Survey says unemployment
declined from 2009 level


In an unexpected report Tuesday the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos said that unemployment was 7.3 percent and that 21.3 percent of the households in the country are considered poor.

The report came from a national survey of some 13,440 homes in July. Casa Presidencial was happy to accept the estimate that unemployment actually declined from 8.4 percent at the same time in 2009.

The institute is using new methods that were suggested by international experts to better reflect the poverty in the country, it said.

The unemployment is not uniform. It ranges from 6.9 percent in the Central Valley to 9.3 percent in the Chorotega region of northwestern Costa Rica, according to the survey.

Based on the survey, the institute concluded that 275,000 homes were classified as poor. Some 6 percent of the households live in extreme poverty, the institute said.

The report comes at the same time that the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social said that the number of employed Costa Ricans had dropped.

Like all surveys there is a range of possibilities around the number reported. The use of the high number of respondents, 13,440, artificially restricts the confidence interval. The Gallup Organization usually uses just 1,200 respondents to estimate probabilities.

However, the institute did not report the confidence interval it used to infer the date to the general population. That is normal in such government reports.


Army's end to be marked
in museum ceremony


Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the day that José Figueres Ferrer abolished the national army.

The country has been true to that philosophy since.

Attending a ceremony today at 10 a.m. will be President Laura Chinchilla Miranda, who is trying to turn back an invasion by Nicaragua into northern Costa Rica.

True to the philosophy, Ms. Chinchilla has declined to use force and instead is relying on international organizations to put pressure on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Figueres, of course, successfully led a revolution against the Costa Rican standing army. History said that he abolished the army while he was head of a provisional junta to prevent a coup by some of his followers. However, he has said that he began to believe the army was unnecessary even when he was a student in the United States.

The ceremony today, as is the case every year, is at the Museo Nacional on Cuesta de Mara east of the San José downtown. The museum was the regional military headquarters, and the towers still show the bullet holes from the civil war.

Culture ministry calculates
carbon dioxide emissions


The local operations of the Ministerio de Cultura y Juventud produced 2,491 tons of carbon dioxide from October 2009 to this September, the ministry said Tuesday.

The estimate includes the Casa del Artista, the Museo de Arte Costarricense, the Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, the Museo Histórico Dr. Rafael Calderón Guardia, the Centro Nacional de la Música, the Coro Sinfónico Nacional, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, the Sistema Nacional de Educación Musical, the Teatro Nacional and the Teatro Popular Melico Salazar.

Manuel Obregón, the minister, said that his agency was in accord with the government plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2021. The carbon dioxide inventory is among the first steps.

The inventory was financed by the Fundación Bandera Ecológica and the U.S. State Department via the free trade treaty between the United States and Central America, the ministry said.

The inventory involved direct consumption such as fossil fuel use and indirect consumption, such as electric use, said the ministry.

The ministry concluded that some 71 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions came from the use of facilities and that 22 percent came from transportation of individuals to and from the various events.

The ministry will devise a plan to balance the emissions, such as changing illumination, it said. Initially it will seek to cut emissions 30 percent, it added.


Firm doubles its size


Emerson has doubled its operations in Costa Rica with the inauguration of a second service center in Multipark, Guachipelín de Escazú.

The company expects to add 150 new employees as a result of its $3.4 million investment. The firm is involved in the design, engineering and shared accounting services.

Find out what the papers said today in Spanish By the A.M. Costa Rica staff Here is the section where you can scan short summaries from the Spanish-language press. If you want to know more, just click on a link and you will see and longer summary and have the opportunity to read the entire news story on the page of the Spanish-language newspaper but translated into English. Translations may be a bit rough, but software is improving every day. When you see the Summary in English of news stories not covered today by A.M. Costa Rica, you will have a chance to comment. This is a new service of A.M. Costa Rica called Costa Rica Report. Editor is Daniel Woodall, and you can contact him HERE!

From the Costa Rican press News items posted Monday through Friday by 8 a.m. Click a story for the summary

Costa Rican news summaries are disabled on archived pages.

Have you seen these stories? From A.M. Costa Rica

Top story feeds are disabled on archived pages.

Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía
y Seguridad Pública photo

operators were told that they could risk losing the business license if police found more contraband, the Fuerza Pública reported. Officers promised to continue their sweeps.