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A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page |
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José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 234
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
President Luis Guillermo Solís has ordered his ministers to realign their operations to conform to the new national development plan. In addition, the Ministerio de Hacienda will keep track and report monthly on overtime in the executive branch as well as trips, contracts and consultants. The president seeks to keep better track of the national budgets in public entities, and he threatens to fire any official who does not follow his plan. Solís issued an official directive to that effect Tuesday. The move was partly public relations because the executive branch has been involved in a prolonged fight to pass a budget that is 19 percent higher than the previous year. Some 26 lawmakers, the majority at the time, rejected the $14.6 billion budget Monday night, but Henry Mora Jiménez, the president of the Asamblea Legislativa issued a ruling that the budget had been approved. That action will be litigated. Riteve is rejected again for fee hike By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos has once again rejected a bid for a rate increase from the company that inspects vehicles. The firm is Riteve SyC Costa Rica. The company has 13 fixed inspection stations and four mobil ones. The rate fixing agency said once again that it did not have methodology approved by the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes to evaluate a rate increase request. That has been a continual theme, and the effort for the inspection firm to obtain a rate increase has a long history. The firm wanted 30,000 colons for an automobile inspection. That's about $66. Tax police mount holiday effort By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The unreformed Grinch may be alive and well on Avenida Secunda. That is probably why the Policía de Control Fiscal and the dircciones generales de Tributación and Aduanas said they will have inspectors out in force to confiscate contraband and control the import of goods into the country. The agencies were most interested in black Friday and cyber Monday. The inspectors also are trying to make sure that the sales taxes are being paid. The tax agency said that special attention will be paid to arrivals at Juan Santamaría airport where those coming from other countries have to declare what they are bringing in. The customs agency, aduana, also said that it would be following closely activities of courier services that may be handling goods for residents here. Helio Fallas, the vice president and minister of Hacienda, called on citizens to turn in tax and customs violators. Heredia is site for walking tour By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The tourism institute and other entities are promoting a walking tour of Heredia Saturday. This is part of the ¡Vamos a Turistear! program that plans similar tours in other areas. The Instituto Costarricense de Turismo has conducted a tour in San José. The tour begins at 9:30 a.m. at the Parque Central of Heredia. Registration is required, and the institute suggests that participants bring a bottle of water. More information is HERE! Furry Christmas gifts available Saturday By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Asociación Animales de Asís is offering folks in Santa Ana the chance to obtain a furry Christmas present Saturday. The organization plans its animal adoption event this week there near the local soccer field adjacent to the Roman Catholic church. Animals are vaccinated and castrated. A donation is requested.
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A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 234 | |
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| Environmental investigators seek to restore 'monument to
incompetence' |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Environmental investigators are blaming public employees for the destruction of the Refugio de Vida Silvestre Las Camelias in Upala. The Tribunal Ambiental Administrativo has elevated the case to prosecutors and is seeking administrative action against workers in the Upala office of the Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación. The refuge came into being 20 years ago. The 64 hectares (about 159 acres) featured a lake and a host of creatures. The Tribunal listed 240 species of birds, 30 species of amphibians and reptiles, and 148 species of plants. The lake held gar fish, which the Tribunal correctly noted is a living fossil. The refuge also was a base for many migrating species. That was then. Information supplied by the Tribunal says the refuge now is a pasture for buffalo, and someone has installed fences. |
 Tribunal Ambiental Administrativo photo
This is where the Las Camelias
lake used to be.The Tribunal is ordering that the conservation offices eject any trespassers on the protected refuge. José Lino Chaves, president of the Tribunal, said the situation is a monument to institutional incompetence. The goal now is to bring back the lake. Toward that end, the Tribunal is seeking hydrological studies. |
| Sunday is a day for
bueyes, boyeros, oxcarts and tourists with cameras |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
This is the weekend for oxcarts, oxen and their handlers. The last Sunday in November always is the time for a gigantic parade bringing statues of saints into San José. The handlers, boyeros, and their families always celebrate in Parque la Sabana the evening before in the open-air style of days gone by. The gentle oxen or bueyes are about 1,800 pounds each, but they easily are handled by boys. This is the 28th annual event this year, and President Luis Guillermo Solís is expected to be among the participants, although he probably does not own a pair of oxen. A lot of professionals do, however. And they hang up their suits on the weekend to participate in such parades with their animals. There still are a lot of oxen in use in day-to-day agriculture, too. An estimated 300 oxen pairs and carts along with carriages and other conveyances and animals are expected in the parade up Paseo Colón and Avenida Secunda. Not only is this a major Christmas season event, it also is a major tourism attraction. The glory days of the oxen were in the mid-19th century when long lines of carts would carry the Central Valley's coffee to the Puntarenas port. |
 A.M. Costa Rica archives
This boyero family was photographed in
2012. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 234 | |||||
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| U.N. researchers correlate being fat with risks of getting cancer | |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Being overweight significantly increases the risk for cancer, according to a new report that found excess body weight responsible for 481,000 new cancers, or 3.6 percent of the cases worldwide, in 2012. The study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said the prevalence of obesity in adults had doubled since 1980, accounting for a significant share of cancers. The study by the research agency, an arm of the World Health Organization, found cancer poses a greater health problem for obese women, who developed 2-1/2 times more cases of cancer than overweight men did in 2012. Most of the 345,000 new cancers in women involved reproductive organs, including the uterus and womb, or breast cancer in post-menopausal women. Lead researcher Melina Arnold said there are different mechanisms by which excess weight causes cancer. “For example, for breast cancer, we know that one of the pathways is related to hormones that are produced by fat tissue, and that can lead to cancer development," she said. Cancers of the colon and kidney accounted for nearly 90,000 cases of the disease among men, according to Ms. Arnold’s report. Esophageal cancer, or cancer of the gullet, is another common cancer worldwide, particularly among overweight men. “One of the main risk factors is reflux of gastric acid," Ms. Arnold said. "And we know this reflux is more common in obese people.” |
 The study is the first to link excess weight to a specific number of cancer cases. Researchers looked at data from the GLOBOCAN cancer database for 184 countries. Most of the new cancer cases were found in the developed world. Twenty-three percent of the obesity-related cancers occurred in North America, while sub-Saharan Africa only contributed 7,300 cancers, or 1.5 percent of the cases. But obesity is a growing health problem worldwide, and researchers expect that trend to be reflected in an increasing number of cancers in the next 10 to 20 years. For example, Ms. Arnold said, North Africa has seen the largest increase in obesity during the past three decades and could also experience a sharp increase in cancer cases. “We need to raise awareness in the population that obesity can cause cancer," she said. The study on the global burden of cancer caused by overweight and obesity is published in the journal The Lancet Oncology |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 234 | |||||||
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 Voice of America/Kane Farabaugh
A Ferguson, Missouri,
beauty supply store lies in ruin in the violence following the grand
jury decision.More unrest
in Ferguson
and in other U.S. cities By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The midwestern U.S. town of Ferguson faced a second night of unrest, and solidarity demonstrations were held nationwide to protest a grand jury's decision to not indict a white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager. More than 2,000 National Guard soldiers have been deployed in Ferguson, Missouri, to guard against fresh racially charged riots, which broke out late Monday after it was announced that charges would not be filed against officer Darren Wilson. There has been no repeat Tuesday of the widespread looting that was seen on the first night of protests, when over a dozen buildings were set on fire and at least 61 people arrested. A tense moment occurred late Tuesday, when a group of protesters began smashing the windows of and setting fire to a police vehicle in front of Ferguson City Hall. A large number of riot police and National Guard troops approached the area in armored vehicles and ordered the protesters to disperse. The St. Louis County Police Department said via Twitter that the area was declared an unlawful assembly and that those refusing to leave would be arrested. The department also said there were reports of bottles and fireworks being thrown at officers. The shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown has inflamed tensions and brought to the surface concerns over police violence and racial discrimination in the predominantly black suburb of St. Louis and across the nation. Tuesday, demonstrators marched and disrupted traffic in cities including St. Louis, Cleveland, New York and Seattle. In Washington D.C., demonstrators laid on the ground in a so-called die-in protest in front of a police station. Protesters in New York also disrupted traffic on bridges and the Lincoln Tunnel, leading to a number of arrests. President Barack Obama Tuesday said he deplored the destructive acts, saying they are criminal and those responsible should be prosecuted. But America's first black president also said he understands that many people are upset by the grand jury decision. He said the frustrations of the protesters have "deep roots in many communities of color who have a sense that our laws are not always being enforced uniformly or fairly.'' Earlier Tuesday, Brown's parents appeared at a news conference in a Ferguson church, alongside their lawyers and civil rights leader Al Sharpton. They described the grand jury decision announced Monday as completely unfair. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said a federal investigation into the shooting continues. The Justice Department has been looking into whether the Ferguson Police Department is engaging in unconstitutional practices. Officer Wilson made his first public comments about the incident Tuesday. In a television interview with ABC, Wilson said he feared for his life during the confrontation with Brown, saying the teenager was trying to take his gun. The officer, who has been placed on leave, said he has a clean conscience "because I know I did my job right." Several eyewitnesses said Brown was putting his hands in the air to surrender as Wilson opened fire. But St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch said Monday that testimony is not supported by evidence and that many of the witnesses contradicted themselves. The grand Jury of 12 contained three black members, and the decision not to indict was unanimous. Pope challenges Europe to reform its immigration By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis called Europe elderly and haggard and said the continent is in need of immigration reform. The pontiff in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg Tuesday said this year alone that at least 3,000 migrants have died trying to reach Italian shores, as he demanded the Mediterranean not be allowed to become a vast cemetery. He warned that inaction on immigration concerns risked furthering slave labor conditions and exacerbating social tensions. The Argentine-born pope chose the tiny southern Italian island of Lampedusa, which many migrants have died trying to reach, as the venue for his first papal trip outside Rome last year. A member of European Parliament, Jean-Luc Melenchon, was critical of the pope’s remarks, saying he thought the pope was coming to meet parliamentarians, but instead preached a monologue sermon. Another member of Parliament said in an open letter that he would have preferred the pontiff’s holding Mass rather than coming to parliament. Political analysts say European leaders have faced strong anti-immigration pressures and noted anti-immigrant riots have erupted in recent days in Rome’s poor peripheral neighborhoods. Lima is venue next week for new climate discussions By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Representatives from 200 countries will gather next week in Lima, Perú, for talks on a new United Nations climate treaty. The meeting will set the stage for Paris talks in 2015, when nations will try to reach a binding agreement that would include all countries. Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute, called it "a global agreement for decades to come that would bring countries back to the table to strengthen their commitment to solving the problem.” The new treaty would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expired in 2012. Scientists say the world is on its way toward a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a tipping point that experts warn would trigger extreme weather and rising seas. Climate-changing emissions from fossil fuels are to blame, they say. The Lima talks are about getting those emissions in check. Morgan points to growing momentum to get that done. — In September, the United Nations held a climate summit to engage heads of state and industry leaders, and about 700,000 people crowded streets in New York City and elsewhere for the People’s Climate March. — In October, European heads of state said their countries were prepared to reduce emissions by at least 40 percent. — In November, there was a bilateral agreement between the United States and China to lower emissions. It was “a pretty historic announcement of what they are willing to do on their numbers and their willingness to work together,” Ms. Morgan said. In that agreement, the U.S. committed to reducing emissions between 26 percent and 28 percent by 2025. And for the first time, China put a timetable on its actions, saying emissions would peak by 2030. If that is to happen, Ms. Morgan, China must begin making massive cuts now. “It’s not like they are going to wait 16 years," she said. "They actually have to shut down coal-fired power plants. They have to build up renewable energy. They have to be much more efficient in order to turn that curve.” The deal puts China in a leadership role for the first time. Other countries are expected to put their reduced emissions commitments on the table by March. Ms. Morgan said the U.S.-China announcement is a strategic move that could energize other nations to do more. “If you look at developed countries, it is fair to say that Australia or Canada haven’t indicated when they are going to table their offer," she said. "Well, if China can offer something, certainly they can offer something, too. And in developing countries, I think a country like India or Brazil now are challenged to table their offers as well.” Ms. Morgan said it is critical to close the gap between what is needed on emissions reduction and what countries are expected to pledge. She said each nation would make reductions in its own way through national policies and laws, but only a global pact with binding commitments can exert pressure to get the job done. “It’s in the interest of every country to actually have a global approach, so they can be sure that what they are doing is being mirrored by others," she said. "You don’t get that through bilateral deals. You don’t get all of the emissions in place and you don’t take care of the most vulnerable countries around the world adequately. So you need to do this global. “It’s challenging. It’s messy. But it’s fundamental to move forward.” Ms. Morgan said she hopes that the Lima meeting will end with a text for a new treaty, one that will guide negotiators and lead governments to act. Somali-Americans face allegations of terrorism By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
U.S. prosecutors announced terrorism charges against two Somali-American men Tuesday, after one traveled to Syria allegedly to join Islamic militants fighting there and the other was stopped at the airport allegedly on his way there. The charges against Abdi Mohamed Nur and Abdullahi Yusuf come as U.S. officials have stepped up efforts to stem the flow of Americans trying to join the militants who have waged a brutal campaign of terror across Syria and Iraq. Nur was charged in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis with conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and providing material support, U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger said. Yusuf was charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. “Our region has lost dozens of disaffected young people to terrorist organizations that would sooner see Somali Minnesotans die on foreign battlefields than prosper in peace and security,” Luger said in a statement. Unfortunately, Yusuf and Nur were not the first – and may not be the last – to conspire in support of the Islamic State, he added. Nur left Minnesota May 29 en route to Turkey, according to his sister Ifrah who said her brother had sent a text message from Istanbul that said he wanted “to join the jihad in Syria in search of Paradise and that they should not worry about him.” His current whereabouts are unknown. Prosecutors said Yusuf was stopped by FBI agents at the Minneapolis airport on May 28. According to the criminal complaint released Tuesday, agents had monitored Yusuf’s phone and text messages as he communicated with another former Minnesota resident now believed to be fighting in Syria. Yusuf was scheduled to appear in court Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if he had a defense lawyer. More than 100 Americans are believed to have traveled to Syria, officials said. That includes more than a dozen men and women from the Somali-American community in the Minneapolis area, the largest in the United States. Minnesota’s Somali community had previously grappled with the issue of young people joining terrorist groups between 2007 and 2010, when about two dozen men traveled to Somalia to join the al-Shabab militant group. At least two of them were involved in suicide missions in the country, while several of them were killed in the battlefield. Danish spy device vendor gets a heavy fine in U.S. By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A U.S. federal court has ordered a Danish man to pay a $500,000 fine for advertising and selling a spyware application to remotely monitor calls, texts, videos and other communications on mobile phones without detection. At a court hearing in the southern U.S. state of Virginia, Hammad Akbar pleaded guilty to marketing StealthGenie. The case marks the first criminal conviction involving the advertisement and sale of a mobile device spyware app. Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said the software secretly and illegally invades individual privacy. The app could be installed on a variety of mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Blackberry Limited’s Blackberry. Akbar also was ordered to forfeit the source code for StealthGenie to the government. According to Akbar, StealthGenie had numerous functions that permitted it to intercept both outgoing and incoming telephone calls, electronic mail, text messages, voicemail and photographs from the smartphone on which it was installed. The app also could turn on the phone’s microphone when it was not in use, and record sounds and conversations that occurred near the phone. All of these functions could be enabled without the knowledge of the user of the phone. In order to install the app, the purchaser needed temporary possession of the target phone. Once the app was activated, it was started as a background service and set up to launch automatically when the phone was powered on. During activation the icon for the app was removed from the phone’s menu. Travelers facing snow, cold on pre-Thanksgiving trips By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Today will be the busiest travel day of the year in the United States, and it could be a rough one for millions of people. A major winter storm called a nor'easter is forecast to hit the Eastern seaboard from Maine to North Carolina — the day Americans hit the roads, rails and skies for Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday. Meteorologists said coastal regions could expect heavy rain and high winds, while some areas to the west could see as much as 40 centimeters (15 inches) of snow. Large cities including Boston, New York and Philadelphia will feel the impact. Travelers were warned to get an early start and to expect delays at airports. Conditions are expected to be much better for Thanksgiving Day, when families gather to enjoy turkey dinners, football and parades. |
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By
the Brigham Young University news service
Say you ignored one of those “this Web site is not trusted” warnings and it led to your computer being hacked. How would you react? Would you: A. Quickly shut down your computer? B. Yank out the cables? C. Scream in cyber terror? For a group of college students participating in a research experiment, all of the above were true. These gut reactions (and more) happened when a trio of Brigham Young University researchers simulated hacking into study participants’ personal laptops. “A lot of them freaked out. You could hear them audibly make noises from our observation rooms,” said Anthony Vance, assistant professor of information systems. “Several rushed in to say something bad had happened.” Fortunately for the students, nothing bad had really happened. What they saw — a message from an “Algerian hacker” with a laughing skull and crossbones, a 10-second countdown timer and the words “Say goodbye to your computer” — wasn’t real. What was real was that all of the participants got the message by ignoring web security warnings. Vance and colleagues Bonnie Anderson and Brock Kirwan carried out the experiment to better understand how people deal with online security risks, such as malware. They found that people say they care about keeping their computers secure, but behave otherwise. In this case, they plowed through malware warnings. “We see these messages so much that we stop thinking about them,” Vance said. “In a sense, we don’t even see them anymore, and so we often ignore them and proceed anyway.” For the study, researchers first asked participants how they felt about online security. Then, in a seemingly unrelated task, participants were told to use their own laptops to log on to a Web site to categorize pictures of Batman as animated or photographed. Students were told their image classification project was being used to check the accuracy of a computer algorithm to do the same task. As participants clicked through the image pages, warning signs would randomly pop up indicating malware issues with the site they were accessing. If they ignored the message enough times, they were hacked. “A lot of people don’t realize that they are the weakest link in their computer security,” said Kirwan, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience. “The operating systems we use have a lot of built-in security and the way for a hacker to get control of your computer is to get you to do something.” Kirwan’s role in the research added another fascinating layer: Using his expertise in neuroscience, Kirwan carried out an additional experiment on subjects using EEG machines to measure brain responses to risk. While results showed that people say they care about Web security but behave like they don’t, they do behave in line with what their brains say. In other words, people’s brainwaves better predict how risky they are with online security. “We learned that brain data is a better predictor of security behavior than a person’s own response,” Vance said. “With neuroscience, we’re trying to understand this weakest link and understand how we can fortify it.” |
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| From Page 7: Fiber cement manufacturer to expand By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Plycem, the fiber cement producer, says it will invest $5 million in its Costa Rican plant. The firm, which has corporate headquarters here, said that it already put $2.5 million in an advanced production facility with Japanese technology. Expansion is needed because of the increasing demand, it said. The company has 200 employees here. The firm also will make investments in Honduras and El Salvador. The company makes some 15 different structural components, including roof tiles and ceiling panels |
