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José, Costa Rica, Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 185
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Taxi driver
is ruled an employee
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The owner of a taxi suffered a reverse when the Sala Segunda, the labor section of the Corte Suprema de Justicia, determined that a driver was an employee and not a renter of the vehicle. The decision has implications for many employers. The driver said he began work in 2007 and continued through 2012 when he was fired. He sought a litany of money for damages, including overtime, vacations, the aguinaldo Christmas bonus, payment for night hours, holiday pay, pay for his dismissal and money for the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social in his name. The man said he worked for 320,000 colons a month, roughly $640 depending on the exchange rate, and that he had a daily income quota established by the taxi owner. The court said that there clearly was an employer-employee relationship. That had been determined in lower courts, but appeals brought the case to the Sala Segunda. A lower court ordered payment of some 5 million colons to the driver and reported the taxi owner to the Caja for action there. The Sala Segunda basically upheld that ruling. Garland Baker has written extensively in A.M. Costa Rica about the employee relationship as they relate to expats. One such article is HERE!  Aarhus University
photo
The Chimborazo volcano was
the site of the vegetation study.Tropical plants
found moving higher
By the Aarhus University news staff
The plants on the highest mountain in Ecuador have migrated more than 500 meters to higher altitudes during the last two centuries. This is determined in a new study, in which Aarhus University researchers compared 1802 data from famed naturalist Alexander von Humboldt with current conditions. Although most of the world’s species diversity is found in tropical areas, there are very few studies that have examined whether tropical mountain species are affected by climate change to the same extent as temperate species. A new study has now determined that major changes have taken place during the last two centuries. By comparing the migration of plant communities on the Chimborazo volcano in Ecuador researchers found the entire vegetation boundary has moved upwards from 4,600 meters to almost 5,200 meters. The main explanation for this dramatic shift is climate change over the last 210 years, they said. The German scientist Humboldt traveled to South and Central America around the 1800s to map the distribution of plants and to explore what determines the different vegetation boundaries. He collected plants over a period of many years, and his collections led to a better understanding of the link between climate and species distributions, which he described in several works. One of his most noteworthy works was the physical tableau, a cross-section of the Chimborazo inscribed with the names of the plants he found on the mountainside. “Humboldt’s tableau and the accompanying descriptions make up the oldest known data set in the world of vegetation along elevation gradients. It provided us with a unique opportunity to study how plant distributions have changed in the tropics during the last two centuries,” says Jens-Christian Svenning of the Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, who is one of the authors of the study. In summer 2012, the team of researchers followed in Humboldt’s footsteps to Chimborazo to map the current distribution of the plants. The fieldwork was carried out at an altitude of up to 5,200 meters. “Right up at 5,185 metres, we found the last trace of vegetation. A defiant little plant belonging to the sunflower family and half covered in snow in full flower in spite of the cold conditions, the thin air, and the harsh wind,” says Naia Morueta-Holme, the lead author of the study. The fieldwork was carried out in connection with her doctoral studies at Aarhus University. By comparing the two data sets, it became clear that not only the vegetation growth limit has moved, but also the vegetation zones defined by Humboldt. The individual plant species are now found more than 500 meters higher than they were 210 years ago. These changes in the vegetation are more than expected as a result of today’s warmer climate, the researchers said. Other studies show that there is now less precipitation in the area, which has also contributed to the significant shrinkage of the glaciers covering the top of the volcano. In addition, the lower parts of the volcano have been intensively cultivated, and a number of species that were previously only found in the lowland near agricultural areas have been introduced by humans. A combination of human-induced climate change and the direct impact on the plant communities via cultivation of the landscape around the volcano helps explain the large-scale vegetation shift, more than has been experienced in other regions outside the tropics. The study shows how historical data sets can be used to demonstrate the way nature is already shifting in response to global and local environmental change. This provides insight into what to expect in the future, when climate change is forecast to be even more than witnessed in the last two centuries. “Even though the plants have kept up on average until now, we see many individual species that are lagging behind, while others, especially common species that are good at spreading and living under many different conditions, are moving upslope. We can thus expect even more drastic changes in the vegetation in the future, and there are concerns about how the rare and specialized species will survive, particularly in the tropics, where most of them grow,” explained Ms. Morueta-Holme. The results of the study can be used for purposes such as nature conservation by giving high priority to efforts to minimize the direct impact of landscape cultivation. The study is featured in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Agents put end to kidnap scheme By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
An 18-year-old woman and two men, 25 and 39, have been detained on an allegation that they held a man for ransom. Judicial police detained them Thursday morning in Coronado when they were in the company of the hostage. Family members told agents that the 31-year-old man had been grabbed Sunday and that those who held him wanted 1 million colons, about $1,900. Agents said they detained the woman and a man when they accompanied the victim to his family member's home, purportedly to pick up the money. The second man was picked up in Coronado Centro based on a description, said agents. Kidnappings like this have been a traditional way to collect debts in Costa Rica, but agents did not say if this was the case here. |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 185 | |
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| Ambitious sweep of pawn shops turns up just six cell
telephones |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Robbers do not really need a dozen cell telephones. What they need is a place to sell them. In San José the usual place to dump stolen merchandise is in pawn shops. Some shops are more reputable than others. Still some of the finest collections of quality cameras and lenses can be found in downtown San José. For investigators, the big problem is that tourists usually do not have the serial numbers of cameras and other goods that crooks take. And not all tourists report crimes. Cell telephones are a little different. Each has a serial number on file with the telephone companies. So when agents swept through six pawn shops on Calle 8 Thursday, they were able to locate three cell phones that had been reported taken by robbers. They also found three with serial numbers removed. |
The sweep was
by a handful of police agencies. They are the
Unidad de Intervención Policial and the Unidad Canina of the
Ministerio
de Seguridad Pública, the Policía Municipal, the
Policía Fiscal and
the Judicial Investigating Organization. Judicial investigators said that they were following up on a February heist at a cell phone outlet in Curridabat. They said that some of the stolen phones had turned up, and those who had them said they obtained them at the stores that were inspected Thursday. Curiously there are some pawn shops that are open 24 hours a day, and the suspicion is that the reason is to cater to thieves and robbers who also work 24 hours a day. During the sweep Thursday police did encounter one man who was the subject of an arrest warrant alleging fraud. He was taken into custody. |
| Early morning death of U.S. citizen could have been work of
an addict |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Much has been made of the murders that officials say are connected with wars among drug gangs. The bloodshed is such that the country probably will see a record number of murders this year. Less has been said about what could be considered collateral damage. There has been a steady series of shootings of youngsters and others who appeared to be innocent third parties. The hard part is to link the fatal bullets to drug disputes. The most recent victim of the drug culture may be Andrew Brooks, a dual national Costa Rican-U.S. citizen. His murder was overshadowed by the discovery of two assassinated men in a vehicle early Tuesday morning in Dos Cercas de Desamparados. Brooks also died early Tuesday when he was on his way home from work. More information has emerged because the 32-year-old man was a friend of a member of the A.M. Costa Rica staff. His death might well be attributed to drugs because he was confronted when he arrived home from his job at a call center by a vagrant who roams his neighborhood in the Monagua section of Moravia. There appears to have been a dispute on the street, and when Brooks pulled his vehicle into his car port, the vagrant followed him and delivered three knife wounds. Investigators still are seeking the assailant, but there is a high probability that the killer was seeking money for drugs at 3 a.m. when he confronted Brooks and killed him when money was not forthcoming. |
 Ministerio de Seguridad Pública photo
The Policía de
Control de Drogas detained these men in Villa Bonita, Alajuela,
Thursday and said they were mainly involved in marketing crack cocaine
in the area.His friend said that Brooks was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a U.S. father and Costa Rican mother. He went to school here and later split his time between Costa Rica and California where he worked for a skateboard company. He was an accomplished skateboarder, the friend said. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 185 | |||||
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| In the automated future, new job skills will be needed,
author says |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Robots can flip burgers, build cars and greet clients at a reception desk. And, as more and more robots take over jobs that used to be performed by people, human workers are becoming justifiably anxious. In fact, almost half of U.S. jobs are likely to be automated within the next two decades, according to researchers at England's Oxford University, and it's a trend that's here to stay. “What we've seen in the U.S. and maybe some of the more western industrialized countries over the last 25 years," said Boston-based business expert Nigel Dessau, "is the removal of entry-level jobs and the removal of the simple, repetitive manufacturing jobs." He pointed to a line in a Sylvester Stallone movie set in the future. "A character calls the police station and the person says ‘if you'd like to speak to a robot please press ‘one’ now. If you're OK still speaking to a person, stay on the line.’ And it’s sort of the way we're heading," Dessau said. But he contends that robots are not taking over, and success in the new world of work is possible for mere humans. The founder of a job mentoring Web site, Dessau says there are ways workers, especially the millennial generation that is now in their 20s and 30s, can adapt to this new reality, starting by making themselves stand out. “The jobs that can be easily automated are easily replaced. When looking to build a career in this century, you have to think more about other sets of skills that you need to get," he said, listing the three skill sets he focuses on. • Content: “So that’s, what do you know? What do you bring that a machine doesn't know?" • Approach: "How do you get to work with other people? How can you lead a team?" |
• Network:
“Who knows what you know, and what you can do?" "So focus less on the processes because those are what gets automated. Focus more on the content and the ability to work as a team," Dessau emphasized. "That’s what will differentiate you and protect you from being replaced by a robot.” The businesses that are most vulnerable to automation, according to Dessau, are the fast food industry and other labor-intensive businesses such as manufacturing. But even those industries still need people, he insists, because being able to talk with and lead people from different backgrounds, cultures, and countries is a crucial skill in this global business environment, and something a robot cannot accomplish. “Those restaurants where they're putting in fast food automated systems still need managers and they still need leaders and they need people to talk to customers. And those are the skills that people need to acquire." In addition, Dessau said, millennials tend to have a particular mindset, which also sets them apart. “When you talk to that generation, you say ‘what do you want for a job?,' what you see them talking about is they want jobs that they can be passionate about, jobs that fulfill some greater purpose,” he said. Automation will help them do that, he predicted, "give us the ability to do better things with our lives; less boring, less redundant things and work on more meaningful things where we can help each other and help the community.” His biggest piece of advice for millennials and anyone else entering the 21st century workplace? "Don't delegate the responsibility for your success to something or somebody else. At the end of the day, it is your career. It is your life. And you must make the decisions to make your life successful and you can't blame robots and you can't blame automation." |
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, Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 185 | |||||||
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| U.S. considers increasing number of Syrian immigrants By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Obama administration would like to further increase the number of Syrian refugees that it resettles in the United States, but it must balance that desire with the need to thoroughly check the backgrounds of those considered for admission, a top State Department official said Thursday. The United States has committed to admitting at least 10,000 Syrian refugees during the next fiscal year, which begins in October. Previously, about 1,700 Syrians had been resettled in the U.S. since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. Anne Richard, assistant secretary of State for population, refugee and migration, said the U.S. was considering another increase in its Syrian resettlement numbers for fiscal 2017. However, she said the 65,000 to 100,000 admissions that some refugee groups and lawmakers have called for is currently unattainable. “We can not physically move that many people, that quickly, through the process to get here in order to reach those kinds of high aspirational numbers,” Ms. Richard said. A primary reason the U.S. cannot physically move such a large number of people is stipulations in the vetting process for refugees required under U.S. policy. That process includes an in-person interview by a Department of Homeland Security official, security checks and a medical exam before the refugee is brought to the United States. “At any given time, we are processing cases in 70 or more locations worldwide with a limited amount of resources,” a State Department official said. “It currently takes anywhere from 18 to 24 months or even longer to process a case from referral or application to arrival in the United States,” the official said. Ms. Richard said the Obama administration wants to make a big push in the coming months to see whether the lengthy process can be streamlined. “But, again,” she said, “we only want to streamline it if it can be done without giving up on these important security pieces.” More than 4 million people have fled Syria since the country’s civil unrest erupted in 2011. The vast majority of Syrian refugees have settled in neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Without criticizing the U.S. decision to resettle about 10,000 Syrians next year, Laura Thompson of the International Organization for Migration urged every country to do as much as it can to help the refugees. “Ten thousand obviously is not enough, or 140,000 that Europe is talking about is not enough when you have three countries that have around 3.5 million,” she said. Migration Policy Institute co-founder Kathleen Newland said the U.S. and other world powers also should expand efforts to help the U.N. refugee agency, which has only about one-third of the funding it needs. “They are having to cut food rations to refugees, and those refugees are getting really, really desperate. They are unable to feed their children, unable to pay rent,” Newland said. She said world powers should consider broadening the types of programs available to help people relocate from troubled areas. GM admits guilt in keeping ignition defect a secret By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The biggest American automaker, General Motors, admitted guilt Thursday in hiding information from both the government and motorists about a deadly defect in its vehicle ignition switches that has been linked to at least 124 deaths in crashes. GM, third largest in the world behind Germany's Volkswagen and Japan's Toyota Motor, agreed to a $900 million fine to settle criminal charges in the case. In addition, the automaker agreed to pay another $575 million to resolve damage claims from 1,385 death and injury cases stemming from accidents caused by the faulty switches and to company shareholders who claimed that the actions of GM officials diminished the value of the company's stock. In a statement, GM chief executive Mary Barra said, “The mistakes that led to the ignition-switch recall should never have happened. We have apologized, and we do so again today." According to the settlement of the case, GM knew about the faulty switches on some of its small-car models for more than a decade before finally disclosing the problem in 2013. With the defect, some cars stalled, preventing air bags from deploying in crashes. U.N. weather agency reports world temperature is at record By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Across the globe the heat is unrelenting, setting new temperature highs by the month that are unparalleled in 136 years of record-keeping, says the U.S. weather agency. Last month was the hottest August on record, nearly a degree Celsius higher than the 20th century average of 15.6 degrees C, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The agency said the June-to-August average was also the highest dating back to 1880, when records were first kept, and also the highest ever for the first eight months of any year. Scientists say the high temperatures are the result of a combination of human-caused climate change related to greenhouse gas emissions and a powerful natural El Niño weather system over the Pacific Ocean that adds heat to the atmosphere. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the higher temperatures have trimmed the extent of the Arctic ice pack to its fourth smallest size for August since these figures were first collected in 1979. Jimmy Carter maintains pace despite his cancer treatment By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
In August, former President Jimmy Carter announced he was battling cancer. One treatment of radiation and two rounds of immunotherapy later, Carter, who turns 91 Oct. 1, shows no signs of slowing down. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, were on hand Tuesday for the kickoff of "Conversations at the Carter Center," an annual lecture series in Atlanta, and he spoke about his treatment before a packed auditorium. "There's a new medicine that's been developed for my disease," he said. "It's called pembrolizumab. It took me three weeks to learn how to say it.” He said there was also a learning curve to another part of his regimen: drinking enough fluids. “Instead of getting productive work done, I spent a lot of time in the restroom," he said. Carter is dealing with the most difficult health challenge of his life with humor and determination, and staff at the Carter Center say he is still a visible presence. “He is here, working, a very, very busy schedule, and there’s no evidence of what I can see that he has slowed down,” said P. Craig Withers, acting director of health programs at the center. His appearance at "Conversations at the Carter Center" was the latest in a series of public engagements on the former president’s calendar in Atlanta, which included the 34th Jimmy Carter Town Hall at Emory University. The annual event draws thousands of students. In good-natured fashion, he objected to having been "relegated to a position of illness, and infirmity, and age, and so, with the permission of the authorities behind me, I’m going to stand up instead of sit down to answer your questions,” he told the audience, winning applause. "I'm in good spirits. I'm prepared for anything that comes," he said. "My wife is a little less prepared than I've been, but she's getting on fine." Rosalynn Carter said that "we’ve had an outpouring of support, and in spite of all that’s going on, it’s been incredible just to know that we’ve got that kind of support … and Jimmy's had a great attitude through it." The Carters continue to spend about one week a month in Atlanta. The rest of the time they are in Plains, Georgia. There, visitors pouring in from around the world come to the small Maranatha Baptist Church most Sundays to see the ailing president continue to do what he has done since he was 18 years old: teach Sunday School lessons. Loss of foods is different based on type of country By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The statistic has been repeated so often, it might have lost its potency: up to half of the food the world produces is thrown out, rather than eaten. But wasteful consumers in wealthy nations are not the only culprits. Poor countries, too, are tossing out perfectly good food, sometimes at the same scale, according to Elliot Woolley, lecturer in sustainable manufacturing at Loughborough University in Britain. What’s notable, though, is that developed and developing countries have different causes and solutions for their waste, whether it’s food or any other items that could wind up in landfills. In poor places like Chad, Woolley said, food is usually lost while still in the field or during storage and transportation, thanks to business inefficiencies. Once the produce is sold, families tend to eat everything they buy. That’s in contrast to British, American, and other consumers, who discard as much as half of their food purchases. “I think this is a disgrace,” Woolley said Wednesday at the 13th annual Global Conference on Sustainable Manufacturing, this year hosted by the Vietnamese-German University. Similarly, rich and poor nations have different ways of preventing waste -- in other words, recycling. Australia and Britain, for instance, recycle 30-40 percent of their garbage, compared with just 10-20 percent in Vietnam and Malaysia, said Brendan Moloney, a doctoral candidate in engineering at Australian National University. And yet in the latter countries recyclers make far more money, Moloney said in a presentation at the conference, because infrastructure costs are lower, as are wages among the informal sector of trash pickers. Plus, some recyclables like glass and metals can fetch international prices, no matter the geography where they’re retrieved. “You end up with a much more profitable industry in emerging markets,” Moloney said. Such variation among countries calls for tailor-made solutions. Woolley’s answer to food waste? There’s an app for that. He built the Pantry App to help users track their groceries, which he said cut food waste by 34 percent. The results were based on a very limited experiment, monitoring food over the course of one week. The app would inform people of how many groceries they bought, when they expired, and how to combine remaining ingredients through recipe tips. But one person who attended the presentation said more should be done to prevent shoppers from buying so much food to begin with. Jeremy Bonvoisin, a postdoctoral candidate at the Technical University of Berlin, said customers are willing to squander food because they value it so little. “The problem is that the inventory is becoming too big because the value of food is getting cheaper,” he said. Bonvoisin said the Pantry App might help those who already want to make a change, though it could also encourage them to waste more because they no longer have to pay attention to how much food they buy. They outsource that to the app. “I think at some point it may have some perverse effects,” he said. As for recycling, Moloney said developing countries should improve health and safety conditions, while still benefiting from informal recyclers. Because trash pickers are separating their finds by hand, they can extract a greater variety of recyclables, such as textiles and different copper types, rather than just the traditional paper and plastic. Advanced nations rely on machines, which can do basic categorizing by material type and color, whereas pickers can also sort by size and shape. Moloney said richer states can use economies of scale, that is, combine recycling in larger facilities, so they have the capacity for more sophisticated sorting. Still, Moloney praised rich countries for recycling ever more materials because they have strong policies in place. He showed data for the United Kingdom, which now recycles more than 25 percent of trash, compared with 6 to 7 percent two decades ago. But he could not contrast that with developing countries, which he said tend not to keep such statistics. |
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Caffeine can
delay sleep, researchers say
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Researchers have discovered that caffeine can delay normal sleep times by as much as 40 minutes, if consumed three hours before anticipated bedtime. The amount of caffeine associated with sleep disruption was equivalent to what is typically in two shots of espresso. Kenneth Wright, head of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said some coffee shop brews typically contain more caffeine than that. Scientists have known for a long time that caffeine disrupts chemicals in the brain that affect wakefulness and block chemicals that promote sleep. “This particular finding tells us that the timing of sleep and wakefulness will be pushed later because of an effect on the clock, not just promoting wakefulness chemicals in the brain,” Wright said. This is important because the natural process of circadian rhythm also affects hormone production and cell regeneration in the human body. Not getting enough sleep can affect mood. It can also promote disorders like diabetes. To look into caffeine’s effect on the circadian clock, researchers at the Colorado university and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, first noted the sleep-wake cycles of five healthy volunteers. Over the course of a 49-day study, investigators gave the participants 200 milligrams of caffeine, the equivalent amount found in two shots of espresso, a few hours before bed and noted how long it took them to fall asleep. The volunteers were also exposed at night to bright light, which is known to disrupt sleep. Caffeine did more than bright light in interrupting the circadian clock, and therefore patterns of sleep. The researchers also looked at the biological function of a sleep hormone and found caffeine interrupted a core component of sleep at the cellular level. Wright said adjusting one’s biological clock in this way could also be beneficial. “Another example of an implication of our findings is we may be able to use caffeine to help shift our clocks westward when we’re traveling across many time zones," he said. "In this case here, caffeine may help us adapt to jet lag much faster.“ The findings, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, also suggest people who want to wake up earlier in the morning might consider giving up that nighttime cup of java. Police helping to delivery food at night By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fuerza Pública officers have begun accompanying workers of Asociación Amigos de la Calle to deliver food to those who live on the streets. Police officials said that the first time was Wednesday night, but that the effort would continue. Police officials said those who would like to help can contact the association at amigoscallecr@gmail.com, or in Facebook at Amigos de la Calle CR. Officials said that the police officers were doing so out of a sense of community assistance. Officers said they met minors, teens and even a pregnant women during their efforts. Some 50 homeless can be found in the vicinity of the old Cine Lebano on Paseo de la Vaca, which is at Avenida 7 and Calle 10. |
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| From Page 7: U.S. Federal Reserve board keeps low rates By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. central bank officials have decided to keep interest rates unchanged at the record low rate where they have been for several years. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen says officials want more improvements in the labor market and need to see inflation rise to the 2 percent annual rate they think is best for the economy. Ms. Yellen spoke to journalists in Washington Thursday at the end of two days of debate among top Fed officials about where to set rates. This would have been the first rate increase in nearly a decade, and many officials say the Federal Reserve may raise rates a bit later this year. The central bank changes interest rates in an effort to steer the economy toward stable prices and full employment. The Fed cut the rates to a record low range between zero and a quarter of a percent during the financial crisis in a bid to support economic growth. Economists say higher rates would tend to slow growth and make it less likely that inflation will rise sharply and harm the economy. Since then, unemployment has improved, falling from 10 percent to just over 5 percent. Inflation, however, has stayed below the 2 percent annual rate that Fed officials think works best for the economy. |
