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San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 211
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 Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública photo
There's
more where these came from.
Law enforcement
has fun
blowing up seized fireworks By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The event was New Year's and July 4 rolled into one. Even though citizens cannot have explosive fireworks, law enforcement has the job of blowing up confiscated material. That is what happened Wednesday at Los Sitios de Moravia when the security minister, Mario Zamora Cordero, sent the current that ignited the pile of fireworks. In all, there were 771,153 separate firecrackers, bombs and rockets that went up in smoke. They had been confiscated from November to March. The security ministry noted that this period is the high season for fireworks. The blast was in the hands of the Dirección General de Armamento of the ministry. Some of the merchandise came from shops that were not authorized to sell them, said officials  Ministerio de Gobernación,
Policía y Seguridad Pública photo
This
is some of the confiscated material.
New
trial in Las
Olas case
begins in January, lawyer says By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A new criminal trial in the case of the U.S. developer of the Las Olas condominium project in Esterillos Oeste will begin the second week of January. That was the report Wednesday from Nestor Morera, the Heredia lawyer representing David Richard Aven of New Castle, Pennsylvania, the developer. Morera said the Sept. 6 start of the trial was postponed that day because he was ill. Then the trial was postponed a second time in the second week of that month because the judge became ill, he added. A news story Friday reported incorrectly that the delay was because Aven had been ill, said the lawyer. New York lawyers for Aven have threatened to take Costa Rica to arbitration under the free trade treaty with the United States. The project is Condominio Horizontal Residencial Las Olas, and a warning letter sent by New York lawyers to the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior Sept. 17 alleges official corruption, perjury, inaction by criminal investigators, misstatements and inequitable treatment in a criminal court case. The project is official Condominio Horizontal Residencial Las Olas. The criminal trial has been plagued with illness. The New York lawyers claim that the prosecutor engineered a delay when it appeared he would lose the case. Then a judge, whom Morera identified as Rafael Solís Gullock, became sick and the trial has to be repeated. The New York lawyers consider this double jeopardy. Costa Rica law provides for a new trial if there is a delay of 10 working days for a reason like the illness of the judge. That took place in December 2012 and January this year, said Morera. The law firm threatening arbitration is King & Spalding LLP of New York City. The Costa Rican lawyer, Morera of the Bufete Morera & Morera, noted in a telephone call Wednesday that both abortive trials represent significant expense to the developer, who was present. Red Sox takes first game from Cardinals 8 to 1 By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Boston Red Sox trounced the visiting St. Louis Cardinals 8-1 Wednesday in the first game of Major League Baseball's 2013 World Series. The American League champion Red Sox jumped out to an early lead over the National League champion Cardinals when Mike Napoli hit a bases-loaded double in the first inning. Napoli's hit came after the umpires reversed an earlier call that St. Louis infielder Pete Kozma had tagged a Red Sox runner out at second base, although it was clear he did not cleanly catch the ball from teammate Matt Carpenter. Boston slugger David Ortiz drove in three runs, including a towering two-run home run in the seventh inning. Ortiz nearly hit a grand slam in the second inning, but St. Louis outfielder Carlos Beltran made the catch right at the wall. Beltran suffered a rib injury on the play and was taken to a hospital for tests. Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester kept the Cardinals scoreless over seven-plus innings, giving up just five hits while posting eight strikeouts. St. Louis's only run came from Matt Holliday's home run in the ninth inning off reliever Ryan Dempster. Game two of the best-of-seven series is set for Thursday at Boston's Fenway Park. Flu shot might protect against heart ills and stroke By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The flu season is just beginning in the Northern Hemisphere and doctors are urging anyone older than six months to get immunized. A new study also suggests the vaccine may do more than ward off the flu. Medical experts say there is nothing that kills as many people as the flu. Doctors say heart patients who get the flu seem to have a higher risk of heart attack, heart failure or stroke. Researchers believe as bodies fight the disease, inflammation and plaque in arteries become more unstable and may form clots and blockages. It appears the flu vaccine, though, may help protect even healthy people from heart attack and stroke. Jacob Udell at Women's College Hospital in Toronto analyzed data from previous studies involving nearly 7,000 patients. “Overall there was about a 33 percent reduction in risk for heart attacks, strokes and other major cardiovascular events in those who received the flu shot, compared to those who’d received a placebo or just the standard of care,” said Udell. For people who'd recently had a heart attack, getting a flu shot cut their risk of having another one by 50 percent. So Udell says getting the vaccine is a no brainer.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 211 | |
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| Visitors report they documented cases of
illegal fishing here |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A marine conservation organization said it spent many days and nights observing and filming fishing activities around the marine protected areas in Costa Rica. It said it turned video footage of suspected illegal fishing to authorities. The organization is Earthrace, and the organization's team members used radar, night vision goggles and other equipment to keep an eye on commercial fishing boats over three months, it said. In a release Wednesday, the organization said it was also able to obtain proof on film from on board several other fishing vessels believed to be acting beyond the law, including a 70-foot (21-meter) long line trawler. The organization said it was hosted by the Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía, In one case, the team aboard a small boat said they watched a Costa Rican shrimper slip into a protected area off Guanacaste at night, the organization said. "Once it was dark, the trawler was observed traveling at 8 knots into the marine protected area, where it turned off its lights, stopped and spent 40 minutes preparing its trawl gear," the organization said. "For the next seven hours, the trawler traversed in the same area at around 2 to 3 knots. It was deliberately operating within the protected area and at daybreak, he pulled in the trawl nets at which point the Earthrace team boarded the vessel." Pete Bethune, who headed up the team, agreed in an email that the organization has no authority to board vessels unless they are invited. He said they simply ask the captains to come aboard and talk and keep their eyes open. |
 Earthrace photo
This is the small craft the team
used.The captain of the trawler vessel maintained there was only a marine protected area in the south of the region, not in the north where he was, that he was not inside the north marine protected area at all and that there was no way of proving that the organization's GPS was working correctly, Earthrace said. Bethune appears to be optimistic that the efforts of his team would lead to criminal prosecutions. The organization said he plans on returning with more evidence. “Illegal fishing may not be as much on the public’s radar as some other issues," he was quoted as saying. "However, I believe it is the most dangerous and damaging practice going on around the world today in terms of our oceans. The pressure on populations of fish and other marine animals from illegal fishing fleets that don’t give a damn about what they catch, how much, and how they catch it means there is no longer plenty more in the sea.” |
| Popular herbicide atrazine linked to
global deaths of frogs |
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By
the University of South Florida news service
The combination of the herbicide atrazine and a fungal disease is particularly deadly to frogs, new research shows. The report comes from a University of South Florida laboratory, which has been investigating the global demise of amphibian populations. Jason Rohr, a biologist said the new findings show that early-life exposure to atrazine increases frog mortality but only when the frogs were challenged with a chytrid fungus, a pathogen implicated in worldwide amphibian declines. The research is published in the new edition of Proceedings of the Royal Society B. “Understanding how stressors cause enduring health effects is important because these stressors might then be avoided or mitigated during formative developmental stages to prevent lasting increases in disease susceptibility,” Rohr said. The experiments showed that a six-day exposure to environmentally relevant concentrations of atrazine, one of the most common herbicides in the world, increased frog mortality 46 days after the atrazine exposure, but only when frogs were challenged with the chytrid fungus. This increase in mortality was driven by a reduction in the frogs’ tolerance of the infection. Moreover, Rohr and fellow researchers found no evidence of recovery from the atrazine exposure and the atrazine-induced |
increase in disease susceptibility
was independent of when the atrazine exposure occurred during tadpole
development. “These findings are important because they suggest that amphibians might need to be exposed only to atrazine briefly as larvae for atrazine to cause persistent increases in their risk of chytri-induced mortality,” Rohr said. “Our findings suggest that reducing early-life exposure of amphibians to atrazine could reduce lasting increases in the risk of mortality from a disease associated with worldwide amphibian declines.” Until this study, scientists knew little about how early-life exposure to stressors affected the risk of infectious diseases for amphibians later in life. ”Identifying which, when, and how stressors cause enduring effects on disease risk could facilitate disease prevention in wildlife and humans, an approach that is often more cost-effective and efficient than reactive medicine,” Rohr said. The findings are also the latest chapter in research Rohr and his lab has conducted on the impact of atrazine on amphibians. These findings are consistent with earlier studies that concluded that, while the chemical typically does not directly kill amphibians and fish, there is consistent scientific evidence that it negatively impacts their biology by affecting their growth and immune and endocrine systems. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 211 | |||||
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| Health effect of e-cigarettes is still an open question,
Mayo Clinic says |
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By
the Mayo Clinic news staff
E-cigarettes are becoming increasingly popular and widely available as the use of regular cigarettes drops. Recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that e-cigarette use by children doubled from 2011 to 2012. The health effects of e-cigarettes have not been effectively studied and the ingredients have little or no regulation, said the Mayo Clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center. Electronic cigarettes, often called e-cigarettes, are battery-operated devices that provide inhaled doses of a vaporized solution of either propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin along with liquid nicotine. An atomizer heats the solution into a vapor that can be inhaled. The process, referred to as vaping, creates a vapor cloud that resembles cigarette smoke. Some liquids contain flavoring, making them more appealing to users. "As of right now, there is no long-term safety data showing the impact of repeated inhalation of propylene glycol or vegetable glycerin on lung tissue," cautions Jon Ebbert, associate director at Mayo Clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center. "There is some short-term data suggesting that e-cigarettes may cause airway irritation, but until we have long-term safety data, we are not recommending e-cigarettes for use among cigarette smokers to help people stop smoking." |
So, what is known
about electronic cigarettes? * Manufacturers claim that electronic cigarettes are a safe alternative to conventional cigarettes. * The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has questioned the safety of these products. * Food and Drug's analysis of two popular brands found variable amounts of nicotine and traces of toxic chemicals, including known cancer-causing substances. * Food and Drug has issued a warning about potential health risks associated with electronic cigarettes, but is not yet regulating their use or standards of manufacture. "It's an amazing thing to watch a new product like that just kind of appear. There's no quality control," says Richard Hurt, director of Mayo Clinic's Nicotine Dependence Center. "Many of them are manufactured in China under no control conditions, so the story is yet to be completely told." The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) will host a press conference about e-cigarettes and their health effects on Tuesday in National Harbor, Maryland. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 211 | |||||
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| DNA can measure the age of human body, study says By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Those searching for the fountain of youth, you might find it in their DNA. That’s according to a new study that sheds light on the biological clock ticking in the human genomes, why bodies age and how the process can be slowed down. University of California genetics professor Steve Horvath has created a new tool that can accurately measure the aging body. “Basically I developed a way of predicting age based on DNA," Horvath said. "To achieve this goal I identified 353 markers on the DNA which measure DNA methylation levels.” Methylation is a naturally occurring epigenetic or gene altering process that chemically modifies the DNA and is critical in the development of every organism. Horvath and his colleagues gleaned information from 8,000 samples to chart methylation in healthy and diseased organs, tissues and cells from fetuses to centenarians. “For one thing, I find that this epigenetic clock ticks fastest during development, and after age 20 it slows down to a constant ticking rate," he said. "But also I find that cancer tissue is on average 36 years older than healthy tissue, and I observed that effect in all 20 cancer types that I studied.” In other words, some cells age faster than others. Horvath notes that while most biological samples matched their chronological age, some diverged significantly. The average human heart, for example, appears to be 12 years younger than its chronological age, and a woman’s healthy breast tissue ages faster than the rest of her body. “So it is possible that the cancer that is adjacent to this tissue accelerates the age," he said. "Having said this, I had one data set that was composed of truly healthy breast tissue and even there I observed a significant age acceleration.” The results may explain why breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. Remarkably, Horvath says the clock kept reliable time across the human anatomy, irrespective of where the DNA came from. “This new epigenetic clock really frees us up from focusing on one tissue at a time because it really works in most tissues and organs and cell types, and the great advantage is that we now can compare the ages of different tissues and organs from the same individual,” he said. Horvath says the work holds promise for studying human development, aging and disease, but also shows potential for rejuvenating tissues. "Of course it has been a long-standing hope to find therapies or compounds that keep us young, and if this epigenetic clock measures a process that causes aging, then we will have a tool that allows us to evaluate compounds that keep us young,” he said White House accepts health from health insurance firms By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The White House is teaming up with some of the country's top health insurance companies to fix the technical problems that have been plaguing the Obamacare Web site. Thousands of people who have tried to log on to the site since Oct. 1 have run into problems preventing them from signing up for the new health insurance program. Some users complain of long wait times. Others have their passwords rejected, and some users say they are being given conflicting prices for the same health plan. The White House said Wednesday it is working 24 hours a day with experts to fix the technical issues. Spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration anticipated there would be some problems with the Web site, but did not expect the scale of these problems. Republicans opponents to the Affordable Health Care Act say the computer problems illustrate their demands that the law is not ready and must be delayed. Under the new law, people without private health insurance can sign up for government subsidized insurance through the Web site. Those who fail to have any insurance would pay a penalty. Some Democrats are demanding the administration postpone those penalties for the uninsured because of the problems with the Web site. Facebook establishes rules for beheading photographs By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Facebook is caught in the middle of a controversy over free expression, and the popular social media Internet site is trying to determine which videos of beheadings it should allow. Facebook, with more than a billion users worldwide, banned beheading videos in May as psychologically damaging for many of its young viewers. But the U.S.-based company recently ended the prohibition, saying it was reversing its policy so that users could share news about world events, including terrorist attacks and human rights abuses. But as soon as it had confirmed the policy switch, Facebook drew new criticism over a video showing the bloody decapitation of a woman believed to be caught up in Mexican drug violence. British Prime Minister David Cameron joined the attacks against Facebook. He said the company was irresponsible for allowing the gory video to be posted, especially without a warning that some viewers might find it offensive. By late Tuesday, Facebook pulled the video of the woman and sought to clarify its policy on posting violent images. It said that posting such videos is acceptable if they are of public interest or concern, with users often condemning the perpetrators of the violence. One U.S. social media expert, Fordham University Professor Paul Levinson, said in an interview that Facebook was certainly legally free to decide what videos can be posted on its site, including beheadings. But he questioned whether the public needs to see such graphic images in order to understand what happened in a specific circumstance. "I don't think we need to see a picture of a beheading to know that it's something that should be condemned. But, that said, I think it's up to Facebook to decide. Nobody has to look at them. If people get some kind of sick thrill from looking at them, that's their business," said Levinson. Facebook says it will continue to remove videos that are posted for sadistic pleasure or to celebrate violence. Facebook administrators often face conflicting pressure from various interest groups seeking to impose their own form of censorship. Women's rights groups want the company to ban misogynistic content, while others have criticized Facebook's ban on nudity. Religious groups have sought a prohibition on what they perceive as blasphemous content, while others have complained about Facebook's censorship of critical comments about various religions. Levinson said the express purpose of Facebook and other social media sites is "that you, the consumer, create the content." But he said even that freedom of speech has its limits. "No one would think, and nobody would argue, that you should be able to put up on Facebook some kind of criminal plan to rob a bank with the exact details," he said. White House adviser shown to be secret Twitter critic By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The White House has fired a national security adviser who anonymously posted hundreds of comments on Twitter highly critical of U.S. foreign policy and key aides to President Barack Obama. The adviser, Jofi Joseph, was fired last week after investigators spent months trying to identify the person making the comments under the pseudonym @natsecwonk. Joseph was the nuclear non-proliferation director at the National Security Council and was involved in recent negotiations on Iran's nuclear weapons program. He also worked at the State Department, which has given no details on what his job was. Joseph told the Politico news Web site that he takes responsibility for the tweets and apologizes "to everyone I insulted." Joseph said he originally intended his comments as a parody of life in highly politicized Washington, but said they evolved into "a series of inappropriate and mean-spirited comments." Joseph spared few officials in U.S. national security circles. He criticized Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton, as well as White House adviser Ben Rhodes. He questioned the official account of how four U.S. diplomats were killed in Benghazi, Libya, last year. Joseph also attacked top Republicans including Sarah Palin, the party's 2008 vice presidential candidate. Laser device beams data at astronomical speeds By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Nation Aeronautics and Space Administration has set a new speed record for data transmission in space. The agency beamed information to and from a probe some 380,000 kilometers away in lunar orbit. NASA downloaded data at a rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps) using a pulsed laser beam. For comparison’s sake, Akamai technologies says that the average Internet user has a connection speed of 3.3 Mbps. In the United States, the average connection speed is 8.7 Mbps. Aboard the probe, the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration is NASA’s first system for two-way communication using a laser instead of radio waves. It also has demonstrated an error-free data upload rate of 20 Mbps transmitted from the primary ground station in New Mexico to the spacecraft currently orbiting the moon. Since NASA first ventured into space, it has relied on radio frequency communication. However, radio is reaching its limit as demand for more data capacity continues to increase. The development and deployment of laser communications will enable NASA to extend communication capabilities such as increased image resolution and 3-D video transmission from deep space. The system demonstrated speeds five times faster than NASA currently has. Concern over Resistant TB continued by World Health By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The World Health Organization says millions fewer people are dying and falling ill from tuberculosis due to successful diagnostic and treatment programs. Published Wednesday, the U.N. group's "Global Tuberculosis Report 2013" warns that many of these gains risk being lost if multi-drug resistant TB is not brought under control. While 8.6 million people fell ill with tuberculosis in 2012, of whom 1.3 million died — including 320,000 deaths who were HIV-positive — World Health considers these numbers to be too high, but notes they indicate steady progress in the fight to control TB. According to the report, the number of people dying from this infectious, airborne disease has been reduced by 45 percent since 1990, and treatments have saved more than 22 million people since 1995, putting the world on track to meet the U.N. Millennium Development Goal of cutting TB deaths by half in 2015. Despite the good news, however, WHO warns that the world stands to lose all gains made in TB control if it does not address the growing problem of multi-drug resistant TB. Karin Weyer, coordinator of laboratories, diagnostics and drug resistance in World Health's Global TB Program, says a second challenge is to find roughly three million people with TB who were missed by health systems, either because they were not diagnosed or their cases went unreported. Since multi-drug resistant TB is an airborne disease, if health workers fail to detect and treat these cases, it has, serious consequences for patients, but also for societies and communities, she says, explaining that three-quarters of the estimated 450,000 resistant TB cases are going undiagnosed annually. World Health says China, India and the Russian Federation have the highest burden of multi-drug resistant TB, followed by 24 other countries. Many patients are discouraged from following the 24-month course of treatment because it is very lengthy, costly and has a number of bad side effects. The report finds 22 high TB burden countries account for about 80 percent of the world’s TB cases. It also says seven of these countries have met all 2015 Millennium Development targets for reducing the incidence, prevalence and mortality in TB, while four others are on track to do so by 2015. Ms. Weyer says Africa is one of the regions not on track to meet the 2015 MDG targets. “I think if Africa can manage to get the TB problem under control and prevent drug-resistant TB, we can prevent a situation similar to that in Eastern Europe," she says. The World Health Organization says it is at a crucial point in its global TB control program. It is urging the international community to provide $2 billion to close the funding gap needed to fight this disease and prevent a reversal of all the gains made in the fight against TB. South Korea thinks North put malware in game data By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
South Korean law enforcement is warning computer users against downloading uncertified online gaming programs, according to local media. The national police agency said Tuesday that some of the games may have been developed in North Korea and could contain malware that could be used in a cyber attack against the South. The malware may collect location data and IP addresses and transmit them. The infected computers could also be used to launch distributed denial of service attacks, which use multiple computers to make millions of requests to Web sites and networks in attempt to overwhelm their capacity to distribute information. Matthew Aid, an independent intelligence analyst, called the reports incredible. “What the North Koreans are doing is something akin to a honey trap for techno-crazed South Koreans,” he said. “No teen will ever pass up an offer for free games online.” A study conducted in 2009 by the Korea Creative Content Agency concluded that about 7 percent of the nation's primary and secondary schoolchildren are addicted to computer games. Aid added that it was concerning that “Norton Anti-Virus or the other forms of computer security systems in use in South Korea apparently are not detecting the presence of malware in the game programs being downloaded.” “I wonder how that is possible. Are the North Korean viruses that sophisticated, or is the current generation of commercial computer security software that far behind the threat?” he said. “The answer may be both, which is really scary.” North Korea has successfully used games to distribute malware. In June of last year, infected games delivered malware to computers which then launched a denial of service attack on Incheon Airport. "The use of game applications to carry a malicious payload is not new, criminal entities do this regularly. North Korea can acquire it from any number of criminal entities or roll-their-own," said Christopher Burgess, CEO of Prevendra, Inc., a privacy, intelligence and security entity. "South Korea commercial or government entities have every reason to be wary of a DDOS attack and/or malicious code attempting to exfiltrate commercial or governmental secrets. The bar to entry is not high for any entity, let alone an entity such as North Korea who can devote significant resources to buy or build." Last March, Seoul also blamed North Korea's military spy agency for a cyber attack that affected 48,000 computers and servers, stalling operations at three top South Korean broadcasters and hampering financial services at banks for several days. Another attack in July was also blamed on Pyongyang. North Korea is believed to have an elite cyber warfare unit that was suspected of being behind computer attacks on South Korean government agencies and financial institutions in 2009 and 2011. Pyongyang denies the accusations. It accused the U.S. and South Korea of shutting down some of its own Web sites in March. Psychologist stress their role in preventing war, violence By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Throughout human history, war has taken countless lives, cost untold sums of money and brought great cities to ruin. But despite the long list of conflicts from ancient times to modern day, psychologists say war is not inevitable. Much research has focused on the causes of war and how to deal with its aftermath. But three political psychologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say a better understanding of the psychological roots of war “can increase the likelihood of avoiding violence as a way to resolve conflicts with others.” Bernhard Leidner, Linda Tropp and Brian Lickel presented their views in the peace psychology issue of American Psychologist. Leidner, lead author, said “Mostly psychology, when it comes to war, focuses obviously on human tendencies to be aggressive, to be violent. So, it’s a lot of focus generally on the more negative end – problematic side – but not as much focus on either the positive side or how to actually prevent those problems in the first place.” Research shows, he said, that those who tend to “glorify their country,” a kind of nationalism, are more likely to choose a violent solution. “It’s not everything that you think about your country that has bad impacts. It’s usually only this aspect of glorifying your country. That you perceive other countries as more threatening. That you are more likely to be aggressive to them. On the other hand, if you’re just committed to your country in a more healthy way then you actually do not show these tendencies.” How do you know if someone is glorifying their country? Leidner says just ask a few questions. “How much do you think that your country would be superior to other countries? That’s one aspect. Basically thinking that my country is a more moral country -- a better country – more successful country in whatever domain. And also how much do you believe criticism of your own country is allowed? People sometimes believe that criticism of your own country is actually being disloyal to your country. This kind of unconditional loyalty,” he said. The authors said that conflict and violence allow some people to “address psychological needs for identity, safety, security and power.” They said non-violence has received much less media attention. “Even if you look at normal human interactions, most of them are non-violent. It’s just that the violent interactions stand out so much that often times we also just get this wrong idea of this is like how we are, although that’s not quite true,” said Leidner. Leidner added that it’s important for political leaders to explain there may be different paths to crisis resolution – conflict on the one hand, and diplomacy on the other. He says when polls are taken asking people whether they prefer a violent or diplomatic solution – instead of just asking whether they favor an attack or not – there is great support for diplomacy. “There are examples like Nelson Mandela in South Africa, whose rhetoric was very cooperative. And by that he also step by step changed the view of citizens in his country that it’s better to cooperate and live together in peace.” Mandela said, “If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” Leidner compares that with rhetoric heard in the U.S. after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He says it became harsher toward Muslim-Americans as time went on. “Since all these attitudes and behavioral tendencies of people are very malleable, obviously the media and also politicians can actually gear them in a good or bad way, so to speak.” Leidner and his co-authors said leaders should place more emphasis on increasing empathy and understanding of others. They write, “It is our contention that psychology can and should be applied to promote peace, not war. |
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| A.M. Costa
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 211 | |||||||||
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| From Page 7: Blame for outage shifts to Nicaragua By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Officials at the state power company said that the cause of a 15-minute outage Monday was in Nicaragua. The Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad said that the regional electrical system shut down automatically shortly after 11 a.m. when a power line between Los Brasiles and Sandino in Nicaragua became disconnected. That divided Nicaragua's power grid in two with the southern half still being connected with Costa Rica and Panamá. The situation caused what the company called low frequency in the grid, and the automatic shutdown took effect. Originally the company blamed Honduras for the initial problem. The firm said that there are many similar events each day but that the robust system usually handles them without a shutdown. The firm said that there was a second problem about noon Monday but it did not affect consumers. Travel firm opens new facility By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Viajes Colón, the travel agency that has been in business here since 1976, has opened a new office in Heredia's Centro Comercial Paseo de las Flores. The firm continues to have offices in San José, Desamparados, Cartago, Alajuela, Limón and San Carlos, it said. The company will be inaugurating the new facility this morning, it said. |
