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San
José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 199
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 Sistema Integral de Formación
Artística
Young violinists practice for
their performance.para la Inclusión Social photo La Carpio youth
string orchestra
presents a benefit tonight By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A youth string orchestra from la Carpio will perform tonight at the Teatro Eugene O’Neill in Los Yoses. The event is a benefit for various projects in La Carpio and the Hogar de Niños Fe Viva. In addition to the Camerata de la Pequeña Gran Ciudad de la Carpio, the string quartet Guayabo de Mora will perform as will the Costa Rican singer José Cañas. The event is co-sponsored by the Cámara Nacional de Ecoturismo y Turismo Sostenible and the Sistema Integral de Formación Artística para la Inclusión Social. La Cario is a low-income area containing many migrants. The theater is in the Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano. The event begins at 7 p.m. and there is a 5,000 colon admission, about $10. In addition to music, the Sistema Integral deals in sports and the arts directed at the children. Costa Rica will exchange diplomats with Turkey By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country will open an embassy in Turkey within the next few months, the foreign ministry said Monday. The announcement coincides with a visit by Enrique Castillo, the foreign minister, to Turkey. The ministry said that Castillo began his visit with a ceremony at the tomb of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. Turkey is expected to reciprocate by opening an embassy here. Castillo is making foreign visits, in part, to generate support for Costa Rica's conflict with neighboring Nicaragua. U.S. Web site will provide 5,000 taxation answers By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A boring book is sometimes the best remedy for difficulty sleeping. But now in the electronic age there is a list of 5,000 tax topics online, courtesy of the National Technical Information Service of the Department of Commerce. The topic index is specifically designed for taxpayers with international filing requirements, the government agency said. And if the 5,000 topics are not enough, U.S. taxpayers also can send comments and suggestions for additional topics to topicmap@irs.gov. The service was noted by the Association of Americans Resident Overseas. Although the information remains online, the Web site is not being updated due to the U.S. government shutdown. The U.S. embassy in San José reported the same thing about its Web site. Hong Kong auction fetches $27.3 million for diamond By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A white diamond the size of a small egg has sold for $27.3 million at a Hong Kong auction. Two phone bidders competed for the 118.28-carat African gem for six minutes until one dropped out. The price edged out the previous price record for a white diamond of $26.7 million, set at Christie's in Geneva this May. The auction's other highlight was a 7.6-carat vivid blue diamond, which fetched a price of $16.1 million. Both gems sold for less than their estimates.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 199 | |
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Bridge in place The temporary bridge at the La Paz waterfall is in place, but traffic still is restricted, said the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad. Traffic can use the bridge for an hour after 6:30 a.m. and after 5:30 p.m. The bridge on Ruta 126 in Sarapiquí was washed away by a water surge. |
 Consejo Nacional de Vialidad photo
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| Five highways still cut due to
weather-inflicted problems |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Five highways in the country have sections still closed because of weekend rains. The problems range from the usual slides to a washed out drainage system. None appears to be a major route, according to the afternoon report by the Consejo Nacional de Vialidad . Several other routes have restricted passage due to problems cause by the weather. The closed routes are Ruta 301 at Bijagual, Ruta 226 at El Jardin, Ruta 225 at Tucurríque, Ruta 926 at Tronadora near Tilarán and Ruta 335 at Santa Eduviges. Continued repairs depend on the weather, the Consejo said. |
There also is continued work on the
Circunvalación between Hatillo and the Pavas exit in San
José, which suffered damage in an earlier storm. There is
continued work and traffic restrictions on a new temporary bridge
erected across the face of the La Paz waterfall. Motorists can use the route for an hour after 6:30 a.m. and for an hour after 5:30 p.m. while work continues. Meanwhile the U.S. National Hurricane Center says there is a broad area of low pressure in the distant eastern Atlantic. The system has a medium chance of becoming a tropical cyclone. The system is moving west northwest. Costa Rica is not out of the woods yet. The Atlantic hurricane season, which so far has been very mild, ends Nov. 30. In the Pacific there is Tropical Storm Narda, but the system is moving west away from Central America. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 199 | |||||
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| Corte de Justicia president confirmed for a new term of
eight years |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Zarela Villanueva Monge, the president of the Corte Suprema de Justicia, has been re-elected to her position as magistrate of the Sala II. She has served there since 1989, and she now has a new eight-year term. The re-election was by 44 favorable votes. There were 47 lawmakers present. She requested reappointment and most likely will be sworn in today. One person who did not vote was Luis Gerardo Villanueva, a lawmaker for the Partido Liberación Nacional and the brother of the magistrate. He declined to participate, as is the custom when there is a conflict of interest. |
There was no
organized opposition from other political parties. The magistrate served as a mayor in Turrialba and also as a labor court and criminal court judge. She has a master's degree in family violence and a law degree. She had served in the No. 2 position in the supreme court since 2010 and was selected to fill the vacancy created by the death of Luis Paulino Mora Mora in February. The Sala II handles labor cases and family matters. The Corte Supreme has 22 magistrates in four sections. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 199 | |||||
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 Why
is this woman smiling? Or is she?
Smiles can be
very deceptive,
researcher concludes after tests By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Humans are very good at reading facial expressions of others, but the smile has proved to be more difficult to interpret. Take, for example the enigmatic smile of the Mona Lisa, which has baffled viewers for centuries. “There is a wide range of more ambiguous expressions, from which it is difficult to deduce the underlying emotional state. A typical example is the expression of happiness,” said David Beltrán Guerrero, researcher at the University of La Laguna in Spain, an expert who has analyzed the smile’s capacity to distort people’s innate deductive ability. Beltrán added that while the smile is usually associated with happiness, it can also mask negative or ambiguous feelings. To see how powerfully smiles can hide other emotions, Beltran and fellow researchers created several faces with differing expressions ranging from smiling mouths and smiling eyes to emotionless or neutral eyes and mouths. The faces were shown to volunteers who were asked to read the different expressions. Four out of ten participants identified ambiguous expressions as happy. Furthermore, participants were not able to see the subtle differences between a smiling mouth and non-smiling eyes. When the participants had to say whether the faces were happy, sad or something else, the power of the smile was diminished somewhat. “A smile can cause us to interpret a non-happy expression as happy, except when we are involved in the emotional assessment of said expression,” Beltran said. The reason smiles can often mask other feelings, the research showed, was that it has a high visual salience. In other words, smiles are attention grabbers and since they’re associated with happiness, that tends to be how people view them. Other studies have also shown that the smile dominates many of the initial stages of the brain’s processing of faces. Genuinely happy expressions prompt similar electrical activity in the brain as do ambiguous expressions with smiles and non-happy eyes. By measuring eye movements, it was observed that an ambiguous expression is confused and categorized as happy if the first gaze falls on the area of the smiling mouth, rather than the area of the eyes. Oxford researchers call today the Age of Internet Empires By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Internet is dominated by the two empires of Google and Facebook, according to researchers at Oxford University in England. Google dominates much of the West and India, while Facebook can claim supremacy in the Middle East, North Africa and much of the Spanish-speaking Americas. While Facebook has carved out a large chunk of the global Internet market, researchers point out that in the countries where the social media site was most popular, Google is not far behind. “Among the 50 countries that have Facebook listed as the most visited Web site, 36 of them have Google as the second most visited, and the remaining 14 countries list YouTube,” according to the research. YouTube is currently owned by Google. Asia, meanwhile is more of a patchwork, with China’s Baidu search engine dominating that country’s half billion Internet users. Researchers also found that Baidu was the top site in South Korea, but admit that could be a result of skewed data. On the other hand, they say it could reflect Baidu’s ambitions beyond China. Japan and Taiwan are outliers in Asia because Yahoo! is the most popular site in those countries. While data was not available for sub-Saharan Africa, “most countries that have a significant Internet population are covered. Kenya, Madagascar, Nigeria, and South Africa fall within the sphere of Google’s empire, whereas Ghana, Senegal, and Sudan have been subsumed within Facebook’s dominion,” according to the research. “We are likely still in the very beginning of the Age of Internet Empires. But, it may well be that the territories carved out now will have important implications for which companies end up controlling how we communicate and access information for many years to come,” the researchers concluded. The data used in the research was collected by the company Alexa, which has provided web analytics since 1996. Three awarded Nobel Prizes for work on cell transportation By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Three researchers studying how cells transport chemicals within and between cells have won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The researchers are: * James Rothman: professor and chairman in the Department of Cell Biology at Yale University, * Randy Schekman: professor in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, and * Thomas Sudhof: professor of molecular and cellular physiology at Stanford University. To explain what the researchers discovered, Harvard University cell biologist Tom Kirchhausen says it helps to think of each cell in the body as a tiny city. “You have people that are moving from one place to the other to do whatever function they do,” he said. “You move from place to place in carriers or containers,” like buses, trucks or trains, he says. In this analogy, the people are the proteins, hormones and other chemicals that do the work and carry messages in our bodies. Insulin, produced in the pancreas but used throughout the body, is one example. Or neurotransmitters that carry brain signals from one neuron to another. The transport system, the cell’s tiny buses, trucks or trains, has to get them from one part of the cell to another, or to the outside of the cell. If the system breaks down, the results are diseases like diabetes or neurodegenerative disorders. The process is so fundamental to life that evolution has not changed it much from yeast to people. Schekman at the University of California at Berkeley discovered in yeast the genetic blueprints for the proteins that make up the cellular delivery system. Later, says neuroscientist Erik Jorgensen at the University of Utah, researchers found out “that the proteins involved in this process that allow us to think, that allow nerve cells to communicate with one another, are precisely the same ones that were found in yeast.” But Schekman’s work was just a piece of the puzzle. Rothman at Yale University discovered how each little cellular bus delivers its passengers to the right station. “From Schekman’s work we had a list of the players,” Jorgensen said. “What Rothman showed us was who was interacting with whom.” And the third prize winner, Südhof, discovered how in nerve cells those little buses release their passengers quickly and precisely in response to a signal. At a press conference, Rothman noted that his good mood was due to his neurons secreting endorphins, one class of neurotransmitters delivered through the mechanism he and his colleagues had discovered. Rothman said he was lucky to get his start at a time when a young scientist could take risks to pursue an idea. “I’d like to think that that kind of support existed today, but I think there’s less of it," he said. "And it’s actually becoming a pressing national issue, if not an international issue.” He said U.S. funding for scientific research has declined in recent years, threatening American leadership in science and technology. Obama says he'll negotiate but not under budget threats By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
President Barack Obama has again said he is willing to negotiate with congressional Republicans on broad budget and fiscal issues, but will not do so under threat of a U.S. government default on its debt payments or an ongoing government shutdown. During a visit to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which like other agencies has many employees furloughed by the shutdown, Obama again urged Republicans to drop what he has called ideological demands. Saying he has always been willing to negotiate on broader budgetary issues, he said the first job for Congress is to move beyond a manufactured crisis to get government services running again, and avoid a potentially damaging default. "We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of further harm to our economy and middle class families. We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of a prolonged shutdown until Republicans get 100 percent of what they want. We’re not going to negotiate under the threat of economic catastrophe that economists and CEOs increasingly warn would result if Congress chose to default on America’s obligations," said Obama. Obama said he will not allow such a pattern to be established. He again challenged House of Representatives Speaker Republican John Boehner to put a clean government funding bill on the House floor. Press Secretary Jay Carney spent much of Monday's White House news briefing responding to questions about a remark earlier in the day by Gene Sperling, a senior economic official. At a Politico breakfast, Sperling was asked about the possibility of a short-term increase of the nation's $16.7 trillion debt limit. "No question that the longer the debt limit is extended, the greater economic certainty there will be in our economy, which will be better for jobs, and growth and investment. That said, it is the responsibility of Congress to decide how long and how often they want to vote on doing that," said Sperling. The administration has warned that even discussion of not raising the limit, let alone failing to do so, could bring economic calamity and set back recovery from the financial crisis. Carney said agreement by Boehner to re-open the government, and not threaten a default, would open the way to broader negotiations. He said the White House does not rule anything in or out as far as the duration of any debt limit solution is concerned, but that Congress needs to fulfill its obligations to fund the government and pay its bills. "How Congress fulfills it, as long as they fulfill it, without drama or delay, without brinksmanship, without threatening default, is up to them and the duration they attach to it is up to them," said Carney. Republicans, but specifically Tea Party conservatives in the House of Representatives, have linked demands for changes in Obama's signature health care reform law to the government shutdown, and the debt. On the House floor, Speaker Boehner interpreted another remark by Sperling as indicating Obama would rather push the nation into default than negotiate. "The American people expect when their leaders have differences, and we’re in a time of crisis, we’ll sit down and at least have a conversation. Really, Mr. President, it’s time to have that conversation before our economy is put further at risk," said Boehner. The White House supports an effort by Senate Democrats who plan to introduce legislation as early as mid-week to raise the borrowing limit, without conditions attached. Cuba once again seeking U.N. condemnation of U.S. By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
For the 22nd consecutive year, Cuba will ask the United Nations to condemn the United States economic embargo against the island, a top Cuban official announced Monday, accusing Washington of tightening sanctions in place for more than half a century. U.S. President Barack Obama, who stated before taking office that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo. The embargo, fully in place since 1962, has done astronomical economic harm, Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno said during a news conference to present Cuba's annual report on the damage wrought on the Communist-run Caribbean island by U.S. sanctions. Last year the vote at the U.N. General Assembly was overwhelming, with 188 nations, including most of Washington's closest allies, condemning the embargo. Only the United States, Israel and the tiny Pacific state of Palau supported it. This year the debate and vote is scheduled for Oct. 29. Obama has lifted some restrictions on travel and on the sending of remittances to the island, but Moreno said the embargo and its enforcement had been broadened in other areas. “The blockade not only is being maintained, but strengthened in some aspects,” Moreno charged. “I ask what right does the United States have to sanction companies that are not North American,” he said, saying that since Obama took office in 2009, fines against embargo violators, domestic and foreign, had dramatically increased and totaled $2.5 billion to date. Cuba says the embargo is a blockade because it punishes third country companies for doing business with Havana. Many critics of Cuba's one-party system, including dissidents on the island, also have called for lifting the embargo, saying it is counter-productive. Moreno said foreign banks were increasingly cautious about any transactions involving Cuba due to U.S. pressure, something confirmed by numerous foreign businessmen in Havana. “Banks calculate the risk versus the gain in doing business with Cuba, even if transactions are legal,” said a foreign banker who asked to remain anonymous. “Given that Cuba is on the U.S. terrorist list, many times banks decide it is not worth that risk and potential hassles and the trend has accelerated in recent years,” he said. Cuba held the news conference, where it announced the draft U.N. resolution calling for an end to the embargo, at the William Soler children's heart center to emphasize that the sanctions do not discriminate between the country's political leadership and innocent people and amounts to what it calls genocide. The hospital's director, Eugenio Selman-Housein Sosa, said his center often lacked the most modern equipment and medicines because U.S. companies predominated in some sectors and Washington's regulations on checking end-users made business next to impossible. “In the case of Cuba this becomes dramatic,” he said, because the sanctions “impede the acquisition of products that literally signify the difference between life and death.” Always contentious U.S.-Cuba relations thawed briefly under Obama, but progress came to a halt when Cuba arrested U.S. contractor Alan Gross in Havana in December 2009. Gross was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting up Internet networks in Cuba under a controversial U.S. program that Cuba views as subversive. The two countries, which do not have diplomatic relations, have renewed immigration and postal service talks suspended after Gross's arrest, but there are no signals of any major improvement in the foreseeable future. President Fernández going into surgery today for bleeding By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Argentina's Vice President Amado Boudou assumed control of the country Monday, as President Cristina Fernández was admitted to a hospital to undergo surgery to remove blood from inside her skull and to relieve pressure on her brain. Her operation is scheduled to take place today in Buenos Aires. Saturday, President Fernandez's doctors discovered a subdural hematoma, which is blood that collected between her brain and skull. They ordered the 60-year-old president to take a month's rest, but decided to operate after her condition worsened Sunday, when she felt weakness and a lack of blood flow in her upper left arm. The president's condition may be the result of hitting her head during a fall in August, although she was cleared by her doctors at the time. President Fernández has been campaigning for elections at the end of October that will determine control of Argentina's Congress. President Fernández, who has been in office since 2007, had her thyroid glands removed last year after she was diagnosed with cancer, although later tests indicated no cancer was present. Her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, died after a heart attack in 2010. The next presidential election is due in 2015. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 199 | |||||||||
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U.S. Supreme Court declines to review Argentine default By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Supreme Court Monday declined to hear a preliminary appeal filed by Argentina over its battle with hedge funds that refused to take part in two debt restructurings that sprang from the country's 2002 default. While not good news for President Cristina Fernández, the court's decision did not alter a lower U.S. court's stay on a ruling ordering Argentina to pay the funds. World markets are watching the case for the implications it might have on future sovereign debt restructurings. The International Monetary Fund has voiced fear that if Argentina is forced to pay the holdouts, it would make it more difficult for cash-strapped countries to re-negotiate their bond obligations. Market reaction to the Supreme Court announcement was muted, with economists stressing the importance of the maintenance of the stay. Argentina's sovereign risk spread tightened 7 basis points to 998 over safe-haven U.S. Treasuries while the rest of JP Morgan's Emerging Market Bond Indez Plus was flat at 344 basis points, indicating that Argentina remains the biggest default risk in the market. “The Supreme Court's decision to not hear our appeal this session does not change anything,” Finance Secretary Adrian Cosentino said in a statement, citing litigation pending in lower U.S. courts, which could lead to another request for high court review. “Argentina will continue defending itself using all available legal avenues,” the statement said. But with the combative Fernandez sidelined for health reasons ahead of a mid-term vote that will determine the clout she enjoys in Congress during her final two years in power, analysts said the legal and political winds were not blowing in her government's favor. “What is becoming clear is that Argentina is slowly getting closer to an unfavorable ruling, ordering it to pay the holdout hedge funds,” said Pablo Lavigne, an economist with Datarisk, a consultancy in Buenos Aires. Fernández vows never to pay the holdouts, whom she derides as “vultures” for picking over the bones of the 2002 default, which pushed millions of middle class Argentines into poverty. But refusal to pay the holdouts in the face of a final U.S. court order to do so could pave the way for another default, as Argentina would be blocked from paying the holders of restructured bonds as well. Easily re-elected in 2011 on promises of more government intervention into Latin America's No. 3 economy, Ms. Fernández has seen her popularity wane due to high inflation and confidence-sapping foreign exchange controls meant to halt capital flight. Monday's Supreme Court ruling means it will not at this time review an October 2012 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in which the court said the Argentine government had broken a contractual obligation to treat bondholders equally. The Supreme Court's refusal to get involved means litigation in lower courts continues, with Argentina able to seek high court review again at a later date when there is a final ruling in the appeals court. In August, that court issued another ruling, upholding a lower court's order that Argentina pay the bondholders $1.33 billion. The court stayed its decision pending possible Supreme Court review. Argentina also has asked the appeals court to reconsider its decision. In a brief order on Monday, the Supreme Court merely said the petition was denied and that Justice Sonia Sotomayor had not taken part in the discussion, suggesting she had recused herself. Justices do not generally explain why they recuse themselves. Ms. Sotomayor had been a judge on the 2nd Circuit bench before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 2009. In two restructurings, in 2005 and 2010, creditors holding around 93 percent of Argentina's debt agreed to participate in debt swaps that gave them 25 cents to 29 cents on the dollar. But bondholders led by hedge funds NML Capital Ltd, a unit of Paul Singer's Elliott Management Corp, and Aurelius Capital Management went to court, seeking payment in full. |
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| From Page 7: Greece sees end of recession in 2014 By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Greece is predicting its six-year recession will end next year with a small economic advance. Athens said Monday it expects the country's economy to fall another 4 percent this year, but grow by six-tenths of a percent in 2014. Overall, its economy has shrunk by about a quarter since the global downturn began in 2008. Since then, Greece has been forced to secure two international bailouts totaling more than $325 billion to keep from defaulting on its debt. More than a quarter of the country's workforce is unemployed. Greek lawmakers have reluctantly agreed to tough austerity measures demanded by the country's lenders. Now, Greece's deputy finance minister, Christos Staikouras, says the country's economic fortunes are beginning to improve. "The citizens have made enormous sacrifices both in terms of fiscal adjustment and in terms of living standards. However, beginning this year, these sacrifices began to take hold, with the first indications of Greece's exit from the crisis becoming evident." Greece accounts for only about 2 percent of the 17-nation eurozone economy. But fears of its default in the last three years often led to crisis negotiations with European leaders before they agreed to hand the country more bailout money. |
