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A.M. Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |||||||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 224 | |||||||||
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Sunday is the day to honor
U.S., Commonwealth veterans By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Sunday is U.S. Veteran's Day and Remembrance Day in Commonwealth countries, and both commemorate members of the military who have died in the service of their countries. The expats in Costa Rica include a number of former members of the military. A.M. Costa Rica has a small but steady readership from Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Web reports. Costa Rica has become a retirement location for many former members of First World military units, and the current generation of warriors are likely to continue this trend. Nov. 11 is the day World War I ended. The day is being celebrated as a three-day weekend in the United States, so the U.S. Embassy will be closed Monday. Motor fuel prices are headed down, regulating agency says By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The ever-changing fuel prices in Costa Rica are changing again. The price regulating agency said Thursday that gasoline and diesel prices were going down to reflect changes in the world market. The change for November is small, but a much larger price cut is estimated for December. Gasoline prices already are more than $5 a gallon. The Authoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos said that super gasoline would be going down 17 colons per liter when the new prices are published. That's about 4.3 U.S. cents. Plus gasoline will drop 12 colons or 2.4 U.S. cents. Diesel will have a negligible reduction of 2 colons per liter. A better scenario is painted for December when super will drop 79 colons or 16.8 U.S. cents per liter and plus will drop 69 colons or 13.8 U.S. cents per liter. Diesel is expected to decline 25 colons per liter or about 5 U.S. cents. Costa Rica imports all its petroleum products so it is a captive of the world market. Environmental film festival promotes sustainable energy By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The organizers of Criterio Ambiental Film Festival have announced a program for an environmental film festival and discussion series on how to transition to sustainable energy. The two-day event will feature five environmental documentaries and three panels from the academic, business and governmental sides of energy. The fair is part of a global initiative by the United Nations to have similar discussions and presentations around the world. Numerous organizers pitched in to hold the festival including the Universidad de Costa Rica, the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, the Ministero de Ambiente, Energía y Telecomunicaciones, the French Embassy and others. Organizers plan to show five environmental films. Four of them are feature-length films from Spain, Italy and Germany. The last a 20-minute film made by a student at the Universidad de Costa Rica. This film is an animated satire that criticizes the practice of fracking, which is pumping water down a well to fracture rock and expose veins of petroleum or natural gas. The panels will be interspersed between the films and feature researchers, professors, business managers and international experts with expertise in sustainable energy. The event will be held Thursday, Nov. 15, from 5 p.m. until 8 p.m. and Friday, Nov. 16, from 1 p.m. until 8 p.m. Both parts of the event will be in the Auditorio Alberto Brenes on the Universidad de Costa Rica campus.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page | |
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 224 |
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Fire fighters seek out hot spots while residents of destroyed homes seek out personal possessions that might have avoided destruction. |
 Cuerpo
de Bomberos photo
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| Electrical outlet blamed for fire that
destroyed 18 homes |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Fire, believed caused by an electrical malfunction, tore through 18 low-income homes in Purral, Guadalupe, Thursday afternoon. Fire fighters said that the blaze appeared to have originated in the kitchen of one home, and they suspect a faulty electrical outlet was the cause. The massive fire took place just a day after the Cuerpo de Bomberos issued a warning about holiday fire dangers. The homes were leveled. Many had been constructed of steel |
sheeting that tends to direct
the heat and flames inward. Firemen said they managed to save many more homes. The alarm came in about 12:25 p.m. Firemen said the blaze was controlled about 40 minutes later. By this time most of the homes were nothing more than twisted steel. The location is in Goicoechea north of San José. A fire department spokesperson said that electrical system problems have accounted for about 23 percent of the 941 blazes this year. About 13 percent have been traced to problems within an electrical device, the spokesperson said. |
| This is the way to watch the elections unfold: Bocas and Fresca |
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| Thank
goodness it’s finished. President Obama has been re-elected to
serve a second term, Mitt Romney can spend more time with his extensive
and much-loved family, the news can get back to normal, and Washington
can get back to – well this time let’s hope, to work. If not, we’re all
in trouble. Expats from the U.S. of both major parties gathered Tuesday night to anxiously await the outcome of what was expected to be a close and long election night. The American Embassy had a gathering at the Crown Plaza Corrobici Hotel in Sabana Este to watch the proceedings on two large screens. As a member of the press, I spent some time there. At the top of the curved and carpeted stairway one was welcomed by half a dozen smiling women at a table with badges and handouts, and inside by half a dozen no-nonsense men with serious looks and arms crossed. Inside the ballroom the din of voices was so loud it was impossible for me to understand the words of anyone I tried to engage in conversation. But busy waiters were weaving among the standees in the crowded room with trays of the largest variety of bocas I have ever seen or carrying wine bottles and trays of soft drinks. I took a Fresca and wished I was hungry. The din didn’t seem to bother some people who chatted away making the din even worse. One amused man, tall and broad enough to be mistaken for an embassy guard looked like an American but not an anxious voter. In fact he was an IBM executive. He introduced himself and told me first that the high ceiling was responsible for bad acoustics, and secondly, he hoped the contest would be a tie so that he could tell his children years later that after he had left the States the country couldn’t make up its mind without him. At least I think he said that. His lovely Paraguayan wife returned from the ladies room to save us both from an involved and hopeless conversation about the consequences of a voter tie. In the alcove of the ballroom there was a large map of the U.S. with the states delineated with the number of electoral votes each state commanded. A lecturer was explaining them to a small audience. There was also a table of attractive booklets of information |
like the one I picked up: “E.E.U.U. Elecciones en sintesis.” Complete with pictures, it is informative in clearly written prose. It even explains the Electoral College and notes the fact that unlike most democracies, voters in the U.S. must register first in order to vote. I had the hope that the embassy would pack up the leftovers and send them to schools in the U.S. All of it was educational and probably by today, diplomats from many countries, and lucky students from the various schools in Costa Rica who were invited, know more about voting in the United States than most U.S. citizens. We Americans are sorely in need of more knowledge of how our democracy works – or doesn’t. Standing for hours is not my strong point, so I left the reporting in the capable hands of Kayla Pearson and went home to a chair, and then to bed, happy that what had to be the longest running presidential contest in history was over. There were two memories of the evening that stuck with me. One was a TV interview with a ‘millennial’ voter about the social network’s involvement in the election. He said he was annoyed with the messages he got on Twitter because all the tweets simply quoted one or the other of the candidates’ sound bites, whereas he would have liked to know how that tweeter personally felt about the election. (Talk about brainwashing.) The other was a young Costa Rican at the embassy gathering who told me that we were luckier in the States to be so enthusiastic about an election because in Costa Rica everybody just dislikes the government. If she meant by “dislikes” is fed up with, well, maybe we are not so different after all. At 10:18 Tico time, I turned off the light. Wolf Blitzer, the electronic town crier on CNN, had declared Barack Obama the now and future president of the United States. I hoped, not prematurely. . . . Are you listening, Florida? |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 224 | |||||
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| Young students produce a hall full of
innovative ideas |
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By
Aaron Knapp
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff Eliecer Sancho Valverde patiently sat by a machine of his own design at the Universidad de Costa Rica’s sports complex in Sabanilla Thursday afternoon. When people asked him about the machine, the 16-year-old eagerly explained how the small factory-like device turned thermal insulation foam into polish that could be used as a varnish for wood carvings. It was his way of using his knack for science to pose a solution to one of the world’s problems. “It’s one of the biggest problems in the world,” said Sancho of the material. He was one of nearly 400 students from across the country who brought almost 200 research projects to show at the 26th annual Feria Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. The science and technology fair is a national competition that showcases the most interesting experiments and research projects done by students from first to 12th grade. These are the winning projects from 27 regional fairs that took place across the country. Jonathan Monge, fair director, said that the objective is to get students to offer new solutions on how to confront the world’s problems. “We try to involve students from primary school to high school in the projects,” said Monge. “Our primary goal is to offer people new perspectives on problems, and try to solve them.” He said the range of projects is diverse. Some projects are demonstrations while others are more presentations of research. Some students build machines, some prove physics theorems and others present their findings from psychological or behavioral experiments. Sancho’s was clearly an engineering project. Step by step, he explained how pieces of the foam were converted into a liquid wood finish using several small, low-electricity motors to get to make the transition. First he put the foam in a small compartment where one motor ground it down into small pieces. A door on the bottom of the chamber dropped it on to a conveyer belt, which took it to a small vat. There a motorized spoon mixed the crushed foam pieces with the varnish base. Sancho said he wanted to do this because the foam is not |
 A.M. Costa Rica/Aaron Knapp
Sancho and his science teacher
Etilma Gamboa Hernándezrecyclable, and he wanted to find a way to put it to use. Sancho is a student at Colegio Nacional de Virtual Marco Tulio Salazar in Buenos Aires, Puntarenas. He is the first student from his school to present a project at the national fair. He was accompanied by his science teacher, Etilma Gamboa Hernández, who was also at the fair for the first time. “It’s incredible because it’s the first time that the colegio has gone to this science fair,” she exclaimed. The two worked on the project for months together. She said that she guided him and tutored him along the way. She even helped him to type his ideas and make charts to support his project, since he did not have a computer. Sancho said that he is hopeful that he will win recognition, he admitted that he faced stiff competition. “The competition is a little difficult,” he said. “There are very good projects.” The projects were presented to judges and the public all day yesterday, and the winners will be announced today at 8:30 a.m. in the Alberto Brenes Córdoba Auditorium on the Universidad de Costa Rica campus. Monge said that there are 64 prizes as well as three spots to participate in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona, in May. |
| Young Golfito resident takes on ICE and
wins court victory |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
One resident of Urbanization Jorge Brenes Duran of Golfito, fed up with the inability to access Internet in her neighborhood, decided to take her complaint to the Sala Constitutional and won. The surprise: She is only a minor. Due to the young citizens determination, the Sala Constitutional has ordered the Costa Rican telecom company, Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, to provide Internet access in that section of Golfito. The company is known as ICE. According to the court document, the electric company has not provided the area with the proper infrastructure needed for Internet. The decision gives the general manager of Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad two months to complete a project financed by the Costa Rican telecommunications fund known as Fonatel. |
This project will assess the
feasibility of installing telecommunications infrastructure in the
community. A noncompliance could result in a three-month to two-year imprisonment or a fine, the Poder Judicial said. “ICE respects the decision, which seems to open a path so that Fonatel resources are assigned with specific purpose,” said Elbert Durán, director of communications, Thursday. The office also maintained that workers there are not the ones who handle funding, and the blame of the lack of infrastructure should be given to the superintendent of telecommunications. “As ICE is not the one who manages those funds, it should be considered that the court be ready to redirect the judgment to the Superintendencia de Telecomunicaciones, which is the administrator of these funds.” Durán said. “ICE is evaluating that possibility,” he added. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M. Costa
Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 224 | |||||||||
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| Hillary
Clinton's replacement is major decision for Obama By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she will step down from her job as President Barack Obama prepares for his second term. Secretary Clinton announced her decision earlier this year, telling State Department employees that she needs a break. "I will certainly stay on until the president nominates someone and that transition can occur, but I think after 20 years of being on the high-wire of American politics and all of the challenges that come with that, it would be probably a good idea to just find out how tired I am," said Clinton. Since the president's re-election, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says that is still the plan. "You’ve heard her say many times that she intends to see through a transition of a successor and then she will go back to private life and enjoy some rest and think and write and all those things," said Ms. Nuland. So who will President Obama choose to replace her? Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is a leading contender. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, he is active in U.S. policy abroad, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. As a former presidential candidate, he has some of the celebrity that Mrs. Clinton uses to advance U.S. goals. He is the man who President Obama chose to help practice debating Republican candidate Mitt Romney, and the Obama campaign used Kerry in an anti-Romney video. "Romney just says things that are not true or irresponsible and is willing, for politically expedient reasons, to put at risk our foreign policy," said Kerry. Kerry's obstacle may be his Senate seat. Any president who chooses any senator for a Cabinet post considers whether the ruling party can keep that seat in the legislature. Especially in a chamber with such a small majority as the current Senate. Sen. Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican, lost a tightly-contested race for re-election this week. That close-fought campaign puts Brown atop candidates to win the commonwealth's other Senate seat if Kerry leaves for the State Department. U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is another leading contender to replace Clinton. Much of the diplomacy in New York mirrors what is happening on the world stage, so being U.N. ambassador is good training for secretary of state. Madeleine Albright made the move. But nominating Ms. Rice may raise criticism from Senate Republicans over the Obama administration's handling of the September terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in the Libyan city of Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. There is no evidence linking Ms. Rice to any of the decisions about security in Benghazi. But Ms. Rice was the face of the Obama administration on Sunday talk shows following the attack and she repeated the claim that the violence grew from demonstrations against an Internet video defaming Islam's Prophet Muhammad. That version of events has since been retracted. "There are still many unanswered questions surrounding the terrorist attack by militants, and I think that might be the greatest liability," said Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst at Washington's Cato Institute. "But that said, she does remain a strong contender for the position and we will see sort of what might happen with her Senate confirmation." Another leading candidate to replace Clinton is Tom Donilon, the current U.S. national security advisor. It is a job at the center of the president's foreign-policy-making apparatus held by Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice before they were secretaries of state. Donilon is a veteran of the Bill Clinton administration where he worked on NATO expansion and the 1995 Dayton Accords that ended fighting in the former Yugoslavia. There is no timetable for Secretary Clinton stepping down. But President Obama could nominate a replacement before the end of the year in hopes of having that person in place when he takes his second oath of office in January. Cave research says rainfall was key to Mayan collapse By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The ancient Mayan civilization, which developed a sophisticated culture in the Central American rainforests, vanished mysteriously a thousand years ago. Now, an international team of anthropologists, archeologists, chemists and climatologists says it has identified the cause of the Mayan collapse: climate change. To create a weather record for the past 2,000 years, the scientists analyzed a natural mineral formation called a stalagmite from a cave in Belize, using oxygen-isotope dating to determine how much rain fell on the region over the centuries. Stalagmites build up incrementally, like tree rings, as water drips through the cave ceiling, preserving an accurate climate record. Mayan rulers commissioned stone monuments to record important events such as their rise to power, major battles, civic unrest and strategic alliances. Douglas Kennett, a Pennsylvania State University anthropology professor, the study's co-author, says the team was able to compare changes in the society documented on those monuments with their new climate timeline. On a podcast for the journal Science, he said the team saw a relationship between rainfall levels and political stability. "The growth of Maya civilization and increases in population and levels of sophistication actually correlate with a very wet interval that spans several hundred years and the decline of the Maya actually appeared to correlate with a downturn generally in climate and climate drying," he said. Abundant rainfall led to bumper crops and a population boom, but a climate reversal and drought triggered famine, political competition, increased warfare and eventually, the society's collapse. Scientists have long suspected that climate change played a role in the fall of the Mayan civilization, but the precise timeline - published in Science - provides them with new confidence in that connection. Kennett suggests their methodology could be used to increase understanding of the influence of climate on other ancient cultures that also have nearby cave systems. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado 2012 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M. Costa
Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 224 | |||||||||
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Latin America news |
Heavy rain is
predicted
for Caribbean and in north By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A second cold front is moving into Costa Rica and the Caribbean coast and the northern zone were hit with heavy rains Thursday. The Instituto Meteorológico Nacional estimated rainfall at up to 100 millimeters or about 4 inches in a 7 p.m. bulletin Thursday. The agency issued a warning about rising rivers, including the ríos Yorkin, Telire, Sixaola and Pacuare on the Caribbean coast. Also rising are the Colorado, Cariblanco and María Aguilar Sarapiquí, the weather agency said. The prediction is for continued rain with perhaps 4 or 5 more inches in the northern zone and on the Caribbean coast. In the Central Valley and Guanacaste there are high wind warnings with gusts similar to those earlier in the week. The prediction also calls for moderate rain through Saturday. Cuban blogger gets press post and then undergoes arrest Special
to A.M. Costa Rica
The Inter American Press Association Thursday called on the Cuban government to immediately release the regional vice chairwoman of its Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Yoani Sánchez. Ms. Sánchez, a tireless and popular blogger who has fought for years for freedom in her country, was arrested along with some 20 dissidents who, according to news reports, had met outside a police station in Havana with the aim of demanding the release of a group of independent activists and lawyers. Ms. Sánchez had just been named regional vice chairwoman for Cuba of the press organization's Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information. “The arrest of Yoani Sánchez is a clear attack on the most elemental human rights, among them that of expressing freely, something that is prohibited in Cuba,” said Claudio Paolillo, chairman of the Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information. A blogger paid by the Cuban regime, Yohandry Fontana, confirmed Sánchez’ detention and spoke of her alleged offenses, “disturbance of public order” and “social indiscipline.” Paolillo is editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda. The detained people were demanding the immediate release of a dozen activists who had been arrested in the middle of this week. In early October Ms. Sánchez had already been temporarily detained at an investigation center in Bayamo along with her husband, independent journalist Reynado Escobar, and blogger Agustín López. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 9, 2012, Vol. 12, No. 224 | |
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