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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 195
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 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública
photo
These
are some of the 10,000 cigarettes confiscated Wednesday in
a multi-agency sweep of five retail outlets in the center of San José. Anti-smuggling
bill almost ready
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Ministerio de Hacienda said it soon will present to the legislature a bill to increase prison terms for smuggling and to reduce the threshold at which prison terms are levied. Now a smuggler has to be caught with goods worth $50,000 or more to be brought into criminal court. The ministry seeks to reduce that amount to $10,000 and to up the maximum prison term from three to 10 years. There also are plans for wording that will lump individual amounts of smuggled goods into one lot to reach the threshold. Also planned are new penalties for those involved in an organized smuggling gang or illegal imports of goods that put human health at risk, jeopardize the health of animals, endanger national security or threaten the environment. A typical lot of smuggled goods are medicines from Nicaragua. These would fall under the new category of a human health risk The Dirección General de Aduanas, the customs agency, is within the Hacienda ministry. A committee from the public and private sectors has been working on the proposal that will be presented to lawmakers. Illegal drugs aside, smuggled goods from Panamá are usually cigarettes, alcohol or manufactured products. Nicaragua is a source of medicines, cows and horses and animal products like cheese. Research study says coral will survive By the University of California at Santa
Barbara news staff
Contrary to the popular research-based assumption that the world’s coral reefs are doomed, a new longitudinal study from the University of California at Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis paints a brighter picture of how corals may fare in the future. A working group reports that there will be winners and losers among coral species facing increasing natural and human-caused stress. However, its experts demonstrate that a subset of the present coral fauna will likely populate the world’s oceans as water temperatures continue to rise. The findings were published in PLOS ONE. Drawn from universities in California, Hawaii and New Hampshire, the 20 scientists in the working group — Tropical Coral Reefs of the Future: Modeling Ecological Outcomes from the Analyses of Current and Historical Trends — sought to understand the future changes in coral reefs motivated by the threat of increasing ocean temperatures. This working group brought together coral reef experts with diverse perspectives from ecology and paleoecology, said Frank Davis, the director of the national center. “ To simulate future outcomes, the researchers analyzed contemporary and fossil coral reef ecosystem data sets from two Caribbean locations in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Belize, and from five Indo-Pacific locations in Moorea, Taiwan, Hawaii, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and Kenya. Based on this cumulative knowledge, the team built a trait-based dynamic model to explore ecological performance in a warmer future. “Although many corals are becoming less abundant, there remain a number of species that are holding their own or increasing in abundance and these corals will populate tropical reefs over the next few centuries,” said principal investigator and lead author Peter Edmunds, a biology professor at California State University at Northridge. The working group’s analysis shows that the winning subset coral species is fast-growing, smaller and wider, and more stress-resistant and that it readily produces offspring. Sensitivity analyses also demonstrate that thermal tolerance, growth rate and longevity are predictors of coral persistence when under thermal stress. While this subset of species still supports diversity, a lot is still unknown about its functionality.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 195 | |
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| Minister says police caught 700 in the act or nearly so in
September |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fuerza Pública officers caught and remanded to flagrancy courts 700 suspects in September alone. The security ministry issued this statistic to show that police were doing a good job, but the numbers also illuminate crime in Costa Rica. The statistic means that on average more than 23 times a day in September police just happened to be on hand or nearby when a crime took place. Celso Gamboa Sánchez, the minister, said that the September total was the highest in a month since the flagrancy courts were created in 2008. He also said that more than 4,800 persons have been remanded to the courts since the beginning of the year. The minister's report did not contain any statistics as to what happened to the suspects after they appeared before a judge. Typically judges let off first offenders. The courts were created to handle cases when a police officer has witnessed a crime or has collared a suspect close to where the crime took place. The violations usually are delitos or felonies, such as armed street robberies, burglaries or smash-and-grab thefts. An example would be the man that Fuerza Pública officers in |
 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública photo
The
Heredia intruder was carrying this.
Heredia pulled out of a ceiling of a video store Wednesday. The man had a butcher knife and a toy pistol, they said. He was remanded to a flagrancy court and perhaps was the first to go there in October. Not every suspect goes to the court. Some may have been caught in the act but are found to have more serous warrants in their name. In addition, persons associated with murders and other very serious crimes usually are held until judicial investigators arrive. San José province led the list in the number of September suspects remanded to the court, said the ministry. Limón was second, followed by Alajuela and Puntarenas. Gamboa attributed the large number of arrests to police sweeps of high-crime zones and a permanent presence is high-crime areas. |
| U.S. Embassy's list of local lawyers is three years old and
inflexible |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
U.S. expats in legal trouble who seek out the name of a responsible lawyer from the U.S. Embassy staff are not getting the whole story. The embassy updates the list just every three years, and newcomers and lawyers who might be expert in a current problem have a long wait to be included. The current list has been on the embassy Web site since December 2011. The U.S. Department of State declines to take any responsibility for the competence of the lawyers on the Web page lists, but staffers still take steps to determine language fluency and licensing. Then a suggested list is sent to the Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington. Under State Department policy, embassy staffers are supposed to send questionnaires to eligible lawyers around the country to see if they wish to be included in the list. An embassy spokesperson has not said that this has been done recently. So basically the list |
includes those
lawyers who thought to contact the embassy and provided
the documents staffers there seek: proof on membership in the Colegio
de Abogados and a certificate that shows the lawyer is current
with
the Dirección Nacional de Notariado. The value of the embassy list is seen in the fact that the lawyer who is second on the list is a well-known figure in the Luis Milanes-Savings Unlimited case and represents about half of the former investors who are seeking to get some of their money back. The lawyer also received a $2 million fee in negotiating a settlement for his client in the Oswaldo Villalobos fraud case. A new list was supposed to have been submitted to Washington in June. The embassy spokesperson said it would be posted in a few weeks. The State Department policy provides leeway for the names of lawyers to be taken off the list, but the policy said that at least three separate complaints from three separate individuals is required for this to be considered. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 195 | |||||
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| Monarchs have been migrating for millions of years, gene
study shows |
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By
the University of Chicago Medical Center news staff
The monarch butterfly is best-known for its annual 5,000-kilometer migration each autumn from North America to México, where they blanket forests with undulating orange and black wings. But the North American monarch is in trouble. Its numbers have dramatically dropped because of loss of habitat and the decline of its primary food source, milkweed. Researchers say understanding monarch migration could help promote conservation efforts, and a new study in the journal Nature describes a single gene that appears to be responsible for the migrating behavior and the lack of it. Some Monarch species, those found in South and Central America, in the Pacific and in Europe and North Africa, don’t migrate. The study compares genomes of 100 of those monarch species. What researchers had expected -- that the butterfly originated as a non-migratory species in tropical South America, came north and then evolved migration -- was not what they saw in the genetic history, says co-author Marcus Kronforst. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago. “We found that the North American populations appear to be the ancestral populations, and that the butterfly was probably ancestrally migratory. And then it dispersed out of North America into South and Central America, and lost migration. And then it also independently dispersed across the Pacific and lost migration, and then independently, a third time, dispersed across the Atlantic and lost migration.” A monarch family tree created from the genomic analysis tells the age of the different populations and how they were related to each other over evolutionary time, with the older populations, the migrating monarchs, at the base of the tree. As the researchers looked for genetic change across species to locate where and when migration stopped, Kronforst says one gene stood out. |
 University
of Chicago Medical Center photo
A
North American migrating monarch
“Basically in this one gene, a collagen gene, all three times that the butterflies left North America and lost migration, they changed at this one gene in exactly the same way,” he said. Kronforst says that same gene is related to the monarch flight muscles. “It looks like what we are seeing is that the North American migratory butterflies are just very efficient in how they fly," he said. "They have enhanced flight muscle efficiency, whereas the non-migratory butterflies actually appear to be pushed in the opposite direction by natural selection." In scanning the genomic data, the researchers also identified a single gene associated with the butterfly’s signature orange color. Kronforst expects future studies will yield more discoveries about the iconic monarch, whose migration flight has filled North American skies for millions of years. |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 195 | |||||||
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| U.S. Secret Service director resigns in face of criticism By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The director of the U.S. Secret Service, Julia Pierson, has resigned. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Wednesday that Ms. Pierson met with President Barack Obama, who expressed appreciation for her 30 years of service to the country. Earnest said Ms. Pierson took responsibility for the service's shortcomings and for fixing them. Earnest said the president continues to have full confidence in the Secret Service, and accepted Ms. Pierson’s resignation because he agreed with her assessment that it was in the best interest of the agency. “They reached that conclusion because of the recent and accumulating reports about the performance of the agency, and that is what led the president to believe that new leadership is required,” he said. The White House press secretary would not go into details of either of the latest security breaches, saying the incidents are under investigation. Earnest said Obama spoke to Ms. Pierson by phone and expressed appreciation for her 30 years with the Secret Service. Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson said he is appointing former Secret Service special agent Joseph Clancy as interim director of the agency. In his statement, Johnson also remarked how the U.S. Secret Service agency protected the president and 140 visiting heads of state during last week’s U.N. General Assembly in New York without incident, noting that “no other protection service in the world could have done this.” Ms. Pierson faced tough questions from Congress this week after two serious breaches in security last month. Earlier Wednesday, key lawmakers voiced new criticism of her and the Secret Service, after recent lapses in White House security. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner said that as more details emerge about the security breaches, "the clearer it becomes that the Secret Service is beset by a culture of complacency and incompetence." He called for an independent investigation. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi also urged a new investigation. Their criticism of the Secret Service, the agency charged with protecting Obama and his family, came as accused White House fence-jumper Omar Gonzalez appeared in a Washington court. He pleaded not guilty to charges that he eluded security and ran into the presidential mansion Sept. 19 with a serrated knife in his pants pocket before he was apprehended. In a separate incident three days before in the southern city of Atlanta, Georgia, a security contractor armed with a gun who had previously been convicted of assault rode on an elevator with Obama and his security detail, even through the Secret Service did not know of his background or that he was armed. The Atlanta incident was revealed hours after Ms. Pierson testified Tuesday before a congressional committee investigating shortcomings at the agency, but never mentioned the elevator security breach. Ms. Pierson said the intrusion into the White House was unacceptable, took full responsibility for it and vowed that it would not happen again. She said the 42-year-old Gonzalez barreled past one agent, and was only caught after running into the ceremonial rooms on the first floor of the presidential mansion, one of the most secure buildings in the United States. The Secret Service at first said Gonzalez was arrested just inside an unlocked White House door, and that he was unarmed at the time. The president and his daughters had left the residence shortly before the incident, while first lady Michelle Obama had departed earlier. In one 2011 incident, gunfire hit the White House, but damage from the bullets was only discovered four days later. In other Secret Service wrongdoing, agents were involved in a prostitution scandal on a presidential trip to Colombia in 2012, and a night of drinking in March led to three agents being sent home from a presidential trip to Amsterdam. Gonzalez served with the U.S. Army during the nine-year war in Iraq. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. Health workers and others in U.S. are jittery over ebola By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
News that a Texas man was diagnosed with ebola after returning home from a visit to Liberia has raised new concerns about the spread of the disease. For health workers the stakes are particularly high — more than 120 have died in West Africa since the ebola outbreak began early this year. In the United States, public health experts are working to reassure the public and medical workers that the virus does not endanger communities here. The first ebola patient to arrive in the United States flew on a plane specially equipped and designed to prevent the spread of the virus. That patient, Kent Brantly, entered Emory University hospital through a special passage to the isolation unit. During a news conference outside the hospital, Jay Varkey reassured the public that they were not at risk. “I can’t think of a better place in the world, other than this hospital at Emory University, to care for this patient,” said Varkey. Some hospitals in developed countries have isolation units equipped with their own laboratories. Technicians do all the lab work right in the unit. And yet, not every worker at Emory was comfortable with having an ebola patient there. "There was a lot of feedback that we got back from our staff that this infection is a death sentence. This infection can have 90 to 100 percent mortality rates," said Varkey. Varkey and the hospital's other infectious disease experts met with staff members. Brantly eventually recovered, as did a second patient, Nancy Writebol. Rick Sacra, the third ebola patient flown to the U.S., was successfully treated at the University of Nebraska Hospital. "Though my crisis has reached a successful end here, unfortunately, the ebola crisis continues to spin out of control," said Sacra. Modern hospitals in developed countries are far different from the situation in Africa, where more than 240 medical workers have contracted Ebola in recent months. Most hospitals lack the supplies to contain the disease. In one ebola holding facility in Sierra Leone, at least three employees have died of the virus. Nurses recently protested in Las Vegas, saying they are not trained to treat ebola patients. Surveys show many Americans are afraid the ebola virus might spread inside the U.S. Thomas Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tried to tamp down concerns after a Texas hospital admitted the ebola patient who had arrived last month from Liberia. "It's only spread by someone who is sick with the virus. And it's only spread through body fluids," said Frieden. Frieden said the ebola virus is something to fear, but as more people get into treatment early, more people will survive. Humor as academic topic leads prof around world By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Analyzing humor, observed American author E.B. White, is like dissecting a frog. "Few people are interested, and the frog dies of it.” But that has not deterred Peter McGraw. McGraw teaches students at the University of Colorado Business School how to do research on the topic of humor. He's taken his research out of the classroom, seeking ways to crack the humor code. “Although you need science, you need a laboratory and experiments to understand what makes things funny," he explained. "If you want a complete understanding of this mysterious, complex thing, you need to go out into the real world. You need to test your theories.” McGraw especially wanted to test a scientific theory he developed, which he calls “benign violation.” “These are situations that are in some way threatening, unsettling or amiss, but at the same time are safe, acceptable or okay.” Like pratfalls, puns and risque jokes. McGraw's is only one of dozens of different theories about the basis of humor. It has been studied by biologists, sociologists and some of the world's greatest philosophers; from Socrates and Kant to Schopenhauer. It's a tough crowd, to borrow a phrase, but McGraw is committed to add to the body of knowledge. His research has taken him around the world. He said the most challenging place for finding benign violation was a country where, at first, he couldn’t make anybody laugh -- Japan. “On the street, in the subways, at their places of work, there was very little laughter, but we found out that that’s because of the cultural norms. It’s not okay to express emotion in those places.” It turns out, he learned, that tickling the Japanese funny bone depends on where you are. “At the karaoke bars and out in social gatherings, the Japanese really were quite funny,” said McGraw. So were the 100 clowns he joined in a poor neighborhood of Iquitos, Peru. McGraw was part of a team trained by U.S. physician and long-time clown, Patch Adams. They entertained children everywhere, using goofy music, silly clothes and round, red noses. “Since these adults are fooling around, it encourages the kids too. It gives them license to have a little more fun than they would normally,” he said. But not all humor deserves praise. McGraw found a type of humor he did not like in every country he visited: the stupid joke. “The stupidity joke picks out a group, typically low status, and makes fun of them for not being smart. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a very good form of comedy.” He has a different feeling about satire, which can be a politically powerful form of comedy, and has been used to great effect all over the world. Serbian activist Srdja Popovic, who led a student movement that helped force Slobodan Milošević from power in 2000, told McGraw it was a weapon against all leaders who take themselves too seriously. “If they get mocked, they do something stupid. If they do something stupid, they give you even more possibility to mock them." McGraw observed, “I wouldn’t say that humor can overthrow a dictator, but I think it can help.” Comedy can bring people together. McGraw recalls a visit to the Middle East. He sat on the steps of a store in Hebron and watched an Israeli police officer sauntering toward the Palestinian shopkeeper. McGraw braced for trouble. But the two men began trading jokes. “Because they see each other every day, they managed to create a relationship, and a relationship built around fun and laughter and joking. One that transcended this conflict.” These global encounters lead McGraw to conclude that humor can be a powerful force. The quest for what's funny, he says, treads a delicate line between making people laugh, making them yawn and making them cry. McGraw has coauthored a book about his global adventures, called "The Humor Code." Some universities are starting to use it as a college text. McGraw hopes a better understanding of humor will help people be more creative, successful... and happy. Fun run was just practice for major Pacific quake By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It's not often you hear fun and tsunami in the same sentence, but both words inform the theme and purpose of the inaugural Race the Wave 5K fun run and walk in scenic Cannon Beach, Oregon. The course leads runners down the hard-packed sand before turning up into the hills behind the oceanfront hotels and cottages. At that point, the course follows a designated tsunami evacuation route: paths that have been mapped out because this coast line is vulnerable to the huge sea waves unleashed by undersea earthquakes. The ring of fire is the name for the great arc of volcanoes and grinding tectonic plates around the edges of the Pacific Ocean. This year, big earthquakes have hit Chile, Mexico, Alaska and the Solomon Islands. Geologists have identified the U.S. Northwest as another vulnerable location. While undersea quakes can cause massive damage and loss of life, the tsunamis they generate can be even deadlier. The idea of a race along an evacuation route was hatched several years ago by one of today's participants who works for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s regional office. He is Ryan Ike of Seattle who said it’s about inspiring people to practice and create muscle memory. "We’ve seen these maps, and we've put these really beautiful things together and you’re looking at it on a table and you think, ‘OK, I could run from here to here. That’s not that far.’ But then you get to the bottom of the hill, and you realize I have only a few more minutes and I have got to get this much further," he said. "And I have my kids, or I have my bags, or I have all this stuff with me. How would you do that?" The Federal Emergency Management Agency and Oregon’s Office of Emergency Management approached Cannon Beach to host what they hope will be the first of many races. For this race, the finish line is at an emergency supply cache on high ground about one kilometer inland from the ocean. After a big earthquake, people are supposed to evacuate to this spot by foot — not by car. Emergency planners assume the Big One -- a magnitude 9.0 quake caused by a full rupture of the dangerous Cascadia fault zone offshore -- will buckle roads, topple trees and bring down power lines from Northern California to British Columbia. Assuming the source of the tsunami waves is the Cascadia fault zone, most people along the Northwest coast would need to get to higher ground within 25 minutes. Race winner Jason Yencopal of Baker County finished with minutes to spare. "I’m really happy with that. It’s a great event," he said. "Get the people out here running this so they are more familiar with it, for sure." A little further back in the field, runner Nancy Thai of Seattle was less certain she would have survived. “You know," she said, "I might swim the last few feet to safety.” Ms. Thai, who loves going to the beach, planned this visit specifically to participate in the tsunami evacuation run. Tsunamis also can come ashore from distant corners of the Pacific. In that case, there would be longer lead time to get away from the water. Earlier in the weekend, emergency planners from Oregon, Washington state and the nation’s capital compared notes on fun or creative ways to engage people. “If people get scared about Cascadia and if they get scared of tsunamis, they become fatalistic," said Althea Rizzo, an earthquake and tsunami program coordinator for the state of Oregon. Ms. Rizzo said the weekend fun run represents the opposite of an eat-your-vegetables approach. “There is a common thread in risk messaging that you don’t hit them with a lot of negatives," she said. "You offer them a way out of a situation and you give them the tools that they need.” The enormity of the task facing planners like Ms. Rizzo is evident because 20,000 people might be in harm’s way just in Cannon Beach on any sunny summer weekend. Fewer than 100 practiced the escape route during the inaugural tsunami fun run. To reach younger people, Ms. Rizzo worked this year with a publisher on an earthquake preparedness comic book. Officials hope teens will read the slick comic and take steps to get themselves and their families ready for the Big One. In mid-October, Eugene, Oregon, and San Francisco will be the scene of different disaster prep races. In these, contestants compete to move disaster relief supplies by cargo bike. Bicycle enthusiasts in other West Coast cities have previously staged obstacle courses like this. The events simulate how a well-equipped cyclist can make a supply run with as much as 50 kilos of provisions following a major earthquake. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 195 | |||||||||
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Last Beltran
Leyva brother captured
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Mexican authorities say they have captured Héctor Beltran Leyva -- one of the country's most wanted drug kingpin suspects. Soldiers arrested him Wednesday in the central Mexican city of San Miguel de Allende after a nearly year-long operation. No other details are available. Beltran Leyva is one of four brothers who allegedly headed a vicious Mexican drug cartel after it split with the notoriously brutal Sinaloa cartel. He was the only Beltran Leyva brother still operating. One brother is dead and two others are in prison. Beltran Leyva also is wanted in the United States on drug trafficking charges. Mom urges action to spring son By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The mother of a former U.S. Marine in a Mexican prison on gun trafficking charges says the U.S. must do more to secure his release. The mother, Jill Tahmooressi, told a U.S. congressional hearing Wednesday that her 26-year-old son has been threatened by prison guards with rape, torture and execution since his arrest in March. She said he has post traumatic stress disorder relating to his military service and accidentally entered Mexico at a poorly marked border crossing. Andrew Tahmooressi, who is now in the reserves, was arrested six months ago at a San Diego-Tijuana checkpoint. Mexican authorities say they found a rifle, shotgun, pistol and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his pickup truck. Tahmooressi's mother said her son is despondent and urgently needs care for his post traumatic stress. U.S. lawmakers took the unusual step of scheduling a House of Representatives hearing during a congressional recess in the hope of putting pressure on Mexico and on President Barack Obama's administration to intervene more urgently in the case. A White House spokesman said Obama has not called Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto because the State Department is handling the issue. State Department officials say they are deeply concerned about Tahmooressi's case and are in close touch with Mexican authorities, but that every country has its own judicial process. Mexican soldiers blamed in executions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Mexico is charging three soldiers with homicide in the death of 22 suspected drug gang members who prosecutors allege were executed. Attorney General Jesús Murillo Karam said late Tuesday the three are among eight who were arrested in connection with the June 30 shootout in Mexico state, 240 kilometers southwest of Mexico City. The military initially said 22 suspects died in a prolonged gunfight that occurred when an eight-man patrol came under fire in the town of San Pedro Limón, an area known to be dominated by drug cartels. But Murillo Karam said the shootout lasted 10 minutes and afterwards the soldiers entered the warehouse and fired shots "that have no justification whatsoever." Media reports have quoted witnesses as saying most of the 22 deaths happened after the suspects had surrendered. |
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| From Page 7: Food chamber campaigns for healthy lifestyle By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The food marketer chamber has launched a campaign to encourage a healthy lifestyle. The chamber, the Cámara Costarricense de la Industria Alimentaria, is targeting parents to provide them with information so that their children will adopt a healthy lifestyle. The campaign seeks to eliminate bad habits that lead to individuals being overweight, a cause of illnesses. The chamber also said that it wanted to confront false information that parents and youngsters may be receiving. Among the suggestions are that families maintain fixed mealtimes and that youngsters up to 12 help with the grocery shopping to get an understanding of basic foods. The chamber also seeks more physical activity in the schools. |
