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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
A new report on interpersonal violence around the world shows that low- and middle-income countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have the highest homicide rates of any developing region, as well as the highest proportion of homicides committed with firearms. The "Global Status Report on Violence Prevention 2014," released Wednesday in Geneva, was published jointly by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Development Program, and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. Among other findings, the report estimates that 165,617 deaths in developing countries of Latin America and the Caribbean were due to homicide, and three-quarters of these were carried out with firearms. This translates into 28.5 homicides per 100,000 population, more than four times the global homicide rate (6.7 per 100,000) and more than twice the rate of developing countries in Africa, which have the world's second-highest regional homicide rate (10.9 per 100,000). (By contrast, the Costa Rican rate is about 10 to 100,000 persons, the report noted.) "As a group, developing countries in the Americas share the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of lethal interpersonal violence in the world," said Marcelo Korc, advisor on sustainable development and human security at the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization). "Many of our member countries are taking steps to address this violence, but it remains a huge challenge to implement effective prevention and treatment programs to lower these rates and reduce the tremendous suffering they represent." Among other findings about the Region of the Americas, the new report shows: * The highest World Health-estimated homicide rates were in Honduras (103.9 per 100,000), Venezuela (57.6 per 100,000), Jamaica (45.1), and Belize (44.7). * The lowest homicide rates were in Canada (1.8 per 100,000), Antigua and Barbuda (4.4) and Chile (4.6). * The highest estimated rates of homicide by firearms were in Venezuela (90 percent), Guatemala (86 percent), Honduras (84 percent), Colombia and Panama (80 percent), and El Salvador and Trinidad and Tobago (77 percent). * Firearms are also predominantly used in intimate partner homicides in the Americas. * Both globally and in the Americas, 30 percent of ever-partnered women report having experienced physical or sexual violence, or both, at some point in their lives. * A higher proportion (76 percent) of countries of the Americas have national action plans to reduce violence than in any other World Health region. This includes 91 percent with plans to reduce child maltreatment, 86 percent with plans to reduce intimate partner and sexual violence, and 71 percent with plans to reduce youth violence. * All countries in the Americas have laws regulating firearms. However, less than two-thirds have special firearms control programs such as gun buy-backs or firearms collection and destruction programs. To reduce levels of violence, the report recommends 18 "best buy" programs, including: * programs to reduce the availability and harmful use of alcohol, * laws and programs to reduce access to firearms, * school-based programs to teach children and adolescents life-skills such as non-violent conflict resolution, * efforts to change gender norms that are supportive of violence against women, * programs to improve parenting in families at risk of violence, and * public information campaigns to prevent elder abuse. Twenty-one Pan American Health member countries in the Americas participated in the report, out of a total of 35 member countries. Lower Nicoya ferry service returning to normal By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Ferry transport between Puntarenas Centro and Paquera on the Nicoya peninsula returns to normal Friday in time for the tourism high season. The newest ferry, Tambor III, has returned from maintenance in Cartegena, Colombia. Ferry trips were reduced Oct. 29 when it left. Once again there will be six trips a day instead of the temporary four. The first trip will be at 5 a.m. from Puntarenas and at 5:30 a.m. from Paquera.
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 245 | |
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| Yegüita festival in Nicoya is
estimated to be the 470th annual |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The community of Nicoya is celebrating this week what probably is a tradition at least 470 years old. It is the celebration in honor of the Virgen de Guadalupe. The religious festival is being sponsored in part by the Municipalidad de Nicoya. The festival began Nov. 8 where the devotees of the Virgin went to the woods to cut fuel for the event this Friday. There also were prayer services at Curime, Tierra Blanca, Casitas, Río Grande, Pedernal, Barrio Los Angeles and in several places in Nicoya Centro. The story of the festival has an unusual origin. On a Dec. 12 more than four and a half centuries ago, locals were returning from a Mass in honor of the Virgin. But two brothers had been hitting the bottle and had become aggressive toward each other. The weapon of choice were machetes. The church goers were dismayed. They feared that one brother would kill the other. So they prayed to the Virgin. The prayers were answered by the arrival of a yegüita, a little horse, that bit and kicked the two brothers until they stopped fighting. This is the origin of the Baile de la Yegüita that takes place Friday at noon. This is a big tourist draw. There will be a procession with a statue of the Virgin. Preceding it will be dancers. One costumed dancer will play |
 Municipalidad de Nicoya photo
Mural of the Yeguita and
the two brothers at the Cofradia de la Virgen de Guadalupe in Nicoya.the role of the horse. Historians think that this procession is at least 450 years old. The festival starts today. Friday the activities begin with a Mass celebrated by Msgr. Victorino Girardi, bishop of Tilarán. At 8 p.m. there is a candle-light procession. The religious observance is in the hands of the Servidores de la Cofradía de la Virgen de Guadalupe. |
| Saturday's parade route will be closed to traffic at noon,
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Police officials will be closing Paseo Colón Saturday at noon in anticipation of the Festival de la Luz. The program begins at 3 p.m. for a pre-festival for younger children. For police the day starts at 6 a.m. as the first group of what will be 800 Fuerza Pública officers take to the streets. Among other duties, officers will be guarding the elaborate floats that will be parked along the south side of Parque la Sabana. Officials urged parade goers to leave the bulk of their money and possessions at home. Bus travel, including some long-distance out-of-town routes will be |
affected. An
area from La Sabana to Calle 11 and two blocks on each
side of the parade route will be restricted. The closings will affect the Circunvalación, the General Cañas highway and the Caldera highway which runs along the south side of the park. Traffic officials said they would field 200 officers. There also are contingents of fire fighters, Cruz Roja workers and even workers from the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia, the child protection agency. Perhaps as many as 1 million spectators will attend. The route is from the park to the Plaza de la Democracia. Those not willing to challenge the crowds for a good point of view will find the event televised by several stations. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, Vol. 14, No. 245 | |||||
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| Linguistic study discounts early learning and age for second
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By the University of Zurich news service
Anyone who reads and writes German well is likely to transfer this advantage to English regardless of the age of onset of foreign language learning. Foreign language lessons at an early age, however, pay off less than was previously assumed. In fact, they can even have a negative impact on the first language in the short run, as a linguist from the University of Zurich reveals in her long-term study involving 200 Zurich high-school children. “A tree must be bent while it is young,” as one saying about learning a foreign language goes. In other words, the earlier someone starts learning a foreign language systematically, the better the language level will be in the long run. The second widely held view is that learners need to be solid in the first language in order to develop good literacy skills in the foreign language. Linguist Simone Pfenninger from the University of Zurich has been examining these two myths in her five-year study involving Swiss high-school children in order to identify the optimal starting age for learning German as a language of literacy and English as a foreign language. The partial results she has just published reveal that anyone who reads and writes German well is likely to carry over this advantage to English – and, interestingly, regardless of the age of onset of foreign language learning or the biological age. The study also shows that students who are given early exposure to English do not maintain a clear advantage for more than a relatively short period over students who begin to learn the language only at secondary level. In fact, early foreign language learning can even have a negative impact on the first language in the short run. For five years, the university scientist has been studying the extent to which starting age, biological age and first language skills, Swiss or High German, influence the development of English proficiency. In order to test skills in German and English, the literacy of 200 randomly selected high-school children in the Canton of Zurich were tested at the beginning and towards the end of their obligatory schooling in the senior grades. One group had begun English lessons in primary school at the age of 8, while the second group had |
only started
English in high school at the age of 13. Besides the positive influence of German on English, the negative influences and transfer of structures from the first language to the foreign language were also studied in the areas of syntax and morphology. “After all, as the mother tongue becomes increasingly entrenched, you might also expect an increasing negative influence . . . on English,” explains Ms. Pfenninger. As the results showed, foreign language lessons at an early age did not have a beneficial impact either in the long or in the short term. Already after six months learners who had started five years later had caught up with the early learners and sometimes even surpassed them in terms of morpho-syntactic accuracy and complexity, syntactic fluency, grammaticality judgment, and content-related and structural aspects of written expression. However, the early learners had a larger vocabulary at the first measurement and less of a tendency to fill the gaps in their vocabulary in the foreign language by switching into German. “By the second assessment, shortly before the final high-school exams, there were no longer any differences between early and late starters,” says Ms. Pfenninger. According to the study’s author, the slightly disappointing results for early foreign language learning can be attributed to the following reasons: at the beginning of high school, the late learners exhibited significantly better German writing skills than the early learners, who had already been taught German, English and French in elementary school. The late learners therefore began foreign language lessons with a more favorable foundation in the language of literacy. By the second assessment five years later, however, this advantage had disappeared. Moreover, the link between German and English writing skills also displayed a positive and significant correlation: “Anyone who is good at German can carry over this advantage to the foreign language, utterly regardless of the age when they start learning the foreign language or their biological age,” sums up Ms. Pfenninger. Therefore, the results of this study have shown so far that, where success is concerned, this does not relate for the most part to age of onset or length of the exposure to the foreign language. |
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| Some liberal Democrats back someone other than Hillary By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
It seems as though not all Democrats are eager to fall in line behind former secretary of State Hillary Clinton should she decide to run for president next year. A prominent group of liberal activists is urging Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to run for president in 2016 even though she has repeatedly said that she is not interested. The liberal activist group MoveOn.org says a poll of its eight million members around the country showed overwhelmingly support for a presidential run by Sen. Warren, one of the Senate’s leading liberal Democrats. Sen. Warren has become a favorite with progressive activists because she often speaks out on the issue of income disparity in the United States and the need to rein in the excesses of large banks and Wall Street. Anna Galland, the executive director for MoveOn.org Civic Action, said 81 percent of MoveOn members who voted in a survey support the idea of a Sen. Warren candidacy. “We have a crisis in our democracy, a crisis in our economy,” Ms. Galland said. “It is not working for middle class and working families. Senator Warren has built her entire career around fighting for those families and we want to see that reflected, that message, that cause, we want to see that reflected by her running in the presidential primary.” Sen. Warren has said repeatedly she has no plans to run for president in 2016, and public opinion polls have consistently shown Mrs. Clinton the far and away favorite for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. But Ms. Galland said Sen. Warren was encouraged to run for the Senate in Massachusetts by progressive activists and she believes it could work again in urging her to run for the White House. “We will launch a significant effort,” Ms. Galland said. “We will hire organizers in early primary states. We will open offices there. We will spend a million dollars just to start to make sure Senator Warren understands that millions of Americans including millions of Move-On members are deeply excited about her and how she fights for working people and the middle class.” In her brief time in the Senate, Warren has emerged as a leading proponent of an economic populism agenda that seeks to improve working and middle class families while reining in the abuses of moguls on Wall Street. She was also recently added to the Senate Democrat’s leadership team and vowed to make income disparity a key focus of her work in the Senate. “Wall Street is doing very well,” she said. “CEOs are bringing in millions more, and families all across this country are struggling. We have to make this government work for the American people and that is what we are here to fight for.” Public opinion polls show that if she did run, Warren would be an underdog in any Democratic presidential field that includes Mrs. Clinton. A CNN-ORC poll a few weeks ago showed Mrs. Clinton with the support of 65 percent of the Democrats surveyed, followed by Warren at 10 percent and Vice President Joe Biden at 9 percent. Biden has said he will decide on a presidential run in the next several months. For her part, Mrs. Clinton is expected to announce her presidential intentions early in 2015. She did campaign on behalf of Democratic candidates in the recent congressional midterm elections and is a frequent speaker at conferences that focus on empowering women. “The Democratic Party is at its best, just like America is at its best when we rally behind a very simple yet powerful idea — family,” Mrs. Clinton said. “Family is the building block of any society. It’s the building block of our party and our country.” Despite the talk about Sen. Warren, Mrs. Clinton remains the clear Democratic favorite assuming she runs, said analyst John Fortier of the Bipartisan Policy Center. “So I think it is still an uphill challenge for anyone to beat Hillary Clinton but she will have challengers and likely a relatively strong challenge from the left during the primary,” Fortier said. Mrs. Clinton’s ability to draw big fundraisers to her campaign would also be a huge advantage plus the fact that her husband, former president Bill Clinton, continues to enjoy near rock star status with Democratic activists and remains one of the party’s most experienced and effective campaigners. Even if Sen. Warren decides against a presidential run, experts say liberal activists may be tempted to support other candidates who are considering getting into the race including Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, an independent who usually votes with Democrats. Prosecution of CIA agents seems to be very unlikely By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Calls for the prosecution of officials involved in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's use of extreme interrogation methods on suspected terrorists multiplied Wednesday. Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special envoy on human rights and counterterrorism, said a U.S. Senate report on the CIA's actions after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reinforces the need for criminal accountability. Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said nations "that have signed up to the convention need to follow up on what is in the convention” — a reference to the U.N.'s Convention Against Torture and Inhuman Treatment, signed by former president Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by U.S. lawmakers in 1994. That convention obligates the United States to prosecute those who commit torture or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution. Kenneth Roth, executive director of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said torture "will remain a 'policy option' for future presidents" unless officials are prosecuted. The demand for accountability extended to Capitol Hill, where Democrat Mark Udall of Colorado spoke at length on the Senate floor. “The CIA has lied to its overseers and the public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the Senate, and lied about torture and the results of torture," he said. "And no one has been held to account.” However, hauling alleged torturers before courts may prove difficult. The U.S. Department of Justice declined to prosecute anyone after a 2009 review of CIA interrogation methods, and so far the Obama administration has given no indication that prosecutions are being contemplated. Wednesday the Justice Department said the United States was committed to complying with its domestic and international obligations but would object to foreign prosecution of U.S. officials. Charges of war crimes could be filed at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, but the United States is not a member of the body, one of several complicating factors, said a Georgetown University law professor, David Luban. “The ICC has jurisdiction over crimes that are committed by the nationals of its member states or on the territory of its member states," he said. "Whatever these crimes are, they are not war crimes. Even if they were, the ICC prosecutor is under a mandate to only take the gravest cases. And the former ICC prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, made it clear that by grave cases he means cases with thousands of victims.” Short of criminal prosecution, there were calls for at least some form of punishment. “There are right now people serving in high-level positions at the agency who approved, directed or committed acts relating to the CIA's detention and interrogation program," Colorado's Udall said. "The president needs to purge his administration of high-level officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this program." The Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday was a summary of a much longer report saying the CIA had mistreated prisoners during questioning. It accuses the CIA of misleading Congress and the American people about the effectiveness of those methods, which included confinement in small places, sleep deprivation and simulated drowning. California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that "under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured." She called the CIA's actions a stain on American values. President Barack Obama told the Spanish language television network Univision that the U.S. engaged in brutal activities. He called them terrible mistakes that should not be repeated. Some in Washington questioned whether it was wise to release the report at this time, with the United States leading the fight against Islamic State militants and Americans being held hostage. They fear a violent reaction by extremists. Obama said there is never a perfect time to release such a report, but he said when the country does something wrong, it is important to admit it. The president banned the use of the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" when he took office in 2009. His predecessor, George W. Bush, authorized the practice after the 2001 attacks, looking to prevent another one. But the report says Bush did not know the details of what the CIA was doing. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday denounced the report on CIA interrogation tactics and demanded that the United States share information about all Afghan victims of what he called the inhuman torture. In a televised speech, Ghani described the abuses detailed in the report as shocking and said the CIA officials and contractors who committed them had violated all internationally accepted norms of human rights as well as U.S. laws. Former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski said that Poland let the CIA run a secret prison on its territory, but that Polish officials did not authorize harsh treatment or torture of the suspected terrorists at the site. In an interview Wednesday with a Warsaw radio station, Kwasniewski said he urged then-president Bush to end all U.S. intelligence efforts at the prison more than 10 years ago. Kwasniewski said the efforts were halted at some point. This was the first time the former Polish president had publicly acknowledged the existence of the prison, after denying its presence for years. It is believed the CIA ran the facility in Poland in 2002 and 2003. Change in American family called just more diversity By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The average American family used to look very much like the fictional Cleaver family in the classic television show "Leave It to Beaver," with two married parents and the father as the breadwinner. But that family arrangement is no longer the norm in the United States. “There is no average American family and that’s what’s exciting and interesting about families today,” said a University of Maryland sociology professor, Philip N. Cohen. “Diversity is the new normal.” Today, one-third of American children still live in households with two married parents, but that’s a significant decline from 1960, when two-thirds of U.S. children lived in married couple households. However, 50 years ago, only one parent, the father, usually worked outside the home. Today, the largest segment of American families consists of two married parents who both work. To reach his conclusions, Cohen primarily used information the U.S. Census Bureau collected from 1960 until 2012. Every 10 years, the government-funded agency conducts a nationwide population and housing poll. He found that 34 percent of children are raised by dual-income, married parents, while 22 percent live in households where only the father works. Twenty-three percent of children live with a single mother, half of whom have never been married. Seven percent live with a parent cohabiting with a romantic partner. About 3 percent of children live with a single father and about 1 percent live with same-sex married couples. Various factors have driven the changing face of the American family, including the emerging financial independence of women. After 1960, more woman than ever began to find employment outside the home. That shift to the marketplace gave women a variety of options they hadn’t enjoyed before. “It’s become more possible for people to divorce out of an unhappy marriage or an abusive marriage,” said Cohen, “and more possible to raise children as a single parent, rather than have a shotgun wedding or marriage with a partner that’s not someone’s desired marriage partner.” And there are simply more households overall. Fewer single young adults are residing at home and more older people are living on their own, thanks to improved healthcare and Social Security, a federal insurance program that provides financial and other benefits to retired people. The decline in marriage is much more pronounced among African-American families than any other group, and it’s not just because of economics, according to Cohen, who sees inequality as a key part of the equation. “We still have a lot of racism in America,” Cohen said. “Black Americans are the least likely to marry outside their own group. We have very high rates of incarceration, especially in inner-city African-American communities and that not only pulls people out of the marriage pool but also provides a taint or a stigma on the people who’ve been in prison…so between concentrated poverty, unemployment, incarceration and various other health situations, the African-American situation is quite unique.” There are segments of U.S. society that see the decline in marriage rates as proof of an unraveling of the American family. However, Cohen views the numbers differently. “I think it’s also interesting to turn it around and to describe the same pattern as an increase in diversity because it’s not as though marriage is declining and being replaced by one thing, such as single parenthood,” he said. “It’s really that marriage has declined from its position of dominance and been replaced by sort of a wide variety of arrangements.” Detroit dumps $7 billion to emerge from bankruptcy By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan says it is a fresh start for his city, which emerged Wednesday from the biggest-ever bankruptcy for a U.S. community. Duggan says Detroit will do the best it can to deliver the services its residents deserve. Under a plan approved by a federal bankruptcy court, the city will shed $7 billion of its $18 billion debt and reinvest almost $2 billion into city services and infrastructure. A once-thriving midwestern city that was headquarters of the world's car industry, Detroit has been struggling with debt and budget deficits for more than 20 years. It filed for bankruptcy last year. Its population stood at more than 1 million as late as 1990, but has since plummeted to about 700,000. Tens of thousands of stores, factories and once beautiful homes are now empty crumbling shells. Some city services became non-existent and the crime rate soared. |
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Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The latest edition of the annual World Bank Doing Business survey shows South America’s entrepreneurs are spending an average 620 hours per year on tax compliance - more than double the global average of 264 hours. The latest report, "Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency," examines the compliance burden on entrepreneurs in 189 jurisdictions worldwide. Russell Bedford member firms have contributed to each of the report’s Paying Taxes surveys since 2009, contributing data on tax regulation, recent reforms, and the real costs of tax compliance. The report does reveal considerable disparities within South American countries, however. While the compliance burden in Colombia is below the global average, at 239 hours, and that of Perú barely in excess of it, at 293, Ecuador exceeds even the South American average, at 654. Daniel Ryba, Russell Bedford International board member for South America, attributes the continent’s poor performance to the frequent and numerous tax reforms to which countries have been subject in recent years, the increasing volume of tax information that taxpayers and third parties are now required to submit, and the sheer volume of tax regulations to which businesses are now subject. Daniel Ryba commented: “Of course, these problems also arise in jurisdictions outside of South America. But the very heavy compliance burden in Ecuador only serves to highlight what many businesses have been aware of for some time. Overly complex – and frequently changing – tax regulation will continue to impact the competitiveness of the continent’s small businesses until this is addressed.” Underground economy targeted By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Ministerio de Hacienda, the budget agency, is expected to announce actions today against the country's underground economy. The ministry includes the tax collecting Dirección General de Tributación. The size of the underground economy is not known. It is generally considered to be activities that are legal but do not pay taxes. That eliminates the inclusion of the drug trade. Included are small businesses that never have paid taxes or do so grudgingly. That includes the nation's 13 percent sales tax and the annual income tax. The underground economy also includes work performed by individuals who are not legally permitted to do so. Expats immediately think of tourists who work. But there also is a large contingent of Costa Ricans carrying out activities that would be considered medical, dental and other that require advanced study and licensing. Regulation ordered for gifted education By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Sala IV constitutional court has ordered the executive branch to establish regulations to accommodate gifted students. The action was brought by the parent of a first-grade student in Chacarita, Puntarenas. Although Ley 8899 is on the books that should allow education officials to evaluate the potential of gifted students, there never has been a regulation published. The court said this should be done in two months. Veterans will meet in Guanacaste Special to A.M. Costa Rica
The Guanacaste Veterans Association will meet Saturday at 11 a.m. at Coconutz in Playas Del Coco. Nominations will be taken for officers and board of directors to be elected Jan. 17. Food and drinks will be available at discounted prices. Those who attend will be able to sign up for CPR training. |
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| From Page 7: New British law targets tax avoidance By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The British government says it will force multi-national companies such as Google to pay more in tax. Draft legislation Wednesday for the so-called Google Tax details a 25 percent tax on multinational corporations that tend to move profits generated in Britain to tax havens. Managing director of tax advisory firm Taxand UK, Jonathan Hornby, told The Wall Street Journal the new tax may violate existing tax treaties. Specifically, he mentioned treaties that aim to protect multinational corporations from being taxed on the same profits in more than one country. Only companies with revenues above $15.5 million would be subject to the proposed law. Political analysts say the new British tax is viewed primarily as a way to target massive U.S.-based companies such as Amazon, Google and Facebook. The U.S. ambassador to Britain, Mathew Barzun, said multinationals may be efficient managers of their tax liabilities but that they follow the law. |
