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San
José, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 166
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 Wildlife Conservation Society
photo
The long-tongued nectar bat
(Anoura fistulata)Bolivian
bat has the longest tongue
By the Wildlife Conservation Society news
staff
A groundbreaking Bolivian scientific expedition, Identidad Madidi, has found a bizarre bat along with a new species of big-headed or robber frog in Madidi national park. The researchers found the bizarre tube-lipped nectar bat (Anoura fistulata), the first record of this species in the park. Described in Ecuador just a decade ago and known from only three records, it has the longest tongue in relation to its size of any mammal. The tongue stretching 8.5 cm to reach into the deepest flowers. The frog (Oreobates) was found during the first leg of an 18-month long expedition to chronicle the staggering wildlife living in what is believed to be the world’s most biodiverse park. James Aparicio and Mauricio Ocampo, two professional herpetologists from the Bolivian Faunal Collection and the National Natural History Museum, immediately suspected they had found something exceptional in the first week of the expedition in the tropical montane savannas and gallery forests of the Apolo region of Bolivia. Subsequent examination of available literature supports this discovery as a probable new species for science to be confirmed with forthcoming genetic studies. “Robber frogs are small to medium-sized frogs distributed in the Andes and Amazon region and to date there are 23 known species," said Aparicio. "As soon as we saw these frogs’ distinctive orange inner thighs, it aroused our suspicions about a possible new species, especially because this habitat has never really been studied in detail before Identidad Madidi.” Identidad Madidi is a multi-institutional effort to describe still unknown species and to showcase the wonders of Bolivia’s extraordinary natural heritage at home and abroad. The expedition officially began on June 5 and will eventually visit 14 sites and last for 18 months. Bolivian scientists are working to expand existing knowledge on Madidi’s birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and fish along an altitudinal pathway descending more than 5,000 meters (more than 16,000 feet) from the mountains of the high Andes into the tropical Amazonian forests and grasslands of northern Bolivia. Across the first two study sites in June and July the Identidad Madidi team registered 208 and 254 species of vertebrates respectively, including an impressive 60 species of vertebrates that are new records for the official park list: 15 fish, 5 amphibians, 11 reptiles, 4 birds and 25 mammals. Five of these additions, three catfish, a lizard and another frog, are candidate new species for science and the team continues efforts to determine their identity. Notable new records for the park include the beautiful but deadly annellated coral snake (Micrurus annellatus); the bizarre Hagedorn’s tube-snouted ghost knifefish (Sternarchorhynchus hagedornae); and the long-tailed rice rat (Nephelomys keaysi). Economist notes coastal protection needed By the University of Wyoming news staff
A decade after Hurricane Katrina hammered America’s Gulf Coast, measures are being taken there to protect against similar devastation from natural disasters. But other coastal regions across the world remain vulnerable to damaging storms, and providing similar protection for the tens of millions of people living in those areas will require international action, says University of Wyoming economist Edward Barbier. In a featured commentary, titled “Hurricane Katrina’s lessons for the world” published in the journal Nature, Barbier makes the case for coastal protection plans like those adopted by Louisiana for the world’s most at-risk nations. “For the parts of the world that have extremely vulnerable populations, I think there are lessons that can be learned from the planning strategy that took place in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina,” says Barbier. After Katrina caused about $110 billion in damage, killed more than 1,800 people and displaced 1.2 million others, Louisiana’s Coastal Protection Restoration Authority was formed to coordinate local, state and federal efforts to develop a more sustainable coast. Barbier was a member of the science and engineering board that oversaw the scientific analysis for the resulting 2012 Coastal Master Plan. The plan guides Gulf Coast protection and restoration projects over the next 50 years, with a total budget of $50 billion. Those projects include creation of new marshlands and building levees. Similar strategies are urgently needed for other parts of the world, Barbier says, noting that coastal areas are the front lines of climate change. The gradual impacts of sea-level rise, saline intrusion and erosion resulting from a warming climate -- added to the potential for extreme damage caused by accompanying increases in storm-caused flooding and surges -- should make international action a priority.  U.S. National Hurricane Center
map
White cone shows the
expected path of stormNo effect
seen here due to tropical storm
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Tropical Storm Danny is expected to have no effect on Costa Rica unless there is an unexpected change in its course. The storm is over the Leeward Islands and headed directly towards Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. Danny became the first Atlantic hurricane of the season but has since weakened to a tropical storm. Danny is expected to produce 2 to 4 inches of rain over the Leeward Islands, the U.S. and British Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico through Tuesday, said the hurricane center. Tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 105 miles (165 km) to the northeast of the center, according to the hurricane center. The storm appears to be headed due west at about 15 mph. Hurricanes that reach lower latitudes in the Caribbean can bring heavy rains to Costa Rica because the influence of the storms extend more than a hundred miles from the center. Locally, the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional said that humid and unstable conditions predominate. The weather institute reported heavy rains and thunderstorms in the Pacific and the Caribbean mountains Sunday night. More storms are predicted for today in the south and central Pacific. There may be isolated showers in the northern zone and the metro area, the institute said. Our reader's opinion
Where are police the rest of the time?Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Help me understand. Like many expats here I have been driving in Costa Rica for over a decade. We have adjusted to the chaotic driving conditions. Speeding, reckless driving and very little regard for others by some drivers makes driving here very stressful. We have all had motorcycles practically go over and under our cars, and all this with very little traffic enforcement. Now here comes Uber, and suddenly the traffic police know immediately, exactly where they are to impound or ticket them. You can agree or disagree with Uber, but the damaging of private property and thug treatment to the drivers is not Pura Vida. Next time you're sitting in traffic on your cellphone with a circus around you to sell you things and distract you, ask yourself what's more dangerous this or Uber. David Dufford
San José
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 166 | |
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| Uber challenges Costa Rican transportation law with its ride
service |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
At the very least, Uber Technologies, Inc., has to be called bold. The firm is challenging Costa Rica's traffic laws by setting up an alternative taxi service. This is the same tactic it has used throughout the world. News reports say that the company is in violation of the law in many countries but the firm keeps operating under the cover of the Internet. One report said that Uber services in Paris have been suspended while a court decision is awaited. The firm, which began service here last week, most certainly is headed to court. The traffic police began ticketing Uber drivers Friday. There were reports that vehicles of Uber drivers have been damaged over the weekend and that licensed taxi drivers are the prime suspects. |
Uber
executives here have met with the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y
Transportes, said Vice Minister Sebastian Urban, who
added that the company began service here 24 hours after that meeting. Uber uses a smartphone application to put passengers in touch with their rides. In some countries, Uber has teamed up with licensed taxi drivers, according to news reports. But not here. There have been worldwide protests. Some Costa Rican lawmakers support the company because they see it leading the way to deregulation of public transportation. The vice minister noted that the fine for providing illegal passenger service is 103,544,10 colons ($196.50) and that traffic police can remove the plates of offending vehicles. Impounding the vehicle also is possible. The primary complaints against Uber is that the drivers are not insured, do not pay the same fees as licensed drivers and that the fares are not regulated. |
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Prefabricated bridge deck This is the deck of a new pedestrian bridge that will be installed within two weeks over Ruta 22 in Brasil de Mora. The bridge there, one of 10 being put up in the country, will cost 143 million colons, about $272,000. The company doing the work is aptly named Puente Prefa. |
 Ministerio de Obras Públicas y
Transportes photo
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| Fire-fighting agency wants a retraction on criticism of its
coverage |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The nation's fire-fighting agency is demanding a public retraction by the defensora de los habitantes. The defensora, Monserrat Solano, told a radio audience Friday that there are dangerous zones in the country where if homeowners have a fire they can only watch while the structure burns down. That is not true, said the Cuerpo de Bomberos in a statement issued just hours later. Some expats on the Pacific coast have made the similar criticisms, but that was before the legislature passed a tax on electricity with the proceeds going to the fire fighters. Since |
then the
agency has been building and staffing new fire stations.
When the 1.75 percent tax was being discussed four years ago, the
fire fighting agency said it would build 32 new stations over the next
10 years. The fire agency in a statement Friday said it provides services to all of the country without exception. The Cruz Roja has said in the past that it would not provide services to areas that were considered too dangerous for its staffers. Certainly some taxi drivers will not provide services to certain areas of the metro area. However, expats have complained of fire fighters arriving after a long delay because of the distance but then never have said the trucks never showed up. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 166 | |||||
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| New movie documents vigilantes
fighting cartels at U.S. border |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Matthew Heineman’s documentary "Cartel Land" is made of the stuff the audience watches in Western movies. Only this narrative is for real. Two vigilante groups, one on the American side of the Arizona border, the other in Mexico, fight a common enemy: drug cartels. Is their war a righteous one? Matthew Heineman, who was embedded with both groups to film the documentary, offers a first-hand account. In the middle of the night, methamphetamine cooks get to work in the desert in the western Mexican state of Michoacan. They roll out huge barrels and containers and start the process. Like businessmen, they brag about the quality of their product, their high productivity. They credit two American chemists, a father and son, for their training. No, this is not a scene from the wildly popular American TV drama series "Breaking Bad." This is a real moment in Matthew Heineman's documentary "Cartel Land." The young filmmaker risked his life to film this. He was blindfolded and driven to the scene. “I couldn't see anything, and so I was freaking out,” Heineman says. “I did not know what to do. The head chef, the head cook, the head of this operation started showing me around the process of cooking meth with this little flashlight, and with this little flashlight I ended up lighting the scene with.” Heineman throws a light on the extreme violence of the cartels and the groups of vigilantes who have taken up arms in both Mexico and the United States to defend their communities from senseless violence and entrenched corruption. “In Mexico,” says the filmmaker, “the violence is real: 80,000 people killed since 2007. 20,000-plus people disappeared since 2007.” According to the documentary, Michoacan is the epicenter of this violence. The film showcases José Mireles, a local doctor and a larger-than-life character, who became the leader of the Autodefensas, a Mexican vigilante group trying to rid the state of the cartel. Heineman puts viewers in the middle of shootouts he filmed. He says there were countless times when he felt in extreme danger. “Obviously being in a shootout was quite dangerous,” he laughs. But he adds it was not the worst one. He says the scariest moment for him was during an interview he did with a local young woman whose husband was chopped to pieces in front of her. Heineman says, “To hear her describe these horrors and to think that human beings would do that to other people, that stuck with me way more than these other action moments.” |
 'Cartel Land'
trailer photo
Mexican woman shouts down an army
unit.Heineman shows Michoacan communities as defiant, tired of the fear and the corruption that lawlessness brings. At some point the army, which he says is often in collusion with the cartels, comes to town to confiscate the weapons of the townsfolk. Locals drive them out of town. An angry woman standing in front of a tank shouts at the soldiers “If this happened to you, you would be on our side.” But Heineman says so far, no one has been able to change the situation. “On one hand, yes there is the lack of law, lack of government institutions in Mexico. On the other hand it is just basic economics. As long as there is demand for drugs in the States, there will be supply for drugs from Mexico and South America," he says. On the other side of the border, in Arizona, Tim “Nailer” Foley, an army veteran with a weather-beaten face and striking blue eyes, has formed his own militia against the Mexican cartels. “Back in the day, vigilante wasn't a bad thing," Foley says. "Say the bandits were riding into your town. The townspeople would all get together and defend their town.” Dressed in paramilitary gear and carrying semiautomatic weapons, he and his group have taken it upon themselves to capture illegal immigrants and hand them over to U.S. government border patrols. “This is what I consider to be the wild, wild West," Foley says. "There is nothing down here, there is no law." “You look up on the hillsides, and there are cartel scouts looking down on you. You listen to this scrambled radio traffic they have, and you can hear the cartel talking about you. You can hear them pushing drugs through the valley,” he says. Meanwhile, Heineman says U.S. border patrols feel undermanned, understaffed and underfunded. He says both the U.S. government and the vigilantes feel locked in a sort of David and Goliath battle with the U.S. being David and the cartels Goliath. Are vigilantes extremists and a potential threat to law and order, or a movement that helps fill a void left by the failure of legal authorities? He lets the audience decide. |
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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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 166 | |||||||
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| Biden edges closer to run in third effort at presidency By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden appears to be seriously weighing another run for the Democratic presidential nomination, calling potential campaign donors and supporters in recent days and meeting with a key lawmaker as he explores his prospects. Biden interrupted a visit to his home state of Delaware Saturday for a private luncheon at his official residence in Washington with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a favorite among progressive Democrats who earlier this year declined overtures to enter the race herself. Sen. Warren, a fiery voice against the influence of large financial institutions in the U.S., has not endorsed any Democratic contender, including the current frontrunner, former secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Biden's consideration of joining the race comes as political surveys show support slipping for Mrs. Clinton in the midst of questions about her use of a private email server during her four-year stint as the country's top diplomat during President Barack Obama's first White House term. Obama is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term. The 72-year-old Biden, while serving as a U.S. senator, previously lost bids to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. He has served as Obama's vice president for the last six and a half years. Voters will start casting ballots in both the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating contests in February, with the parties selecting their nominees months later ahead of the November 2016 national election. U.S. voters appear restive, often challenging presidential candidates in face-to-face confrontations about their views as they campaign for support. Republican contenders uniformly have called for tougher immigration reforms, to curb the flow of illegal immigrants across the southern U.S. border from Mexico. The current leading Republican presidential candidate, real estate mogul Donald Trump, said he wanted to force the country's 11 million illegal immigrants out of the country and build an impenetrable wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. But not everyone agrees with their anti-immigration stance. When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie spoke Saturday at the state fair in the rural central state of Iowa, pro-immigrant supporters chanted in favor of U.S. citizenship.  The official campaign button
Silly
season is engulfing
the list of U.S. candidates By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
An unexpected name is surging in the polls and shaking up the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. The candidate? Deez Nuts. That's the alter ego of 15-year-old Brady Olson, who decided to prank America by registering as an independent candidate in his home state of Iowa. Even though Olson is still two decades shy of the 35-year minimum age limit to become president, he asked Public Policy Polling to include Deez Nuts among a list of other candidates running for president. To his surprise, they agreed. The poll asked residents of the eastern state of North Carolina who they would support if their choices were Democrat Hillary Clinton, Republican Donald Trump, or independent Deez Nuts. Deez Nuts received a surprising 9 percent of the vote. Since then, his campaign has taken off. He's been interviewed by dozens of media outlets. Endorsements are pouring in from celebrities and professional athletes. Deez Nuts also has been trending on Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Google said this week that more people were searching for Deez Nuts than for Hillary Clinton. According to the Daily Beast, Deez Nuts even received an endorsement from Warren G, the rapper who originated the phrase. So why did Olson decide to run? First of all, he says, because he can. As it turns out, anyone can file to run for president with the Federal Elections Commission, provided they fill out an initial application that is so basic that it does not even ask for the candidate's age. If that application, the FEC Form 2, is submitted electronically, the candidate immediately appears on the commission's candidates list, even before the information is fully vetted, according to officials there. Another more serious motivation for running, according to Olson, is that he is tired of the two main political parties and wanted to provide an alternative to Mrs. Clinton, Trump and ex-Florida governor Jeb Bush. The platform section of Olson's campaign Web site is no joke. The libertarian-leaning teenager says he supports a balanced budget, is a proponent of the Iran nuclear deal, and that he opposes illegal immigration. Still, Deez Nuts' popularity has some Americans scratching their heads, and wondering what, if anything, it says about the state of U.S. democracy. Deez Nuts has apparently inspired many others to also run for president. According to election commission records, 699 people have declared their candidacies, as of early Saturday. The list is growing, and even includes some non-humans. Limberbutt McCubbins, a cat owned by a 17-year-old student from Louisville, Kentucky, recently announced his candidacy, saying on his Web site "meow is the time" to run for the "demo-cat" nomination for the presidency. Among McCubbins' stated positions are support for gay cat marriage, regular veterinarian checkups, and a pledge to help all American citizens gain access to both medical and recreational catnip. Other candidates on the FEC list include Buddy the Cat, Bailey D. Dog, and Mr. Not Sure. Railway heroes to receive France's Legion of Honor By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
French President Francois Hollande today will bestow France's highest decoration, the Legion of Honor, on three Americans and a Briton who subdued a heavily armed gunman aboard a high-speed train on Friday. The ceremony set for Monday morning in Paris also will include a French citizen who first discovered the gunman near a restroom as the train sped toward Paris. The event is expected to cap two days of near non-stop reporting on an intervention that French officials and anti-terror experts say in all likelihood averted a bloodbath. Speaking for the first time Sunday, one of the three Americans who overpowered a heavily armed gunman on a high-speed train traveling between Amsterdam and Paris said he thought of his survival, as well as that of everyone else on the train, when he tackled the gunman. Spencer Stone, who was injured in the attack, and fellow Americans Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sadler spoke to the press from the U.S. Embassy in Paris, describing the rough and tumble takedown of the suspect Friday. “I feel our training mostly kicked in after the assailant was subdued, frankly," Skarlatos said. "When it came to medical care and things like that, and providing security and making sure there wasn’t another shooter. But in the beginning, it was mostly gut instinct.” Stone said he awoke from a nap to see a man struggling with an assault rifle. It "looked like it was jammed and not working," he recounted. After charging the gunman, a 26-year-old radical Islamist identified by officials as Ayoub El-Khazzani, the three Americans fought with the man until Stone was able to choke him unconscious. Nobody died in the attack. Skarlatos suggested Khazzani had little experience handling weapons. “He clearly had no firearms training whatsoever, and yes, if he knew what he was doing — or even just got lucky and did the right thing — he would have been able to operate through all eight of those magazines and we would have all been in trouble and probably wouldn’t be here today, along with a lot of other people," Skarlatos said. Stone said he thought about "survival, to survive and for everyone on the train to make it." Stone said what happened Friday hasn't really sunk in yet. "It feels very unreal, feels like a dream." French investigators continue to question Khazzani, who is believed to have links to radical Islam and may have traveled to Syria. Sunday, his lawyer told French TV the assailant is shocked to be linked to terrorism. She says he claims to have found the weapons hidden away and hoped to use them to rob passengers. French President Francois Hollande thanked U.S. President Barack Obama by telephone Saturday for the exemplary actions of U.S. servicemen Skarletos and Stone, saying they stopped what would have been an extremely serious attack. Skarletos, Stone and American student Sadler were joined by Briton Chris Norman in subduing the Moroccan-born gunman, who seriously wounded at least one passenger before he was swarmed. More Internet domains will be in non-Latin letters By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
For English speakers, it’s easy to take for granted opening a Web browser and typing in a URL. But what do people do when their languages have Chinese characters or Vietnamese tone markers? In a further democratization of the Internet, more and more Web sites are popping up with domain names that don’t use the Latin alphabet. Advocates say these internationalized domain names add diversity to cyberspace. “IDNs are important because they complete and support a multi-lingual internet,” said Rinalia Abdul Rahim, a board member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. “They make the Internet more inclusive for people with different writing systems around the world, and they enable local communities to come online using their own languages and scripts.” The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names, which profits from domain registrations, opened up the registrations to include these complex scripts in 2009. Since then, 47 country code top-level domains have been approved. That means that instead of .com or .org, newer Web sites can end with a label that is specific to a country and that uses non-Latin letters. Three billion people have internet access today and 45.6 percent of them are in Asia, according to the corporation. Asia also will make up most of the next billion that come online by 2020. But to achieve that growth, people need the option of Web site names with non-traditional scripts, such as Burmese letters or Khmer numbers. Such needs are greatest in the developing world, where English is less common. “Due to the impact of language barriers, IDNs in local scripts are incredibly beneficial to people that don’t speak a language based on the Latin alphabet,” said Phonpasit Phissamay, chairman of the Laos Label Generation Rules Panel, an internet adviser. “This is especially true for people living in a rural area. Thanks to IDNs, Laos will be able to register and use domains in Lao languages.” Some officials say they want their countries to move toward knowledge-based economies or digital societies. That includes Rapid Sun, secretary of the Khmer Label Generation Rules Panel, who said linguistic variety in Web site names can increase internet access and fuel e-commerce. Sun said with cheaper smartphones and a stronger electric grid, Cambodia will focus on “expanding infrastructure to the countryside, ensuring reliable and secure connectivity at an affordable price, and promoting fair competition between operators.” President of South Korean demands apology from North By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
South Korean President Park Geun-hye is demanding that Pyongyang clearly apologize for a recent land mine incident, and that the South's propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts at North Korea's border will continue until an apology is issued. President Park made the comments Monday as North and South Korean officials met for a third day of emergency talks aimed at averting war on the peninsula. The latest marathon negotiating session began Sunday afternoon, following a 10-hour meeting that began Saturday and stretched through the night. Officials have not publicly commented on the discussions, only to say they are tense, and there is no word on whether the negotiations are making any progress, or how long they will continue. Meanwhile, South Korea has been reporting unusual troop and submarine movement in the North. Pyongyang has moved 70 percent of its submarines away from their bases and the vessels are now undetectable, according to South Korea's Defense Ministry. A ministry spokesman on Sunday characterized the movement as "unprecedented." The North has also doubled its frontline artillery strength at the border with the South, according to South Korea. "It seems that the North is pursuing dialogue on the one side and preparing for battle on another side," a South Korean Defense Ministry official said. The high-level meetings are taking place at the Panmunjom truce village despite a deadline set by Pyongyang, which had threatened military action unless Seoul ended propaganda broadcasts into the Communist North and removed banks of loudspeakers it has installed along the border. The deadline passed without incident and without the loudspeakers' removal, and the talks began 90 minutes later. In Washington, White House officials said President Barack Obama has been kept up to date on the situation in the Korean Peninsula. "As the State Department has said," a spokesman commented, "we remain steadfast in our commitment to our alliance with South Korea, with whom we will continue to coordinate closely." Even without concrete results, analysts say the talks have delayed any further military activity and given the two Koreas added time to look for a peaceful end to the current crisis. South Korea’s foreign ministry has said it will not end its cross-border audio broadcasts into the North until Pyongyang takes responsibility for recent attacks, punishes those responsible and takes action to prevent further provocations. Despite the high level dialogue, the potential for escalation or miscalculation remains, since both sides are in a state of maximum defense preparedness, ready for the possibility of a major military confrontation. A landmine explosion in the DMZ that wounded two South Korean soldiers Aug. 4 triggered the current crisis. Seoul accused Pyongyang of planting the explosive devices and restarted cross-border broadcasts denouncing North Korea for the first time in over 10 years. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 166 | |||||||||
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The aroma of a
gardener is a unique mix
If you’re a gardener, you usually have dirt under your fingernails, smudges on your clothes and aches just about everywhere. You scrub
Then there is the problem of those odd little smudges. You could swear that you scrubbed everything, but it turns out that there was a stubborn patch behind your left knee. . . . ? Or maybe it was that bit of dirt you missed on your neck or the stubborn grit under a fingernail? In a small town like ours, the news will be all over by morning that you: smelled really strange last night and don’t know how to bathe. Friends understand, though (I hope) because, as they say, most gardeners have: “been there, done that.” And it will probably happen again. Right now, though, I am spotlessly clean and frightfully depressed about it. Why? Because it means that I haven’t really gardened in weeks and weeks. Why? Because I had shoulder surgery and was told to rest. I hate resting. I don’t know a single gardening enthusiast who wants to sit and rest unless it is at the end of a long, hard day of raking, sowing, composting, weeding, and just generally playing in the dirt. That’s when you rest. You rest, semi-reclined, feet up and beer in hand, and enjoy the view from the deck. The tree you planted, the pile of mulch you have plans for and the row of veggies all ready to produce. Your rest is well deserved. Compared to that, resting with your arm in a sling is boring and purposeless. But, we are gardeners, and these little setbacks, while boring, cannot dampen our enthusiasm. I will be out there again, overdoing it as usual, until my husband, Metric Man, calls me and insists that “you’ve had enough.” Then I will be back inside and covered with Bengay. Maybe he will be sympathetic and take me out to dinner? . . . nah.  Plant of the Week
Here is a great shrub, locally called the sombrero plant for
its hat-shaped flowers.If you would like to suggest a topic for this column, simply send a letter to the editor. And, for more garden tips, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arenal-Gardeners/413220712106845 |
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| From Page 7: Asian stock markets continue their slide By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Key Asian stock markets closed down sharply today, and Europe markets followed the course at the open, continuing a global slide that saw U.S. markets drop 3 percent Friday. China's Shanghai exchange ended the day down nearly 8.5 percent as investors watched to see what action Beijing might take. The fall in markets across the globe in recent days is keyed mainly by a fear about a Chinese economy that is slowing more than had been expected. Japan's Nikkei lost 4.6 percent Monday for its lowest close in nearly a year. Hong Kong's Hang Seng fell 4.9 percent. Other markets in the Pacific region were also down sharply. Meanwhile, markets in Britain, France and Germany all opened at least 2.5 percent lower. |
