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| A.M. Costa Rica's Second news page | |
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San
José, Costa Rica, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 248
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Long
holiday is planned
for government workers By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Most government offices will be closed at the end of business Friday for two weeks. They will reopen Monday, Jan. 6. The lengthy holiday comes because Christmas and New Year's Day are on Wednesdays. The judicial will be off the same period, but says that it will close Dec. 23, next Monday, to Jan. 3. Of course, the announcement does not count the fact that Dec. 21 and 22 make up a weekend and that the same is true from Jan. 4 and 5. Just because the offices are open this week does not mean that routine work will be accomplished. There are the obligatory office parties and the office parties of the agency across the street. Vital services will be maintained during the holiday break. Certain courts will be available for cases. Among these are the family courts which will issue temporary restrictions in the case of domestic violence. Most private businesses will not close until Dec. 23 or 24, and they will reopen Jan. 2. Private employers are not as generous as the government. Christmas
lottery rewards
a few with millions of colons By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country's voluntary tax on Innumeracy reached its climax Sunday when the baskets of the Junta de Protection Social emitted No. 67 of the series 615. This was the annual Christmas lottery, called the gordo because the payoff is bigger than normal. Four tickets will each earn the colon equivalent of $2.4 million. Each lottery ticket has 40 parts, and frequently neighbors or relatives chip in because a full lottery ticket cost 60,000 colons or about $120. There are more than 100 lesser prizes. The top prize represents just 20 percent of what the Junta collected from bettors. The Junta distributed some ¢5.5 billion colons or about $11 million to some 347 institutions and organizations. Plate law to be suspended over the holiday weeks By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Motorists will not have to worry about the final digit on their license plate over the holidays. The Policía de Tránsito will not be enforcing the plate law from Dec. 21 to Jan. 3. This is the rule that keeps 20 percent of the vehicles out of the central metro area each weekday. The police agency said that since the central government is on vacation and a lot of city residents are also, that the rule will not be enforced. Unlike most traffic laws, the police had been vigorous in enforcing this measure. Over the holidays, the traffic police shift their attention to the beaches where many Central Valley residents vacation. Serial rape
suspect held
after he shoots himself By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Agents have detained a 35-year-old man who has been evading arrest on the Caribbean coast. The man's flight ended when he accidentally shot himself in the left side with a homemade shotgun, said the Judicial Investigating Organization. The man is sought for at least five allegations of forcible rape. Agents said that the man constantly was changing where he lived to avoid arrest and most recently was headed into the mountains. The crimes of which he is accused took place in the province of Limón. He also faces an allegation of attempted rape and causing injury with a knife in Siquirres, agents said. After he shot himself, the Cruz Roja responded and took him to Hospital Tony Facio in Limón, where he is under police custody. Of the five cases, three involve adult women victims and two involve girls, one 12 and one 15, said agents. In some cases the women were confronted in an isolated area. Others were sexually assaulted when they were alone in their home, agents said. In the Siquirres case, the woman attempted to relieve her assailant of his knife and suffered a cut hand. The attacker fled. |
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| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
A.M. Costa Rica Third News Page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 248 | |
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| World Court decision simply is not
something to cheer about |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The country's officials have expressed their happiness with a decision Friday by the International Court of Justice. The court said that Nicaragua did not have much of a case to condemn Costa Rica for environmental damage along the south bank of the Rio San Juan. Newspapers were quick to tout the second court victory over Nicaragua. But each was just a temporary decision. An
analysis on the news
The court in November told Nicaragua to fill in ditches or channels that it dug when no one was supposed to set foot on the disputed section of the Isla Calero. The decision Friday basically had the court knocking down flak that Nicaragua has thrown up as part of the continuing court case. The real meaning of both cases bodes ill for compliance with a future decision. In both cases, Nicaragua was tweaking the nose of the World Court. The dredging crew opened channels at a time when no work was supposed to be done in the area. |
Then when the court told Nicaragua
to fill in the channels, the job was done grudgingly and badly. The claim that Costa Rica was pouring sediment into the river was a flimsy case at best, and, as the court noted Friday, even Nicaragua's expert estimated the sediment at no more than 3 percent of the total load in the river. What Nicaragua was doing was playing for time so that the river would punch through a new mouth making the San Juan more accessible for boat traffic. The initial 40 winding kilometers of the river are silted heavily. The best hope for Managua is a flooding San Juan making a new mouth at a river bend that is very close to the Caribbean. Never mind that this would take some of Costa Rica's land. President Laura Chinchilla and her administration have extraordinary respect for international law. The administration fully expects Nicaragua to comply with whatever the World Court says when it renders a final decision. Meanwhile, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is playing for wide access to the Caribbean and the possibility of millions in new development at the east end of the Río San Juan. Casa Presidential is trying to save some mangroves and some lagoons. Clearly, Ortega has the strongest motives. |
| Police say they had
a successful Festival de la Luz operation |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Festival de la Luz took place under tight security, but even 900 Fuerza Pública officers could not prevent all the lawlessness, particularly on side streets. Young toughs engaged in street fights, and witnesses said that groups of kids would beat on cars and that combatant gangs and Goth were sparring as usual in small groups. Marijuana smoke replaced the usual bus smog in the downtown, one said. |
Still, Saturday had fewer
confrontations than in previous years, pedestrians said. Police said
that they checked out 77 persons and detained 64. But only four are
going to court on charges. Two face allegations of robbery and two face
allegations of threats and resisting authority. Fuerza Pública officials said that there were no incidents involving firearms or drugs along the parade route this year. In addition to police on the ground, there were two helicopters flying over the holiday crowd. |
| Social Security still seeking responses
from about 300 here |
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By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
About 100 expats and other recipients of U.S. Social Security benefits here have contacted U.S. Embassy officials to prevent a halt in their payments. An embassy spokesman said Friday that there still are about 300 persons with Costa Rican addresses who have not responded to a Social Security Administration questionnaire. Without a response the government will stop payments. The system is in place for, among other reasons, to determine when a recipient dies. The spokesman said that the anti-fraud measure saved taxpayers about $20,000 a month in 2013. "Of the 428 who didn’t respond to the questionnaire last year, |
we ultimately heard from 403,"
said the spokesman. "So the SSA was able to stop payments in 25
cases, saving over 200,000 dollars this year." This year, the Social Security Administration sent questionnaires to recipients whose social security number ended in 50 to 99, as well as beneficiaries who have representative payees, that is persons receiving benefits on behalf of a minor or disabled person, said the embassy. These selected beneficiaries received the form with an envelope to the Social Security facility in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. In October, the agency mailed a follow-up notice to those who did not respond to the original questionnaire sent in July. "If you received the questionnaire, please return it to the address on the envelope SSA provided – or bring it to the US Embassy for mailing to the U.S.," said the embassy. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 248 | |||||
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| Research says coral changes blamed on global warming began
150 years ago |
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By
the University of California, Santa Cruz, news staff
Long-lived deep-sea corals preserve evidence of a major shift in the open Pacific Ocean ecosystem since around 1850, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The findings, published Thursday in Nature, indicate that changes at the base of the marine food web observed in recent decades in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre may have begun more than 150 years ago at the end of the Little Ice Age. Deep-sea corals are colonial organisms that can live for thousands of years, feeding on organic matter that rains down from the upper levels of the ocean. The corals' branching, tree-like skeletons are composed of a hard protein material that incorporates chemical signatures from their food sources. As a result, changes in the composition of the growth layers in deep-sea corals reflect changes in the organisms that lived in the surface waters at the time each layer formed. "They're like living sediment traps, recording long-term changes in the open ocean that we can't see any other way," said coauthor Matthew McCarthy, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Scientists can study sediment cores taken from the ocean floor for clues to past conditions in the oceans, but that approach is not very useful for the most recent millennia. In the open ocean of the North Pacific, sediment accumulates so slowly that the entire Holocene epoch (the past 12,000 years or so) is represented by less than 10 centimeters (4 inches) of sediment that has been stirred up by organisms living on the sea floor. "Even if there were good sediment records, we would never get the level of detail we can get from the corals," McCarthy said. To analyze the coral skeletons, the researchers combined carbon dating with a novel technique for analyzing nitrogen isotopes in proteins. They were able to reconstruct records over the past 1,000 years indicating that a shift occurred around 1850 in the source of nitrogen feeding the surface waters of the open ocean. As a result of decreasing nitrogen inputs from subsurface water, the phytoplankton community at the base of the food web became increasingly dominated by nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, which are able to use the nitrogen gas absorbed by surface waters from the atmosphere. "In the marine environment, the two major sources of nitrogen are dissolved nitrate, which is more concentrated in the subsurface and deep |
 University
of California, Santa Cruz /Hawaiian Undersea Research Lab
Pisces V submersible takes a
sample of a deep sea coral. The submersible is operated by the Hawaiian
Undersea Research Labwater and is brought to the surface by upwelling, and nitrogen fixation by specialized microorganisms that are like the legumes of the sea," explained first author Owen Sherwood, who worked on the study as a postdoctoral researcher at the university and is now at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The shift revealed in the coral record from an ecosystem supported by nitrate coming up from deeper waters to one supported more by nitrogen-fixing organisms may be a result of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre expanding and becoming warmer, with more stable layering of warm surface water over cooler subsurface water. This increased stratification limits the amount of nutrients delivered to the surface in nutrient-rich subsurface water. Scientists have observed warming and expansion of the major mid-ocean subtropical gyres in the past few decades and have attributed this trend to global warming. The new study puts these observations in the context of a longer-term trend. "It seems that the change in nitrogen sources, and therefore possibly large-scale shifts in ocean conditions, switched on at the end of the Little Ice Age and it is still continuing today," McCarthy said. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 248 | |||||
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 San Francisco State University/Alessandro
Catenazzi
A female Bryophryne cophites,
one of the frog species used in the study, attending her eggs. The
species lives at the very top of the Andes mountains, elevations from
3,200 to 3,800 meters.Fungus not
global warming
blamed for frog epidemic By
the San Francisco State University news service
A deadly fungus and not climate change as is widely believed is the primary culprit behind the rapid decline of frog populations in the Andes mountains, according to a new study published in the journal Conservation Biology. Frogs living at higher elevations can tolerate increasing temperatures, researchers found, but their habitats fall within the optimal temperature range for Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, a harmful pathogen they have only encountered relatively recently. The disease, caused by the fungus which has a common name of chytridiomycosis, has led to the recent decline or extinction of 200 frog species worldwide. The results have implications both for researchers trying to understand the rapid decline in frog populations across the globe and for conservationists looking to save the animals, said Vance Vredenburg, associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University and co-author of the study. "Our research shows that we can't just automatically point our finger at climate change," he said. "We need to look carefully at what is causing these outbreaks." The research was conducted at Wayqecha Biological Station on the eastern slopes of the Andes, located near Manu National Park in southern Perú. To measure frogs' tolerance to the changing climate, researchers placed them in water baths of varying temperatures, then flipped them on their backs. If a frog quickly flipped itself back over, that meant it was able to tolerate the warmer water. If not, researchers knew the frog had become overwhelmed and unable to deal with the change. Researchers also measured the temperatures at which conditions are optimal for the growth and spread of chytridiomycosis and found that the highland frogs' habitats lay right within that range. "This really suggests that the fungus is driving a lot of the declines in this place," said Alessandro Catenazzi, assistant professor of zoology at Southern Illinois University and the lead author of the study. Climate change, however, isn't let completely off the hook. Although chytridiomycosis poses less of a threat to frogs in the lowlands, this study suggests that species at lower elevations are more susceptible to climate changes, putting them at risk if they are unable to adapt or move to higher altitudes. "It's terrible news," Vredenburg said. "The frogs at the top of the mountain are in trouble because they are experiencing a novel pathogen. The guys at the lower elevations are not in trouble from the fungus, but they're really susceptible to changes in climate." Vredenburg said chytridiomycosis was likely introduced into this area of the Andes by human activity, and the results of the study indicate research and conservation efforts should focus on understanding and stopping the spread of the disease. Methods of doing so could include stopping the transport of live amphibians across borders, he said. But understanding the disease also has important implications for human health. "This pathogen is like no other in the history of the world. Bd outbreaks make bubonic plague look like a slight cough," he said. "We need to understand the basic biology that's driving this terrible pathogen because it's the same biology that drives diseases that affect humans." Vredenburg has studied the impact of Bd for more than a decade. His research has tracked the spread of the disease through the Sierra Nevada and beyond and shown that some species of frogs are relatively immune to its effects while others are highly susceptible. Future research will focus on those species to learn how they are able to escape Bd's harmful effects and see how that knowledge can be used to save other amphibians. "Thermal Phsyiology, Disease and Amphibian Declines on the Eastern Slopes of the Andes" was published online in Conservation Biology on Dec. 13. Vredenburg co-authored the study with Catenazzi and Illinois Wesleyan University Assistant Professor of Biology Edgar Lehr. The research was funded by the Amazon Conservation Association, the Rufford Small Grants Foundation and a grant from the National Science Foundation. Vance T. Vredenburg is an associate professor of biology at San Francisco State University. He is also a Research Associate at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley and California Academy of Sciences. Vredenburg is the co-founder of AmphibiaWeb.org, an online bioinformatics project promoting science and conservation of the world's amphibians. French law on face veils now faces two challenges By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Two years after becoming law in France, a ban on face-covering Muslim veils is challenged by a pair of high-profile legal cases. The decisions in French and European courts may force Paris to roll back the legislation and have ramifications elsewhere in Europe. In 2011, France became the first European country to ban face-covering Muslim veils in public places. The legislation was generally to include items like ski masks as well as veils, but many felt it singled out France's five-million-strong Muslim community, the largest in Europe. The debate also spread across the region. Belgium followed France in adopting the ban. In September, so did a canton in southern Switzerland. France argues the ban is needed for security reasons and to protect its secular traditions. But today, France's ban faces legal challenges, one at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and another at a trial that opened last week in the Paris suburb of Versailles. The plaintiff, a 20-year-old convert to Islam called Cassandra Belin, did not appear at the opening of the Versaille trial. But her lawyer, Philippe Bataille, questions the constitutionality of the ban, which was passed under the previous conservative government. At the time, France's Constitutional Council, the highest legal body, had no objections to the legislation. But Bataille argues it should reexamine the ban, looking specifically at whether it violates personal freedoms and human dignity enshrined by French and European laws. Bataille says the legislation is only acceptable in narrow circumstances like airport checks when a covered face could pose a security risk. For some Muslims like M'Hammed Henniche, general secretary of the Union of Muslim Associations of the Seine-Saint-Denis region outside Paris, the legislation makes no sense. Henniche notes only a small minority of Muslim women in France wear the face veil. It's unlikely to change their habits, but it has succeeded in riling the larger Muslim community and giving France a bad name. Henniche also lists a series of other debates in recent years against minarets in mosques, street prayers on Fridays, halal meat and whether foreigners should vote. All have cemented a belief among French Muslims that they are being singled out. French authorities estimate only a few hundred women have been stopped or fined for wearing veils since the ban came into effect. Many are repeat offenders. But the ban continues to spark deep divisions. In November, the European rights court in Strasbourg agreed to examine it. Nicolas Cadene, of the government's Observatory on Secularism, says if the European Court decides the law goes against Europe's human rights convention, France may need to draft new legislation. Verdicts for both the French and European court challenges will be delivered next year. And like the veil ban, they are likely to resonate far beyond France's borders. Oxford given major collection of Chinese paintings and art By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Chinese paintings and art considered to form one of the best collections outside China have been bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford University by an art historian, the museum announced on Friday. The Canadian-born historian and collector Michael Sullivan, who died in October at the age of 96, had amassed the collection with his late Chinese wife, Khoan, and many of the artists were the couple's close friends, the statement said. The collection includes works by Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian and Fu Baoshi, with more recent acquisitions including "Landscript" by Xu Bing, the museum said. “Michael Sullivan was a longstanding friend and supporter of the Ashmolean,” Christopher Brown, director of the Ashmolean, said, describing the collection as outstanding. “Scholars from around the world will have the opportunity to use the works in their study, teaching, and research. We hope this is a fitting testament to a great art historian and collector.” Sullivan, whose family moved to Britain from Toronto when he was 3 years old, was a pacifist who first visited China in 1940 after he'd heard the Quakers were recruiting a team to drive trucks for the International Committee of the Red Cross. He developed a lifelong fascination with China, southeast Asia and the Pacific region and in 1959 published “Chinese Art in the Twentieth Century,” the first of several works on China and Chinese art. He was appointed lecturer in Asian art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in 1960, and was professor of Asian art at Stanford University in California from 1966 to 1984. He combined academic work with his passion for bringing eastern art to a wider audience, producing articles for BBC publications and broadcasting on the radio. Air crews seek clarification on abusive passenger behavior By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Fighting soccer fans, fashion models screaming obscenities and a French film star relieving himself in the gangway are just a few well publicized examples of what airlines say is a growing trend of abusive passenger behavior on planes. Briefing journalists this week, the International Air Transport Association said it aims to use a conference in Montreal next March to seek agreement on the rights of crews and captains to do whatever is necessary to subdue offenders. “Unruly passenger behavior...is on the increase,” Tim Colehan of the Geneva-based grouping told reporters. “ It is a problem which our crews and other travelers face every day.” He cited as typical a woman passenger who fought cabin crew after throwing liquor at them, and then shouted abuse at stewards and fellow passengers throughout an overnight flight from Europe to Thailand. Since 2007, when it began recording data, well over 15,000 incidents have been reported to the Air Transport Association, Colehan said. “But there are almost certainly many more which we never hear about.” The problem for the airlines and the crews, said Colehan, is that international law has not caught up with the new world of global air travel. Often offenders, like the violent woman passenger on the Bangkok flight, go scot free because police in countries where planes land say they have no jurisdiction. Worse, the Air Transport Association says, the lack of clarity in the current 1963 Tokyo Convention that governs such cases leaves cabin crew and pilots uncertain on how to respond. “There is always the fear that they could be sued for assault if they restrain a violent passenger,” Colehan said. Other incidents in the skies this year include a violent attack on a stewardess in China, an American viewing pornography on his computer, and a South African couple having First Class sex, according to credible media reports. A Russian woman on a flight from Los Angeles to London drank liquid soap when refused alcohol, and tried to bite a steward. On another plane a man seized wine from a trolley and locked himself in the toilet to drink it. Several years ago, the Air Transport Association told its 240-odd members, which include almost all the world's scheduled carriers, that they should back their crews and try to ensure that badly behaved passengers are taken to court. But the absence of well-defined legislation means that this often leads nowhere. The Tokyo convention was originally drawn up to deal with hijacks. The Air Transport Association wants governments to agree at the March conference, convened by the International Civil Aviation Organization, on a new convention that will spell out the right of an airliner's captain to do what he feels necessary to control misbehaving passengers. But the airlines are not sure of the outcome. “We are confident there will be a new convention, but - with so many governments having to agree - we have to wait to see how it turns out,” Colehan said. Iranian foreign minister denies info on ex-FBI agent By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
There are no traces in Iran of the former FBI agent who disappeared there six years ago, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on CBS's Face The Nation on Sunday. Robert Levinson, who became a private detective after retiring from the FBI in 1998, disappeared during a trip to an Iranian island in 2007. The White House says he was not a government employee at the time. The fate of Levinson is unclear, and Zarif told CBS the Iranian government has no idea about his whereabouts. “What we know is that he is not incarcerated in Iran,” Zarif said, adding, “If he is, he's not incarcerated by the government, and I believe the government runs the, pretty much, good control of the country.” The Associated Press and The Washington Post on Thursday reported that Levinson was not a private citizen on a business trip to Iran, as the U.S. government has said, but was working for a rogue CIA operation when he disappeared. Levinson's lawyer, David McGee, said Friday that Levinson was investigating allegations of corruption by well-connected people in Iran. The FBI has offered a $1 million reward for information about Levinson, but his family believes the U.S. government has not acted to its full capacities in trying to free him, McGee said. Asked whether Iran would return Levinson to the United States, Zarif said: “If we can trace him and find him, we will certainly discuss this. ... Everything's possible, but I'm saying that we have no traces of him in Iran.” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States has not abandoned Levinson and that he personally has raised the issue, according to an interview with ABC's This Week aired on Sunday. Japanese diplomat stabbed in attack in Yemen's capital By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
A security official in Yemen says attackers repeatedly stabbed a Japanese diplomat in the capital of Sanaa in an apparent failed kidnapping attempt. The official said that the kidnappers attacked the diplomat on Sunday not far from the Japanese Embassy and stabbed him when he resisted them. The official did not provide the diplomat's name but said he is in a hospital and is expected to recover. Kidnappings are common in Yemen, where armed tribesmen and Islamic militants take hostages to trade them for prisoners or cash. U.N. expresses its concern over growing electronic waste By the A.M. Costa Rica wire
services
The United Nations predicts that the amount of electronic waste disposed of annually worldwide will surge 33 percent by 2017. The U.N.'s "Solving the E-Waste Problem" initiative issued a report Sunday saying that the weight of electronic goods discarded every year worldwide would rise to 65.4 million metric tons by 2017, with most of the growth coming from developing nations. The alliance of U.N. organizations, grassroots groups and industry said China had the highest volume of electrical goods put on the market last year, with the U.S. ranking second. Taken together developing and emerging countries already produce as much e-waste as the developed world. E-waste, defined as anything with a battery or electrical cord, often contains materials that are toxic to humans and the environment. The study called for better monitoring of e-waste exports, saying a lack of consistent reporting makes it difficult to formulate effective rules of the treatment of electrical junk. Latin economies expected to grow 3.2 percent in 2014 Special
to A.M. Newspapers
The economies of Latin America and the Caribbean will expand by 3.2 percent in 2014, which is higher than the 2.6 percent from the end of 2013, according to a new report presented in Santiago, Chile. In its annual report "Preliminary Overview of the Economies of Latin America and the Caribbean 2013," the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean points out that less buoyant external demand, greater international financial volatility and falling consumption were the factors determining the more modest economic performance of countries in 2013. These factors brought down the 3.0 percent estimate put forward by the Commission in July. The report said that next year is expected to see a moderately more favorable external environment help boost external demand, and in turn the region's exports. Private consumption will also continue to grow, although more slowly than in previous periods. In the meantime, increasing investment in the region remains a challenge, it said. "The world economic situation in 2014 provides opportunities and threats for Latin America and the Caribbean," said Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the commission, as she presented the report. According to Ms. Bárcena "Opportunities include increased international trade and the possibility of harnessing currency depreciations to ensure sustained changes in relative prices. This along with industrial policies to support growth, boost regional integration and help small and medium-sized enterprises could help to increase investment in diversifying production in tradable goods and to reduce the region's structural heterogeneity". The threats facing the region include ongoing volatility in the global economy and higher external financing costs, as well as a smaller contribution by consumption to GDP growth and a worsening regional current account. According to the report, regional growth in 2014 will be led by Panama (with 7 percent), followed by Bolivia (5.5 percent), Peru (5.5 percent), Nicaragua (5 percent), Dominican Republic (5 percent), and Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador and Paraguay (all four with 4.5 percent). Growth is predicted to be 2.6 percent in Argentina and Brazil, 4 percent in Chile and Costa Rica, 3.5 percent in Guatemala, Mexico and Uruguay, and 1 percent in Venezuela. Next year, the Caribbean will experience a recovery and post a figure of 2.1 percent (following just 1.3 percent growth in 2013), the report estimated. The report said that the main challenge facing Latin American and Caribbean governments is to drive through social covenants for investment to boost productivity and growth with equality. These social covenants must have an institutional framework that provides certainty and clear rules, short-term policies to provide nominal and real stability and long-term policies that encourage more diverse investment in tradable goods sectors. In 2013 consumption made a smaller contribution to regional growth owing to a slowdown in the wage bill and credit, the report said. The slightly higher contribution by investment and the smaller negative impact of net exports failed to offset reduced consumer buoyancy, it added. This year, regional growth was led by Paraguay (13 percent), followed by Panama (7.5 percent), Bolivia (6.4 percent), Peru (5.2 percent), Nicaragua (4.6 percent), Uruguay (4.5 percent), Argentina (4.5 percent) and Chile (4.2 percent). In terms of the labor market, the unemployment rate remained more or less stable, going from 6.4 percent in 2012 to 6.3 percent in 2013. This dip was caused by a lower overall labor participation rate. Inflation remained below 5 percent in most of the region's countries, said the report. |
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| Some of our other titles: |
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| A.M. Panama |
A.M. Colombia |
A.M. Guatemala |
A.M. Honduras |
A.M. Cuba |
A.M. Nicaragua |
| A.M. Venezuela |
A.M. Central America |
A.M. Dominican Republic |
A.M. Ecuador | A.M. San Salvador |
A.M. Bolivia |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
| The contents of this page and this Web site are copyrighted by Consultantes Río Colorado S.A. 2013 and may not be reproduced anywhere without permission. Abstracts and fair use are permitted. Check HERE for details | ||||||
| A.M. Costa
Rica's sixth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Dec. 16, 2013, Vol. 13, No. 248 | |||||||||
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Michelle Bachelet
easily wins a second term in Chile By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Chileans have handed the moderate socialist and former president Michelle Bachelet a new four-year term with a landslide victory in a runoff election. Center-right opponent Evelyn Matthei conceded defeat after Sunday's results showed Ms. Bachelet received an unbeatable 62 percent of the vote. Ms. Matthei had 38 percent. In the first round of voting last month, Ms. Bachelet, a 62-year-old pediatrician, won nearly twice as many votes as Ms. Matthei, a 60-year-old economist and former labor minister. But Ms. Bachelet fell just short of the 50 percent needed to win outright, pushing the vote into a runoff. Ms. Bachelet has promised to raise corporate taxes to pay for wide-ranging education reform, shred the dictatorship-era constitution and legalize abortion under certain circumstances. She will take over in March from outgoing conservative President Sebastian Pinera. Actor Peter O'Toole dies in a London hospital at 81 By
the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Actor Peter O'Toole, 81, who shot to instant stardom as "Lawrence of Arabia" and was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, has died. O'Toole's agent said the actor died Saturday at a London hospital following a long illness. O'Toole, son of an Irish bookmaker, got his first Oscar nomination for David Lean's 1962 epic "Lawrence of Arabia," his last for "Venus" in 2006. With that he set the record for most nominations without ever winning, though he had accepted an honorary Oscar in 2003. One of his Oscar nominations was for the film "Beckett" with fellow British star Richard Burton, who was also nominated. Both men confessed to having been drunk throughout the filming. |
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| From Page 7: Tests planned for fuel system in Liberia By
the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The national petroleum refinery is beginning a series of tests of its new distribution facility at Daniel Oduber airport in Liberia. The Refinadora Costarricense de Petróleo said that this is the final stage in construction of the $17 million project. The facility will supply jet fuel and aviation gasoline. A consortium, EDICA-Hatch Mott Mc Donald Cape Safe Fuelley S.R.L, built the facility. The refinery said that the job also includes training of those who will use the facility as well as delivery of full documentation. |
