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A.M. Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 187 | |||||||||
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Presidency is entering
the newspaper business By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
There is a new Internet newspaper, and it is produced by the ominous-sounding Ministerio de Información. The Presidencia appears to have taken steps to make sure that President Laura Chinchilla's administration gets good press. There is little chance of hard-hitting, aggressive journalism. The domain LaNoticia.cr was registered just last Friday, according to the Costa Rican domain administration. The administrative contact is the Ministerio de la Presidencia. However, the publication does not mention on its site that it is a product of the government. Nor does the domain have the go.cr suffix that denotes a Costa Rican government agency. The president already has time on the radio and television each week for upbeat news. The so-called cadena nacional was envisioned as a way for the president to discuss the national issues. The Chinchilla administration has turned it into a commercial for Casa Presidencial. The presidencial Web site does not seem to make any mention of the new Internet newspaper arrival even though the domain registration says it is published at the offices in Zapote. Our readers' opinions
Which beneficial modificationdoes the writer oppose? Dear A.M. Costa Rica: It is not clear which genetically modified food your writer is against. Is it the one which increases yield preventing hunger for millions? Or the rice which is modified to contain vitamins which will prevent blindness and other illnesses in children? Dr.
John Cocker
Ojochal We've been engineering genetically for ages Dear A.M. Costa Rica: Thank heaven for genetic engineering. Let me be brief. For thousands of years, we have been genetically engineering our food. We learned to cross-pollinate crops for a larger seed heads, greater sugar content, more protein. We bred a prize bull to certain cows for higher milk production or more meat. We genetically engineered for food and for vanity (how else did the wolf become the chihuahua?). We have genetically engineered for thousands of years, we just didn’t know how to do it quickly. Now we do. As for the engineering? I really prefer a Golden retriever….. Victoria
Torley
Aguacate.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 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 | |
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 187 | |
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| Ferry service scheduled to resume today
from Puntarenas dock |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Ferry service from Puntarenas to two points on the Nicoya peninsula is supposed to resume today. Transportation officials said that seven days of intense labor allowed a contractor to remove 15,000 cubic meters of sand and debris from the dock where the ferries tie up. That is in Barrio el Carmen in Puntarenas. The ferry routes are to Paquera and to Playa Naranjo. The Belgium firm of Jan de Nul did the work, and the cost was $297,000, paid by the Instituto Costarricense de Puertos del Pacífico. The División Marítimo Portuaria of the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes supervised the work. |
 Ministerio de Obras Públicas y
Transportes photo
Dredge is in the final stages of
the work. |
| Another warning about high seas issued
for the Pacific coast |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Pacific coast residents are being warned again about the possibilities of high seas through Thursday. The national emergency commission said that those most vulnerable are in Barrio el Carmen and El Cocal in Puntarenas and Boca Vieja and el Cocal de Quepos. The highest seas are expected in the mornings, the agency said. The commission also said that the south Pacific coast also might be vulnerable. Coastal areas suffered flooding last month and in July, but estimates now are that the seas will be even higher. Some residents in Caldera at Puntarenas Centro lost their homes |
when the seas pushed in sand and
rocks. The high seas are attractive to surfers, but the conditions can be fatal. The cause of the high seas has been attributed to a number of factors, but mainly the tides are a result of the pull of the moon. The Centro de Investigación del Mar at the Universidad de Costa Rica is working closely with the emergency commission to predict problems. The commission said that operators of small boats may face problems and that the mouths of rivers could be troublesome. |
| University student guns down man presumed
to be a robber |
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By
Aaron Knapp
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff A university student who feared he was facing robbers took out his own legal weapon and killed one of the men. Police detained the other. The Judicial Investigating Organization said the student had a pistol for self-protection. The incident took place in San Pedro's Barrio Roosevelt around 9:30 p.m. Monday. The Judicial Investigating Organization report did not give the names of the two students, but a spokeswoman for the organization, said that the dead man was César Hernández Alguilar. His associate, who is in police custody, is Michael González González. The spokesperson said that the student who shot Hernández |
was not detained by police because
he had the proper permit and certification for the gun. “He only tried to defend, and he is not in jail,” the spokesperson said. Both students attend the Universidad de Costa Rica, and neither of the students was harmed in the incident, the agency said. According to a bulletin from the investigation organization, the two students were walking back to their apartment from a grocery when two men pulled up to them on a motorcycle. The two men then attempted to rob the students. The student carrying the gun pulled it out and shot the man later identified as Hernández. He died at the scene. González was detained by police when they arrived. |
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| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 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, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 187 | |||||
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| Significant improvements in health in
Costa Rica cited in report |
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By
Kayla Pearson
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff In the 1900s a person living in North America would be considered old age at 48, while in Latin America and the Caribbean the average person would only make it to age 29. Today both of these life expectancies have been extended to 78 in North American and 74 in Latin America, according to the "Health in the Americas 2012" report. This report was compiled by the Pan American Health Organization and World Health Organization from 2010 statistics. It also said 98 percent of Latin American children live past their first birthday, while 100 years ago only 75 percent turned 1 year old. Yet with these successes, it is still evident that the state of health in these areas is not equal to the world and even varies between the countries in the region, the report said. "The countries of the region in this part of the world have collectively been successful in being healthier and more prosperous in the last 110 years,” said Pan American Health Organization Director Mirta Roses Periago. However, she called for efforts to make the region more equitable and sustainable. Costa Rica has made significant improvements in health: A Tico's life expectancy of 79.2 years. The 2010 infant mortality rate was 9.5 per 1,000 live births and only 21 mothers died out of every 100,000 births, said Health in Americas. The report also said that only 471 out of 84,443 dengue cases between 2006 and 2010 were serious, and malaria cases dropped from 2,903 to 114 in the same time span. From 2002 to 2010 there were 2,278 HIV and 1,805 AIDS cases reported. Here are some other findings: There have been no cases of vaccine preventable disease. These changes were linked to a higher literacy rate of 97 percent and a near 100 percent schooling rate. However, persons who live in areas classified as slums are not receiving the same care and the percentage of those living in extreme poverty made a jump from 3.3 percent to 3.5 percent in 2008. |
According to the 2008-2009 National
Survey of Nutrition 23.8 percent of
children from 1 to 4 years old were at risk for malnutrition and 5.6
percent were malnourished. Also, around 20 percent of young
children
and teenagers were overweight or obese, the report said. This is just one of the many challenges of Costa Rica. The average income has dropped to $10,200 and one out of three workers earn minimum wage. The leading cause of death is diseases of the circulatory system followed by cancer. Men face risks of cancer in the prostate, stomach, lungs, colon and liver while women face breast, stomach, colon and cervical cancer, leukemia and lung cancer. Other types of deaths are traffic accidents and violence. Homicides have risen from 6.8 per 100,000 in 2006 to 9.33 in 2010, but suicides have decreased from 7.2 per 100,000 persons in 2006 to 5.8 per 100,000 persons in 2010. Across Latin Americas and the Caribbean problems exist with maternal mortality, malnutrition, tuberculosis, malaria, and lack of access to safe water and sanitation. These usually affect population groups in situations of social exclusion. Poverty is one of the determining factors of the state of health of the population. Inequalities exist between those who dwell in the city opposed to the country, or between persons who are native to those which are Spanish speaking. Overall, around 250 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have some non-communicable disease, such as cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. In 2007, 3.9 million people died due to these causes. Of these, 37 percent were under the age of 70. Mental disorders in Latin America and the Caribbean are responsible for about 22 percent of the recorded disabilities. Depression and the use of alcohol-related disorders are the first places. Health in the Americas is designed to analyze the progress and challenges of the American countries in order to achieve an improvement in the health. The full report is at http://www.paho.org/healthintheamericas. |
| New snake species in Panamá
enlisted into environmental cause |
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By
the Senckenberg Research Institute news staff
Scientists of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, have discovered a new snake species in the highlands of western Panamá. The scientific name of the conspicuously colored reptile Sibon noalamina means "no to the mine.“ It was chosen to call attention to the fact that the habitat of this harmless snail-eating snake is severely threatened by human interventions. The researchers say that other species of amphibians and reptiles which were discovered in the region during the last years share the same fate. The study was published Tuesday in the scientific journal Zootaxa. The snake Sibon noalamina is completely harmless for humans, yet has a pugnacious name. The light and dark-ringed reptile at first sight resembles a well-known and widespread species of snail-eater. However, closer examination revealed the non-venomous snake to represent a hitherto unknown species. "The three individuals that we caught during several expeditions between 2008 and 2010 the montane rainforests of western Panamá differ markedly from all known species of snakes, especially in scalation characters,” said Sebastian Lotzkat, research associate of the Herpetology Department at Senckenberg Research Institute Frankfurt. "Therefore we newly described the species — it now bears the name Sibon noalamina.“ The second part of the scientific name is Spanish and translates to "no to the mine.“ Representative of other recently discovered species that probably only occur in the Tabasará mountains, Sibon noalamina stands with its name against overexploitation of nature and for the conservation of the highland rainforests of western Panama. “Without the establishment of protected areas and the development of sustainable alternatives to large-scale forest clearance, these unique ecosystems will vanish in the foreseeable future,” Lotzkat said. Like all representatives of the genus Sibon, the new species |
 ©Senckenberg Gesellschaft für
Naturforschung/Sebastian Lotzkat
This is the newly discovered
snakebelongs to the so-called snail-eaters. Apart from snails and slugs, these nocturnal animals feed on other soft-bodied prey like earthworms or amphibian eggs. Instead of defending themselves with bites, the non-venomous colubrids deter potential predators with their appearance: With its alternating light and dark rings, Sibon noalamina mimics the contrasting warning coloration of the venomous coral snakes. The snake inhabits the mountain range known as Serranía de Tabasará in the Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé, an autonomy territory established in 1997 for the Ngöbe and Buglé. Here, the extreme poverty among the population has a share in the highest deforestation rate within Panamá: more than one-fifth of the Comarca’s forests were lost in the 1990s alone. Moreover, the region’s enormous ore deposits – especially the copper deposit in the Cerro Colorado area – are in the focus of mining companies. As the exclusive home of several amphibian and reptile species only known from – i.e., endemic to – this mountain range, the Serranía de Tabasará is a little biodiversity hotspot of its own, although still largely unexplored. |
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Jo
Stuart |
| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M.
Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 187 | |||||||||
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 Karen
L. King photo
Front
of the papyrus fragment
Possible new gospel hints that Jesus had a wife By
the Harvard University news service
Four words on a previously unknown papyrus fragment provide the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus had been married, Harvard Professor Karen King told the 10th International Congress of Coptic Studies Tuesday. Ms. King, a professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the existence of the ancient text at the congress's meeting, held every four years and hosted this year by the Vatican's Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum in Rome. The four words that appear on the fragment translate to "Jesus said to them, my wife." The words, written in Coptic, a language of ancient Egyptian Christians, are on a papyrus fragment of about one and a half inches by three inches. "Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that claim," Ms. King said. "This new gospel doesn't prove that Jesus was married, but it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates about sexuality and marriage. From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether it was better not to marry, but it was over a century after Jesus's death before they began appealing to Jesus's marital status to support their positions." Roger Bagnall, director of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York, said he believes the fragment to be authentic based on examination of the papyrus and the handwriting. Ariel Shisha-Halevy, a Coptic expert at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, considers it likely to be authentic on the basis of language and grammar, Ms. King said. Final judgment on the fragment, she said, depends on further examination by colleagues and further testing, especially of the chemical composition of the ink. One side of the fragment contains eight incomplete lines of handwriting, while the other side is badly damaged and the ink so faded that only three words and a few individual letters are still visible, even with infrared photography and computer photo enhancement. Despite its tiny size and poor condition, Ms. King said, the fragment provides tantalizing glimpses into issues about family, discipleship, and marriage that concerned ancient Christians. Ms. King and colleague AnneMarie Luijendijk, an associate professor of religion at Princeton University, believe that the fragment is part of a newly discovered gospel. Their analysis of the fragment is scheduled for publication in the January issue of Harvard Theological Review, a peer-reviewed journal. The brownish-yellow, tattered fragment belongs to an anonymous private collector who contacted King to help translate and analyze it. The collector provided King with a letter from the early 1980s indicating that Professor Gerhard Fecht from the faculty of Egyptology at the Free University in Berlin believed it to be evidence for a possible marriage of Jesus. Haiti fund will receive $20 million from Qatar By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Haiti will receive millions of dollars from Qatar through a special fund that aims to help the impoverished nation in the areas of health, education and housing. Former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Qatar's ambassador, Mohammed Bin Abdulla al-Rumaihi, made the announcement in Port-au-Prince Monday. "This $20 million the Qatar Fund has pledged to support long-term recovery in five important areas with very strong partners in each is profoundly important," Clinton said. "And I hope will set an example for other donors who have committed funds but have not been specific yet when they will deliver how much money. The Qataris have kept their word and done it in an intelligent, forward-looking way for which I am very grateful.'' Haiti was struck by a massive earthquake two years ago which displaced more than a million people and toppled thousands of buildings. Blow-dry hair shops prosper despite recession By
the A.M. Costa Rica news services
Dry Bar founder Alli Webb is in the business of selling glamour. Despite the economic downturn, Webb's Los Angeles enterprise is not only thriving, it's actually expanding across America. At first glance, Dry Bar looks like a typical hair salon. But it's not. The stylists do not cut or color hair. Their goal is to make every client look like a celebrity with a professional shampoo and blow dry. The price of glamour is $35. “It is such a good deal that I am willing to set aside $35 every week for it," says college student Adrienne Zubia. "So I save my money on meals, because this is more worth it for me than going out to eat." Ms. Webb says she is selling much more than a simple blow dry. “We feel like we are not selling blowouts. We are selling happiness and confidence that comes with a great blowout, and I think women everywhere want to feel that way.” Ms. Webb opened her first blow-dry salon in Los Angeles to fill a gap she saw in the marketplace. “There was either a high-end salon where you are paying upwards of 80, 90, 100 bucks," she says, "or there was the discount chain where you kind of do not know what you are getting." Celebrities including Julia Roberts and Cindy Crawford have gotten their hair styled at Dry Bar. Business has been so good that, in just two years, Ms. Webb has opened a total of 16 blow-dry bars across the United States. By the end of next year, she expects to open nine more. And Dry Bar is not the only salon of its kind to find success. “They are popping up every single day in a different location, and they are everywhere all across the U.S.," says Gretty Hasson, who owns My Blow L.A., which opened two years ago. “We realized it was a big trend that started. It was in San Francisco, in Canada and some in New York of these blow-dry bars opening up and we realized what better place than Beverly Hills to open one up.” |
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Jo
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M.
Costa
Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 187 | ||||||||||
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Latin America news |
Another cleanup scheduled
for World Oceans Day By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
In honor of Día Mundial de los Océanos Saturday, groups involved with Asociación Terra Nostra will spend the weekend cleaning around the ocean. One such is Grupo Gollo, a company which markets and distributes household appliances, furniture, video and computer hardware. Grupo Gollo has an electronic recycling program and will be responsible for the collection and treatment of electronic waste during this second grand national effort of ocean cleaning Friday, Saturday and Sunday. It is common to find electronic waste in rivers because for many it is easier to throw kitchen appliances or televisions that no longer work here. There is also informal recycling, and on many occasions the appliances are deposited on vacant lots or buried, according to staffers at the Asociación Terra Nostra. The company's efforts will ensure that electronic waste will receive proper treatment and will not go to the dumps or municipal landfills. The theme of the weekend is “Limpieza Internacional de Costas y Riveras” and the cleaning promotes The Ocean Conservancy organization. The goal is to draw the attention of the world by an urgent change of culture in the management of solid waste and avoid their impact on human health and coastal ecosystems, a release said. During this weekend institutions, municipalities, organizations and many volunteers will participate in the cleaning Playa Guacalillo in Puntarenas, rivers and other areas of 44 different cantons of the country. The beach is at the mouth of the Río Grande de Tárcoles, which carries a lot of trash from the Central Valley. Volunteers at the event will classify all the waste they find to contribute to the production of the only world index of marine waste, divided country-by-country and published by The Ocean Conservancy. Asociación Terra Nostra's objective is to achieve that Costa Rica in 2015 will be a green country and clean, it said. Four held in robbery string at Guanacaste beach towns By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Three men and a woman have been detained on suspicion of being the culprits in a series of at least 40 robberies in Guanacaste beach communities. The Judicial Investigating Organization said that the investigating began in December. Crimes were reported in Playas del Coco, Playa Hermosa and Playa Panamá, the agency said. Many of the victims were foreigners, said the judicial police. The gang of robbers usually worked at night and entered homes where there usually was just one person. The arrests were made during morning raids in the Liberia area. |
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