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San
José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 224
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 University of the Andes/Santiago
Madriñán
Co-author Santiago Madriñán
inspects a cacao blossom
Older
origin is good news for cacao trees
By the Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
news staff
Chocolate, produced from seeds of the cacao tree Theobroma cacao, is one of the most popular flavors in the world, with sales around $100 billion per year. Yet, as worldwide demand increases, there are fears the industry will fail to cope with growing public hunger for the product. The main problem, common to many crops, is the lack of genetic variation in cultivated cacao, which makes it vulnerable to pests and blights. Lack of genetic variation also puts cacao trees at risk from climate change, jeopardizing the long-term sustainability of the industry. Now, however, new research suggests the cacao tree is much older than previously realized and may have close relations capable of sustaining the sweet-toothed appetites. "Studies of the evolutionary history of economically important groups are vital to develop agricultural industries, and demonstrate the importance of conserving biodiversity to contribute towards sustainable development. Here we show for the first time that the source of chocolate, Theobroma cacao, is remarkably old for an Amazonian plant species," said James Richardson, a tropical botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and lead author of the study. Together with researchers from the University of Rosario and the University of the Andes in Colombia, the University of Miami, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Richardson found that Theobroma cacao is one of the oldest species in the genus Theobroma, having evolved around 10 million years ago. At the time, the Andes were not yet fully elevated, which explains why cacao trees today occur on both sides of the Andes. The species' early evolutionary origin is good news: it suggests that cacao has had enough time to diversify genetically, with each wild population adapting to its local habitat. Wild populations of cacao across the Americas may therefore be treasure troves of genetic variation, which could be bred into cultivated strains to make the latter more resistant to disease and climate change, and perhaps even create new flavors of chocolate. "After ten million years of evolution we should not be surprised to see a large amount of variation within the species, some of which might exhibit novel flavors or forms that are resistant to diseases. These varieties may contribute towards improving a developing chocolate industry," says Richardson. The researchers already plan to return to South America to sample all species related to cacao and investigate the characteristics of their native populations. "We hope to highlight the importance of conserving biodiversity so that it can be used to augment and safeguard the agricultural sector. By understanding the diversification processes of chocolate and its relatives we can contribute to the development of the industry and demonstrate that this truly is the Age of Chocolate," says co-author Santiago Madriñán of the University of the Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. The study is published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. Costa Rica and U.S. sign wildlife pact By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The governments of Costa Rica and the United States entered into an agreement Thursday that will provide for exchanges, safeguarding habitat, conservation, protection and scientific research. Representing the United States was Bryan Arroyo of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Costa Rica was represented by Edgar Gutiérrez, minister of Ambiente y Energía. The agreement is for five years and can be renewed, said a summary by the Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía. The document signed Wednesday was a memo of understanding. The ministry said that another area of assistance would be the process in handling confiscated or rescued wildlife with assistance for centers that care for these creatures. Another aspect will be student exchanges, said the summary. The specifics of the agreement are to be developed by a working group, it added. Plane crash drill scheduled in Liberia By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Dirección General de Aviación Civil is staging a plane crash drill today at 3 p.m. at Daniel Oduber in Liberia. The scenario is that a passenger jet has trouble with its landing gear, slides off the runway, ruptures a wing tank and bursts into flames. Some 17 agencies will be involved in the hour-long exercise, said Aviación civil. The idea is to evaulate how the various agencies work together during a disaster. Such simulations are common. Water outage planned for Coronado By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Nearly 20,000 persons will be without water today from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the canton of Coronado, said the Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados. Workers will be cleaning a water storage tank, the institute said. Affected are San Francisco, Don Trino subdivision, Valle Sereno, San Blas subdivision, La Esmeralda subdivision, Barrio Corazón de Jesús, Río Durazno subdivision, Magnolias subdivision, Villalta, Pueblo, Bruno Martínez, Don Leco, Edén and La Mora. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 224 | |
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| Entrepreneurship to be stressed in a week of activities here | |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
For the fifth year, the country is involved in Global Entrepreneurship Week, a week-long series of activities. Perhaps the most inviting for those in business is a seminar Nov. 26 titled "12 steps to convert your company into a big business." That is at 8:30 a.m. at Parque La Libertad in Desamparados. Another activity is a forum on entrepreneurship for refugees. That is at 8 a.m. next Thursday in the Hotel Radisson. A handful of government ministries are involved, including the Ministerio de Economía Industria y Comercio that houses the small business initiative. |
The week is
being observed from next Monday through Nov. 22 in 160 countries. According to the international sponsors, "Global Entrepreneurship Week is a celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare. During one week each November, GEW inspires people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them explore their potential as self-starters and innovators." The events here are free and are outlined on the commerce ministry Web site HERE! The ministry said that digital platform would be launched by the Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud that will provide financial information to business people in the cultural area, such as gallery operators and individual artists. |
| Contents of new stamp emphasizes U.S.-Costa Rica cultural
divide |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A decision by Correos de Costa Rica involving the content of a commemorative stamp clearly shows a divide between Costa Rican and U.S. cultures. Correos chose part of a local artist's work that shows two black children on a swing, and one is eating a slice of watermelon. Almost certainly the artist, officials at Correos and a number of newspaper reporters are totally unaware that the work mimics what is considered a highly racist stereotype in the United States. Pictures and even songs about watermelons have been used to denigrate blacks since before the end of slavery. More recently President Barack Obama, who is black, has been the target of racist cartoons with watermelon themes. One showed the White House lawn planted in watermelons. Artist Adrián Gómez uses watermelon slices liberally in his works. He seems enthralled with the Caribbean where many black Costa Ricans live. An Internet search does not show that any reporter or reviewer who wrote about him or his works have mentioned the watermelon stereotype. The graphic is part of a work by Gómez titled "Tarde de merienda," translated as an afternoon snack. |
The general
tone of the stereotype is that black Americans would
rather sit around eating watermelon than work. Some
The postal service issued the stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Cooperativa de Ahorro y Crédito Coope Ande, which caters to educators. The 15,000 stamps have a face value of 600 colons. |
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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, Nov. 12, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 224 | |||||
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| Native American Navajo language is making a comeback in West |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
During World War II, the U.S. military recruited Native American Navajo speakers and, together, they developed a code to send secret information past Japanese and German code-breakers. The code was never broken. Richard Epstein, a linguist and professor at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, credits the Navajo language’s complex structure for it being such a successful code. “It was so unbelievably complicated that the enemy couldn’t figure out how it worked,” he said. “And yet we took the children of these people away from their families to train them to speak English only, on the grounds that this language was inferior.” More than 100 years ago, the U.S. government began sending Native American children to boarding schools where all the instruction was in English. The native cultures and languages of the children were discouraged. “We had to speak English,” said Sylvia Jackson, one of those children who stopped speaking her native language. “So I lost a lot of just speaking the Navajo language.” In the last 20 to 30 years, tribal governments have started to promote the teaching of Native American languages in schools. The U.S. Department of Education now also supports Native American language programs. Today, Ms. Jackson is a Navajo language instructor in the small town of Holbrook, Arizona. She teaches Navajo to students at Holbrook High School. Her class is taught entirely in Diné, the Navajo language. Ms. Jackson and her students play an important role in keeping their language alive. “My parents are actually, they grew up speaking the Navajo language,” she said. “They’re fluent speakers. They’re like a dictionary. If I ask them, ‘How do you say this?’ they translate. But me, I’m learning as I’m going.” The town of Holbrook is an hour by car from the Navajo Nation. The 69,000-square-kilometer territory is the largest of the 326 Indian reservations in the United States. The Navajo Nation covers parts of four states in the American Southwest. It is about the same size as the country of Ireland. During the 1800s, increasing numbers of European settlers in America moved west. In 1864, the federal government began a campaign to deport Navajos from their lands. The natives were moved to the northwest in a series of marches called the Long Walk. The marches took place under the threat of death. Navajo leaders and the U.S. government reached a peace treaty in 1868. It established the Navajo Indian Reservation. Today, more than 250,000 people live in the Navajo Nation. They have their own laws, fly their own flag, and elect their own president. The 2010 United States Census showed that about 170,000 Navajos speak Navajo at home. It is one of the most robust Native American languages today. But there is a growing worry that the Navajo language could disappear. Seventy years ago, nearly everyone on the Navajo reservation spoke Navajo as their first language. But today, |
few young
Navajos can speak
the language of their grandparents. A study in 1998 found that only 30 percent of Navajos entering school spoke Navajo as their mother tongue. Just 30 years earlier, that was true of 90 percent of first-grade Navajo students. Linguist Epstein says a language’s survival depends on one generation passing down knowledge to the next generation. “In order to keep a language alive, the adults of the community have to be able to transmit it to the young folks,” he said. Epstein calls teaching and transmitting a native language to children a right that should be better protected. “Everybody should have the right to speak their own language, just as much as they should have the right to practice their religion,” he said. “Because their language is as good as everybody else’s language…So if you take that away, you’ve taken away a massive resource for knowing something about a part of human life. And you’ve taken away a part of who those people are. Is that right? Everybody should have the right to speak their language and to transmit their language to their children and to keep their culture alive.” On the reservation itself, Navajo language instruction in schools starts at a young age. At Indian Wells Elementary School, third graders are learning how to read, write, and speak Navajo. The school opened in 2001. Robbie Koerperich was Indian Wells’ first principal. Now, he is the superintendent of the Holbrook Unified School District and says the district is concerned with preserving the Navajo language. “The Navajo language itself, I believe, is a major concern on the reservation and in our district, pertaining to the preservation of the language,” Koerperich said. “So the preservation of the Navajo language is part of our mission.” Hortensia, a third-grader at Indian Wells Elementary, says Navajo language is her favorite class. “So we could learn it and teach it to other people.” Hortensia says she often visits her grandmother, or naali in Navajo. Grandparents on the reservation play an important part in passing down both the language and culture to their grandchildren. Morgan, a Navajo language student at Holbrook High School, is one of Sylvia Jackson’s students. She visits her grandparents’ home with her cousins, nieces and nephews and sometimes feels like an outcast. “With my nieces and nephews and my cousins, they’re about my age or a bit older and they don’t speak Navajo,” Morgan said. “And so it’s a bit hard when we go out to my grandparents’ place and they try to talk to us. And it feels like — when my grandparents and my parents talk together — I feel like, kind of like an outcast, like I don’t know what they’re saying, but it’s like, I want to learn the language so I can carry it on and then teach my kids. And so we won’t lose the language.” Today, Sylvia Jackson, who was once taught to forget her native language, now finds herself at the forefront of keeping it alive. “If you just think about it, my parents, if they go, then that’s going to be me right there who has to carry that on,” she said. “If I don’t have the knowledge that they had, that’s going to be it right there. So, I’m glad that we have students who want to learn the language, who want to keep that language.” |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Colorado
S.A. 2015 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
Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 224 | |||||||
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| World leaders to consider economic health of nations By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
As leaders of the 20 richest nations prepare to meet in the Turkish resort of Antalya, there are alarming indicators about the health of some emerging economies, including Turkey, where inflation is high and the currency struggling. But it is Russia that is suffering the most, said Andrew Kenningham of London consultancy Capital Economics. Russia's economy "is contracting by maybe 5 percent this year — really struggling with the collapse in the oil prices, on top of the sanctions problem, on top of the very poor governance, which has made it extremely difficult for businesses to operate there,” he said. Official growth in China has slowed to under 7 percent, prompting an equity sell-off and pushing down oil prices. Kenningham said the fears are overblown. “The equity market did collapse," he said, "but there had been a bubble beforehand, and it’s not really very strongly connected to actual growth in the economy.” Robust economic data from the United States have raised expectations of an interest rate increase there next month, compounding problems for emerging economies. China said this week it wants the G20 to focus on reform of voting rights at the International Monetary Fund. Olivia Gippner of the London School of Economics said the Chinese "are underrepresented dramatically. At the moment, the U.S. has around 16 percent of the share, China only 4 percent, India 3 percent, Brazil even 2 percent. So these don’t reflect the current economic system anymore at all." Ms. Gippner said climate change would also be high on the G20 agenda, "particularly because we have the Paris summit coming up in December, and this is one of the last meetings where the big economies and the big actors also on climate change will come together.” Turkey arrested 20 suspected Islamic State militants in Antalya province this week. Global security has been thrust to the forefront of the agenda, said the University of Toronto’s John Kirton, founder and co-director of the G20 Research Group at the university's Munk School of Global Affairs. “Terrorism in the Middle East, primarily, and the Syrian refugee crisis, they're going to be dealt with by the leaders at the dinner, where they meet alone and can deal in a more flexible fashion,” he said via Skype from Antalya. China takes over the rotating presidency of the G20 in 2016. Analysts say Beijing will most likely find its own economy is the major focus of many fellow members. Mealworms able to feast on discarded polystyrene By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It's a bit unclear how long it takes polystyrene-based products like Styrofoam to decompose. But no matter if it's 500 years, or 5,000, it's a long time in human terms, and it illustrates the scope of the problem. But scientists may have discovered an unusual way to break down this plastic garbage. It takes hundreds of years to biodegrade Styrofoam, and those plastic plates, cups and containers currently take up between 25 and 30 percent of the landfill space. It turns out mealworms have a taste for Styrofoam. “Mealworms eat Styrofoam and they digest Styrofoam in their gut. The process was very fast. In less than 24 hours it became CO2," said Stanford University's Wei-Min Wu. Each worm can digest plastic waste about the size of a pill every day. Special enzymes in their gut break down the styrofoam. “I think the secreted enzymes are really interesting. Those are the tools that actually break the wall down into little pieces," said Craig Criddle. Researchers are trying to develop enzymes that mimic the worm's ability to break down plastic waste. “It’s an issue because we are running out of landfill space for one thing, especially in dense urban environments. Also, the clutter that results, particularly in the ocean everyone hears about, but all around the world," said Criddle. Surprisingly, environmental scientists found mealworms chomping on Styrofoam were just as healthy as those that ate their normal diet of bran. Putin calls for investigation of sports doping allegations By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Russia must conduct its own investigation into allegations that its athletes regularly took performance-enhancing substances, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday. Putin's comments were his first on the issue since the World Anti-Doping Agency's six-month suspension of Moscow's drug-testing laboratory following a scathing report Monday alleging state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics. The report accuses the laboratory of manipulating athletes' drug tests so they appear clean. It also implicates Russian athletes, coaches and doctors in the scheme. “I ask the minister of sport and all our colleagues who are linked in one way or another with sport to pay this issue the greatest possible attention," Putin said from the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where he will meet with sports officials. Russia will conduct its own investigation and cooperate with international anti-doping agencies, Putin vowed. “A sporting contest is only interesting when it is honest,” said the president, himself a famous sportsman. If problems are found, Putin warned, someone must assume responsibility. "They need to have a constructive dialogue to find a way to end this scandal,” said public relations professional Maxim Filipovich. “So long as it exists, and remains unresolved, it's very detrimental to the images of our national teams." Russia faces possible suspension from athletic competition over doping and could be banned from next summer's Olympic Games in Brazil. That threat raised concerns among people in Russia. Yevgeny Denisov, an engineer, found fault with a possible blanket expulsion of the team. "Maybe some individuals should be excluded, but not the whole federation," he said. "Russia must defend its point of view in the world sport arena." London consultant Nigel Currie said the entire Games would suffer if Russia were banned. "Financially for the Olympics and, more importantly, the prestige and status of the Olympics will definitely face some tough challenges because of this," he said. Among those possible challenges for the Olympic Games and Russia itself are threats to valuable sponsorships. Andrey Movchan, economic policy program director at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the sponsorship problem could extend beyond the Olympics to other sporting events. "Accordingly, international investors, if there are any left, could rethink their positions," he said. "Even the amount of sponsorship for the 2018 World Cup could be revised in connection with changed national image and status." Supercomputer simulates big California quakes By the Oak Ridge National Laboratory news
staff
The San Andreas Fault system, which runs almost the entire length of California, is prone to shaking, causing about 10,000 minor earthquakes each year just in the southern California area. However, cities that line the fault, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, have not experienced a major destructive earthquake of magnitude 7.5 or more since their intensive urbanizations in the early 20th century. With knowledge that large earthquakes occur at about 150-year intervals on the San Andreas, seismologists are certain that the next big one is near. The last massive earthquake to hit San Francisco, had a 7.8 magnitude, occurred in 1906, took 700 lives and caused $400 million worth of damage. Since then, researchers have collected data from smaller quakes throughout California, but such data doesn’t give emergency officials and structural engineers the information they need to prepare for a quake of magnitude 7.5 or bigger. With this in mind, a team led by Thomas Jordan of the Southern California Earthquake Center, headquartered at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, is using the Titan supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to develop physics-based earthquake simulations to better understand earthquake systems, including the potential seismic hazards from known faults and the impact of strong ground motions on urban areas. “We’re trying to solve a problem, and the problem is predicting ground shaking in large earthquakes at specific sites during a particular period of time,” Jordan said. Ground shaking depends upon the type of earthquake, the way a fault ruptures, and how the waves propagate, or spread, through all three-dimensional structures on Earth. Clearly, understanding what might happen in a particular area is no simple task. In fact, the prediction involves a laundry list of complex inputs that could not be calculated together without the help of Titan, a Cray XK7 machine. On Titan, the team uses CyberShake, a physics-based computational approach that integrates many features of an earthquake event, to calculate a probabilistic seismic hazard map for California. In May, Jordan’s team completed its highest resolution CyberShake map for Southern California using Titan. One of the most important variables that affects earthquake damage to buildings is seismic wave frequency or the rate at which an earthquake wave repeats each second. With greater detail and increases in the simulated frequency from 0.5 hertz to 1 hertz, the latest CyberShake map is the most useful one to date and serves as an important tool for engineers who use its results to design and build critical infrastructure and buildings. Building structures respond differently to certain frequencies. Large structures like skyscrapers, bridges, and highway overpasses are sensitive to low-frequency shaking, whereas smaller structures like homes are more likely to be damaged by high-frequency shaking, which ranges from 2 to 10 hertz and above. High-frequency simulations are more computationally complex, however, limiting the information that engineers have for building safer structures that are sensitive to these waves. Jordan’s team is attempting to bridge this gap. “We’re in the process of trying to bootstrap our way to higher frequencies,” Jordan said. Many Kabul protesters rally against Islamic State killings By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Afghan security forces fired warning shots to disperse angry protesters in Kabul after some of them tried to storm the gate of the presidential palace. Demonstrators were in the capital protesting the beheading earlier this week of seven civilians, including three women, by militants allegedly linked to the Islamic State. The victims, members of the minority Shi’ite Hazara ethnic community, were kidnapped more than a month ago and authorities found their headless corpses in the southern Zabul province this past Sunday. The demonstrators carrying the coffins marched through the streets of the Afghan capital despite heavy rain and cold weather before gathering in front of the presidential palace. They were chanting anti-government slogans and demanded security and safety for civilians. Afghan television stations carried live coverage of the massive rally. Protesters also chanted "Down with Taliban" and "Down with Daesh" (Arabic acronym for Islamic State). Rally participants also called for President Ashraf Ghani and his chief executive, Abdullah Abdullah, to step down, accusing them of neglecting the victims after they were kidnapped. Afghan security forces fired warning gunshots to disperse the angry demonstrators after some of them tried to storm the gate of the presidential place. A large number of women are also among the protesters in Kabul and they have vowed not to disperse until their demands are met. Protest rallies were also reported in other parts of Afghanistan. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan condemned the murder of the seven civilians. A statement issued Wednesday quoted mission chief Nicholas Haysom as saying that the deliberate murder of civilian hostages, including women and children, is particularly abhorrent. “These senseless murders may amount to war crimes and the perpetrators must be held accountable,” Haysom said, adding the U.N. Mission expresses its sincere condolences to the families of the victims. President Ghani called for calm and said a special investigation is underway into the incident to bring the killers to justice. “We want peace and progress in Afghanistan and we all should demonstrate national unity to defeat enemy attempts to divide us," said the Afghan president in a nationally televised address Wednesday. The Islamic State group, which controls large parts in Iraq and Syria, is slowly extending its influence in parts of Afghanistan. Some in Afghanistan have accused the Taliban of carrying out the beheading of the civilians. A spokesman of the Islamist insurgency, Zabihullah Mujahid, when contacted, said the Taliban has nothing to do with the incident. Instead, he claimed its fighters have taken action against Daesh insurgents responsible for the violence and have eliminated them from Zabul. Mujahid went on to assert that deadly clashes in the Afghan province over the past week were not between Taliban rival factions as had been reported in the media. They were between Taliban and Daesh fighters to punish the rebels for committing atrocities against Afghan civilians, he added. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 224 | |||||||||
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Third
positive test not enough for firing
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The firing of a worker for drug use was not justified even though the man had been suspended twice before, according to the Sala Segunda, the high labor court. The case involved a laborer working on the Proyecto Hidroeléctrico Reventazón for the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad. The high court affirmed an appeal court decision to give the man money for his discharge. The electrical utility sought to fire the man without employer responsibility, something the court of initial jurisdiction ruled. Although the labor code is silent on drug use, the use of drugs should be treated the same way as alcohol use, said the court. The court also said that the drug tests involving blood and urine should be conducted with rigor and confidentiality. The drug involved was marijuana. The man tested positive twice, but he also tested negative several times, said the summary of the case, which dates from 2012. Marijuana says in the system for about a month. The worker was allowed to attend a rehabilitation center, but the court said that no one in the company checked to see that he had done so. Lawmaker cites Nicoya prison opposition By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The justice ministry is running into trouble with plans to build a 576-bed prison in Nicoya. Lawmaker Marta Arauz Mora of the Partido Liberación Nacional said Wednesday that residents of the area do not want such a facility. The proposed prison is the third and smallest of three that the Ministerio de Justicia y Paz plans to build. The ministry is involved in controversy now about the early release of inmates and overcrowded prisons. The lawmaker said that the opposition to the prison reflected local sentiment and that crime and drug use increase in communities where there are prisons. $1 million for Costanera Sur paint job By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A handful of construction companies united to form a consortium that was the only bidder on putting lane markings on the Costanera Sur between Dominical and Palmar Norte. The bid was opened Wednesday. The consortium offered to do the job for 500 million colons, a bit short of $1 million. The job includes putting down thermoplastic paint and installing 14,000 reflective lane markers. Expats have complained about the highway with new asphalt but with no lines. The consortium is Consorcio Horizontes de Vías y Servicios de Centroamérica S. A. |
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| From Page 7: U.S. housing market continues to recover By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. housing market continues recovery, with foreclosures in September down sharply from the same period a year earlier. Tuesday's data from CoreLogic shows a drop of 17.6 percent. But that still means there were 55,000 homes where owners could not repay the mortgage loans. Severe problems in the housing sector played a key role in the financial crisis. Another study of business confidence held steady as more small firms said they plan to buy business equipment, expect higher prices for their goods and indicate it is a good time to expand. The report by the National Federation of Independent Business was tempered by a decline in the number saying they plan to hire new workers. Meantime, government experts report prices for imported gasoline and other goods continued falling in October. Falling prices for both imports and exports reflect low global commodity prices and the strong value of the dollar, which gives American consumers more goods for their money. But the strong dollar also means U.S.-made goods are more expensive and less competitive on global markets. Falling prices are among the many economic issues under review by top officials of the U.S. central bank, which may raise interest rates later this month for the first time in many years. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is scheduled to give a public speech today about the Fed's efforts to maintain stable prices and full employment in the wake of the financial crisis. Also this week, the University of Michigan will report on consumer confidence, and a survey of economists is predicting a slight improvement. Friday is when new retail sales data comes out. Analysts predict a modest gain in the October figures. Economists watch retail sales closely because consumer demand drives most U.S. economic activity. |
