found
in amber is a surprise
By the
Oregon State University news staff
More than 20 million years ago, a short struggle took place in what is now the Dominican Republic, resulting in one animal getting its leg bitten off by a predator just before it escaped. But in the confusion, it fell into a gooey resin deposit to be fossilized and entombed forever in amber. The fossil record of that event has revealed something not known before, that salamanders once lived on an island in the Caribbean Sea. Today, they are nowhere to be found in the entire Caribbean area. The never-before-seen and now extinct species of salamander, named Palaeoplethodon hispaniolae by the authors of the paper, adds more clues to the ecological and geological history of the islands of the Caribbean. Findings about its brief life and traumatic end of the baby salamander have been published in the journal Palaeodiversity, by researchers from Oregon State University and the University of California at Berkeley. “I was shocked when I first saw it in amber,” said George Poinar, Jr., a professor emeritus in the Oregon institution, and a world expert in the study of insects, plants and other life forms preserved in amber, all of which allow researchers to reconstruct the ecology of ancient ecosystems. “There are very few salamander fossils of any type, and no one has ever found a salamander preserved in amber,” Poinar said. “And finding it in Dominican amber was especially unexpected, because today no salamanders, even living ones, have ever been found in that region.” This fossil salamander belonged to the family Plethodontidae, a widespread family that today is still very common in North America, particularly the Appalachian Mountains. But it had back and front legs lacking distinct toes, just almost complete webbing with little bumps on them. As such, it might not have been as prolific a climber as some modern species, Poinar said, and it probably lived in small trees or tropical flowering plants. This specimen, Poinar said, came from an amber mine in the northern mountain range of the Dominican Republic, between Puerto Plata and Santiago. “The discovery of this fossil shows there once were salamanders in the Caribbean, but it’s still a mystery why they all went extinct,” Poinar said. “They may have been killed by some climatic event, or were vulnerable to some type of predator.” This fossil is 20-30 million years old, and its lineage may go back 40-60 million years ago when the Proto-Greater Antilles, that now include islands such as Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, were still joined to North and South America. Salamanders may have simply stayed on the islands as they began their tectonic drift across the Caribbean Sea. They also may have crossed a land bridge during periods of low sea level, or it’s possible a few specimens could have floated in on debris, riding a log across the ocean. California soda tax reported falling short By the Cornell University news staff
A Cornell-University of Iowa analysis of a soda tax passed last fall by voters in Berkeley, California, found the measure so far has fizzled, raising retail prices for high-calorie sugary drinks by less than half the amount expected. The measure is the first such city ordinance in the country. The law, which took effect this March, imposes a penny-per-ounce tax on distributors of sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soft drinks, energy drinks and presweetened teas. Distributors pay 20 cents per 20-ounce bottle of Coke, for instance. Tax proponents expected the extra cost to result in higher prices for shoppers, which would discourage soda consumption. To date, however, consumers have been largely spared from higher prices, researchers found. On average, prices for beverages covered under the law rose by less than half of the tax amount. For Coke and Pepsi, only 22 percent of the tax was passed on to consumers. The findings by economists John Cawley of Cornell and David Frisvold of the University of Iowa appear in the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper. “In light of the predictions of the proponents of the tax, as well as in light of the previous research, we expected to see the tax fully passed through to consumers,” said Cawley. “In contrast, we find that less than half, and in some cases, only a quarter of it is. This is important because the point of the tax was to make sugar-sweetened beverages more expensive so consumers would buy, and drink, less of them.” So-called sin taxes are designed to improve public health by discouraging people from purchasing unhealthy products. Smoking rates, for instance, have plummeted in the United States in recent decades partly due to federal, state and local taxes that have driven up cigarette costs. Berkeley officials hoped that the soda tax would raise prices and lead residents to avoid energy-dense, sugar-sweetened beverages, considered a culprit for high rates of obesity and chronic disease. “The reason for this surprising result could be related to the fact that it's a city tax and therefore store owners have to be concerned about the ability of consumers to shop at stores outside of Berkeley,” Cawley said. “Concerns about cross-border shopping could contribute to a low pass-through of the tax.” For the study, the research team visited nearly all Berkeley groceries, supermarkets, pharmacies, convenience stores and gas stations and recorded prices for a wide variety of products. They collected data from a comparable sample in nearby San Francisco, where a ballot initiative to impose a soda tax failed last fall. The researchers compared price changes for regular and diet drinks – which were untaxed – in both cities from before and after the tax took effect. The study, authors note, offers several advantages over previous research on soda taxes in other nations. It’s the first to collect extensive store-level data on prices before and after a tax on regular and diet drinks, and it includes a neighboring control location to account for trends in prices over time. Revenue collected from the tax, projected to be $1.2 million in the first year, goes into a Berkeley general fund, part of which has been earmarked for healthy living programs. Though the tax does not yet appear to be raising prices, the authors note that the idea has merit.
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copyrighted by Consultantes Ro Colorado S.A 2015 and may not be
reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 164 | |
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| Another questionable survey seeks to evaluate safety in
Costa Rica |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Is Costa Rica the 10th safety place in the world or is the report from another of those bogus surveys like the Happy Planet Index? The latest report comes from a firm called ValuePenguin that mashes data to develop reports on car insurance and other consumer purchases. The report also said that Costa Rica was the fourth safest country in the small population category after Cyprus, Ireland and Iceland. Some 107 countries were included in the results, but critics quickly pointed out that Great Britain was not included. The company used available data to record population carbon dioxide release, number of police per 100,000 residents, traffic deaths per 100,000 residents, thefts, stickups and life expectancy. |
The firm
reported that Costa Rica had 20 assaults per 100,000 persons.
To rank these countries, the firm said it collected data on a variety
of safety-related topics from a variety of reputable sources,
everything from the quality of countries’ water sources
to their rates of kidnappings and the prevalence of drugs between their
borders. Then it said it narrowed the list to the seven factors. Critics quickly savaged the study on a Web page. "This Valuepenguin report is not worth the bandwidth it uses up!" said one. Another said that the data was at least four years old. As A.M. Costa Rica has reported, crime statistics here are skewed because many persons do not report them because they do not expect an investigation. The 2009 Happy Planet Index is still quoted uncritically even by government sources even though it was mainly ideological. It stressed lack of industrial development. |
 Ministerio
de Seguridad Pública
Officer is bringing ashore a net
that also containes dead fish. |
No
fishing!
Two boat crews violated rules By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Pacific fishermen are continually violating a moratorium imposed for environmental reasons on the Gulf of Nicoya. The law says that commercial fishing for certain food fish is prohibited from July 1 to Sept. 30. The Fuerza Pública and the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas rounded up two more boat crews this week for violating the moratorium. That was in the vicinity of Isla Bejuco. Between them the crews had 568 kilos of corvina that police said was valued at more than $3,000 at the supermarket. The government makes subsidy payments to those in the fishing business who are handicapped by the ban. The Instituto Costarricense de Pesca y Acuicultura is the agency that sets the period for the moratorium based on the seasonal activities of the fish. |
| Heredia man facing allegations of luring young men via
Facebook |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A Santa Bárbara de Heredia man has been detained on the allegation that he lured two teens to his home and then raped one and sexually abuse the second boy. The Poder Judicial identified him by the last names of Gómez Contreras. He was detained at his home about 6 a.m., said the Poder Judicial. He is 36, and the two young men are 16 and 17, said the Judicial Investigating Organization |
The
allegation is that between February and May he conducted a
questionnaire via Facebook and said he was casting for modeling jobs at
his home. He also is facing the allegation of promising sexual acts for money, said the Poder Judicial. The Judicial Investigating Organization, which conducted the raid, said that the alleged casting and sex acts took place in a home in San Antonio de Belén. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2015 and may not
be
reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 164 | |||||
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| Tropical
spider joins the list of creatures that can glide to a safe
landing |
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By the University of California, Berkeley,
news staff
Arachnophobes fearful of spiders jumping, creeping or falling into their beds now have something new to worry about. Some spiders might also glide in through the window. A group of biologists working in Panamá and Perú have discovered a type of nocturnal hunting spider, about two inches across, that is able to steer while falling, much like a wingsuit flyer, in order to return to the tree from which it fell. The spider joins a small number of non-flying insects, ants, bristletails and some insect larvae, known to have the ability to maneuver while falling instead of dropping like a rock, according to Robert Dudley, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the authors of a paper about the spider appearing this week in the journal Interface of the Royal Society. “My guess is that many animals living in the trees are good at aerial gliding, from snakes and lizards to ants and now spiders,” Dudley said. “If a predator comes along, it frees the animal to jump if it has a time-tested way of gliding to the nearest tree rather than landing in the understory or in a stream.” Forest floor predators or fish would quickly make a meal of a grounded tree-dweller. The spider, from the genus Selenops, is the only arachnid they found that was able to do this. Other arachnids, scorpions, pseudoscorpions, whip scorpions and even other types of spiders, merely plummeted to earth. Dudley and Stephen Yanoviak, a professor of biology at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, have been studying gliding insects in tropical forests for more than a decade, after discovering a group of ants that unfailingly land on a tree when accidentally brushed off a branch. This led them to toss from a tree every non-flying arthropod they could find to see which animals glided. “As far as adult arthropods are concerned, only ants, bristletails and spiders use directed aerial descent,” Yanoviak said. “However, the wingless immature stages of various insects that are winged as adults can also glide really well. |
 University
of Kentucky/ Stephen Yanoviak
This spider from the genus Selenops is about two inches across
and hunts in the tree canopy at night for its prey. These include cockroaches, mantids, katydids, stick insects and true bugs.” Dudley is interested in directed aerial descent because controlled gliding, he thinks, may have been the predecessor to flying, as animals learned how to use their arms and legs to gain lift in addition to maneuvering in freefall. “This type of aerial behavior preceded the origin of wings,” he said. The 59 individual Selenops spiders they studied were all well-adapted to skydiving. They are wafer thin, Dudley said, and flexible. They maneuver by spreading their legs wide in order to use lift and drag to steer themselves toward the tree trunk when they fall. If they fall upside down, they’re able to right themselves in midair. The biologists occasionally saw spiders bounce off the trunk, recover and maneuver back to the trunk a second time for a successful landing. “This study, like the first report of gliding ants, raises many questions that are wide open for further study.” Yanoviak said. “For instance, how acute is the vision of these spiders? How do they target a tree? What is the effect of their hairs or spines on aerodynamic performance?” By studying these unusual types of animal behavior, Dudley said, biologists may be able to supply engineers with novel ideas for robots that can right themselves when falling. Dudley also is with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panamá. |
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
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Colorado
S.A. 2015 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 164 | |||||||
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| Iran to do own inspection, leaked document claims By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The United States says it has confidence in the International Atomic Energy Agency to probe Iran's alleged past efforts to build a atomic bomb after a leaked agency memo shows it will let Iran carry out its own inspections at a suspected nuclear site. The Associated Press said Wednesday it has seen what it calls a secret agreement between Iran and the Atomic Energy Agency and endorsed by the six world powers that negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the U.S. Under the agreement, Iran itself will send its own inspectors and equipment to the Parchin nuclear site where Iran has been suspected of trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran has consistently denied the charge and has refused to allow international inspectors into the site. The deal gives Iran the right to withhold photos and video of parts of Parchin that the Iranians say have military significance. This deal is apparently exclusive to Iran and no other Atomic Energy Agency member state has such an arrangement. In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that he could not comment on what he says is a purported draft document. But he said the U.S. is comfortable with any arrangements the Atomic Energy Agency has with Iran. "When it comes to monitoring Iran's behavior going forward, the IAEA has separately developed the most robust inspection regime ever peacefully negotiated to ensure Iran's current program remains exclusively peaceful," he said. Kirby said it is not up to the six world powers to endorse or reject any agreement between the Atomic Energy Agency and Iran. He said as part of the nuclear deal with Tehran, the Atomic Energy Agency must be satisfied that Iran is fully cooperating with any investigation that it may have at one time tried to develop a nuclear weapon. If the agency is not happy, sanctions against Iran would not be lifted. Iran has always denied ever wanting to build a nuclear bomb. It says evidence of a weapons program at Parchin was based on false intelligence by the U.S. and Israel. The U.S. Congress will vote next month whether to back or reject the nuclear deal with Iran. President Barack Obama says he would veto a rejection. House Minority Leader, Democrat Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that the House has enough votes to sustain a veto. Opponents to the deal say it does not totally dismantle Iran's nuclear infrastructure, leaving the door open to a possible weapon. Supporters say it is the best deal possible and one that includes strict inspections of Iran's nuclear program. U.S. birthright citizenship becomes campaign issue By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Donald Trump, the leading 2016 U.S. Republican presidential contender, has ignited new consideration of an old idea: ending the country's nearly 150-year-old grant of citizenship to anyone born in the United States. The billionaire real estate mogul, who has soared to the top of surveys of Republican voters with calls to deport the country's 11 million illegal immigrants, says birthright citizenship remains the biggest magnet for illegal immigration. He says he wants to amend the U.S. Constitution to repeal the 14th Amendment clause that declares "all persons born or naturalized in the United States" are U.S. citizens. The Mexican government attacked Trump's anti-immigration proposals Wednesday, saying they reflect prejudice, racism or plain ignorance. "Anyone who understands the depth of the U.S.-Mexico relationship realizes that those proposals are not only prejudiced and absurd, but would be detrimental to the well-being of both societies," Mexico’s foreign ministry said. Five months ahead of the first state-by-state contests to pick a Republican presidential nominee, Trump and his 16 rivals for the party’s nomination are all calling for tough measures to curb the flow of undocumented immigrants across the southern U.S. border with Mexico. But not all of them support Trump's call for ending birthright citizenship, including two of his key rivals, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, the son and brother of two U.S. presidents, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. Bush called birthright citizenship a constitutionally protected right. Rubio said, "I'm open to doing things that prevent people from coming to the U.S. to take advantage of the 14th Amendment, but I'm not in favor of repealing it." Other Republican contenders say they support Trump's stance. The Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to limit immigration to the United States, says that 30 of the world's 194 countries allow birthright citizenship, but that the United States and Canada are the only two advanced economies that do so. The group contends that foreign women entering the U.S. as birth tourists are annually giving birth to 36,000 babies so their children can become American citizens. An independent 2010 study by the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that 340,000 out of 4.3 million babies born in the U.S. in 2008 were the children of immigrants who had entered the country illegally, about 8 percent of the total. Birthright citizenship in the U.S. dates to its founding days in the 18th century, when English common law was imported to the first American colonies. The issue of citizenship came to the forefront with an infamous 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that birthright citizenship did not apply to the children of slaves. But after the country's Civil War in the 1860s, when anti-slavery northern states defeated a southern confederacy favoring slavery, the country's Constitution was amended to make it clear that all freed slaves were U.S. citizens. At the end of the 19th century, the Supreme Court further upheld that interpretation, ruling all children born in the U.S., except for those of diplomats serving in the country, invading armies and those born on foreign public ships, are U.S. citizens. Conservative lawmakers in the U.S. have occasionally attempted to revoke the birthright citizenship provision, but have failed to win broad support for doing so. Amending the U.S. Constitution is difficult, requiring both chambers of Congress to approve any changes with a two-thirds vote, followed by approval from at least 38 of the 50 state legislatures. Fed minutes are mixed on increase in interest rate By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Top officials of the U.S. central bank are balancing an improving job market against weak inflation and problems overseas as they ponder when and how much to raise interest rates. Wednesday, the U.S. Federal Reserve published the minutes of its rate-setting meeting in late July with the customary delay of several weeks. Many economists predict that the central bank will raise interest rates in September, the first such hike in more than nine years. Low interest rates were intended to boost the economy during the financial crisis, but may no longer be needed. The Fed’s job is to seek full employment and stable prices. The unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent during the financial crisis to the current 5.3 percent, which is close to the level considered full employment in the United States. But Fed officials also expressed concern about weak growth in overseas markets, slow growth in U.S. wages and inflation that is running persistently below the Fed’s goal of a 2 percent annual rate. However, they also said the economy is approaching the point of being able to withstand an interest rate increase. A new government report early Wednesday showed inflation rose at a slower pace in the U.S. economy in July. Overall prices rose just 0.1 percent, with prices up a meager two-tenths of a percent over the past year. Outside the volatile areas of food and energy, so-called core prices advanced 1.8 percent for the year ending in July. Thursday, the Fed will get new data on the job market when the government reports the number of Americans signing up for unemployment compensation. Obama to visit New Orleans to mark hurricane anniversary By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama will visit New Orleans, Louisiana, next week to check on the 10-year effort to rebuild the southern U.S. city from the devastation wreaked there by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Obama plans to meet a week from today with New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and residents in several neighborhoods who have rebuilt their lives over the last decade. Numerous other U.S. officials are also visiting the city in the coming days for commemorative events and meetings on what yet needs to be done to restore the city and its environs. The storm stands as the costliest natural disaster ever in the United States, having caused $135 billion in damage. It killed 1,800 people and displaced a million others as torrential rains and winds up to 280 kilometers an hour raked the city near the Gulf of Mexico. Billions of dollars in federal assistance has been spent for reconstruction programs in Louisiana and neighboring states, but New Orleans was the hardest hit. Mayor Landrieu said more than $14 billion has been spent to reinforce levees that spectacularly failed to protect the city when the storm slammed ashore Aug. 29, 2005, leaving 80 percent of New Orleans underwater. He said he was confident his city could withstand any new storm equal to Katrina. "The city is much safer than it was in terms of hurricane protection," he said in Washington this week. U.S. levels more sanctions on Mexican firms, individuals By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on 15 Mexican businesses and six individuals Wednesday for their support of a major drug cartel. "The Los Cunis drug trafficking organization is one of the most powerful and violent drug cartels in Mexico," said John E. Smith, the acting chief of the Treasury's foreign assets control. "Today's designation marks the first step in dismantling its significant business network. These businesses and individuals will no longer be able to operate under the veil of legitimacy," Smith said. Wednesday's move freezes any assets the targeted entities and individuals may have in the United States, and U.S. persons are barred from doing business with them. The businesses include two real estate firms, two shopping centers, and an exclusive luxury hotel in Tomaltan in Jalisco state. Six individual Mexicans with ties to the Los Cunis cartel also were sanctioned. Los Cunis leader Abigael González Valencia was captured in Mexico in February. But another cartel chief, his brother-in-law Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, is still at large. Subway spokesman to admit his trysts with underaged girls By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The longtime television ad pitchman for Subway, the world's biggest fast-food chain, agreed Wednesday to plead guilty in the United States to charges that he paid for sex with underage girls and distributed child pornography. The man, Jared Fogle, was known in the United States as the Subway guy after he claimed that he lost 90 kilograms while he was a college student by eating healthily at Subway restaurants. The restaurant chain, with about 33,000 restaurants across the globe, subsequently hired Fogle, now 37, to appear in television ads touting his dramatic weight loss and the Subway menu. Fogle went on his diet while at Indiana University in the central part of the U.S. Not far away in an Indianapolis courthouse, he agreed Wednesday to plead guilty at a later date to charges that he traveled to New York to engage in illicit sex with underage girls and distributed and received child pornography. Under his plea deal with prosecutors, Fogle will pay $1.4 million in restitution to 14 minor victims, register as a sex offender and undergo treatment for sexual disorders. Each person is to receive $100,000. Fogle faces a five- to 12-year prison term. As Fogle, the father of two children, was appearing in court, his wife, Katie Fogle, announced she is divorcing him. Subway ended its relationship with Fogle when authorities raided his Indiana home last month. Dead aid and health workers honored on Humanitarian Day By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
In commemoration of World Humanitarian Day, international agencies paid tribute to the thousands of humanitarian workers who have lost their lives or been injured in the line of duty. In December 2008, the U.N. General Assembly established World Humanitarian Day on Aug. 19 in memory of the terrorist attack on U.N. headquarters in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad in 2003. Twenty-two U.N. staff members were killed, including mission chief, Sergio Vierra de Mello. U.N. chief spokesman in Geneva, Ahmad Fawzi, was de Mello’s press secretary. That day is seared in his memory. “It was the beginning of a downward spiral in terms of U.N. protection and U.N. humanitarian work where we realized that we had become a target of terrorism,” he recalled. Since then, attacks against humanitarian workers responding to emergencies have increased and become all too commonplace. The World Health Organization is launching a campaign to draw attention to continued attacks on health care workers and health facilities. World Health reports 603 health care workers were killed and 958 injured in direct attacks in 32 countries in 2014 alone. Rudi Coninx, coordinator of the agency's Department of Emergency Risk Management and Humanitarian Response, said health care workers and facilities are under regular and constant attack in areas of conflict. “Just recently, in Yemen, for example, 30 hospitals have been attacked, 14 health care workers have been injured, five of them have been killed. But, it is not only in Yemen. On Syria, in Iraq, in Central African Republic, in Ukraine, in South Sudan today hospitals are attacked and health care workers risk their lives to do what health care workers do, provide services, provide health to people,” he explained. “These attacks must stop.” |
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contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2015 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 164 | |||||||||
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 University of California, Riverside,
photo
Madeline Luth and Nichola Kinsinger conduct
research on spinach.
Bacteria found
to hide on leafy greens
By the University of California,
Riverside, news staff
Ever wonder what the words triple-washed or pre-washed on a bag of baby spinach mean? Not much, according to engineers at the University of California, Riverside. They discovered that small peaks and valleys in baby spinach leaves could be a key reason why there have been numerous bacterial outbreaks involving leafy green vegetables. Currently disinfection is put into the rinse water and not specifically applied to the leaf surface. The researchers found that because of the varied topography of the spinach leaf nearly 15 percent of the leaf surface may reach concentrations as low as 1000 times that of the bleach disinfectant being used to rinse it. As a result, as the leaves move through the commercial processing facility after being rinsed, the bacteria may continue to live, grow, spread, and contaminate other leaves and surfaces within the facility. Following rinsing under the low bleach condition, upwards of 90 percent of adhered bacteria were observed to remain attached to and survive on the leaf surface. “In a sense the leaf is protecting the bacteria and allowing it to spread,” said Nichola M. Kinsinger, a post-doctoral researcher working with Sharon Walker, a professor of chemical and environmental engineering. “It was surprising to discover how the leaf surface formed micro-environments that reduce the bleach concentration and in this case the very disinfection processes intended to clean, remove, and prevent contamination was found to be the potential pathway to amplifying foodborne outbreaks.” Ms. Kinsinger is writing a paper, co-authored by Ms. Walker and Madeline Luth, an undergraduate student, about the findings. It will soon be submitted for publication. The Center for Disease Control estimates that 1 in 6 Americans become ill and 3,000 die annually from foodborne diseases. Additionally, this causes an estimated over $75 billion per year loss for the food industry. Past research has found about 20 percent of single food commodity outbreaks from 2003 to 2008 were attributed to leafy green produce. Contamination of such minimally processed and ready-to-eat produce is of concern since it is frequently consumed uncooked or raw. One of these outbreaks, involving spinach, occurred in California in 2006. In all, 199 people in 26 states were infected with the outbreak strain of E. coli. Three died. Currently, the industry standard is to add 50 to 200 parts per million of bleach to the water used to rinse leafy green vegetables. But that is just a recommendation, not a requirement or regulation, Ms. Kinsinger said. |
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| From Page 7: Monetary Fund delays decision on China's yuan By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The International Monetary Fund says it will delay a decision by a year on whether or not to include China's money in its basket of reserve currencies. Reserve currencies are held by central banks to pay off international debt obligations or influence exchange rates. These include the dollar, yen, euro and the pound. Monetary Fund reserve currencies are supposed to be freely usable and widely traded internationally. China strictly controls its currency exchange rate and the flow of currency in and out of the country. Christopher Whalen of the Kroll Bond Rating Agency said China's yuan was not likely to become a reserve currency until and unless Beijing allowed it to move and trade freely. China's government roiled foreign currency and stock markets recently when it allowed the value of its yuan to drop sharply. Beijing said it was a move toward a more market-oriented method of determining exchange rates. Beijing's critics said it was a move to give Chinese exports a price advantage on global markets. |
