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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 192
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some women on the verge of giving birth had to be evacuated from the Hospital de las Mujeres Monday morning because a faulty air conditioner caused a small fire that sent smoke billowing through the facility. In addition, some newborns were taken to other hospitals. No one was affected by the smoke, said fire fighters. The Cuerpo de Bomberos reported some damage to a delivery room and smoke though much more of the building. An automatic alarm alerted fire fighters at 9:32 a.m., and the agency responded with 12 vehicles and crews. Hospital crews spent much of Monday disinfecting the areas that were affected by the smoke. The hospital staff said that the routine would be normal today. The hospital is in Plaza Víquez not far from the railway Estación al Pacífico. Tamarindo firm buys hotel and cuts rates Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Witch’s Rock Industries S.A. has acquired Tamarindo’s Hotel Pueblo Dorado, the firm said Monday. In an effort to build a stronger more sustainable tourism base, hotel management immediately slashed hotel rates, the firm added, noting that the hotel aims to attract international and local tourists who desire to spend their vacations and holidays in the famous beach town but who also struggle to keep up with Costa Rica’s growing costs. Rooms prices start at $55 per night with breakfast included, the firm said. Witch’s Rock Industries currently owns and operates Witch’s Rock Surf Camp, Volcano Brewing Co., and the El Vaquero Beach Bar and Restaurant. The founder of Witch’s Rock Industries, Joe Walsh said in a release, “I’m excited about the purchase of the Pueblo Dorado Hotel. It will be a great compliment to our organization and will keep with our mission to offer a great quality of family-friendly, clean, and affordable rooms. Our brand of hospitality always includes service with a smile and the Pueblo Dorado will adopt this tradition of warmth and care.” The Pueblo Dorado Surf Hotel has 29 rooms, a pool, free WIFI, cable TV and air conditioning in every room and is located a short distance from Tamarindo Beach. The hotel helps to maintain a beautiful nature trail that leads to the beach that is located directly across the street from the hotel. More cocaine netted from boat in Pacific By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Anti-drug officials said Monday that a boat containing 629 kilos of cocaine was intercepted off the Pacific coast. The Ministerio de Seguridad Pública said the crew of one of its planes spotted a boat some 52 miles off Flamingo Saturday, and the crew of four was taking packages from the sea. A cutter from the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas responded and took the crew and cargo into custody. Traffic police report parking violations By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
That traffic police actually are issuing tickets for illegal parking might surprise expats, particularly those in the metro area. But it is true, according to statistics released Monday by Mario Calderón, director of the Policía de Tránsito. He said that in the first eight months of the year, his officers issued 9,873 tickets for illegal parking. The fine for this offense is 51,249.10 colons or about $97. The traffic police director also said that residents who are upset by badly parked vehicles should call 911 and report the fact because his officers cannot patrol each street. Fingerprints can give clue to ancestry By the North Carolina State University news
staff
Fingerprints show much more than who done it. A North Carolina State University study said that it is possible to identify an individual’s ancestral background based on his or her fingerprint characteristics, a discovery with significant applications for law enforcement and anthropological research. “This is the first study to look at this issue at this level of detail, and the findings are extremely promising,” says Ann Ross, a professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University and senior author of a paper describing the work. “But more work needs to be done. We need to look at a much larger sample size and evaluate individuals from more diverse ancestral backgrounds.” Anthropologists have looked at fingerprints for years, because they are interested in human variation. But this research has looked at Level 1 details, such as pattern types and ridge counts. Forensic fingerprint analysis, which is used in criminal justice contexts, looks at Level 2 details, the more specific variations, such as where a fingerprint ridge splits. For this study, researchers looked at Level 1 and Level 2 details of right index-finger fingerprints for 243 individuals: 61 African American women; 61 African American men; 61 European American women; and 60 European American men. The fingerprints were analyzed to determine whether there were patterns that were specific to either sex or ancestral background. The researchers found no significant differences between men and women, but did find significant differences in the Level 2 details of fingerprints between people of European American and African American ancestry. “A lot of additional work needs to be done, but this holds promise for helping law enforcement,” Ms. Ross says. “And it’s particularly important given that, in 2009, the National Academy of Sciences called for more scientific rigor in forensic science, singling out fingerprints in particular as an area that merited additional study. “This finding also tells us that there’s a level of variation in fingerprints that is of interest to anthropologists, particularly in the area of global population structures. We just need to start looking at the Level 2 fingerprint details,” Ms. Ross says. Elderly care sorely lacking, new study says By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A new study by the International Labor Organization finds more than half of all people 65 years and older have no access to urgently needed long-term care. The study is being launched on the International Day of Older Persons. The study of 46 countries covers 80 percent of the world population aged 65 and over. It finds an alarming lack of social protection for this aging population and a global shortfall of 13.6 million workers to care for its needs. The report says 300 million elderly people are incapacitated in various ways. Many have lost their mobility and cannot walk, some may have mental illnesses, such as Alzheimer’s, while others may need daily assistance to tend to their basic health needs. Xenia Scheil-Adlung is the labor organization's health policy coordinator and author of the study. She says the whole long-term care issue is largely neglected due to both age and gender discrimination. “This age discrimination and gender discrimination, but particularly age discrimination is publicly not considered as a serious concern," said Ms. Scheil-Adlung. "Other than other forms of discrimination, we find that it is largely accepted that, for example, older people get less services. They are expected to consume less public funds. If you compare rehabilitation services, which are needed both by younger and older persons, we find that older persons get much less.” The report says in Africa, which lacks 1.5 million long-term care workers, more than 90 percent of older persons do not receive care. It says the need for long-term health care workers in absolute numbers is greatest in Asia and the Pacific. It says this region lacks 8.2 million workers, depriving 65 percent of the over 65 population of assistance. Older people generally do better in Europe. But, the report notes even European countries spend on average only 2 percent or less of their gross domestic product on long-term care for the elderly. Due to the shortage of health care workers, the International Labor Organization says unpaid female family members end up caring for up to 80 percent of all older people in need of assistance. The study says global populations are rapidly aging and few countries in the world are prepared to deal with their increasing needs. The labor organization is calling for universal coverage and protection for the elderly, financed by national social insurance plans or taxes. |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 192 | |
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| New bill proposed in new effort to revamp the firearms law |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A legislative commission presented Monday a new rewrite of the country's firearms laws. Under the proposal, all foreigners except those with permanent residency are prohibited from possession of a firearm, just as the law says now. But the new twist is that even those with permanent residency have to have held the status for five years before getting a firearm, according to the proposal. The bill also seeks to create a data base of firearms that includes every weapon in the country. The proposal came from the Comisión Permanente Especial de Seguridad y Narcotrafico in the form of a 19-page presentation. However, the actual bill, No. 19.716, is not available yet online. The proposal was put forward as a measure supported by members of a number of political parties represented in the committee. The presentation also characterizes possession of a firearm as a concession of the state and not a human right to self defense, as the U.S. Supreme Court has called it. The bill also gives limit rights to those under 18 to use a firearm to participate in sports shooting. A prior version forbade this. In fact, the new measure contains parts of two previous proposals that never were made into law. The proposal also would create more restrictions of where someone could carry a firearm. The law already prohibits carrying a weapon into large gatherings of persons, bars and similar. The measure also would make law the provision in a recent decree that said persons carrying weapons while they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs would lose their permit. |
The measure
also puts the burden on the person buying a firearm to
complete all the requirements with the Departamento
de Control de Armas y Explosivos of the Ministerio de Seguridad
Pública. Under
current law arms dealers frequently register weapon sales for their
customers. Those with multiple weapons would have to obtain a permit to carry for each one, and carrying more than one weapon at the same time would be prohibited. Law enforcement would be given broad powers to question and search individuals in order to seek illegal weapons. The proposal would continue to require an assessment by a psychiatrist of the mental state of those seeking a permit to have or to carry a firearm. These assessments generally are considered to be worthless, except for psychiatrists who charge a fee. There also are more restrictions on those who can obtain a permit to have or carry a firearm. The proposal includes criminal and administrative penalties. Carrying a firearm without a permit to do so would bring a 50-day to one-year prison sentence. Selling arms illegally could bring a one-year to six-year prison sentence. International arms trafficking could be penalized for a prison term of up to 10 years. Fines would be levied on those with more weapons than their permits allowed, those who test positive for dope or alcohol and those who carry their weapon into places where it is prohibited. Carrying a licensed firearm in a place on the body where it is visible also would continue to be illegal. A lot of the regulations are modified for law enforcement and those working with security firms. |
| Slightly higher limit announced that exempts workers from
withholdings |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
The Ministerio de Hacienda has set new amounts for the collection of salary withholdings. For the next fiscal year starting Thursday monthly salaries of 793,000 colons or lower are exempt from withholdings. That is about $1,504. This year the cutoff was 787,000 colons. The adjustment is based on the consumer price index, said the ministry. Those who earn more than this amount and up to 1,181,000 |
colons a
month
will be subject to a 10 percent withholding. Those who earn more than that face a 15 percent withholding. Employers are obligated to remit the money withheld to the tax department in the ministry. The amounts for withholdings were raised slightly, too, based on the consumer price index, said the ministry. The ministry figured an increase of about three-quarters of a percent, it said. The amounts withheld are applied to the employee's payment of income tax at the end of the year. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 192 | |||||
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| Computer system designed to defeat cyber threats from
Twitter feeds |
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By the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council news staff
Cyber-criminals are taking advantage of real-world events with high volumes of traffic on Twitter in order to post links to Web sites which contain malware. To combat the threat, computer scientists have created an intelligent system to identify malicious links disguised in shortened URLs on Twitter. They will test the system in the European Football Championships next summer. In the recent study the Cardiff University team identified potential cyber attacks within five seconds with up to 83 percent accuracy and within 30 seconds with up to 98 percent accuracy, when a user clicked on a URL posted on Twitter and malware began to infect the device. The scientists collected tweets containing URLs during the 2015 Superbowl and cricket world cup finals, and monitored interactions between a Web site and a user's device to recognize the features of a malicious attack. Where changes were made to a user's machine such as new processes created, registry files modified or files tampered with, these showed a malicious attack. The team subsequently used system activity such as bytes and packets exchanged between device and remote endpoint, processor use and network adapter status to train a machine classifier to recognize predictive signals that can distinguish between malicious and benign URLs. Pete Burnap, director of the Social Data Science Lab at Cardiff University, and lead scientist on the research, said: "Unfortunately the high volume of traffic around large scale events creates a perfect environment for cyber-criminals to |
launch
surreptitious attacks. It is
well known that people use online social
networks such as Twitter to find information about an event." "Attackers can hide links to malicious servers in a post masquerading as an attractive or informative piece of information about the event." "URLs are always shortened on Twitter due to character limitations in posts, so it's incredibly difficult to know which are legitimate. Once infected the malware can turn your computer into a zombie computer and become part of a global network of machines used to hide information or route further attacks." "In a 2013 report from Microsoft these drive-by downloads were identified as one of the most active and commercial risks to cyber security." "At the moment many existing anti-virus solutions identify malware using known code signatures, which make it difficult to detect previous unseen attacks." Omer Rana, principal investigator on the project, said: "We are trying to build systems that can help law enforcement authorities make decisions in a changing cyber security landscape. Social media adds a whole new dimension to network security risk. This work contributes to new insight into this and we hope to take this forward and develop a real-time system that can protect users as they search for information about real-world events using new forms of information sources." "We have the European Football Championships coming up next summer, which will provide a huge spike in Twitter traffic and we expect to stress-test our system using this event." |
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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, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 192 | |||||||
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| 80-year-old Dalai Lama checks into Mayo Clinic By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Days after the Dalai Lama canceled all appearances for the month of October, the 80-year-old Tibetan Buddhist leader checked into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. A Mayo spokeswoman confirmed that the Dalai Lama had checked into the Rochester clinic for a medical evaluation on Sunday. No other details were released. The Dalai Lama has made regular visits to Rochester for medical care. Mayo Clinic last week confirmed his most recent visit was for a routine annual checkup but released no details, as is routine. Friday the Dalai Lama's office said in a statement on its Web site that he had canceled his planned October U.S. appearances after doctors advised him to rest. The statement gave no more details about the Dalai Lama's condition, and there was no update on the Web site as of Monday. "The doctors have advised His Holiness to rest for the next several weeks," the statement said. "We deeply regret the inconvenience caused by this decision and apologize to all the people who have worked so hard in organizing the visit as well as to the public." The Dalai Lama lives in exile in India. Among the Dalai Lama's canceled appearances next month was a planned visit to the University of Colorado in Boulder as well as appearances in Salt Lake City and Philadelphia. The Dalai Lama's checkup came as Pope Francis concluded his first-ever visit to the United States, and heads of state and diplomats were gathering for the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York. No. 2 Republican McCarthy will seek top job as speaker By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
California Republican Kevin McCarthy has announced his bid to be the next speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. “I am running for speaker to work with my colleagues and make the case to the American people for conservative principles,” McCarthy wrote to his fellow Republican representatives and tweeted to the world on Monday. "We can’t ignore the differences that exist, but we can and must heal the divisions in our conference.” With that, he might be said to be wading right in since former speaker John Boehner announced his resignation only three days earlier on Friday, in part over criticism that he did not fight hard enough for conservative principles. In fact, Boehner was facing a challenge to his leadership from the conservative House Freedom Caucus wing of his own Republican party. The 50-year-old McCarthy was often seen standing behind Boehner in his role as majority leader, a leadership position just behind speaker. He is viewed as a more pragmatic conservative Republican, like Boehner, but he has cultivated relationships with members of the House Freedom Caucus. He is widely expected to win the speakership which will be voted on by the entire House. But questions have been raised about his ability to lead with a fractious right wing. “The Republican House is in a sad state,” bemoaned Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada on the floor of the senate Monday. “Last week the far right showed that it can depose the speaker, and it has emerged more powerful than ever, more outspoken than ever.” McCarthy is a fifth-term congressman who has spent nine years in the House. Having grown up in a family of Democrats in Bakersfield, California, at 19 he was attending junior college when he won $5,000 in a lottery and bought a delicatessen. McCarthy has said that experience is what prompted him to become conservative: when he discovered how many federal government regulations he had to comply with in order to run a business. He later sold the deli and returned to school. “I am running to be your speaker because I know that the People’s House works best when the leadership you elect listens to members and respects the legislative process,” wrote McCarthy, who has a reputation for being a good listener, in his announcement letter. The turmoil in the House comes as a current funding measure for the federal government expires Thursday. Now that Boehner is leaving, analysts say it is likely that House Republicans will approve a short-term, two-month spending bill to avert a partial shutdown, with the help of votes from House Democrats, kicking controversy differences over long-term spending decisions down the road. “The House will hold leadership elections in coming days,” Reid continued. “I hope they elect some sensible leaders. I am concerned that even those Republican leaders previously inclined to work for compromise have already lost the courage to stand up to the far-right when it matters most."  Voice of America/C.
Presutti
Women on
stilts cheer for Egyptian PresidentAbdel Fattah el-Sissi Crowds
promote their views
at New York U.N. building By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The women towered over the crowd near the United Nations in New York, wearing the colors of the Egyptian flag, big red bows on their hair and waists, over black and white striped leotards. Black and gold striped trousers covered the stilts that raised them up. They were just several of the thousands of people demonstrating for or against various governments, a city block away from where the leaders of many of those governments were addressing the United Nations during the annual General Assembly. Amira Abdelhamid said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is fighting terrorism in Egypt and around the Middle East. "We need the military right now. We need someone with power to get our land stabilized. We need peace and calm right now." An opposing voice came from Moustafa Mohammed, who argued against al-Sissi from the other side of a thick steel police fence. "This man robbed Egypt of power through a military coup two years ago. The United Nations did nothing about it. Mr. Obama did nothing about it. He should not be welcome in the U.N. to speak on behalf of the Egyptian people," Mohammed said. The largest group of protesters paraded an oversized caricature of Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, as a puppet, accusing him of executing 2,000 people since taking office two years ago. Delaram Ahmady's family left Iran when she was 4 years old. "The United Nations is a place where countries come together to discuss the future of the world, a better place for children and young people to grow up in. It's not a place for Hassan Rouhani and his regime to be given a platform. Countries inside are discussing animal rights and climate change right now. Not brutally killing people. We are into 2015, but the cutting off of someone's hand? As a society, we need to get past that," she said. About 10 protesters wore light blue rain ponchos, the color of the United Nations, and walked backwards three kilometers to protest the nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers. Mookie Tenembaum was the artistic creator of the backwards march. "Iran executes people, not agreements. The Iranians have hacked our values. They have hacked the free world," he said. Slava Kolomiets came to the United States 10 years ago. She wore a bright flower garland in her hair, the traditional dress of her homeland Ukraine. She was protesting Russia's invasion of her country and blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin. "Don't kill our children. Go home. Putin, go to Russia. Stop the war in Ukraine," she said. Some protest voices were heard through silence. Falun Gong used its meditation exercises as a protest against the Chinese government. Giant sequoias stressed by drought in California By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
California is suffering under a historic four-year drought and scientists say even the state's famed sequoia trees are feeling the pain. The National Park Service has started detailed research to see how it can help the oldest living things on earth survive. Slowly and painstakingly, University of California tree biologist Anthony Ambrose climbs up a giant sequoia in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, the only place on earth where these magnificent trees live. “It’s an amazing experience to be able to climb up into these things and know that it's been growing in this same spot for a thousand years or more,” he said. Sequoias grow over 90 meters tall, their trunks are up to 15 meters wide and some of them are more than 3,000 years old. Once-rich mountain streams have dwindled to trickles and the trees that each need more than 3,000 liters of water a day are now getting much less. Some of them are showing signs of thirst. “We've observed some unusual and abnormal levels of foliage die-back, which haven't been observed in the park before,” Ambrose said. Sensors installed in tree canopies, examinations of seedlings, data from individual trees and images collected by observational planes will help scientists measure the seriousness of the danger. One possible solution would be to cut down less important species of trees that compete with sequoias for water. “They'll have more water than they would have in a denser forest, more nutrients and light and therefore be more resistant and resilient to these hot droughts they're faced with in the future,” said Koren Nydick, who is with the National Park Service. Scientists say that over thousands of years, sequoias have gone through many droughts, forest fires, insect infestations and other calamities, so they will probably survive this drought, unlike many less-resilient California trees. French president warning about global warming By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
French President Francois Hollande is warning that December's global warming conference in Paris could be the last chance to save the Earth. "In Paris, we will be asking one question," he told the U.N. General Assembly Monday. "Is humankind capable of deciding if we will preserve life on this planet? If we don't make this decision in Paris . . . it will be too late for the world." Delegates in Paris will seek agreement on how much to cut greenhouse gas emissions blamed for causing the global climate to get dangerously warmer. While just about every major world leader agrees that something must be done, there are still big differences over the costs of taking action. Developing nations say the wealthier countries are the major polluters and should be most responsible for the economic costs of a plan while some wealthier countries want developing nations to pay their fair share. Many governments do not want to be tied down to mandatory emission quotas. U.S. President Barack Obama met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the U.N. Monday, thanking the Indian leader on his commitment to clean energy. Modi said he and Obama share an uncompromising commitment on climate change. India's plan to fight global warming is expected to stress renewable energy and green transportation to cut pollution from cars, trucks and buses. Also Monday, the U.N. awarded its Champions of the Earth prize, its highest environmental award, to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The U.N. says Bangladesh is the first country to establish its own climate change trust fund, setting aside up to 7 percent of annual spending just to fight global warming. This includes four million solar-powered homes and food security for 160 million people. In accepting the prize, Hasina said, the "people of Bangladesh believe that conservation and protection of the environment is a time-honored responsibility." U.N. experts say nations must agree to stop temperatures from rising beyond 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. Scientists caution that a warmer planet could bring stronger storms, catastrophic floods and rising sea levels. Some island nations and coastal cities could disappear, while other parts of the world would face extreme drought. . |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 192 | |||||||||
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Salt traces
suggest water on Mars
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Scientists have found strong evidence of salt water streams on Mars, at least during the red planet's summer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced Monday. The lines of hydrated salt minerals found would require water for their creation, and where there’s liquid water, there could be life, even if it's in microbial form. "Today we are revolutionizing our understanding of this planet," Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA Headquarters, said during a news conference releasing the findings. Amid speculation before the announcement, Doug McCuistion, the former head of NASA’s Mars program, told the Boston Herald, “If they are announcing that they have found easily accessible, freely flowing liquid water under the surface, which is one of the theories we have been hearing for years and years, that has massive implications both for the potential for life on that planet and sustainability of humans." NASA has found evidence of water on Mars in the past. In March, NASA said there was once more water on Mars than in Earth's Arctic Ocean. NASA researchers wrote in the journal Science that they compared the ratio of two different types of water found in the Martian atmosphere to the ratio of those waters trapped in a Martian meteorite dating back 4.5 billion years. They say more than 4 billion years ago, Mars was covered with water 137 meters deep and that nearly all of it has since evaporated into space. Political divide is blamed on deregulation By the Washington Sate University news staff
Increasing American political polarization is linked to television news deregulation following the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, according to a Washington State University study. “After 1996, we see changes in polarization based on how much television people are using,” said researcher Jay Hmielowski, assistant professor at Washington Sate University. He conducted the study with colleague Myiah Hutchens and former colleague Michael Beam, now at Kent State University. Their work was recently published online in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research. The telecommunications act sought to open markets to competition, but the result was consolidation. This included large companies like FOX and NBC buying smaller, independent TV stations and cable news channels. Scholars and pundits have voiced concern that the U.S. government has become increasingly inept at solving important problems. Many point to political polarization as the culprit, with evidence of increasing attitude divergence among party elites, interest groups and activists. The researchers found that U.S. citizens have become increasingly polarized since 1996. And they found that greater use of TV news is associated with higher levels of polarization. “Our study is unique,” they wrote, “in that it focuses on a specific moment that perpetuated changes to the media system.” That is 1996. Earlier studies have put forward various explanations for how these changes may have contributed to polarization, they explained. For example, having more TV news choices means programmers can target particular consumers and consumers can pick news they prefer. Also, corporate consolidation of TV news resulted in drastic cuts to newsroom budgets, reducing coverage and variety. |
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| From Page 7 Shell halts Arctic oil drilling operations By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Royal Dutch Shell said Monday it is halting its oil drilling operations in the Arctic waters off the coast of the U.S. state of Alaska for the foreseeable future. A company statement said an exploratory well found indications of oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea about 240 kilometers from the town of Barrow but not enough to continue operations. It cited high costs and the unpredictable federal regulatory environment among reasons for deciding to seal the 2,000-meter well. "Shell continues to see important exploration in the basin, and the area is likely to ultimately be of strategic importance to Alaska and the U.S.," Shell Upstream Americas Director Marvin Odum said. "However, this is a clearly disappointing exploration outcome for this part of the basin." The Arctic region is estimated to hold 20 percent of the world's untapped oil and gas. The U.S. government granted Shell permission to drill in August, a move that drew sharp criticism from environmental groups. |
