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A.M.
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San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 189
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 Municipalidad
de Santo Domingo de Heredia
photo
Workers at the
rebuilt recycling center in Santo Domingo de Herediaeven found a use for old tires as decorations. The new facility replaced one destroyed by fire in March 2014. The project was a joint effort by the Municipalidad de Santo Domingo, Compañía Nacional de Fuerza y Luz and Florida Bebidas, the beverage company. The location is 100 meters east and 700 meters south of InbioParque. Country outlines its climate proposals By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country is readying its proposals for the United Nations climate change summit. They include: • installing 100 percent capacity to generate power with renewable resources, mainly hydro, • development of an efficient public transportation system low in emissions, • increased use of biomass, and • promoting recycling and composting for management of solid waste. The proposals by the world's countries will be used to create a new climate agreement. Edgar Gutierrez, minister of Ambiente y Energía, outlined the proposals Wednesday. Most will not take effect until after 2020 or 2030. The country aims to be carbon neutral by 2021, according to officials. The government has a number of committees working on various aspects of climate change. The goal is to keep the increase in the world's average temperature to 2 degrees C. Officials attribute the increase in the Earth's average temperature to the emission of carbon dioxide. The Goddard Institute for Space Studies says the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8 degrees C (1.4° F) since 1880. The institute is an agency of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Harvard study sees power smorgasbørd By the Harvard University news staff
A new Harvard study pokes holes in the conventional wisdom that clean renewable sources like wind and solar will require huge quantities of storage before they can make a significant dent in the greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation. The analysis published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science finds that the supply of wind and solar power could be increased tenfold without additional storage. "There's no question that it would be better to have more and better storage and a sensible long-term strategy for the grid will have much more storage than today," said coauthor David Keith, professor of applied physics at Harvard University. "But you don't have to wait for that before deploying more variable renewables." The parametric study conducted by Keith and graduate student Hossein Safaei asked: In order to drastically reduce planet-warming carbon emissions from electricity generation, what amount of bulk electricity storage is economically efficient? Storage technologies are those that can hold electricity for hours at a time, such as pumped hydroelectric facilities or flow batteries. Since the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine at the time that energy is needed, many assume that bulk storage technologies are essential in order for wind turbines and solar farms to contribute a larger share of the nation's electricity demand. But storage "is not the only strategy to achieve a low-carbon electricity grid," according to Safaei. "Low capital cost in addition to good emissions performance make gas turbines cost-effective carbon mitigation candidates. Moreover, dispatchable zero-carbon generation technologies such as hydropower, nuclear, and biomass can be deployed instead of, or in conjunction with, the intermittent renewables." The finding that widespread deployment of batteries for grid-scale storage is not a prerequisite for dramatically increasing the amount of renewable energy we use is good news, said Sally M. Benson, professor of energy resources engineering and executive director of Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project. That's because more time and R&D is needed to decrease the cost of bulk electricity story and to scale-up production, she said in commenting on the research. Another independent observer, Jay Apt, professor of engineering and public policy and co-director of the Electricity Industry Center at Carnegie Mellon University, added that the Harvard study makes clear that the cost of removing pollution from electric generation is lowest when an all-of-the-above strategy is used. Keith and Safaei hope that their analysis will assist investment decisions and government policy directions. Agents think head is taxi driver's By the
A.M. Costa Rica staff
When robbers killed a taxi driver, they threw his body into a well. That was in Guadalupe de Liberia. In 2010 parts of the body turned up, and investigators identified the victim as a 63-year-old man with the last name of Contreras. Despite efforts, they could not find his head. Judicial agents now say that they think the head has reappeared. They said a skull came from the same well, and they suspect it is of the taxi driver. The owner of the property and the well contracted for work to deepen it, and workmen located the skull, agents said. Workers at the judicial morgue now have the job of verifying the identity of the skull. No new workers, says court president By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
There will be no employees added to the judicial payroll next year, according to the president of the Corte Suprema de Justicia. The court president, Zarela Villanueva, said this Wednesday as she appeared before the Comisión Permanente de Asuntos Hacendarios to defend the 2016 budget. The judiciary already said that the $804 million budget would be about 5.48 percent higher than last year. The court president said that 43.2 percent of the budget was going to the Judicial Investigating Organization, the Defensa Pública and the Ministerio Publico, which houses prosecutors. The total budget for the year as proposed by President Luis Guillermo Solís is about $15.1 billion. Of that amount, the central government plans to borrow 46 percent, about $7 billion, to pay bills. Also before the committee Wednesday was Alexander Mora, minister of Comercio Exterior. His budget proposal is nearly 25 percent less than this year, but he told lawmakers that the cut would not affect the ministry's work in the coming year. The ministry budget is about $14.1 million. Web checked for agency transparency By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
University and government officials will outline how they measure the transparency of public agencies based on the individual Web Pages. The Centro de Investigación y Capacitación en Administración Pública at the Universidad de Costa Rica, the Defensoría de los Habitantes and Gobierno Digital will outline the project today. The Web pages of some 105 agencies are involved. Nearly every agency has a Web site, but not all of them are up to date. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 189 | |
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| Cartago university to inaugurate its biotech research center
today |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The public university in Cartago is about to inaugurate today a new biotechnology center at its main campus. The center will conduct research in plant biology, environmental biology and applied biomedical techniques, according to the university, Tecnológico de Costa Rica. The new facility is part of the Centro de Investigación en Biotecnología, which was founded in 1994. There are 14 specialized labs, a radiation lab, coolers, a place to grow algae and an area to grow plants. The school is a leader in science and technology. School officials say that the operations of the new facility will |
dovetail
with other programs. The plant biology section will deal in
propagation of species of interest in agriculture, ornamental plantings
and medicine as well as genetics. Biotechnology was described by the school as the study of renewable energies with the use of vegetable species, plant diseases and control with biological agents such as bacteria, fungus and insects. In biomedical research the scientists will cultivate human skin for treatment of burn victims, among other efforts. Current projects seek to find substances that will kill cancer cells. The center now has 34 researchers with 90 student assistants who are working on 36 projects. |
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Building wall Something there is that must love this wall, at least motorists traveling Ruta 209 between Guayabo de Mora and Palmichal. The 60-million colons ($114,000) project is an effort to reclaim highway that dropped away in a slide. The work may cause delays, said the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad. The wall is 10 meters high and 25 meters long, some 33 by 82 feet. |
 Consejo Nacional de Vialidad photo
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| Traffic police report many safety violations despite steep fines | |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
In the first eight months of the year, some 44 motorcyclists have been cited for carrying a passenger under 5 years of age, which is against the law. During the same period the Policía de Tránsito issued 542 citations to drivers who were carrying children under 12 with no or inadequate security seats, police said. |
These rules
went into effect 18 months ago, and police issued a statement Wednesday
reflecting their frustration. They also noted that in the first eight
months of the year they issued
3,236 persons tickets for not using seat belts and 1,532 citations
for
using a cell phone while driving. Anyone who drives in Costa Rica knows that these numbers hardly reflect the violations on the roadways. Fines can range as high as 207,088 colons. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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be
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 189 | |||||
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| Hackers got away with many more Fed fingerprints than first
suspected |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Hackers who stole personnel data on millions of U.S. federal employees got away with more fingerprint images than originally thought, according to the government agency hit by the massive cyber attack. In a statement Wednesday, the Office of Personnel Management said further investigation revealed that 5.6 million fingerprint records were stolen in the attack or more than five times as many as first thought. The attack, first discovered earlier this year, affected nearly 22 million current and former federal workers, job applicants, and their families. U.S. investigators have told reporters privately they believe the Chinese government is responsible for the breach, but officials have not yet made this accusation publicly. President Barack Obama is expected to prominently raise the issue of cyber attacks when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House for a state visit later this week. The Obama administration says cyber attacks, particularly Beijing's alleged theft of commercial secrets, have become a major irritant to U.S.-China ties. |
However,
White House officials have been more reluctant to bring
up the Office of Personnel Management attack, which is seen as a more
classic case of government espionage. If the Chinese government did carry out the breach, it is not clear how exactly it intends to use the federal worker data. U.S. officials say they have no evidence the information has been abused so far. Federal experts also believe that, "as of now, the ability to misuse fingerprint data is limited," according to the Office of Personnel Management statement. "However, this probability could change over time as technology evolves," it said. The Office of Personnel Management says an interagency working group, including the FBI, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, has been set up to review the potential ways adversaries could misuse fingerprint data now and in the future. The revelation could particularly put at risk any U.S. intelligence officers or contractors working covertly overseas whose prints have been taken. The U.S. has blamed China for a series of high-profile cyber attacks on U.S. government and business entities in recent years. China has strongly denied all the allegations. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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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, Sept. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 189 | |||||||
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| Pope and Obama both cite need for action on climate By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis appealed to the United States Wednesday to take urgent action and help slow the pace of climate change, because the world is at a critical moment of history. President Barack Obama warmly welcomed the leader of the Roman Catholic Church to the White House on a beautiful autumn morning in Washington, and he agreed that Americans and people throughout the world have "a sacred obligation to protect our planet." The president and the pope were speaking at an official arrival ceremony celebrating the pontiff's first visit to the United States. They saluted each other in speeches that were frequently interrupted by applause from 15,000 invited guests on the White House lawn. Crowds of other well-wishers turned out to get a glimpse of the pope from afar. "What a beautiful day the Lord has made," Obama said, adding that the pope's "message of love and hope has inspired so many people, across our nation and around the world." Turning to the 78-year-old pope, the president praised the pontiff for "your humility, your embrace of simplicity, the gentleness of your words and the generosity of your spirit." "You remind us that in the eyes of God our measure as individuals, and as societies, is not determined by wealth or power or station or celebrity, but by how well we hew to Scripture’s call to lift up the poor and the marginalized, to stand up for justice and against inequality," Obama said. The president's speech referenced refugees fleeing war-torn lands, religious liberty and the "sacred obligation to protect our planet." He also thanked the pope for his efforts to bring Cuba and the United States closer together after decades of distrust. Pope Francis highlighted his background, born in Argentina to parents who emigrated from Italy to South America, in his opening speech. "As the son of an immigrant family, I am happy to be a guest in this country, which was largely built by such families," he said in English. "I would like all men and women of good will in this great nation to support the efforts of the international community to protect the vulnerable in our world." Francis called on Americans to take urgent steps to prevent environmental ruin and also to address poverty. "When it comes to the care of our common home, we are living at a critical moment of history," he said in echoing his June encyclical on the environment. Addressing climate change "can no longer be left to a future generation," he added. And for all the United States has done and continues to do in addressing world problems, the pope said in conclusion: "God bless America." The two leaders then went inside the White House for private talks in the president's Oval Office. Together with first lady Michelle Obama, they also waved to the crowd from a balcony of the presidential mansion. During their one-on-one meeting at the White House, Obama presented Francis with two gifts: a sculpture of an ascending dove, an international symbol of peace as well as the Christian symbol for the Holy Spirit, and a key from the Maryland home of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first native-born American to be declared a saint. After meeting with Obama, Francis led a worship service with America's 450-strong bishops' conference at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, where he told U.S. Roman Catholic bishops that crimes of sexual abuse of minors by clergy should never be repeated. While the pope did not utter the words sexual abuse, he referred to the scandal by talking about difficult moments and providing help for victims. "I know how much the pain of recent years has weighed upon you, and I have supported your generous commitment to bring healing to victims ... and to work to ensure that such crimes will never be repeated," Francis told the bishops, who applauded. Under enormous public pressure, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pledged to oust any guilty clergy from church work and enact safeguards for children. Status of women in church remains an unresolved issue By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Just what is in store for Roman Catholic women under Pope Francis' leadership? For now, that remains a mystery. The pontiff arrived Tuesday for a six-day visit to the United States, trying to shore up support for an American church whose numbers are trailing population growth. Polls show most of the country’s 51 million Catholic adults embrace Francis but disagree with some fundamental church teachings affecting women, who make up just over half of the denomination. Key areas of contention involve women's reproductive health and females' limited roles in the church’s male-dominated hierarchy. Shortly after becoming pope in March 2013, Francis called for "still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence" but made clear women priests would not be accepted anytime soon. Nor has he pushed for women's broader inclusion in positions of authority throughout the church, some Vatican observers say. "The optimism that I felt two years ago . . . has not really been borne out by anything that has happened," said Kathleen Sprows Cummings, director of the University of Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. While she noted the pope appointed a woman to lead a Vatican missionary group and chose five others for an international theological commission, "it’s not the sweeping changes that signal women have a place at the table." "The bottom line is if women . . . are turned off by the church’s patriarchal culture, we’re going to lose future generations," agreed Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit and member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Ms. Cummings, a historian, teaches a course on feminism in the church. The young women in her classes don’t necessarily consider themselves feminists, she said, but, having grown up in contemporary America, they "assume all doors are open to them." Her students wrote letters of protest several years ago when they learned of threats to revoke the right for girls to serve on the altar. The Vatican has permitted female servers, earlier known as altar boys, since at least 1994 at the discretion of each diocese and their individual priests. Just outside of Washington, in Arlington, Virginia, 15-year-old Annemarie Dougherty in January became one of the first female servers at St. Agnes Catholic Church. The Arlington diocese was one of the last to approve female servers, in 2007. "A lot of it was that girls weren’t allowed to do what boys were allowed to do, and that frustrated me," the high school sophomore said. Serving on the altar has "made me more aware of what is going on in different parts of the Mass." Her mother had encouraged Annemarie’s participation. "When I was young, I always thought it was a little unfair. I felt that women were so unimportant in the church," Sheila Dougherty explained. "You had those priests up there, the men doing the readings, the men collecting the money." The latter two roles, and others, have long since opened up to women. Now both mother and daughter are enthusiastic about the Catholic Church and its spiritual leader. He’s also a 78-year-old celibate man, which may impede his understanding of women – and their expectations and potential within the faith community, Reese speculated. "Celibacy is a problem for priests not because they don’t have sex. It’s because they don’t have a wife" or daughters to question their assumptions and give advice, said Reese, who, as senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter, has written about the pope and women. He noted that the former Jorge Bergoglio comes from Argentina, and "the Latin American male ideal is macho, paternalistic. You can’t ignore that." But on the flip side, Reese pointed out, Francis has a long history of working well for and with women, first as a chemist, later as a leader in the movement against human trafficking in a country that has had a female president since 2007. As pope, he has said the church needs a new theology about women, Reese added. Francis has "invited the church into a conversation. That’s the important thing." On his U.S. trip, the pontiff might expect discussion on several points of particular interest to women. Sexual reproduction: Three-fourths (76 percent) of U.S. Catholics differ with, or disregard, the church’s ban on the use of artificial contraception, according to the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. And a slim majority of U.S. Catholics (51 percent) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, the Public Religion Research Institute found in a recent poll. That percentage falls to 35 percent among regular churchgoers. Francis recently announced a special Holy Year of Mercy, in which any priest can grant women forgiveness for abortion, considered a grave sin by the church. The observation begins Dec. 8, a holy day honoring belief in the Virgin Mary’s immaculate conception of Jesus. The pope, who spent years working among Argentina’s poor and talking with people at every level of society, wrote a letter urging compassion for "all the women who have resorted to abortion. I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal." Pushing for priesthood: Nearly six in 10 Catholics support letting women into the priesthood, a Pew Research Center poll found this spring. Francis and his Vatican predecessors have emphatically ruled that out. But the international Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests claims at least 124 ordained members worldwide, including dozens in the United States. With ordination comes excommunication by the Vatican. And it plans to ordain three women bishops in Philadelphia today. "We use equal rites to promote equal rights and justice for women in the church," its Web site says. Rebecca Woodhull, president of the National Council of Catholic Women, rejects the association members’ claims of authority. She recently told NPR News: "They are not Catholic priests. They can call themselves that, but it would be, maybe, with a small 'c' and not a capital 'C.'" Clash with American nuns: Under Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican’s doctrinal office in 2012 announced it was imposing new oversight of the main leadership representing most of America’s 50,000 nuns after opening an investigation into the sisters’ activities four years earlier. Investigators have recovered deleted Hillary Clinton emails By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. officials say that investigators have recovered personal and work-related emails that former secretary of State Hillary Clinton believed had been deleted from the private server she used while serving as the country's top diplomat from 2009 to 2013. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been probing how classified national security material ended up on Mrs. Clinton's email server. Mrs. Clinton, now the leading candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, has said she used the server as a convenience so she did not have to maintain two email accounts, one for State Department business and one for personal matters. It was not clear how many of the 60,000 emails on the server have been recovered. Mrs. Clinton has said the server was wiped clean, but one investigator told The New York Times that it had not been hard to recover the emails. Mrs. Clinton says that 30,000 of them she deemed personal had been discarded and copies of the remainder turned over to the State Department. Officials there are sorting through them and have found dozens of classified documents, although Clinton says she is confident that none of the emails was marked as confidential when she sent or received it. The State Department has released several batches of the official emails, and is planning to disclose even more of them in the coming weeks. The emails recovered from the server could also eventually be made public. Republican political opponents of Clinton in Congress are combing through the emails to investigate her role during the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador there. With the ongoing controversy over her emails, surveys about the presidential race show her political standing has waned, with increasing numbers of voters questioning her trustworthiness. But the surveys also show that Democratic voters still favor Mrs. Clinton for the party's presidential nomination next year. Inflatable space tower seen as alternative to rockets By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Launching space vehicles is still very costly because booster rockets are not reusable. A space elevator could make it dramatically cheaper but there still is no material for the space cable that could lift such an elevator to a height that would eliminate the need for a booster rocket. Canadian company Thoth Technologies won a U.S. patent for a different solution, an elevator encased within a 20-kilometer space tower that could bring people and vehicles much closer to outer space. According to Thoth Technologies the elevator would run inside an inflatable tower. Launching space vehicles from its top would be much cheaper. “We think it's realistic. We're looking to license the patent to Google or Alphabet, SpaceX, Elon Musk, maybe the European Space Agency, and we think that in three to five years a 1.5-kilometer prototype model, full-scale model, could be accomplished," said Ian Tomaszewski. The company estimates that its elevator could carry 10 tons of cargo at approximately 11 kilometers per hour, reaching the top in about 60 minutes. From there passengers and cargo could easily reach the orbit and beyond. There would be other opportunities too. “Tourism is one. You'd have a great sight of the earth at 20 kilometers up, you'd see about 1,000 kilometers in any direction," said Tomaszewski. Another idea being developed is a space elevator. A laser-powered car traveling along a ribbon made of strong and light nanotubes, stretched between Earth and a satellite in the geostationary orbit. A number of experiments have been conducted but the biggest obstacle remains: how to manufacture a 36,000-kilometer-long ribbon. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 189 | |||||||||
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Ritual
decapitation cited in ancient Brazil
By the PLOS ONE news staff
A 9,000 year-old case of human decapitation has been found in the rock shelter of Lapa do Santo in Brazil, according to a study published Wednesday in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by André Strauss from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany and colleagues. An archaeological site called Lapa do Santo, located in east-central Brazil, contains evidence of human occupation dating back to about 12,000 years ago. In 2007, researchers found fragments of a buried body, Burial 26, including a cranium, jaw, the first six cervical vertebrae and two severed hands at the site. They dated the remains back to about 9,000 years ago using accelerator mass spectrometry. The researchers found amputated hands laid over the face of the skull arranged opposite each other and observed v-shaped cut marks on the jaw and sixth cervical vertebra. Based on strontium analysis comparing Burial 26's isotopic signature to other specimens from Lapa do Santo, the researchers suggest Burial 26 was likely a local member of the group. Additionally, the presentation of the remains, lead the authors to think that this was likely a ritualized decapitation instead of trophy-taking. If this is the case, these remains may demonstrate sophisticated mortuary rituals among hunter-gatherers in the Americas during this time period. The authors think this may be the oldest case of decapitation found in the New World, leading to a re-evaluation of the previous interpretations of this practice, particularly with regards to its origins and geographic dispersion. The full paper is available HERE! Peace accord reached for Colombia By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Colombia's president and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias rebels reached a major breakthrough late Wednesday in the effort to end more than 50 years of bloodshed. President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel leaders agreed to sign a final peace accord by March. The deal was reached in Havana, where the two sides have been holding three years of peace talks sponsored by Cuba and Norway. Santos made his first appearance at the talks Wednesday to announce the breakthrough, which came when the two sides finally agreed on the touchy issue of justice for crimes committed by the rebels. The deal would grant a general amnesty to rebel fighters, but not in cases of such serious offenses such as war crimes, rape and kidnappings. Rebels who confess to less serious crimes may not have to go to prison, but could instead be told to compensate their victims and have their freedom of movement restricted. Rebel negotiators have always vowed to keep their fighters out of jail. The rebels also must disarm within 60 days of the March deadline. The details of how they will give up their weapons are still to be worked out. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned his congratulations to Santos. "The Colombian people deserve a just and durable peace, and this will be their victory," Kerry said. The leftist rebels have been fighting a guerrilla war to topple Colombian governments since 1964, killing thousands. They have used drug trafficking and kidnappings to fund their war. |
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From Page 7: Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo
S.A. photo
There will be no shortage
of this aviation fuel at the Daniel Oduber airport. The
Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo S.A. says the fuel storage
capacity will be increased by 5,000 barrels with the construction of a
new tank. The airport now has two 5,000 barrel tanks that were built in
2013. |
