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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday,
Sept. 30, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 193
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 Al
Andalus
photo
Promotional
photo mixes oranges, lemons and dancers.
Flamenco with literary theme next Tuesday By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Al Andalus flamenco dancers will tackle a literary theme Oct. 7 for the Teatro al Mediodía at the Teatro Nacional. The dancers will perform excepts from “Naranjas y Limones,” based on the novel "The Orange Girl " by Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder. The name of the show stems from a famous painting by Julio Romero de Torres. There also will be recitation of poetry written by Federico García Lorca, a victim of the Spanish civil war and a leading 20th century literary figure. The Teatro al Mediodía, which begins at noon has been a big success for the Teatro Nacional. Admission is just 1,000 or 2,000 colons, about two to four dollars. The presentations are designed for the downtown office crowd on lunch hours, but many tourists also are attracted. The Al Andalus group has performed the work with as many as 18 dancers. Dry seasons expected to arrive early By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
There's good news for those sick of the rain. The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional said that the end of the rainy season will be between Oct. 28 and Nov. 1 in the northern Pacific. The Central Valley will be moving out of the rainy season Nov. 7 to 11, the institute said. These dates are about a month earlier than normal. The Central Pacific will have to wait until Dec. 7 to 11 for the end of the season, and the southern pacific will see that happen from Dec. 22 to 26, said the institute. This is good news for sun lovers and tourism operators, but the institute also said that the Central Valley will end up from 10 to 20 percent short of the average rainfall and that the deficit in the northern Pacific would be about 20 to 30 percent. This is bad news for farmers and ranchers. The weather institute said that the effects of El Niño and a colder Atlantic and Caribbean would advance the arrival of the dry season. The institute also said that the southern Caribbean would have a significant deficit in rainfall in December. Despite rainfall about 25 percent less than normal, the institutes said that precipitation in the northern Pacific still would be about double that of August. This area is having a serious drought. The weather institute predicted that there will be enough rain for the planting of crops that have been delayed due to the wave of dry weather. The weather institute also noted that Costa Rica has not been threatened yet this year by any cyclone activity in the Atlantic or Caribbean. Predictions were for a hurricane season in the Atlantic way below normal. Court appeals freeze action on pensions By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The central government has been frustrated in its efforts to put a top on so-called luxury pensions. The Ministerio de Hacienda revealed Monday that a Sala IV constitutional court case has been filed against Ley N° 7858 on which the government is relying to cut these pensions. The ministry noted that its workers were required to stop their work on the pensions while the court case was being considered. The Sala IV has agreed to hear at least two appeals. The government of Luis Guillermo Solís has been trying to reduce pensions that may be as much as 9 million colons a month in some cases. These all are pensions awarded to former top government officials. A pension of 9 million colons is about $16,500 a month. The law has been on the books but disregarded by those awarding lavish pensions. Pensions of average workers are far below this level. The magnitude of these government pensions were not common knowledge until the Solís administration decided to put a top on monthly payments. Officials said they worried about the stability of the pension system with monthly payments such as these.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 193 | |
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| Christmas here is like a personal time portal to the 1950s |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Can that be Christmas lights and trees in the local department stores? You bet, because Costa Ricans do not have Thanksgiving to bracket the December holiday season. But they do have Black Friday, which seems to be universal. All those shipping containers from China carrying traditional Christmas decorations are already at the docks and soon the decorations, trees, wreaths and all will be crowding out other items on the store floors and shelves. The calendar shows that there are only about 80 days left until Christmas week. For those in business, the calendar also says that aguinaldos, the fat, mandatory Christmas bonus is due to be paid to employees in the first two weeks of December. This is one reason Costa Ricans have such a festive Yule. The Costa Rican Christmas is very much like a 1950s Christmas in the United States. Those were the days when the American Civil Liberties Union had better things to do than crack down on nativity scenes and Santas. Costa Ricans are unashamed to link the holiday closely with the birth of Jesus. The municipalities pitch in, and tax money is spent hanging decorations along the streets, putting a nativity scene on the lawn of the supreme court and sponsoring the gigantic Festival de la Luz that draws perhaps a million people to the sidewalks of San José. The festival this year is Dec. 13. |
 Logo from the festival Web page.
The tradition is fragile. Lawmakers are considering legislation that will reduce or eliminate the role of the Catholic Church in government. Officials of other religions want a piece of the pie that the Catholic clergy gets from the annual budget. They should be careful what they wish for because cash-short Costa Rica might just opt for a secular state. There is a campaign to do just that. Such a decision would pull all the government support from the December holidays and leave it to citizens. That happened to some extent last year when a small committee created a traditional Yule holiday with downtown merchants and some help from the local municipality. Expats can keep an eye on the legislature, and until there are changes, they have a personal time machine to see the Christmas holidays they way they were up north 60 years ago or more. |
| Central government agrees to a 3.3 percent cut in 2015 budget |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Faced with opposition to the national budget in the legislature, the central government agreed Monday to a 3.3 percent cut. The announcement was greeted lukewarmly by lawmakers. The government said it would cut 221 billion colons from the 7.95 trillion 2015 budget. That's about 2.8 percent. In dollars that is a cut of $405.5 million from a $14.6 billion budget. Legislators had proposed a 3.8 percent cut. President Luis Guillermo Solís is facing problems even from his own party. Ottón Solís, also of the Partido Acción Ciudadana, is chairman of the legislative budget committee and he has been a strong voice for a lower budget. The budget has to get through his committee. |
Helio Fallas, the
first vice president and minister of Hacienda, announced the proposed
cuts Monday afternoon. The announcement said that the government would not affect projects to combat poverty, health, education or productive infrastructure. The announcement said in general that the cuts would affect overtime, advertising, trips abroad and consultants. Several lawmakers said they would wait to hear specifics. Fallas said that he agreed in theory with Ottón Solís even though his proposal to cut 300 billion from the budget had been rejected in committee. Much of the budget is established by law and the Costa Rican Constitution, which required allocating a certain percentage of gross domestic product to specific areas like education. |
| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 193 | |||||
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| Dolphin are sensitive to magnetism, French researcher reports |
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By
the Springer Science+Business Media news staff
Dolphins are indeed sensitive to magnetic stimuli, as they behave differently when swimming near magnetized objects. So says Dorothee Kremers and her colleagues at Ethos unit of the Université de Rennes in France, in a study in Springer’s journal Naturwissenschaften – The Science of Nature. Their research, conducted in the delphinarium of Planète Sauvage in France, provides experimental behavioral proof that these marine animals are magnetoreceptive. Magnetoreception implies the ability to perceive a magnetic field. It is supposed to play an important role in how some land and aquatic species orientate and navigate themselves. Some observations of the migration routes of free-ranging cetaceans, such as whales, dolphins and porpoises, and their stranding sites suggested that they may also be sensitive to geomagnetic fields. Because experimental evidence in this regard has been lacking, Ms. Kremers and her colleagues set out to study the behavior of six bottlenose dolphins in the delphinarium of Planète Sauvage in Port-Saint-Père. This outdoor facility consists of four pools, covering 2,000 square meters of water surface. They watched the animals’ spontaneous reaction to a barrel containing a strongly magnetized block or a demagnetized one. Except from this characteristic, the blocks were identical in form and density. The barrels were therefore indistinguishable as far as echolocation was concerned, the method by which dolphins locate objects by bouncing sound waves off them. During the experimental sessions, the animals were free to swim in and out of the pool where the barrel was installed. All six dolphins were studied simultaneously, while all group members were free to interact at any time with the barrel during a given session. The person who was assigned the job to place the barrels in the pools did not know whether it was magnetized or not. This was also true for |
 Springer Science+Business Media
A magnetic personalty, perhaps?the person who analyzed the videos showing how the various dolphins reacted to the barrels. The analyses of Ethos team revealed that the dolphins approached the barrel much faster when it contained a strongly magnetized block than when it contained a similar not magnetized one. However, the dolphins did not interact with both types of barrels differently. They may therefore have been more intrigued than physically drawn to the barrel with the magnetized block. “Dolphins are able to discriminate between objects based on their magnetic properties, which is a prerequisite for magnetoreception-based navigation,” says Ms. Kremers. “Our results provide new, experimentally obtained evidence that cetaceans have a magenetic sense, and should therefore be added to the list of magnetosensitive species.” |
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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
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 193 | |||||||
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| Chinese fine for drug firm results in a formal apology By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has been hit with the biggest fine ever imposed by the People’s Republic of China for allegedly bribing doctors and others in China’s medical system to use and prescribe the company’s drugs. And, this came about after the company illegally collected personal data on a number of Chinese nationals. The British drug maker incurred a three billion Chinese yuan penalty – roughly $489 million – the largest ever fine imposed by Beijing. It was announced this month on the same day, GSK China Investment Co. Ltd. issued a formal apology to the people of China. The company stated that “GSK plc fully accepts the facts and evidence of the investigation, and the verdict of the Chinese judicial authorities.” The 15-month-long investigation by the economic crimes unit at China’s Public Security Ministry found that the drug maker funneled bribery payments through a reported network of some 700 travel agencies. According to Bloomberg, health care professionals were given travel and meeting expenses, and sexual favors. The CEO of GSK’s China unit, Mark Reilly, was given a three-year, suspended prison sentence and ordered deported from the country. Four other senior GSK China managers were also convicted and given suspended sentences. All say they will not appeal their sentences. Chinese authorities also say that Reilly, along with GSK China Vice President Zhang Gouwei and the China subsidiary’s legal affairs supervisor, Zhao Hongyan, acted in 2012 to attempt to bribe police and other officials in Beijing, Shanghai, and other cities to try to impede or stop the public security ministry’s investigation. The company’s massive fine follows the August sentencing of British investigator Peter Humphrey, who worked for GSK. He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail, fined nearly $33,000. He also faces deportation after serving his sentence for illegally collecting private information on Chinese nationals. His wife, Yu Yinzeng, drew a two-year sentence and a nearly $25,000 fine for her role in this crime. The couple was not cooperative with Chinese prosecutors, claiming that the three Chinese sub-contractors who collected data were paid for their services, not for the information. One of Humphrey’s targets was a former GSK China employee, Vivian Shi, who is a well-networked daughter of a senior Communist Party official. The London Telegraph reports that GSK suspected her of being a driving force behind Beijing’s corruption investigation of the company. GSK says it “apologizes for the harm caused to individuals who were illegally investigated.” The company also announced that it will pay this nearly half-billion-dollar fine in cash and take a charge against its third-quarter earnings. “A heavy punishment is necessary to rescue the pharmaceutical sector,” said Liao Mingtao, a senior partner at the Hui Ye law firm in Shanghai, She told the South China Morning Post that “It was not just GSK that paid the price, and it was a lesson that all the other players, including the foreign and domestic companies, should learn.” In its apology statement, GSK said “the illegal activities are a clear breach of GSK’s governance and compliance procedures and are wholly contrary to the values and standards expected from GSK employees.” While GSK’s China case has been resolved, the company may face further probes from Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, which launched a probe in May 2014, and also in the United States from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, which may address GSK’s behavior through prosecution under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Indian leader's U.S. visit is media sensation at home By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Indian media is going wild over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the United States, calling his address to Indian-Americans at New York's Madison Square Garden Sunday rocking and following his every move with breathless headlines and sweeping coverage. India's main television channels aired his speech live on Sunday night and will air extensive reports of his visit to the White House this week. Shailaja Bajpai, a critic and commentator who writes a weekly column, said that she has not seen such extensive coverage of any prime ministerial visit to any country before. She said that almost every television anchor of India is in the U.S. covering the visit. “We are doing a non-stop coverage of Modi's visit,” said Arnab Goswami, editor-in-chief and anchor with Times Now, the most watched English language channel in India. Arnab said that he has a team of 16 people and multi-cameras setup for the visit. Suhasini Haider, diplomatic editor of The Hindu newspaper, who is in the U.S to cover the visit, said the coverage is historic in terms of number of people covering the event and the intensity. Supriya Prasad, managing editor of India's news channel Aaj Tak, said that extensive coverage of Modi's visit on his channel started three days before Modi landed in New York. “The most noteworthy thing this time is that even major domestic political developments have taken a backseat,” said Supriya, who has been in the private Indian television news industry since its inception. During Modi’s visit, two major political alliances split in the state of Maharahshtra, where elections are due next month. On another front, the chief minister of the Indian state of Tamilnadu received a four-year prison sentence in a corruption case. Most days, these developments would have overtaken other news but Modi’s visit far out-paced them. India's vibrant and aggressive regional newspapers are also covering Modi’s visit in great detail. “If there is any news which is a top priority for us at the moment, its Modi's visit to U.S.,” said Anand Pandey, who is the state editor of one Hindi daily, Dainik Bhaskar. He said that Dainik Bhaskar has sent a reporter to the U.S. from their Gujrat edition - the home state of Narendra Modi - to do special stories. Analysts say Modi’s popularity in India is fueling the hyperbolic coverage of his U.S. visit.  Voice of America photo
This is the famous cave.Tales of
hidden treasures
brings unwanted cave visits By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Could a cave in a small village in central Kenya be the site of buried treasure? A rumor of riches, left behind by colonialists, has some residents dreaming of wealth, while others see it as a dangerous hoax. This system of caves has become the center of excitement in the village of Maraigushu, near Naivasha, Kenya. It is not clear where the rumor came from, but some locals here believe white settlers hid gold, mercury and other precious metals in the cave before leaving the area, many years ago. Local resident Edward Maina says the rumors have brought amateur treasure hunters flooding into town to dig in the caves. "It’s not long ago that people came and they went to excavate the cave, and we don’t know them. We heard them saying that in the 1800s a white man left treasures inside the caves and closed it off," says Maina. Residents say the original treasure seekers entered the cave nearly two months ago before being detained by police. Local authorities sealed up the entrance, but excavators broke back in. While neither gold nor mercury have been brought forth yet, the cave does guard another important resource: water. Many rely on a natural spring emerging from the cave and local officials, among them Ward Councilor Gaka Mwaniki, worry the digging could disrupt or contaminate the supply. “There’s nothing. We’ve seen ourselves there’s nothing in those caves, they are excavating for the first time, it’s natural. It’s the water table that they’re interfering with,” says Mwaniki. Excitement about the cave has gotten the attention of regional leaders, as politicians from nearby Naivasha town accuse one another of sponsoring the treasure hunt and unfairly exploiting unemployed youths by sending them to dig in dangerous conditions. Local resident James Mbugua Njenga wants the situation brought under control. “If at all there’s treasure inside there, let the government come and excavate and preserve the water table,” says Njenga. It might be true, it might be a hoax or it could be part of a political game. Whatever the case, treasure hunters continue to be drawn to the mystery of the caves. Secret Service director to be grilled in Congress By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The director of the U.S. Secret Service will testify before a U.S. House committee today about a major security breach at the White House earlier this month. The director, Julia Pierson, is expected to undergo tough questioning by lawmakers over the security breach, as well as several other embarrassing incidents involving the agency, which is responsible for protecting President Barack Obama and his family. The other incidents include a failure to immediately respond to a lone gunman who fired shots at the White House in 2011, a prostitution scandal involving agents on a presidential trip to Colombia in 2012, and a night of drinking in March that led to three agents being sent home from a presidential trip to Amsterdam. In the most recent incident, 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez was arrested after he climbed the White House fence, ran across the lawn and into the building. The Secret Service initially said Gonzalez was arrested just inside the main entrance, but news outlets Monday said he rushed past a guard at the front door and ran down a hallway past a staircase leading to the Obama family living quarters before he was subdued. The Secret Service also initially said Gonzalez was unarmed, but it was later revealed he was carrying a knife. Prosecutors have said Gonzalez was stopped, but not arrested, in August, after he walked past the White House with a hatchet in his waistband. He was also arrested in July after state police found weapons in his car following a high-speed chase in nearby Virginia. The intrusion could have been more serious if the suspect had been heavily armed and Obama and his family had been in the mansion. Migration organization finds thousands died fleeing home By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A new report by the International Organization for Migration found that more than 40,000 migrants who were fleeing war, persecution and poverty have died since 2000 in dangerous journeys across land and sea. The 200-page report, called “Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost During Migration,” is the world’s most comprehensive tally to date of migrant fatalities. The report said Europe is the world’s most dangerous destination for irregular migration. The reports said that since 2000, more than 22,000 migrants have lost their lives on treacherous routes across the Mediterranean Sea. The region has also set a record in 2014 for lives lost. More than 3,000 migrants have died this year alone, trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy smugglers’ boats, the organization report found. That figure accounts for 75 percent of the more than 4,000 migrant deaths registered worldwide so far this year. The agency attributed the surge in deaths to the growing conflict in the Middle East and chaos across North and West Africa. Organization spokesman Joel Millman said the smuggling market is sensitive to external forces and smugglers take advantage of that by inducing vulnerable migrants to put their lives in their hands. “These smuggler organizations obviously respond to deep, deep changes in the security situation of the sender countries," Millman said. Millman said the going rate for a voyage across the Mediterranean Sea is between $2,000 and $4,000 a person. “We hear things like half-a-million-dollar voyages where organizations can expect that kind of profit from moving several hundred migrants across a very short voyage," he said. A profit of $500,000 is the amount the organization estimated smugglers made from the ship they deliberately rammed off the coast of Malta earlier this month, killing an estimated 500 migrants, including 100 children. Only 11 people are known to have survived that deadly shipwreck. The ship was carrying Syrian, Palestinian, Egyptian and Sudanese migrants. Since 2000, records showed nearly 6,000 migrant deaths occurred along the U.S.-Mexico border and 3,000 more deaths from such diverse migration routes as Africa’s Sahara Desert and the waters of the Indian Ocean. The true number of fatalities worldwide is likely to be much higher than the data show. The report said some experts believe for every dead body discovered there are at least two others never recovered. The immigration organization also called for an end to what it calls an epidemic of crime and victimization by smugglers and traffickers who prey on desperate, vulnerable people. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 193 | |||||||||
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Confronting
those local plant pests
In a place where it’s always summer, we get summer problems all year-round. Take fruit flies for example. In New York and Georgia, they were a
Now there’s a problem that many people have never faced (unless they are of my advancing years) – the active fruit fly. What to do, what to do…. I like to dunk the fruit and veggies into an all-natural solution of water and vinegar for about 15 minutes. This not only washes them but inhibits decomposition and kills any fruit fly eggs. After the “bath,” just refrigerate the produce and the problem should be solved. But, if you still see flies, try setting out a dish with apple cider vinegar, water and a drop of dish soap. The flies are attracted to it and die in the solution. Then there are those pesky house ants. Some people call them “sugar ants” but no matter what the name, they are tiny black pests that will find any remnant of food that you left on the counter when cutting up fruit and any speck that fell on the floor. Again, what to do? Boric acid is the solution for these pests. Just mix it with any sort of jelly and put spots of it where you have seen the ants. Or sprinkle boric acid powder where you see a trail of ants entering (or trying to enter) the house. Boric acid powder also works on that very miserable pest, roaches. Brrrrr. But what about the garden? My worst garden nightmare is one that tourists (and weren’t we all tourists once) always ooh and ah over. “Oh look! They’re so cute! How can they carry all that?” You guessed it, leaf-cutter ants. Yuck. Leaf-cutter ants are tiny, voracious, and too numerous to count. They can range up to 152 meters (500 ft.) from their nest, which means a circle of 304 meters (1,000 feet) around the nest. That’s a lot of territory. They climb trees, negotiate steep banks, cross streams on branches, and generally wreak havoc on any number of trees, shrubs, and flowers you so lovingly planted. We have a lot of solutions (some actually work), however, they are for another day. For now, here is the…
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| From Page 7: Two new categories for sustainability By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Restaurants and marine operators can now apply to be certified as a sustainable tourism venture. The Instituto Costarricense de Turismo said that 312 tourism operators of various types had opted to obtain sustainability certifications. The institute said that the creation of the new categories guarantees that the entire chain of value in the tourism sector has certifications. The certification of restaurants also is a step in the creation of a Costa Rican cuisine, officials said. |
