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Sneak thieves are targeting
supplies for quake victims By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The emergency commission is beefing up security around the food and clothing that have been donated to earthquake victims. At the same time individuals and families are infiltrating the shelters where the quake refugees live to take advantage of the free items being distributed. Some of these impostors are attempting to claim they were earthquake victims, perhaps in the hope that the commission will award them new homes. The commission said that it was requiring volunteers working with food and clothing to wear wristbands as a means of identification. And the security ministry has been asked to provide more police officers to keep watch over the shelters and the supply storage areas, said the commission. The problem is diminishing. The commission reported Monday that some 700 persons have returned to their homes after having been in shelters since the Jan. 8 earthquake north of San José and Heredia. The 19 active shelters now have 1,483 persons living there, the commission said. Meanwhile experts in construction and engineers and geologists are studying the homes of those who have been displaced to determine if there is structural damage. Such evaluations are taking place in Sarapiquí, Los Cartagos and several cantons of the province of Alajuela, said the commission. Those who returned to their homes this weekend received supplies and clothes from the commission to help them start their life anew. New clinics are in the works By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Contraloría General de la República has approved a trust that will use $180 million to construct some 42 neighborhood clinics for the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social. The trust will be managed by the Banco Nacional. The bank and the Caja officials are expected to announce the details today. The clinics are Equipos Básicos de Atención Integral en Salud or Ebais for short. Our reader's opinion
Language protectionismis not opening to the world Dear A.M. Costa Rica: A language that cannot submit to change might as well be dead. English — the second most spoken language in the world (Mandarin being the most spoken) — has more words than any other language, even though English speakers generally use only about 1 percent of their language. English survives, in part, because it is a language of the people, and every year, hundreds of new words are added to official English dictionaries. It keeps the language fresh and interesting. Many new words have foreign origins . . . ain’t that grand! You don’t see the English all shaky and worried about their language surviving. My thought is that if a language is alive and healthy, it doesn’t need government attempts to protect it. You can probably guess that I am anti-protectionist, and not just in language. As our world becomes smaller and we allow for new ideas, integration and global cooperation is the only answer for the good of the people and their economy. Isolation should never be the answer. The news story Monday refers to Quebec as an example, and what a poor example, that is. As a Canadian, I believe that the efforts of the late prime minister, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, have done more to isolate Quebec from English Canada because he rammed French down the throat of the English. The Costa Rican lawmaker obviously is not aware of the negative sentiment (mostly suppressed because of political correctness) that a great many Canadian English-speaking people have toward the French in Canada. Had everyone been allowed to embrace the French language on their own terms, it would have happened eventually, without a bitter outcome. In most of Canada, many minorities retain their languages and cultures in their homes and in their communities . . . and I think that’s wonderful and I applaud them. What would upset me is if they took the same position as the French and demanded their German, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Chinese etc. etc. all be declared official languages in Canada. And if the stores in their community want to add little sticky pieces of paper to their packaging to make it easier to understand the directions, I would hope they wouldn’t deface the English or French by obscuring their language preference. Is it Costa Rica spewing negative foreign sentiment? Is it trying to separate rather than cooperate? I hope not because I don’t believe you can ever raise yourself up by putting someone else down and forcing your will on others through legislation. Think opening your world, not shutting it out. Spanish will never be a universal language . . . get over it. Nor will French. Time for me to start learning Mandarin and move forward, not backward. I can’t wait to read the backlash. Before you write, here’s a little joke to consider: Q: “Why do little boys whine so much?” A: “To prepare them for when they become men.” So whine away anyone of another language who has a phobia for change or likes to propagate cultural hysteria. Mary Jay
Alajuela, Costa Rica
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| A.M. Costa Rica third newspage |
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Cuban airport inhabitant
awarded status as a refugee
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The security minister again awarded refugee status after the applicant had been turned down by immigration officials and the courts. The minister, Janina del Vecchio, decided Monday that José Angel Roque Pérez, could stay in the country. The man received notoriety by refusing to return to his native Cuba and peppering the legal establishment with appeals. Ms. del Vecchio's decision was announced by the Ministerio de Gobernación, Policía y Seguridad Pública. Roque arrived at Juan Santamaría airport Dec. 4 en route to Ecuador from Cuba. |
According to the ministry, Ms. del
Vecchio awarded refugee status
because the man had a well-founded fear of returning to Cuba. The
ministry noted that such a fear is subjective. The ministry said that Ms. del Vecchio looked into the case before making her decision. That was not the case with Chere Lyn Tomayko, the U.S. fugitive mom from Heredia who received refugee status in July shielding her from a U.S. indictment of parental child abduction. Ms. del Vecchio awarded the woman refugee status without even checking with officials in the woman's home state of Texas. Several other cases or runaway U.S. moms are likely to reach the minister's desk in the next few months. |
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Atmospheric discovery among
those accomplishments cited for awards
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Two science and technology prizes were among a litany of cultural awards announced Monday at the Ministerio de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes. Jorge A. Amador Astúa, a Universidad de Costa Rica professor, received the honors in science for his discovery of a hitherto unknown atmospheric current over the Caribbean. A man only identified as Primo Luis Chaverría Córdoba received the technology award for the development of a herbicide dispenser. Well-known pianist Jacques Sagot received two awards. |
One was for
bringing culture to the public. The second was as the best interpreter
of music. Two persons, including a 6-year-old boy received awards of civil merit. The boy, José Arias Madrigal, was instrumental in bringing help to his family after their vehicle ran off a road in Puriscal in June. The second person is Cristián Sanabria Jiménez, a Cruz Roja rescue worker in Cartago. His accomplishments were not described. In the Spanish literature field, Carlos Morales Castro received an award for his novel La rebelión de las avispas. There were a number of theater and dance awards. |
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Scientists decipher the love duet produced by dengue carriers
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By the Cornell University news services
That pesky buzz of a nearby mosquito is the sound of love, scientists have known for some time. But a new Cornell study reports that males and females flap their wings and change their tune to create a harmonic duet just before mating. Cornell entomologists have discovered that male and female mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti), which can spread such diseases as yellow and dengue fevers, "interact acoustically with each other when the two are within earshot -- a few centimeters of each other," said Ron Hoy, professor of neurobiology and behavior. The study is available online and will be published in a February issue of Science, said Laura Harrington . She is a Cornell associate professor of entomology and mosquito expert. "The frequency at which males and females converge is a harmonic or multiple of their wing-beat frequencies, which is approximately 400 hertz [vibrations per second] for the female and 600 hertz for the male," said Hoy. The mating duet, generated just before the couple mates on the fly, settles at around 1,200 hertz —roughly an octave and a half above concert A (the pitch to which instruments are tuned — the A that has a frequency of 440 hertz and is above middle C). "That is significantly higher than what was previously thought to be mosquitoes' upper hearing limit," he added. Interestingly, the mosquitoes adjust the harmonic resonance of their thoracic box to produce a harmonic frequency that converges at a frequency that is the female's third harmonic (three times her fundamental frequency) and the male's second harmonic (two times his fundamental frequency). |
The study also is the first to definitively show that contrary to previous thought, female mosquitoes are not deaf. To study mosquito mating calls, the researchers tethered mosquitoes and flew them past each other while recording the flight tones with a special microphone. Benjamin Arthur, a postdoctoral researcher in Hoy's laboratory, placed electrodes in the mosquitoes' auditory organ in their antennae during playback to measure physiological responses of the mosquitoes to the sounds of potential mates. The researchers hope that their work will provide new ways to better control of mosquito populations in places where yellow and dengue fevers are significant problems. "By studying these flight tone signals, we may be able to determine what kind of information males and females consider important when choosing a mate," said Lauren Cator, a Cornell graduate student who works with Harrington. "This will allow us to release sexy transgenic or sterilized males that will be able to successfully compete with wild populations." Dengue fever affects 50 million people annually, and two-thirds of the world's population is at risk. In recent years, it has reached epidemic levels in Asia, South and Central America and Mexico, where the number of dengue cases has increased by more than 300 percent from year to year. No dengue vaccine is available, and no treatment exists beyond supportive care. More than 10,000 persons contract the disease in Costa Rica each year. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and by a $19.7 million Foundation for the National Institutes of Health grant awarded to Harrington and a global team of scientists to cure dengue fever and control the mosquitoes that transmit the viruses that cause it. |
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cluster bombs or toxic gases By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The legislature approved six treaties on first reading Monday that, among other things, causes the country to promise not to use cluster bombs. The package of six treaties also covers toxic gases, explosives and war crimes. Being a nation without a military, Costa Rica is unlikely to run afoul of any of these pacts, but lawmakers said that it was incorrect to think that the nation should not support the measures. The treaties establish certain norms that make wars less violent, said Lesvia Villalobos of the Partido Acción Ciudadana. The legislature also approved an agreement strengthening the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission which has the job of tuna conservation and management in the eastern Pacific Ocean. All the measures require one more vote before going to President Óscar Arias Sánchez, whose administration put forth the measures in the first place. Invasion suspects given three months in jail By the A. M. Costa Rica staff
The four suspects detained near San Ramón Saturday were two Costa Ricans and two Dominicans. They have been remanded to jail for investigation for three months, according to the Poder Judicial. The suspects were further identified by their last names of Gómez Brenes and Sojo Carmona of Costa Rica and Hernández Guzmán and Pérez of the Dominican Republic. The Poder Judicial identified the victim by the last names of Peña Sánchez and his wife, identified as Castillo Duarte, who live in the Karen Olsen subdivision in Esparza. The Poder Judicial said that robbers Saturday took advantage of an open portón and an open wooden door to enter the home Saturday. There they found money that was to be used to pay the man's 45 employees, the Poder Judicial said. The amount was about 3.6 million colons or about $6,600, said the Poder Judicial. That amount was recovered from the vehicle in which the suspects were riding. The vehicle overturned during a police chase and the occupants took to the hills where the suspects were encountered by land and air searchers. |
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