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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 201 | |||||||||
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| Costa Rica Expertise Ltd http://crexpertise.com E-mail info@crexpertise.com Tel:506-256-8585 Fax:506-256-7575 |
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addresses sustainability Special to A.M. Costa Rica
Ever struggle with how to operate sustainability and, at the same time, balance costs? Do you wonder what businesses mean when they say they are green-friendly? And do you wish there was more guidance in implementing green practices in a developing country? The third meeting of the The Professional Women’s Network will address ideas to help women use sustainability as a competitive business model and to improve practices as professionals. Panelists include Alexis Fournier of Recycle Art, Jani Schulz of Rainforest Radio, Alida Francisco of Bamboo Global Exchange, Kate Cruse of 10:10 and The British Embassy. The meeting is scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 23 at Restaurant Tin Jo on Calle 11 between Avenidas 6 and 8 downtown San José. Reservations may be made by emailing pwn.wccr@gmail.com or at the Web site. The Professional Women’s Network is a new interest group of the Women’s Club of Costa Rica, active for 70 years serving local communities. The Network has been developed specifically for women of all nationalities to encourage personal and professional development through networking with other professional women, and to develop programs to contribute to all women in Costa Rica. The Network is an English-speaking group but beginner level English is welcome. La Niña likely to strengthen U.N. weather agency says Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The La Niña weather pattern is likely to continue and may strengthen over the next four to six months, potentially bringing abnormal conditions to widely separate areas of the world, from floods to droughts to below or above normal temperatures, the United Nations weather agency said Monday. La Niña, characterized by unusually cool ocean temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific, is the opposite of El Niño, characterized by unusually warm ocean temperatures, and both events can last for 12 months or more, disrupting normal tropical rainfall atmospheric circulation, with widespread impacts on climate in many parts of the world. But although the current La Niña has similarities to past events, its local impacts may differ from those observed in the past, the World Meteorological Organization warned in its latest update, stressing that for managing climate-related risks, it is important to consider both prevailing La Niña conditions and other factors with potential influence on the local climate. Our reader's opinion
Kolbi wireless servicegets worse and worse Dear A.M. Costa Rica: I'm on the sidelines waiting for some competition for the communication market after a long fought TLC or CAFTA battle, I'm glad I'm not holding my breath. The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad is trying to ramp up its technology to compete with whoever comes here to challenge them, but has simply forgotten or its management is too ignorant to understand is that “It's Customer Service, Stupid.” This is what people are looking for. If they could manage to grasp this as part of their business plan, they may just keep there heads above water. We have all experienced the constant interruptions in service, the delays with available phone lines, private and cellular and the ever increasing rates for these inadequate services. I bought into this Kolbi wireless idea like many others have. I got rid of my satellite service and then moved on to Reico. Both were costly, but were still far better than what I'm getting now. I paid for the highest download and upload speeds with this Kolbi, and at first I was delighted. There were some glitches, but for the people in our local office in Nuevo Arenal, I perservered. They went out of their way to help me. But you see, the speed I pay for has been little by little deminishing. It is being interupted constantly now, and sometimes I can't even get on line. It is about 75 percent less than what I first received and expected. Tonight I sit here and can't even upload an e-mail. Here's is where “Customer Service” shows its ugly face. Although the local office staff would like to see me have what I paid for, their hands are tied. No one above them really cares. The answer from them recently is there is a problem with the tower and who knows when they will come to fix that. I've also been told that too many people have Kolbi's now and that this lessens the bandwidth so we lose the speed we contracted for. Not one person has offered to lower the monthly rate while this is being fixed. You see, beyond the local ICE staff, no one really cares. I understand that a company has run new fiber optic lines down our road and I'm hoping it's Amnet so I can fire ICE. But I'm sure ICE will be getting a cut from Amnet since their using ICE poles to run the lines. If I had a lot of money, which I don't and besides the others things I would do with it, No. 1 on my list would be to fire ICE and go total solar for electricity and use any of the competition for telephone. Anyone but ICE!!! Tom Ploskina
Nuevo Arenal
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 201 | |||||||||
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 Red Sismológica Nacional/A.M.
Costa Rica graphic
Looking sideways to the north at a cross
section of the country. Each green dot represents a previous quake. |
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| Central mountains appear to be active earthquake zone |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
If anyone had doubts that Costa Rica is geologically active, a report this week by the Red Sismológica Nacional will change the mind. The author, Mauricio Mora Fernández, produced the report after the three quakes that took place near Zarcero Friday. The biggest quake, magnitude 5.9, took place at 7:54 p.m. A quake of 3.3 magnitude followed at 10:16 p.m. And that was followed by an 11:15 p.m. quake of 4.1 magnitude. Mora said that all these quakes took place within the Coco tectonic plate, which is under the bulk of the country. Because they were so deep, there was no serious damage, and the second and third quakes may not have been sensed by many people, Mora said. The initial quake was estimated |
to be 84 kilometers beneath the
surface. That's about 52 miles. Mora noted that a quake Nov. 19, 1948, had a magnitude of 7.0 and that one in 1992 had a magnitude of 6.2. These are infrequent events, he said and due to the great depth usually do not have grave effects. The Red Nacional is part of the Universidad de Costa Rica and affiliated with the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad. The Coco plate reaches 100 kilometers below the surface of the central volcanic mountains, called the Cordillera Volcánica Central. The cross sectional map that the Red Nacional produced shows a green dot for every quake registered between 1985 and 2008. The deeper the location, the fewer the quakes. |
| Security tightened in wake of discovery of airborne drugs |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Costa Rican police officials pulled out all the stops Sunday night and Monday as they struggled to understand how a drug-laden plane could come and go without the cargo being discovered. The flurry of police activity came after the Sunday morning crash of a Piper Cherokee carrying perhaps 200 kilos of cocaine in its wings: There were these other developments Monday: • The copilot, identified as Máximo Aníbal Ramírez Cotón, 53, died in Hospital México. • Two men who hold positions in the company that owned the plane were detained trying to cross the border illegally into Nicaragua. They were identified as Rubén Martinez Trujillo, 53, and Elvis Mendoza Rivera, 31. Both are Mexican nationals. • Immigration officials said that Martínez tried to trick them by booking a flight on a commercial aircraft leaving from Juan Santamaría airport. • Immigration officials also disclosed that Martínez has been in and out of the country 25 times. • Fuerza Pública officers beefed up the security at Tobias Bolaños airport in Pavas while security officials denied that they were the blame for not detecting the drug load. The Pavas airport has international traffic but the bulk of the flights are within Costa Rica. • Fuerza Pública officers also beefed up security at Hospital México where the pilot of the plane, identified by the last name of Monzón, remained in critical condition. Family visits to patients have been restricted. The hospital does not have a secure law enforcement wing. The aircraft rolled to the left and crashed on the bank of the Río Torres about 8 a.m. after a long, lumbering takeoff from the Pavas airport. Law officers said they thought that the drug shipment |
 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública
The crash happened in one of the few places in Pavas that is
not full of people and houses.might have come from Quepos on another aircraft, which is why the drugs in the left wing fuel tank were not discovered when the plane got the routine once over from anti-drug agents. The bulk of the investigation is in the hands of the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública because that ministry houses the anti-drug police. The company that owns the downed plane, ATA, maintains a hanger at the airport. Police searched it Monday after flying the two men caught at the border to the location. There is no surprise that there are plenty of drugs in the country. Costa Rica has long been known as a transit point for the illegal substance. However, this appears to be the first time that a major shipment has been linked to the Pavas airport, which is operated by the civil aviation authorities. The use of the airport as a drug shipment center probably would not have become known except that the pilot took off with the craft overloaded. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2010, Vol. 10, No. 201 | |||||||||
| Passport and cédula deliveries
help postal service prosper |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The cédula and passport delivery service of Correos de Costa Rica has turned out to be a big success and a way the government postal service can insulate itself from the winds of change. Correos said that it has delivered 150,000 passports and cédulas in the first six months of the year. It also has delivered 100,000 sets of documents for students in a special program set up by the Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social, the social welfare agency. The postal service reported that it had earnings of 6.6 billion colons in the first half of the year with net earnings of 740 million colons, about $1.46 million. That is a big turnaround from the same period in 2009 when Correos posted a deficit of 500 million, a bit less than $1 million. |
The postal service
does not get money from the national budget. It has to survive on what
it brings in. The postal service continues to make money on such traditional items as the delivery of bank statements and electric bills. That and the sale of stamps has increased 26 percent over last year. The expresss service EMS showed a 33 percent increase, Correos said. It competes with the private firms like DHL and Federal Express. The Dirección General de Migración y Extranjería has expanded the way it issues passports and cédulas de residencia. Cédula renewals can be handled at Banco de Costa Rica, and the final document is processed by the immigration service which then sends it to a designated office of Correos de Costa Rica. Applicants pick up the document there. |
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| Small temperature changes in tropics
expected to be crucial |
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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
In recent decades, documented biological changes in the far Northern Hemisphere — from species extinctions to shifting geographic ranges — have been attributed to global warming. Such changes were expected because warming has been fastest in the northern temperate zone and the Arctic. But new research published in the Oct. 7 edition of Nature adds to growing evidence that, even though the temperature increase has been smaller in the tropics, the impact of warming on life could be much greater there than in colder climates. The study focused on ectothermic, or cold-blooded, organisms (those whose body temperature approximates the temperature of their surroundings). Researchers used nearly 500 million temperature readings from more than 3,000 stations around the world to chart temperature increases from 1961 through 2009, then examined the effect of those increases on metabolism. "The expectation was that physiological changes would also be greatest in the north temperate-Arctic region, but when we ran the numbers that expectation was flipped on its head," said lead author Michael Dillon, an assistant professor of zoology and physiology at the University of Wyoming. Metabolic changes are key to understanding some major impacts of climate warming because a higher metabolic rate requires more food and more oxygen, said co-author Raymond Huey, a biology professor. If, for example, an organism has to spend more time eating or conserving energy, it might have less time and energy for reproduction. "Metabolic rate tells you how fast the animal is living and thus its intensity of life," Huey said. Using a well-documented, century-old understanding that metabolic rates for cold-blooded animals increase faster the warmer the temperature, the researchers determined that the effects on metabolism will be greatest in the |
tropics, even
though
that region has the smallest actual warming. Metabolic impacts will be
less in the Arctic, even though it has shown the most warming. In
essence, organisms in the tropics show greater effects because they
start at much higher temperatures than animals in the Arctic. Dillon and co-author George Wang of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, Germany, sifted through temperature data maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. They came up with readings from 3,186 stations that met their criteria of recording temperature at least every six hours during every season from 1961 through 2009. The stations, though not evenly spaced, represented every region of the globe except Antarctica. The data, the scientists said, reflect temperature changes since 1980 that are consistent with other recent findings that show the earth is getting warmer. Temperatures rose fastest in the Arctic, not quite as fast in the northern temperate zone and even more slowly in the tropics. "Just because the temperature change in the tropics is small doesn't mean the biological impacts will be small," Huey said. "All of the studies we're doing suggest the opposite is true." In fact, previous research has indicated that small temperature changes can push tropical organisms beyond their optimal body temperatures and cause substantial stress, while organisms in temperate and polar regions can tolerate much larger increases because they already are used to large seasonal temperature swings. The scientists say the effects of warming temperatures in the tropics have largely been ignored because temperature increases have been much greater farther north and because so few researchers work in the tropics. "I think this argues strongly that we need more studies of the impacts of warming on organisms in the tropics," Dillon said. |
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Latin American news Please reload page if feed does not appear promptly |
Rescue
hatch passes test as Chile readies Phoenix By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Chilean emergency crews have successfully tested a rescue hatch designed to retrieve 33 miners trapped underground since Aug. 5. Officials plan to begin lifting the men one-by-one to the surface early Wednesday. Rescue crews in Chile lowered the rescue device 610 meters into the rescue shaft, just 12-meters short of the chamber where the miners are trapped in northern Chile. Officials authorized the test after crews finished placing steel lining along the top portion of the shaft, to minimize concerns about possible falling rocks or dust. Mining minister Laurence Golborne said the results of the initial test with the hatch, known as the Phoenix, were very promising. Golborne said the rescue hatch performed well on both lined and unlined portions of the shaft. He said there were no signs of falling dust or other debris. Chilean navy engineers and mining experts helped build the Phoenix, which is about 50 centimeter (about 20 inches) wide and includes an oxygen supply and a phone to communicate with rescue crews on the surface. Andres Sougarret, head of rescue operations, said crews are completing work on an Austrian-built winch that will lower the device into the mine shaft and pull the miners to the surface. He said if they encounter no problems, then the rescue operation may begin early Wednesday. Sougarret said engineers plan to conduct additional tests before the rescue operation begins, adding that the first people to ride in the hatch will be rescue personnel. Officials say two mining experts and two paramedics will descend into the mine shaft to help the miners in the final rescue phase. Health officials have been monitoring the miners' health and providing them a special diet in recent weeks. Health minister Jaime Mañalich said the latest indication from the miners shows their health conditions are stable, even after more than two months underground. He said officials will consider the status of each miner when they decide who will surface first. Mañalich said the decision on the first miner to be rescued will be made moments before the operation begins. He said there is a group of 10 miners with delicate health conditions, who will have priority for rescue. Mañalich added that paramedic crews and military helicopters have been rehearsing the steps needed to fly miners to a nearby hospital after their rescue. Officials say the 32 Chileans and one Bolivian miner will be monitored for weeks to come to ensure their physical and mental health. |
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