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A.M.
Costa Rica
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Published Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, in
Vol. 17, No.
234
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San José, Costa
Rica, Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 234
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Black
Friday seems to be on again
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Today once again is Black Friday, the annual shopping frenzy day. The government and even the nation’s union of chambers of commerce urged private business operators to close until Monday. Hurricane Otto’s impact was barely noted in the Central Valley, and many outlets were open. A reporter found that in downtown San José most of the retail outlets were open Thursday afternoon, although some small businesses on side streets were closed. The major bars and casinos were in full operation. Retail chains were sending out emails to tempt shoppers to visit the valley’s major malls today. Most stores are likely to lengthen the Black Friday discounts into Sunday and next week to make up for time lost as a result of the hurricane.
Three
national highways remain closed
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Ruta 32 has been opened, but officials are watching it closely because it is prone to slides. The Caldera highway, Ruta 27, is being watched through surveillance cameras. It, too, is prone to slides. The Consejo Nacional de Vialidad said three national routes were closed. They are Ruta 708 Sarchí-Bajos del Toro, Ruta 741 Zarcero-Palmira-Bajos del Toro and Ruta 219 Cartago-Volcán Irazú. The Nicoya ferries are running normally, but the transport ministry is discouraging boat traffic leaving Puntarenas. The transport ministry will be conducting a survey to see where roadway and bridge repairs are needed in the wake of the hurricane.
Airline
operations were mostly normal
By the A.M.
Costa Rica staff
Both Sansa and Nature Air canceled their flights Thursday, and the nation’s aviation agency closed local airports until later today. But the two major international airports were operating. At Juan Santamaría airport a few flights were delayed as much as three hours. An American Airlines flight from Miami was diverted in the morning. A Spirit aircraft from Florida and a Southwest craft from Baltimore, Maryland, were delayed but just for about a half hour. Delta Flight 900 from Atlanta also was diverted to another airport. But the Jet Blue flight from Florida was delayed a bit more than an hour and landed at 2:37 p.m. The afternoon American Airlines flight from Miami landed with just a 29-minute delay. The Iberia flight from Madrid, Spain, was canceled in the mid-afternoon. At Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia, an Alaska Airlines flight from Los Angeles, California, was canceled three hours before its scheduled 4 p.m. arrival, but an Avianca flight from El Salvador landed on time about 4 p.m.
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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S.A 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere without
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 25,
2016, Vol. 17,
No. 234
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| Australian
PM says his country may take some refugees from here |
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By Conor Golden
of the A.M. Costa Rica staff Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced that his government intends to participate in a U.S.-led program that is resettling Central American refugees in Costa Rica. In a speech given at President Barack Obama’s Leaders’ Summit on Refugees, Trumbull talked on the need for a combination of stronger border policies throughout the world as well as Australia’s commitment to investment in peace building and assistance to refugees. “We will participate in the U.S.-led program to resettle Central American refugees currently in a resettlement center in Costa Rica,” he said, “This is the pragmatic and compassionate approach Australia takes to this crisis. We encourage all nations to focus on practical, long-term solutions to this global problem.” Australia’s program of permanent refugee resettlement is the third largest in the world, the prime minister claimed. It plans to increase upwards of 19,000 places by mid-2018, he also noted. The refugee program in Costa Rica is under the overall administration of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Their headquarters is based in San José. |
According
to the most recent report on the subject, there was
a 60 percent increase in new asylum applications
registered in Costa Rica for 2015 in comparison to
the past year. Of those
registered applicants, there was a 127 percent increase
of nationals from the Northern Triangle of Central
America defined as the nations of Guatemala, Honduras,
and El Salvador. The Costa Rican government entered into a protection transfer agreement with the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees and the International Organization for Migration in late July 2016, according to a press release by the U.S. State Department. The U.S. praised Costa Rican leadership on human rights and addressing the regional challenge, the release said. This agreement allows for the United States government to pre-screen individuals from Central America seeking asylum. Following this pre-screen, the arrangement allows the U.N. refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration to transfer those in need of immediate protection to Costa Rica. From there, they could undergo a refugee processing before potentially being resettled in the United States or another country. The election of Donald Trump as U.S. president has generated uncertainty about the program. Trump waged a campaign, in part, on promising to build a wall to keep illegal immigrants out of the States. |
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| You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this
Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced
anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 25,
2016, Vol. 17,
No. 234
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Here's reasonable
medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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Food |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, Nov. 25,
2016, Vol. 17,
No. 234
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recount of votes in key states By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
Calls among Hillary Clinton supporters for a recount of votes in three key states grew louder this week on the news that her national popular vote lead surpassed 2 million votes, along with reports of voter irregularities in some counties. Last week, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta spoke with a few election lawyers and computer scientists who urged him to ask for a recount in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan because they thought the electronic voting booths used in those states could have been hacked, according to a report in New York magazine. The academics said their findings showed Mrs. Clinton's support had dropped 7 percentage points in counties that used electronic voting machines, as opposed to those counties that used optical scanners or paper ballots. Though the academics provided no proof of any hacking, they nonetheless urged the recount based on the slim margin of Donald Trump's victories in those states, less than 2 percentage points in all three states. Had Clinton won these states, she would have earned 274 electoral votes, which is just slightly higher than the 270 needed to win the presidency. In a Wednesday blog post on Medium.com, one of the academics, University of Michigan computer science J. Alex Halderman, said he thought it was possible a foreign government could hack America's voting machines. He called for an examination of the voting equipment in the three states for signs of a cyberattack. "Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts," he wrote. While the academics questioned the validity of the elections in the three Midwestern states, polling expert Nate Silver of the Web site FiveThirtyEight.com said the claim of rigged results in the states was probably false, and he said Mrs. Clinton's loss could be attributed to demographic shifts. According to Silver, the disparities noted in the New York magazine report completely disappear when controlling for race and education levels, two demographic indicators that most closely predicted the vote shift this year. "Maybe a more complicated analysis would reveal something, but usually bad news when a finding can't survive a basic sanity check like this," he wrote on Twitter. "Nothing in Pennsylvania, either, whether or not you control for demographics. And Michigan has paper ballots everywhere, so not even sure what claim is being made there." Despite the lack of evidence, Green Party candidate Jill Stein has so far raised $2.7 million, enough to pay for the recount effort in Wisconsin, and was attempting to raise an additional $2 million to request recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. A post on Ms. Stein's campaign Web site called the voting machines used in Wisconsin highly vulnerable to hacking and malicious programming, and said the machines lacked any security features. Ms. Stein won slightly more than 1 percent of the popular vote. The statement on her Web site said the recount effort wasn't meant to help Mrs. Clinton, whom Stein heavily criticized throughout the campaign, but "is about protecting our democracy." The deadline to ask for a recount is Monday in Michigan and Wednesday in Pennsylvania. The Clinton campaign has yet to announce any plans to contest the results in the three states, but she and her supporters repeatedly denounced Trump during the campaign after he said he thought the election might be rigged against him. "We are a country based on laws, and we've had hot, contested elections going back to the very beginning," Mrs. Clinton said in October, after her final debate with Trump. "But one of our hallmarks has always been that we accept the outcomes of our election." President Barack Obama made similar comments during the election, telling Trump to stop whining about a rigged election, and the president said it could never happen. "There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections, in part because they are so decentralized," he said. "There is no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances that could happen this time." Trump remains unpredictable in his foreign policy goals By the A.M. Costa Rica
wire services
As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump repeatedly stressed the need for the president to be unpredictable when it comes to foreign policy. It seems he has succeeded. With eight weeks to go until Trump enters the White House, many foreign policy experts concede they have no idea what kind of foreign policy he'll oversee. "It's sort of like a new form of Kremlinology, trying to decipher which way he's going to go," joked Daniel Larison, senior editor of The American Conservative magazine. Trump, a billionaire businessman who portrays himself as a master negotiator, has embraced two distinct and seemingly contradictory approaches to foreign policy. At times, he calls for showing more restraint in the world, arguing that the U.S. has focused too much on building up other countries and not enough on itself. On other occasions, Trump swings wildly in the opposite direction, for instance threatening to massively bomb Islamic State territory and work with American companies to take the oil. Since winning the election, Trump appears to have backed away from, or least de-emphasized, some of his more extreme foreign policy proposals made during the campaign. At the same time, though, the president-elect also has begun to fill out his new administration with several national security hawks, whose appointments seem to contradict a noninterventionist approach to the world. Most notably, Trump chose retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn to serve as national security adviser and Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas to head the CIA. Neither man's record suggests an isolationist worldview. Both oppose the Iran nuclear deal, and they have suggested regime change as a way to keep Tehran in check. Pompeo has suggested bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. Both men also have advocated for a much tougher approach to fighting the Islamic State terror group. Some of those views are more aggressive than that of outgoing President Barack Obama. But they're not exactly a rarity within the U.S. defense establishment, The American Conservative's Larison said. He predicted Trump would continue more of Obama's policies than many people expect. "What you're seeing with these appointments is people who are generally in agreement with the overall foreign policy consensus in Washington. Where they differ, it seems to be mostly differences of degree or tactical differences," he said. "It's not going to be a wholesale repudiation of basic assumptions about the U.S. role in the world." That assertion was backed up this week when Trump named South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Like Pompeo, Gov. Haley comes from the more establishment, hawkish wing of the Republican Party. But do Trump's appointments really suggest that his interventionist inclinations have won out over his isolationist ones? Not necessarily, said Elizabeth N. Saunders, a professor at George Washington University. "There's contradictions within what Trump has said, there's contradictions contained in his appointments. I just don't think we know yet," said Ms. Saunders, who also is a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Additional signs about Trump's foreign policy priorities will emerge when he names more of his political allies to high-level positions, including the heads of the Defense and State departments. Those looking for Trump's behavior to become any more predictable, however, may be waiting a while, according to Ms. Saunders, who pointed out that the president-elect seemed to have embraced impulsiveness as a strategy. "I think the new watchword for American foreign policy is unpredictability," she said. "And it is going to be a very interesting experiment." The strategy can't have come as much of a surprise. Trump himself has been boasting about it for months, including during his first major foreign policy address in April. "We must as a nation be more unpredictable. We are totally predictable. We tell everything. We're sending troops? We tell them. We're sending something else? We have a news conference," said Trump. Trump promised that under his administration, reliable patterns would end. "We have to be unpredictable," Trump said, waving his index finger in the air to make the point. "And we have to be unpredictable starting now." Reddit chief is under fire for editing user comments By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The CEO of one of the most popular social media websites, Reddit, is facing heavy criticism from users after he admitted to secretly altering comments on a pro-Donald Trump message board. The CEO, Steve Huffman, admitted to changing the content of the posts, which were directed at him, to instead show the names of the moderators of the subreddit r/The_Donald, a community within Reddit where users share images, news stories and other material related to the president-elect. Huffman said the posts were abusive to him and he only changed them as a joke, not to censor them. The posts were later restored to their original form. Reddit is a massive message board broken up into smaller communities called subreddits in which users can discuss and share information about a variety of topics. The pro-Trump subreddit has more than 300,000 active subscribers. The pro-Hillary Clinton subreddit, in contrast, has around 33,000 subscribers. Huffman's clash with r/The_Donald subscribers came after the Web site earlier this week banned a community called r/Pizzagate, which was made up of people who believe Hillary Clinton and her close associates are running a child sex ring out of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C. The Pizzagate conspiracy centers on emails that were stolen and made public by WikiLeaks in which Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta and others discuss pizza. According to the theory, talk of pizza is code for pedophilia. There has been no solid evidence backing up any of the accusations against Mrs. Clinton or her associates. Reddit said it banned the community because members repeatedly posted personally identifiable information of people they accused of being involved in the pedophile ring, which is against the site’s terms of service. James Alefantis, the manager of pizzeria Comet Ping Pong, said he has been receiving hundreds of death threats since the conspiracy began gaining traction, and asked for help on social media to stop the harassment. In Response, Huffman, who goes by the handle u/Spez on Reddit, altered comments critical of himself as a way of coping with the stress of dealing with the fallout from Pizzagate. "As much as we try to maintain a good relationship with you all, it does get old getting called a pedophile constantly. As the CEO, I shouldn’t play such games, and it’s all fixed now,” Huffman wrote. “This was a case of me trolling the trolls for a bit,” he later added. When one Reddit user asked Huffman if he had secretly altered more comments in the past, Huffman said he had not. He went on to say he would not change anymore comments in the future. Huffman’s admission came in response to a thread on r/The_Donald in which users posted photos of the original comments next to the altered comments and accused Huffman of altering them. The reaction from Donald Trump supporters was swift, and a petition has been created on Change.Org calling for Huffman to resign as CEO. “The CEO of a major media company edited the comments of Trump supporters because he did not like what they had to say,” one Reddit user, who goes by the handle Velostodon, wrote in a prominent thread on r/The_Donald. “This calls into question the integrity of the Web site. Not in a ‘muh free speech’ sense, but in a legal sense.” The petition, which so far has garnered just over 1,200 signatures, claims the Reddit community has lost their trust and faith in Huffman due to his inability to conduct himself properly as a CEO. “We will not stop until we see action taken,” it reads. Reddit's administrators have clashed with the site's users in the past, frequently over content that the administrators consider offensive and decide to censor. Last year, users called for the site's former CEO, Ellen Pao, to be fired after she decided to ban five subreddits that were accused of harassing people on Reddit and outside of the website. Pao eventually resigned as CEO after a brief protest on Reddit that saw many popular subreddits turn private to show their displeasure with Pao’s decision and several petitions were created calling on her to step down, the most popular of which reached 200,000 signatures. Hackers gain personal data on 134,000 Navy personnel By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The U.S. Navy said hackers have gained access to the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of more than 134,000 current and former U.S. sailors. The data breach occurred after hackers compromised the laptop of an employee of Navy contractor Hewlett Packard Enterprise. In a statement released Wednesday, the Navy said the information was accessed by unknown individuals and that an investigation is underway to identify and help those whose information was exposed. The information was taken from what is known as the Career Appoints database, which is used to submit re-enlistment and occupation requests. The statement said there was no evidence of misuse of the compromised information. Hewlett Packard Enterprise informed the Navy of the breach Oct. 27. This is the latest in a string of data breaches in the U.S. this year. In a report issued Tuesday by the Identify Theft Resource Center, 901 breaches occurred in 2016, exposing the records of more than 34 million people. The breaches occurred in the government, financial, business, educational and healthcare sectors. The largest number of breaches occurred in the business sector, the target of 397 breaches that exposed records on more than 5.5 million people. There were 61 cyber-attacks in the government/military sector, compromising the records of 12.9 million people. Despite the large number of data breaches this year, none compares to the worst-ever data breach of U.S. federal government records. In 2015, the security clearance applications and other sensitive information of some 21.5 million people were compromised. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The
contents
of
this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río
Colorado S.A. 2016 and may not be reproduced anywhere
without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details |
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| A.M. Costa Rica sixth news page |
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San José, Costa
Rica, Friday, Nov. 25, 2016, Vol. 17, No. 234
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Lion appears to be pawn in zoo war By the A.M. Costa Rica
staff
The government, animals lovers and officials of the Parque Bolívar zoo are having a three-way tug-of-war over an aging lion. The lion is Kivú, who has been confined to a cage at the Parque Zoológico Simón Bolivar since he was a youngster confiscated from a passing circus. He and his late mate were the principal attraction of the zoo. The Ministerio de Ambiente y Energía has been trying for years to close down the zoo. Officials plan a sprawling botanical garden in its place. They have been joined in the effort by animal rights activists who have been known to picket the zoo. Now the environmental ministry has been joined by the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería in issuing an order to close off the bars to the lion’s cage so that he cannot be seen by the public. The stated reason is because the lion is ailing and is not in the best physical condition. Earlier the environmental ministry ordered the foundation that operates the zoo to move the lion to its facilities in Santa Ana after building an elaborate cage for the animal. The foundation said that it cannot afford to build what the ministry wants. The foundation has appealed both orders and is no stranger to the courts. In the past the foundation won a court battle when the ministry in another administration tried to terminate its lease.
Flamenco is on the
program for tonight
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Some 30 dancers from the Allan Naranjo Escuela de Flamenco will give a repeat performance tonight at Casa España in Sabana Norte. The performance went on Thursday night despite fears about the weather. The Spanish cultural center is 100 meters north of the headquarters of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad in Sabana Norte. Naranjo is an accomplished dancer himself. The performances include singing, the guitar and plenty of hand clapping as well as dancing. This is a traditional dance form from the Spanish areas of Andalusia, Extremadura and Murcia. |
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From Page 7:
Ornament gives backers touch
of Trump
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Donald Trump won’t be sworn in as president until January, but those reveling in his victory and eager to be reminded of it throughout the holiday season can buy a Christmas tree ornament bearing his famous campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.” Made in the shape of a miniature red hat like the one Trump wore at numerous rallies, the ornament is advertised as brass with gold trim and sells for $149. Purchases constitute non-refundable contributions to a Trump fundraising committee, as well as the Republican National Committee. Like Trump himself, the ornament has sparked widely divergent reactions. The reviews section on retailer Amazon.com instantly became a forum for people to register their feelings about the president-elect, his policies and persona. “Every time I try to hang it on the branch, it yells 'WRONG!' No matter which branch I try, it's 'WRONG!'” a reviewer wrote. “I woke up, and there was a wall around my tree,” another wrote. “Millions of Americans and I ordered the 'Stronger Together' ornament. Imagine our disappointment when this is what we got,” another wrote. “Let's make America great again ornament has liberals in the corner sucking their thumbs holding onto a blankie. My ornament is proudly displayed on my Christmas tree where we say, God Bless America and Merry Christmas,” said another reviewer. “This is a great ornament! So excited to ring in a new year with Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence at the helm! God bless America,” a reviewer posted. “Unfortunately this has turned out to be as disappointingly and frustratingly repugnant as the BREXIT ornament,” another posted. Advertising for the ornament proclaims “It is sure to make any tree stand out” and “President-elect Trump loves Christmas and makes a point of proudly saying ‘Merry Christmas’ every chance he gets.” The ornament's country of origin is not listed, but many speculated it is manufactured in China, which produces most holiday decorations sold in the United States. “Of course, like most things bearing the Trump name, this was mass produced in China,” a reviewer posted. The ornament had sold out on Amazon as of early Thursday. |
