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A.M.
Costa Rica
Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 230
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Agents seek
answers at immigration
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
This has been a bad week for the nation's immigration agency. By now the number of Cuban immigrants moving into the country has reached at least 2,500, and the Direccion General de Migración has been overwhelmed. Then there is the case of the individuals traveling on doctored Greek passports. Investigators disclosed Thursday that the passports had been listed as stolen and were in an international police data base. But immigration agents appear to have failed to check the data base when the six individuals arrived and also failed to do so when five left from Juan Santamaría airport Tuesday night. A sixth person, believed to be a 27-year-old Syrian woman, was finally picked up Thursday and detained on an allegation of using a false passport. Agents knew she was in the country but did not locate her until Thursday. She was identified as Alaa Bustati, and prosecutors were expected to seek preventative detention. Greeks have the same rights of access to Costa Rica as U.S. citizens and Canadians. They need no visas issued in their home country. The tourism visas are issued as the traveler reaches the immigration counters in the airports. Yet, Honduran agents managed to spot the doctored passports at Toncontín airport Tuesday night. For good measure they called in Greek diplomats who determined that the five travelers could not speak Greek. The passports had been stolen in Athens, and the true owners' photos had been replaced for those of the travelers. An investigation is in progress in Costa Rica to see why agents here did not realize that the passports were fake. The case in Honduras rose the the level of the presidency Thursday. Juan Orlando Hernández, the president, praised the work of officials and said that 1,200 persons had been rejected this year when trying to enter the country. He said that his country was on the cutting edge of the use of biometrics in immigration identification. Other Honduran officials said that the five Syrians seem to be ordinary migrants and unconnected with terrorism. Reporters concluded that initially because sophisticated terror groups at least would have done better jobs on the passports. As of Thursday afternoon officials in Honduras were still deciding what they would do with the five migrants. The men initially said at the airport that they were going to try to reach the United States overland. Costa Rica is no stranger to stolen passports. Hundreds of stolen U.S. passports have passed through the black market here, although recent innovations in putting a chip in the passport appears to have slowed the commerce. Many of the passports went to Colombians, A.M. Costa Rica has reported in the past. Water company to do maintenance By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Instituto Costarricense de Acueductos y Alcantarillados said that water will be cut off today at four areas of the Central Valley. The reason is maintenance, it added. Abut 68,000 persons will be affected, said the state company. The water will be off from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. in San José Centro, Zapote, Barrio Amón and the Morazán park area. In San Miguel de Desamparados water will be off at the same time in Los Guidos, Las Lomas, La Bretania and points nearby. In San Pablo de Hereida the cutoff will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and cover a number of subdivisions there. In Santa Eulalia, Atenas, the cutoff will be from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include Barrio Mercedes and Fátima. Watson story was not complete Dear A.M. Costa Rica: In the story about Paul Watson you fail to mention his actions after he was arrested in Germany . . . a fairly relevant part of the story. As you know, there's also a bit more to the story in regard to Watson "acting at the request of Guatemalan authorities." Your stories about Watson always seem to be slanted toward him. Is he a personal friend or do you just admire his escapades from afar? Me? I just don't think anyone is above the law, no matter how just they believe their cause is. And no, I don't have any financial interest in shark finning or any other commercial fishing activity. In fact, quite the opposite; I support Watson's general objectives for marine conservation, just believe his methods are quite self-serving and would lead to anarchy if more widely condoned. My interest in Watson's activities stem from being a retired U.S. Coast Guard officer that worked with the Central American maritime services for many years, including in Costa Rica and Guatemala. It does a disservice to your fine publication to present slanted stories. Presented with balanced facts, your readers can make up their own minds without being guided to a particular point of view. AL Gastón
Port Orchard, Washington |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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copyrighted by Consultantes Ro 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 Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 230 | |
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| Agents raid lawyer's office as part of missing U.S. expat
case |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Judicial investigators searched a lawyer's office in Ciudad Quesada Thursday, and this appears to be related with an
The agency did not name the lawyer and did not report making any arrests. U.S. citizen Brian Lynn Hogue vanished while on a motor trip in mid-June. At that time it appeared that investigators considered the disappearance to be a crime to be linked to property that the |
resident
of Pococí owns. A check of the Registro Público showed
that
the courts have put multiple holds on two properties in the Paquera de
Nicoya area. This prevented the properties from being transferred. That took place June 23, three weeks after Hogue was believed to have gone missing. Public records also hint that an effort to transfer one or both properties was frustrated by the judicial hold. One property has a fiscal value of 54 million colons, about $102,500. The second is listed at 26 million colons, about $48,500. Fiscal values generally are lower than the actual market price. Hogue, 65, is believed to have encountered someone he knew as he drove home from San José on the last leg of his business trip. The man was planning to make stops in several towns including Guápiles, judicial agents said at the time they announced his disappearance. Hogue has been involved in small-scale development. The public records show that he holds mortgages that appear to be from selling property adjacent to what he owns now via a corporation. Investigators did not identify the lawyer as a suspect. Sometimes lawyers who are notaries are involved in property theft. But at other times, individuals present themselves with fake documents, and the lawyer is an innocent party. |
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| Constitutional court rejects appeal over release of prison
inmates |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The constitutional court has declined to block the release of prison inmates. The justice ministry reported Thursday that the court had rejected an appeal by a woman who filed it Nov. 11. The rejection appears to have been on technical grounds. The woman said that the Ministerio de Justicia y Paz, which runs the prisons, was ready to release 5,000 inmates before their time and who are not ready to be reincorporated into society. |
The ministry
said that the court rejected the appeal because the
woman was not allowed to file a case in favor of individuals who
had
not authorized it and that the execution of sentences is the job of
judges. The ministry was pleased with the decision and issued a press release. The reduction in inmates is to reduce the numbers in the various prisons, and the constitutional court has ordered this. Other appeals also are in the hopper for court action. The ministry has not said that it would release 5,000 inmates. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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copyrighted by Consultantes Río 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 Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 230 | |||||
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| Coral with fat reserves appears to handle bleaching events
better |
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By the Ohio State University news staff
A year ago, researchers discovered that fat helps coral survive heat stress over the short term, and now it seems that fat helps coral survive over the long term, too. The study offers important clues as to which coral species are most likely to withstand repeated bouts of heat stress, called bleaching, as climate change warms world oceans. In the Nov. 18 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the researchers report that the same fat-storing coral species that showed the most resilience in a 2014 bleaching study has recovered more fully in the year since, compared to other species that stored less fat. Lead study author Verena Schoepf, a former doctoral student in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University and now a research associate at the University of Western Australia, said that tropical corals are extremely sensitive to heat stress. “Three global bleaching events have already occurred since the 1980s, and will likely occur annually starting later this century,” she said. “Therefore, it has become more urgent than ever to know how coral can survive annual bleaching, one of the major threats to coral reefs today.” Corals are animals that live in symbiosis with algae, and when stressed, they flush the algae from their cells and take on a pale or bleached appearance. Bleached coral are more susceptible to storm damage and disease. Andréa Grottoli, professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State and principal investigator of the study, said that repeated bleaching will ultimately lead to less diversity in coral reefs, where all the different sizes and shapes of coral provide specialized habitats for fish and other creatures. “Bleaching will significantly change the future of coral reefs, with heat-sensitive coral unable to recover,” Grottoli said. Interactions among coral hosts and their endosymbiontic algae, as well as predators and prey would then change in a domino effect. “Already, bleaching events have resulted in significant amounts of coral dying and causing impact to ocean ecosystems, but up until now it was largely unknown whether coral could recover between annual bleaching events,” Ms. Schoepf added. In fact, evidence that fat is a key component to coral survival has been building in recent years. In 2014, Grottoli, Ms. Schoepf and their colleagues exposed three different coral species to two rounds of annual bleaching, then tested them six weeks later to see how well they had recovered. At that time, finger coral (Porites divaricata), the species which kept the largest fat reserves, had fared the best. Boulder coral (Orbicella faveolata), |
 University of Western Australia/Verena
Schoepf
Orbicella faveolata, also known as
boulder coral or mountainous star coral, in a Caribbean coral reef. which kept less fat reserves, had recovered to a lesser extent. Mustard hill coral (Porites astreoides), which stored the least fat, had recovered the least. Now, one year later, the researchers have revisited the corals and discovered that both the finger coral and boulder coral have recovered, while the mustard hill coral has not yet recovered, and likely never will if bleaching remains high. Surprisingly, all three species appear to be healthy at first glance. The symbiotic algae had returned to their cells, so the corals’ normal color had returned. But further analyses of the corals’ bodies tell a different story. “They all look healthy on the outside, but they’re not all healthy on the inside,” Grottoli said. Healthy corals get their day-to-day energy from sugar that the algae make through photosynthesis. For growth, healing and reproduction, they eat a diet that includes zooplankton. During bleaching, their nutritional state is thrown out of balance. “When coral is bleached, it no longer gets enough food energy and so it starts slowing down in growth and loses its fat and other energy reserves, just like humans do during times of hardship,” Schoepf said. When corals photosynthesis slows down during bleaching, they start consuming their own bodies, as human bodies do when severely malnourished. And while all the corals in the study were able to eat zooplankton, the ones who had more fat to burn had less healing to do after the repeat bleaching subsided, and were able to resume a normal status within a year. The ones with less fat to burn sustained more damage, and so even a year later they are still in the process of healing. “Our research will help with predicting the persistence of coral reefs, because knowledge of their capacity to recover from annual bleaching is critical information for these models,” Grottoli said. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
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, Friday, Nov. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 230 | |||||||
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Pollard to leave prison but remain in New York By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard is set to be released from a U.S. prison today, but his desired move to Israel will have to wait. Pollard, 61, a former U.S. Navy Investigative Service civilian analyst, was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 after pleading guilty to selling classified information to Israel. He is expected to settle in the New York area while he spends at least the next five years on parole. He will be barred from traveling outside the country, including to Israel, without permission. Both the Justice Department and Pollard's lawyers have so far declined to discuss the details of his parole. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the U.S. to allow Pollard to move immediately to Israel, the pro-government Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom reported Thursday. Pollard was granted an Israeli citizenship while he was in prison. Two New York congressmen, Eliot Engel and Jerrold Nadler, have also written U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, saying that Pollard should be allowed to renounce his American citizenship and emigrate to Israel. More information is sought on fatal Hammarskjold crash By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.N. General Assembly asked all members Thursday, particularly Britain, South Africa and the United States, to turn over any information they may have on the death of Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold in 1961. The U.N. chief died in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, on his way to try to broker a cease-fire in Katanga, a breakaway state in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. An independent investigation said in July that new information had emerged indicating that the crash might not have been an accident. The new information includes reports from eyewitnesses who said they saw another plane in the air as Hammarskjold's jet approached the airport, and from others who said they thought his plane was on fire before it hit the ground. The assembly also said two U.S. military officers either heard or read a transcript of radio transmissions from Hammarskjold's plane showing it might have been under attack. The General Assembly called on any member to release any relevant records it has on the crash. McDonald's agrees to pay over its green card policy By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
McDonald's reached a settlement with the U.S. Justice Department Thursday on charges that the restaurant chain discriminated against immigrant workers at company owned stores. U.S. investigators say McDonald's forced legal permanent residents who were employed in its stores to show new resident cards, popularly known as a green card, when their old ones expired. Federal law prohibits this practice because lawful residents can use any one of several documents when taking a job. Green card holders also have a permanent right to work even if the card expires. Under the Justice Department settlement, McDonald's will pay $355,000 in fines and compensate workers who lost their jobs because of the illegal practice. The penalties only affect restaurants McDonald's directly owns and not its franchises, which are 80 percent of its locations. Free expression receives approval, Pew survey says By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
People worldwide embrace fundamental democratic values that include free expression, despite a documented global decline in democratic rights in recent years, according to a Pew Research Center survey of respondents in 38 nations. A majority in nearly all the nations surveyed said it was at least somewhat important to live in a country with free speech, a free press and freedom on the Internet. And across the countries polled, global medians of 50 percent or more considered these freedoms very important, according to the survey. Still, the survey said, ideas about free expression vary widely. It noted that the United States stood out for its especially strong opposition to government censorship, as did countries in Latin America, like Argentina and Chile, and in Europe, such as Germany and Spain. Majorities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East also tended to oppose censorship, albeit with less intensity. Indonesians, Palestinians, Burkinabe and Vietnamese were among the least likely to say free expression is very important, the researchers said. The survey noted that while free expression was popular around the globe, other democratic rights were more widely embraced. In Western and non-Western nations majorities said they wanted freedom of religion, gender equality, and honest, competitive elections. The survey said Americans were among the strongest supporters of such freedoms, while Europeans were especially likely to want gender equality and competitive elections, but somewhat less likely to prioritize religious freedom. The right to worship freely was most popular in sub-Saharan Africa. Across all regions, people who said religion was very important in their lives were more likely to value religious freedom, according to the Pew poll. U.S. visa waiver program causes concern in Congress By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Amid furor in Washington over the admission of Syrian refugees, senators of both parties say that the easiest path for foreign terrorists to enter the United States is the visa waiver program. Without visas, nationals from dozens of countries in Europe and elsewhere need only a passport to pass through U.S. customs at airports and other entry points, bypassing the screening process to which visa applicants are subjected. “Twenty million people each year from 38 countries, including France and Belgium, use the visa waiver program,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. “Terrorists could exploit the program, could go from France to Syria, as 2,000 fighters have done, come back to France, use the visa waiver program and, without any further scrutiny, come into the United States.” The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Feinstein has introduced legislation to block visa waivers for foreign nationals who have traveled to Syria or Iraq in the last five years. “They can still visit,” Feinstein said, “but they need a traditional visa, a process that includes an in-person interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate.” The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican who says fears about possible security risks posed by Syrian refugees are overblown. “If you look at all the gaps in our security situation and the vulnerabilities we have, in my view the refugee program is well down that list. Visa waiver is near the top,” Flake said. “We absolutely need to tighten up the visa waiver program,” said another Republican, Rob Portman. “There are 5,000 foreign fighters who are from countries with which we have a visa waiver program. It’s a huge problem.” Not all senators believe a focus on Syrian refugees is misplaced. Republican Ted Cruz, who is running for president, blasted President Barack Obama and others who defend admitting asylum seekers from Syria. “They are supporting a policy of bringing tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees into this country, knowing full well that we cannot vet them to determine who is coming here to wage jihad,” Cruz said. The Obama administration insists the screening process for refugees is extensive, multi-layered, and long-lasting, up to two years. Sen. Chuck Schumer, as Democrat, said refugees must be vetted as thoroughly as possible, but added: “If a terrorist is going to try to come into this country, they are much more likely to use the loopholes in the visa waiver program instead of waiting two years to go through the refugee screening process.” Republican Flake said he has yet to decide how he will vote if and when the Senate takes up a bill passed by the House of Representatives to halt the acceptance of Syrian refugees until the vetting process is reviewed and strengthened. But he is optimistic about the chances of advancing legislation to reform the visa waiver program. “As people look at this and consider what our vulnerabilities are, I am hearing support,” Flake said. More Mexicans reported leaving U.S. than entering By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
More Mexicans are leaving the United States than entering it, according to a report released Thursday, at a time when some Republicans, including presidential candidate Donald Trump, have taken a hard line on illegal immigration. Most Mexicans leaving the United States are doing so voluntarily to reunite with their families or to start one, the report by the Pew Research Center showed. From 2009 to 2014, more than 1 million Mexicans and their families left the United States for Mexico, while more than 865,000 entered the United States, Pew said. The figures include unauthorized immigrants. An increasing share of Mexicans say life north of the border is neither better nor worse than life in Mexico, Pew said. The overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s, Pew said. The findings follow Trump's call for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, a plan President Barack Obama has said is too costly and un-American. Trump, a real estate billionaire who has been among the leading candidates for the Republican nomination in the presidential 2016 election, also said he would get the Mexican government to pay for building a wall along the border. More than 16 million Mexican immigrants have migrated to the United States in the last 50 years, more than from any other country, Pew said. From fewer than 1 million living in the United States in 1970, the number of Mexican immigrants peaked at 12.8 million by 2007, Pew said. The total declined to 11.7 million last year. The drop is mostly due to a decrease in unauthorized immigrants from a peak of 6.9 million in 2007 to 5.6 million in 2014, Pew said. Still, unauthorized immigrants from Mexico account for about half of all U.S. unauthorized immigrants. Pew has been tracking flows for about 15 years, said Ana Gonzalez-Barrera, a research associate who wrote the report. For its report, Pew analyzed government data from both countries. "This is the first time that we have the actual evidence and numbers of people going back," she said. About half of all adults in Mexico believe those who moved to the United States lead better lives, but 33 percent say life is neither better nor worse north of the border, up from 23 percent in 2007, Pew said. Other reasons for the decreased inflow include the slow recovery of the U.S. economy after the recession and stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws at the border. Genetically modified fish approved as food in U.S. By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved genetically engineered salmon for human consumption, the first altered animal approved for food in the U.S. The FDA's decision came after years of controversy over the fish, which is injected with a gene to make it grow faster. The fish, called AquAdvantage salmon, was developed by the Massachusetts-based Aquabounty Technologies. The company uses Atlantic salmon and injects it with a gene from Pacific Chinook salmon. Regulators on Thursday determined that "AquAdvantage salmon is as safe to eat as any non-genetically engineered Atlantic salmon, and also as nutritious," according to an FDA statement. It adds that the approval of the AquAdvantage salmon "would not have a significant impact on the environment of the United States." U.S. law does not require producers and manufacturers to label genetically engineered food. The FDA did, however, offer guidance for companies that would like to voluntarily label their food products, acknowledging that "many consumers are interested in this information." Mother of slain James Foley urges hostage polices review By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The mother of James Foley, the American freelance journalist who was slain by his Islamic State captors last year, said that she felt the pain of the victims of last week’s Paris attacks. “The suffering and tragedy of the people killed in Paris is a tragedy for the whole mankind,” Diane Foley said in Washington after testifying before Congress Tuesday. “My suffering, you know, is the suffering of all humanity. My heart goes out to all people who are suffering from the hands of IS or any other terrorist group. We need not to forget IS and be truthful about how we engage this horrific enemy. They want to destroy our way of life.” Foley offered condolences to the families of the Paris victims in testimony before a House subcommittee. "Our son James was tortured and starved by ISIS for nearly two years, just for being an American," she told lawmakers using the acronym for the Islamic State. Foley was kidnapped in Syria in 2012. His mother, who has said the U.S. government did not do enough to free her son before he was beheaded by the Islamic State, said the U.S. needed to re-examine its policies for dealing with hostage situations. “I have no answers. I am not an expert,” she said in the interview when asked what policies needed to be changed. After Foley's slaying, the Obama administration conducted a six-month review of U.S. hostage policies and changed them so that the government can now communicate directly with hostage takers. President Barack Obama promised families they would not face criminal prosecution if they negotiated with terrorists, and “I acknowledged to them in private what I want to say publicly, that it is true that there have been times where our government, regardless of good intentions, has let them down. I promised them that we can do better.” A U.S. attempt to rescue Foley in Syria failed in July 2014, and it was learned later that he and other hostages had been moved before the raid. The families blamed the Obama administration for not acting on intelligence sooner. “I feel that all of us that fight this terrorist threat need to be shrewder and need to come to know what these people want, need to understand, need to be willing to talk to them, engage them, because they are shrewder than us,” Diane Foley said of terrorists. “They know how to hurt us. So it’s very tragic. We need to get much shrewder. We can’t ignore this threat. We cannot ignore it, or we will be very sorry.” Researchers conclude men overeat to impress women By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Different male species have many ways to attract a mate. Some have colorful feathers, luxuriant manes or bulging muscles, but a new study suggests the human male tries to impress females by overeating. Writing in the journal Evolutionary Psychological Science, Cornell University researchers found that men who dined with women ate 93 percent more pizza and 86 percent more salad when accompanied by woman than when with other males. "These findings suggest that men tend to overeat to show off. You can also see this tendency in eating competitions which almost always have mostly male participants," explains lead author Kevin Kniffin of Cornell. For the study, the researchers observed 105 adults having lunch at an all-you-can-eat Italian buffet and recorded the amount of pizza and salad eaten. They also noted the sex of the subjects’ dining partners. As they left, a researcher approached them, asking them to fill out a questionnaire “indicating their level of fullness after eating, and their feelings of hurriedness and comfort while eating.” Unlike men, women tended to eat the same amount regardless of the sex of their dining partner, however women did indicate they felt they’d overeaten and were rushed when dining with men. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents of this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 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 sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 20, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 230 | |||||||||
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Man in photo flap
dies of his knife wound
By the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
The 22-year-old man who made public the actions of a man photographing a woman on the downtown pedestrian mall died Thursday night. The man, Gerardo Cruz Barquero, had been the victim of a knife attack Oct. 7. Investigators have not been able to link the attack to his efforts to embarrass the photographer. Cruz took photos of his own of the man photographing with his cell telephone the legs and rear end of a young woman. Cruz posted his photos on social networks. The man who was photographing the woman is not a suspect in the later attack. He is a Ministerio de Hacienda employee. After the knifing, Cruz became celebrated for his actions on the street, and most supporters felt in some way the knifing was a result of his action to embarrass the photographer. Walls at Hospital Calderón Guardia are decorated with tributes to him. The knife punctured part of his heart, but he was expected to recover. He was the father of a 4 year old, and his companion is pregnant. Taking photos of individuals in public places is not a crime, although some have called incorrectly the actions of the man sexual harassment. The woman was not aware of the photos until Cruz stopped and told her. Although photographing persons in the public street is legal, there are restrictions on what can be done with the photos. There usually is no legal problem if the photos are used to illustrate news stories, but use in advertising requires permission. Local television stations take street photos all the time to illustrate news stories on obesity and other current problems. Cruz was on his way home from his job in a bakery shop when he was confronted by as many as three men. That was in San Sebastián in south San José. 3,500 police officers will be on watch By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
There will be another blue Christmas in the metro area. The Fuerza Pública is fielding 3,500 officers to patrol the area. A priority is to safeguard those workers who are receiving aguinaldo payments, the Christmas bonus. And police also will have a heavy presence at the various Christmas functions such as the Festival de la Luz and the Tope Nacional. The special attention starts today and runs until Jan. 31. Judicial Investigating Organization agents also will be involved, and law officers promise to continually monitor automatic tellers and bank branches. The effort is being supported by the Asociación Bancaria Costarricense. Smoking blamed as Coronado fire cause By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Smoking has been blamed as the cause of a fire that destroyed a home in San Isidro, Vásquez de Coronado, Thursday morning. Fire fighters said that the blaze started in the kitchen. They said they were able to save a furniture store and an adjacent home of two stories. The report said that fire fighters were on the scene five minutes after the alarm came in. Trucks and crews came from Guadalupe and Coronado. |
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| From Page 7: Economists worry about next recession By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Stock market turmoil, unconventional efforts to bolster the economy, faltering global trade, and years of economic expansion are sparking worries that the U.S. economy could fall into recession. However, key analysts say major economic indicators are pointing toward continued modest growth, at least for the time being. The business cycle is one source of worry. The business cycle is similar, though far less regular and predictable than the sea. Experience shows the current modest growth rate in the United States, will, eventually, turn downward for a while. Behavioral economist Dan Geller says there have been six U.S. recessions in the past 50 years, and the average time between them is about seven years. The economic crisis hit around seven years ago, and the economy has been recovering and growing since then. The recovery has cut unemployment in half and is prompting the Federal Reserve to consider ending a program intended to stimulate the economy with ultra-low interest rates. Geller says the longest economic expansion in recent memory lasted around 10 years. With an eye on the end of 2017, he is watching economic data, and tracking worried consumers and investors with particular care, to see if some kind of economic decline occurs then. He also says anxious investors and consumers tend to save rather than spend their money. The level of consumer concern is important because consumer demand drives about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity. Money anxiety, he adds, is the main factor that pushes the economy into recession. For now, he says, most economic indicators are consistent with continued growth, barring an unforeseen and unusually severe economic trauma like massive natural disaster or huge terrorist attack. Other economists, including Allianz chief economic advisor Mohamed El-Erian, are concerned that the economic growth is too dependent on unprecedented kinds and levels of support from central banks. Support from the U.S. Federal Reserve, for example, includes record-low short-term interest rates, and programs to purchase huge quantities of government bonds to push down long-term rates. In a television interview on CNBC, El-Erian said such stimulus efforts might become totally ineffective. He also says the U.S. economy is vulnerable to slowing growth in overseas markets, and puts the risk of recession in 2017 at 25 to 30 percent. Other economists are more optimistic. S&P Capital IQ Strategist Sam Stovall says the odds of an economic contraction in the near future are around 10 to 15 percent. He says a recession would be signaled by a slowdown in the number of homes being built, but those numbers are rising right now. Stovall says the risk that other nations could fall into recession is higher than the chance that the U.S. economy could begin to shrink. The United States is the world’s largest economy, but the second-biggest, China, is seeing growth slowdown, and Japan, the third largest economy, has just slipped back into recession. Stovall says overseas problems could eventually affect U.S. growth, because national economies are as interconnected as climbers, roped together on a mountain side. If one of them falls, he says, it “could drag us down as well.” |
