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Published Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, in Vol. 17, No. 203
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San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 203
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Restored
Victoria is a Barrio Amón jewel
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
There is a 103-year-old wooden home in San Jose’s Barrio Amón that has withstood the test of time. The structure, now owned by Tecnológico de Costa Rica, the Cartago-based university, has undergone two years of renovation. The university has a satellite campus in San José. The structure is on Avenida 9 at Calle 7, just west of one of the city’s notorious locations. It is a classic example of an early 20th century Victorian. When it was built, Barrio Amón was the classy place to live in the capital. Now it is a mixture of commercial store fronts, a few homes, several hotels and the headquarters of Alliance Francaise in a similar historic structure just a block south. The building is a classic inside and out. Among other attributes, some of the brick walls are 50 centimeters thick, nearly 20 inches. The university traced the history of the building. The first occupants were Cecilia González Ramírez and Carlos Saborío Yglesias, a couple involved in ranching who had moved from Limón. He died in 1918, and the family sold the property. From 1990 to 2004 the building was a small hotel. Then it was vacant for 10 years. The university has posted an article with fascinating photos online HERE! Agents seek reason for ambush of cops By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
The big question facing law enforcement today is why did gunmen ambush a car full of off-duty tactical unit officers early Wednesday. Two policemen died. Two are in critical condition. There were four off-duty officers in the car when it stopped at a street light in Cañada Sur, San Sebastián, not far from their station and living quarters. Judicial investigators identified them just by the last names of López and Herrera. The security ministry said that the man, whose full name Errol López Hidalgo, worked as a police officer for 10 years. He was dead at the scene. The second officer, Bryan Herrera Sandoval, died in Hospital San Juan de Dios. Information provided by the Ministerio de Seguridad Pública was unusually subdued. A brief email said that the men were not working undercover and no more details would be provided. Usually when a police officer dies, the ministry is quick to release photos and background information. The shooting happened about 1 a.m. The men were staying at the facilities of the Unidad de Intervención Policial nearby, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. This is the ministry's tactical squad. The two gunmen came from another vehicle, said judicial agents. The primary target appeared to be López, who was reported to be driving the sports utility vehicle. Investigators said they had witnesses. A theory making the rounds is that the officers tried to breakup a drug deal. Another marijuana operation raided By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Anti-drug police detained a man in Cartago and said they found a hydroponics marijuana growing operation. The anti-drug unit said it was tipped off by Fuerza Pública officers who became suspicious of activities around the home, located in Barrio Carmen. Police said they located a handgun in the home, too, as well as a bulletproof vest. Frontier police collar illegal immigrants By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Officers of the Policía de Fronteras said they stopped three illegal immigrants and a man who was guiding them along the northern border. The immigrants were from Nicaragua. The detentions Tuesday came at a place known as Cebichito in Los Chiles. Officers also reported detaining three more illegal immigrants Wednesday in the northern part of San Carlos. Another killing reported in Limón By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Despite a large police presence on the Caribbean coast, crime continues. A 26-year-old man with the last name of Pérez died Tuesday night in Centro de Batán, Limón, when two men on a motorcycle pulled up and one riddled him with bullets. The Judicial Investigating Organization said that he suffered at least five wounds. This happened about 6:30 p.m. When the victim and another individual were talking in front of a commercial establishment. Pérez lived in the area, agents said.
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San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 203
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Coffee
producers being trained to nuke plants to fight fungus
disease |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Coffee producers have been invited to nuke their plants to create varieties that resist roya de cafe, the leaf rust that is sweeping Central America. The International Atomic Energy Agency says it is putting on a two-week seminar to show coffee growers and plant breeders how to use atomic energy to create coffee plant mutants. The main focus is on Arabica, the only variety that is grown in Costa Rica. Arabica is particularly susceptible to disease due to low genetic diversity among cultivated plants. Variety, said the commission. Unlike genetically modified plants, the doses of radiation are designed to alter the plant’s existing genes to create something different. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization is hosting the seminar at its plant breeding lab in Seibersdorf, Austria. |
The
project, partially funded by the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries Fund for International
Development, is part of an effort to establish a global
research and development network, with a core in Latin
America, to help producing countries respond to coffee
leaf rust, said the commission. Roya de cafe (Hemileia vastatrix) is a fungus that showed up in in Kenya in 1861. The fungus causes the coffee plant leaves to wither. The disease that has cut Central American and Dominican Republic coffee production by 2.7 million sacks, according to the Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura. That is about 20 percent of the annual harvest. The current outbreak is the worst seen in Central America and Mexico since the fungal disease arrived in the region more than 40 years ago. Guatemala has joined Honduras and Costa Rica in declaring national emergencies over the disease. |
President Solís and his foreign minister play 'I've got a secret' | |
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Costa Rica has a state secret. No, it is not about a high-tech laser killer that would destroy invading Nicaraguan tanks. And it has nothing to do with Vladimir Putin or an emerging Mexican drug cartel. The state secret is the documents exchanged between the foreign ministry and its embassy in Brazil. The decree declaring the messages a state secret has been issued by the executive branch. The Procuraduría General de la República, the government’s lawyer, said that had to be done because only then can officials skirt the constitutional requirement to make information public. Spanish-language news people have been seeking the documents to find out why President Luis Guillermo Solís, his wife, Mercedes Peñas, and the foreign minister, Manuel |
González,
stood up and left the United Nations assembly hall when
Michael Temer, president of Brazil, began to speak Sept.
20. The president and the foreign minster have declined
to give a full explanation. Brazilian officials were not
pleased. In a statement Wednesday González said that revealing the contents of the messages would jeopardize bilateral relations with Brazil. In less diplomatic words, the documents would seem to say bad things about Temer, who took over the presidency after Dilma Rousseff was removed from office by the congress. The Costa Rican exodus was joined by Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba, all headed by leftist regimes. They have equated the impeachment proceedings to a coup. But the matter is not yet put to rest. Some media organizations are likely to bring the case to the Sala IV constitutional court. And then there is Wikileaks. |
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San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 203
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Obama
urged to grant a posthumous pardon to Marcus Garvey, Jr. |
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Editor’s
note: Marcus Garvey has a long legacy in Limón where
the Universal Negro Improvement Association is
rebuilding the Black Star Line, the central canton’s
gathering place and social center. By Stephen Cooper*
Special to A.M. Costa Rica Early this week, The Gleaner, Jamaica’s oldest and most respected daily newspaper, reported on that country’s continuing efforts to pave the way for the United States, and specifically, President Barack Obama, to grant a posthumous pardon to Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., for his 1923 mail fraud conviction. Born on Aug. 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, Garvey was a civil rights activist, the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and a strong proponent of black nationalism and pan-African philosophy. Garvey is not only Jamaica’s first national hero, he is revered by millions throughout the Caribbean, Central America, Canada, Africa, the United States, and indeed, all over the world. Garveyism, while still controversial in some quarters, has long been internationally recognized for its strong and enduring influence on the Nation of Islam, Rastafarianism, and the Black Pride movement. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said Garvey was “the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny.” Writing for Fusion, Casey Tolan notes that “[a]s Garvey’s popularity grew, he attracted the attention of a young J. Edgar Hoover.” Hoover “put Garvey under surveillance, and in 1919, he wrote a memo about his investigation of the activist. Garvey had ‘been particularly active among the radical elements in New York City in agitating the negro movement,’” Hoover wrote. Hoover lamented, “[u]nfortunately, however, [Garvey] has not yet violated any federal law whereby he could be proceeded against on the grounds of being an undesirable alien, from the point of view of deportation.” Just four years later though, in 1923, Hoover’s secretive and vindictive persecution of Garvey did lead to Garvey’s federal prosecution, conviction, jailing (for two years and nine months), and eventually deportation, on mail fraud charges. The charges were brought in connection with the sale of stock of Garvey’s Black Star Line, an ambitious all-black shipping company that Garvey founded. Garvey was “accused of trying to defraud his customers by advertising a ship that was not yet in his possession.” Tolan observes: “Modern day research suggests [however] that the trial was politically motivated to blunt the rise of a powerful black organizer.” Objectively, what the Office of the Pardon Attorney, and ultimately, President Obama, should consider, is: if Garvey had had access and been able to present Hoover’s 1919 memo as evidence of his selective prosecution, there is no question he would have had meritorious grounds for the dismissal of his mail fraud case. (As Justice Thurgood Marshall noted in his dissenting opinion in Wayte v. United States, 470 U.S. 598, 624 (1985) “[M]ost of the relevant proof in selective prosecution cases will be in the Government’s hands.”) At page 15 of his 1997 book, “The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s ‘Racial’ Crisis,” Orlando Patterson, a professor and historical and cultural sociologist at Harvard University, writes: "The prejudices of centuries die hard, and even when they wane, the institutional |
Library of Congress
This is a photo of Marcus Garvey in 1924frameworks that sustained them are bound to linger." It doesn’t have to be that way for Marcus Garvey. The Office of the Pardon Attorney and President Obama should heed Marcus Garvey’s sage counsel in a speech in Nova Scotia in 1937, words Bob Marley helped immortalize decades later in his 1980 masterpiece, Redemption Song, and “emancipate [them]selves from mental slavery,” so Marcus Garvey’s legacy can finally be free. Answering questions on April 9, 2015, following a speech at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, President Obama said: “I think that all people want basic dignity and want basic freedom, and want to be able to worship as they please without being discriminated against, or they should be able to speak their mind about an important issue pertaining to their community without being arrested.” That’s true today, but it was also true of Marcus Garvey in 1923. Having been sentenced to prison and addressing a crowd at Liberty Hall in New York City, Garvey said: “We are not fighting America; we are fighting hypocrisy and lies, and that we are going to fight to the bitter end. Now understand we well, Marcus Garvey has entered the fight for the emancipation of a race; Marcus Garvey has entered the fight for the redemption of a country.” *Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. |
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San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 203
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Mrs. Clinton with problems By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is facing more controversy stemming from thousands of hacked emails written by staffers and published by WikiLeaks. Wednesday, the latest batch to be publicized focuses on comments that campaign communications director Jennifer Palmieri made about Catholics in 2011. Ms. Palmieri was exchanging emails with John Halpin, who is with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank with close ties to the Clinton campaign. Halpin wrote that the country's most powerful conservatives are all Catholic and called their politics "an amazing bastardization of the faith." "They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy," Halpin said. Ms. Palmieri replied by writing, "Catholicism is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals." Another 2011 email sent to current Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta from the head of a progressive group called for a Catholic Spring, adapting the pro-democracy Arab Spring in the Middle East. "There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle-ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church," Voices for Progress President Sandy Newman wrote. Republican presidential rival Donald Trump's campaign condemned the emails as "breathtaking anti-Catholic bigotry." Trump said Wednesday that anyone of religion has to vote for him. Other leaked emails from the Democratic Party include allegations that Clinton campaign officials tried to discredit former Democratic presidential rival Bernie Sanders, and suggestions the campaign should laugh off the controversy surrounding Clinton's State Department emails. Meanwhile, Trump is facing more trouble of his own. Two women told The New York Times that Trump molested them after he denied during last Sunday's debate ever doing such things. One woman said Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt during an airplane flight in 1978. She said she ran into Trump two years later at a charity event and he started insulting her. Another woman says she met Trump for the first time outside an elevator in his Manhattan building in 2005, and that he almost immediately started kissing her on the mouth. The Times said Trump hollered at a reporter when questioned during a telephone interview Tuesday, accusing the newspaper of making up the story. Also, a Florida woman told The Palm Beach Post that Trump touched her on the buttocks in 2003 at Mar-a-Lago, a Trump-owned resort. She says the alleged encounter took place backstage after a concert. The Trump campaign says the Post story lacks any merit or veracity. A leaked 2005 videotape in which Trump bragged that he could grope women because he is a star may have wrecked his presidential hopes, even after he apologized and said he is ashamed. Support of protesting athletes depends on the racial makeup By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A public opinion poll finds black Americans overwhelmingly approve of protests that athletes across the country have been staging for several weeks. The athletes fail to stand respectfully silent during the traditional playing of the U.S. National Anthem before major sporting events. A poll by Quinnipiac University found that 74 percent of African-Americans approve of the protests, begun by quarterback Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers football team. Kaepernick’s protest has been joined by a number of professional athletes in a wide variety of sports. Those participating either do not stand or they kneel as the anthem is played, in what the athletes have said is a bid to raise awareness of complaints about racial injustice in some sectors of American society. The poll released this week showed that white Americans overall disapprove of the protests by a margin of 63 percent to 30 percent. Hispanic Americans disapprove by a smaller margin, 45 percent to 36 percent. Only 17 percent of African-Americans disapproved of the protests. “There is a profound racial divide over athletes who refuse to stand for the National Anthem,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. In addition to the racial disparities, Americans’ views of the protests contrasted sharply when they were separated into age groups. The millennial age group, defined as 18 to 35 years old, agreed with the athletes’ protest strategy, by a margin of 52 percent to 37 percent. Racial or ethnic differences were not a factor when survey participants were grouped by age. A majority of Americans from 35 to 49 years old, 54 percent, said they disapprove of the protests, which media accounts have equated with the black lives matter social protest movement. Among those 50 to 64 years old, about 60 percent disapproved of the protests, and 70 percent of those older than 65 also viewed the athletes’ action negatively. The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,391 adults nationwide Oct. 7-9 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percentage points. Jordanian student pilot gets blame for deliberate crash By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The FBI on Wednesday began investigating an apparently intentional plane crash in the state of Connecticut, in which a student pilot died and his instructor was badly injured. The National Transportation Safety Board said its initial investigation showed the crash Tuesday was the result of deliberate action. The board turned the case over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The small, twin-engine plane crashed in flames on a busy street in East Hartford, near the headquarters of Pratt and Whitney, a company that builds airplane engines, about 118 miles (190 kilometers) north of New York City. The student pilot, Feras Freitekh, a Jordanian national, died in the crash. Flight instructor Arian Prevalla suffered critical burns but survived. Media accounts said Freitekh was frustrated and unwilling to continue his aviation studies, but was being pressured to do so by his family. The instructor is said to have told authorities there was an altercation in the cockpit in which it became clear the young man wanted to crash the plane, but that he could not prevent the aircraft from going down. The plane that crashed, a Piper PA-34, had dual controls. Aviation experts quoted by CNN television said the flight instructor could not have disabled his student's controls, so if events unfolded as Prevalla reputedly told authorities, it would have been an impossible situation. Wells Fargo chairman quits over aggressive marketing By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The chief executive officer of the second largest U.S. bank will step down in the aftermath of a scandal over its sales practices. San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank announced Wednesday that John Stumpf has resigned effective immediately and will be replaced by chief operating officer, Tim Sloan. Stumpf will also relinquish his title as chairman. Wells Fargo was well-known in the banking industry for its ability to sell customers multiple products, such as a new account, a mortgage, a retirement account, or even online banking. The company last month agreed to pay $185 million to settle allegations that its workers opened millions of accounts without customers' permission to reach aggressive sales targets. It has since faced a raft of federal and state investigations, including from the U.S. Department of Justice. Some 5,300 lower-level employees were fired because of the scandal. U.S. rights groups support decriminalizing illicit drugs By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
A new report by two prominent rights groups calls for the decriminalization of possession and personal use of all illicit drugs in the United States, concluding that enforcement of drug laws has unjustifiably ripped families apart, fueled racial discrimination and failed to cut widespread drug abuse. The report, titled "Every 25 Seconds: The Human Toll of Criminalizing Drug Use in the United States," by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union said more people are arrested for simple drug possession in the United States than for any other crime. "Every 25 seconds, someone is funneled into the criminal justice system, accused of nothing more than possessing drugs for personal use," said the report's author, Tess Borden. "These wide-scale arrests have destroyed countless lives while doing nothing to help people who struggle with dependence." While the U.S. struggles with myriad drug abuse issues, including a rapidly growing opioid epidemic, decriminalization of drug use is unlikely. But Ms. Borden says she hopes the report will prompt federal and state authorities to boost funding for drug treatment programs and to reclassify drug use and personal possession offenses as misdemeanors instead of felonies. The report said state law enforcement departments make 1.25 million drug possession arrests each year, or one out of nine arrests nationwide. Although black adults use drugs at similar or lower rates than white adults, the report said blacks are more than twice as likely to be arrested for possession. The nation's war on drugs campaign, which began in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, has failed, the report said. Drug abuse rates are still high and criminalization of drugs forces users into the shadows of society and makes them less likely to get treatment. Human Rights Watch and the ACLU said they interviewed 149 people who were prosecuted for using drugs in Florida, Louisiana and Texas. Sixty-four of them are in custody, including Corey Ladd, who is serving a 17-year sentence for possessing a half-ounce of marijuana after two previous drug arrests. Ladd is the father of a 4-year-old girl who has never seen him outside of prison. "The sheer harshness of the sentence shocks the conscience," Louisiana's appeals court wrote in April, when it asked that Ladd be given a lesser term. But prosecutors denied the request, and Ladd's case is now headed to the Supreme Court. In a statement, White House National Drug Control Policy spokesman Mario Moreno said, "The administration has been committed to implementing a balanced approach to drug policy from the beginning because we cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem. Public health and public safety collaboration is imperative to achieving this goal, which is why we've prioritized reforming our sentencing policies so that scarce resources are applied in the most effective ways." Moreno said the Obama administration has promoted evidence-based alternatives to imprisonment that ensure access to drug treatment and recovery programs. Specialized courts that divert non-violent drug offenders to the programs have been expanded, Moreno said, as have reentry programs that help former offenders remain drug-free as they return to society. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Russ Baer said the agency is committed to upholding the nation's drug laws and focuses its efforts on the biggest and most violent drug traffickers that control the flow of illegal drugs. The report said many Western European countries have adopted comparatively less punitive approaches to drug abuse. Portugal took the most significant step in 2001 when it decriminalized the acquisition, possession and use of illegal drugs in amounts up to a 10-day supply. As a result, many drug abusers there are more likely to enter treatment programs rather than face prosecution. But a Temple University criminal justice professor, Steven Belenko, maintains the U.S. approach to drug enforcement is dramatically different from Portugal's. "We don't have a consensus" in the United States, he said. "We've got to see it more as a public health problem, not as a crime problem." World Health backs soda tax to get people to lose weight By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The World Health Organization says the widespread consumption of sugar is a major factor in the growing global obesity epidemic. To help counter the trend, the U.N. agency is calling on governments to tax sugary drinks to lower consumption and reduce this worldwide health risks. The call coincides with the publication of a new report that found that in 2014 more than one third of adults around the world were overweight, with half a billion considered obese. More troubling, World Health estimates 42 million children under age 5 were overweight or obese last year. This represents an increase of about 11 million during the past 15 years. Nearly half of these children live in Asia and 25 percent in Africa. The U.N. agency says unhealthy diets are behind the rise in diabetes, which now accounts for more than 422 million cases and an estimated 1.5 million deaths a year. It says the consumption of sugar, including products like sugary drinks, is a major factor in the global increase of obesity and diabetes. Temo Waganivalu, coordinator for World Healths Department for the Prevention on Non-Communicable Diseases, said putting a tax on sugary drinks would reduce consumption and save lives. “If we increase the tax and that gets passed on to the consumers resulting in a 20 percent increase in price, you are more likely to get, and I say proportional, a 20 percent reduction in the consumption. In addition . . . you will be more likely to achieve the ultimate health outcome we are aiming for, which is the reduction in obesity and diabetes,” she said. Waganivalu said México, which in 2014 introduced a 10 percent tax on sugary drinks, had a 6 percent reduction in consumption by the end of the year. Among poor people, the number of consumers decreased by 17 percent. The World Health report says China tops the worldwide obesity rankings with 43 million men and 46 million women. The United States, which has been bumped into second place, has 41.7 million men and 46 million women who are obese. World Health recommends people keep their sugar intake at below 10 percent of their total energy needs, and reduce it to less than 5 percent for additional health benefits. It warns people to be careful in their calculations because sugar is everywhere. For example, one tablespoon of ketchup contains one teaspoon of sugar and an average cup of breakfast cereal contains about four teaspoons of sugar. |
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday,
Oct. 13, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 203
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Turrialba may
be in for the long haul By the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
Just as the Irazú volcano started a two-year series of eruptions in 1963, the sister mountain, Turrialba, might do the same thing. The volcano erupted several times Wednesday, including at 2 p.m. That lasted until 4:20 p.m., said the Red Sismológica Nacional. Then scientists detected a large tremor in the mountain followed by a 10-minute emission of ash, gas and vapor, according to the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica. The winds carried the ash mostly to the northwest, but there were no reports of ash fall received by either agency. The Observatorio said it expected the emissions to last through the night. Colombians march to support peace deal By the A.M. Costa Rica
wire services
Thousands of people flooded streets in cities across Colombia Wednesday to protest in favor of a peace deal between the government and a group of Marxist rebels who have been feuding for more than five decades. The marches Wednesday mark the second mass gathering of Colombians in support of the peace deal that was signed with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia but was later rejected by voters. The protests come as the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Juan Manuel Santos, has continued talks with opposition politicians and rebel representatives in an attempt to save the peace deal. Voters narrowly rejected the deal 50.2 percent to 49.7, or by a margin of just 54,000 votes. The result came as a shock to Colombian leaders as public opinion polls leading up to the vote forecast the referendum would pass by a two-to-one margin. Last week, Santos said he would extend a cease-fire agreement with the rebels until Oct. 31, though expectations for a deal remain low because rebel leaders refuse to budge on the already-signed peace accord and opponents say the rebels need to accept tougher terms. Many no voters were genuinely offended that nearly all rebels will avoid prison time for crimes committed during the uprising and get various financial support from the government. They are also upset that rebels would be guaranteed seats in the Colombian congress without an election in exchange for transforming into a political party. World Bank says climate means poverty By the A.M. Costa Rica
wire services
Climate change could plunge tens of millions of city dwellers into poverty in the next 15 years, threatening to undo decades of development efforts, the World Bank said Wednesday. Fast-growing cities, particularly in the developing world, are ill-prepared to deal with increasing climate-related disasters, according to a joint report by the bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, which the bank manages. Globally, more than 1 billion people or one in seven live on less than $1.25 each a day. But that figure could increase by 77 million people by 2030, unless cities plan better for climate-linked disasters, the World Bank said. The Washington institution called on governments to speed up investments in projects that shield the cities' poorest from the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels. |
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
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From Page 7: U.S. vacation rental service expands here Special to A.M. Costa
Rica
Vacasa has announced its entrance into the Costa Rica market, marking its fifth international destination since its co-founder and chief development officer, Cliff
Founded in Portland, Oregon, in 2009, Vacasa says it makes vacation rentals easy by managing the entire process of listing, marketing, booking, and maintenance for every home in its portfolio. The company says it pairs industry-leading technology with experienced on-the-ground staff to oversee daily operations such as maintenance and housekeeping. Most of the company’s proprietary technology systems were built by an in-house team of developers, engineers and analysts. In the past year, Vacasa has grown its portfolio from 2,700 to more than 4,000 homes and has entered three international markets: Italy, Spain, and now Costa Rica. Head, Vacasa’s Costa Rica country manager, has been a vacation rental consultant in Costa Rica for the past four years. Before that, he owned a Coldwell Banker franchise, which was named number one in the country for three years in a row. Head was also named the top sales agent. Since launching in the country, the local team has already signed 23 homes in Jacó. “I am thrilled to work with the Vacasa team to further the sophistication of vacation rentals in this market,” says Head. “Their expertise and ability to offer many different services under one umbrella are just what Costa Rican homeowners and vacationers need.” “Vacasa has ambitious growth plans for Costa Rica and Latin America,” said Johnson, the co-founder. “We will be growing both through acquisitions and organic growth in the region. In addition to the beautiful landscape, Costa Rica offers travelers a friendly culture which has helped it become a sought after destination for both short and longer-term travelers.” |