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San
José, Costa Rica, Friday, July 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 140
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Gas emergency puts
focus on safety
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A gas explosion in Alajuela is putting the focus back on the quality of the cylinders in which the fuel for cooking is sold. Six persons of the 15 present suffered injuries when gas that had leaked from a tank ignited. That was about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday, Fire investigators credited cooks they did not name for keeping a cool head and turning off stoves when they detected gas fumes. The cooks also alerted diners and urged them to flee, said the Cuerpo de Bomberos. The Fortuna de Oro restaurant in Villa Bonita was wrecked. Concrete beams were jolted loose and even bedrooms above the ground floor restaurant were damaged heavily. The injured were in stable condition, fire fighters said. The Bomberos also reported that on average fire fighters answer 15 calls a day involving gas leaks. In the case of the Chinese restaurant, the problem was traced to a valve on one of three 100-pound petroleum gas cylinders, said firefighters. The Autoridad Reguladora de Servicios Públicos quickly checked in with troubling details. It said that a survey of 25,000 gas containers prevented the marketing of 1,500 that had leaks. At the close of 2014, the agency said that 63 percent of the cylinders evaluated had some defect. Among these were lack of the name of the company that provided them or any indication of the age of the cylinder, said the agency. Some 615,357 homes use gas for cooking, and that represents 44.3 percent of the nation's homes, the agency said. The Autoridad urged consumers to inspect and reject any cylinders that are faulty. Soccer
federation's Webb extradited
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Former soccer federation vice president Jeffrey Webb has been extradited from Switzerland to the United States to face racketeering and bribery charges. Webb, who is from the Cayman Islands, was president of the soccer's governing body for North and Central America and the Caribbean, and a Fédération Internationale de Football Association vice president at the time of his arrest. A U.S. indictment issued in May charges nine federation officials and five corporate executives with offenses that include racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering. Among them was former vice president Jack Warner, who is resisting extradition from Trinidad and Tobago. Eduardo Li, head of the Costa Rican federation, remains jailed in Switzerland fighting extradition. Webb was one of seven people, all from South America or Webb's countries, arrested in a dawn raid on a Zurich hotel in May. The men are accused by U.S. authorities of involvement in more than $150 million worth of bribes given for marketing deals for football tournaments in North and South America. A separate Swiss investigation has been looking into allegations of mismanagement and money laundering connected to the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. Swiss prosecutors are investigating 53 possible money-laundering incidents involving the bidding process for the two World Cups. The international federation has suspended the bidding process for the 2026 World Cup because of the controversy. The host of the 2026 world football championship was set to be chosen by federation members during a 2017 meeting in Malaysia. It is not clear when the decision now will be made. A week ago, the federation expelled former executive committee member Chuck Blazer, who admitted accepting massive bribes and became an informant in a U.S. government investigation that has shaken the world football body. The federation's ethics committee said Blazer "committed many and various acts of misconduct continuously and repeatedly" while serving in senior positions at the Fédération Internationale de Football Association and the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football. The 70-year-old, well-known for his opulent lifestyle and larger-than-life personality, is now wheelchair-bound and seriously ill from cancer in a New York hospital. He was an ally of federation President Sepp Blatter, who has agreed to step down in the wake of the scandal. Bilinguals found to have more grey matter By the Georgetown University Medical Center
news staff
A new study published in the journal Cerebral Cortex suggests people who speak two languages have more gray matter in the brain. In past decades, much has changed about the understanding of bilingualism. Early on, bilingualism was thought to be a disadvantage because the presence of two vocabularies would lead to delayed language development in children. However, it has since been demonstrated that bilingual individuals perform better, compared with monolinguals, on tasks that require attention, inhibition and short-term memory, collectively termed executive control. This bilingual advantage is believed to come about because of bilinguals’ long-term use and management of two spoken languages. But skepticism still remains about whether these advantages are present, as they are not observed in all studies. Even if the advantage is robust, the mechanism is still being debated. “Inconsistencies in the reports about the bilingual advantage stem primarily from the variety of tasks that are used in attempts to elicit the advantage,” says senior author Guinevere Eden, director for the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University Medical Center. “Given this concern, we took a different approach and instead compared gray matter volume between adult bilinguals and monolinguals," she said. "We reasoned that the experience with two languages and the increased need for cognitive control to use them appropriately would result in brain changes in Spanish-English bilinguals when compared with English-speaking monolinguals. And in fact greater gray matter for bilinguals was observed in frontal and parietal brain regions that are involved in executive control.” Gray matter of the brain has been shown to differ in volume as a function of people’s experiences. A prominent finding of this type was a report that London taxi drivers have more gray matter in brain areas involved in spatial navigation. What about being bilingual leads to these advantages? To address this question the team went one step further. “Our aim was to address whether the constant management of two spoken languages leads to cognitive advantages and the larger gray matter we observed in Spanish-English bilinguals, or whether other aspects of being bilingual, such as the large vocabulary associated with having two languages, could account for this,” explains Olumide Olulade, the study’s lead author and post-doctoral fellow. The researchers compared gray matter in bilinguals of American Sign Language and spoken English with monolingual users of English. Both ASL-English and Spanish-English bilinguals share qualities associated with bilingualism, such as vocabulary size. But unlike bilinguals of two spoken languages, ASL-English bilinguals can sign and speak simultaneously, allowing the researchers to test whether the need to inhibit the other language might explain the bilingual advantage. “Unlike the findings for the Spanish-English bilinguals, we found no evidence for greater gray matter in the ASL-English bilinguals,” Olulade said. “Thus we conclude that the management of two spoken languages in the same modality, rather than simply a larger vocabulary, leads to the differences we observed in the Spanish-English bilinguals.” The research team says their findings adds to the growing understanding of how long-term experience with a particular skill — in this case management of two languages — changes the brain. Strong waves predicted for Pacific coast By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Oceanographers at the Universidad de Costa Rica said that storms in the south Pacific are sending heavy seas to Costa Rica. The heavy waves will create more strong rip tides that are a danger to bathers, said the Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología at the university. The waves are expected to begin to arrive today all over the Pacific coast. More are predicted for next week, said the Centro.
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, July 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 140 |
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A crew of the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas begins to salvage the unregistered craft that was carrying eight person when it overturned Wednesday evening. Eventually they lashed it to the hull of the patrol boat to bring it to shore for investigators. |
Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas photo
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Two women and four children survive night clinging to
overturned boat |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Two women and four children spent Wednesday night and Thursday morning clinging to an overturned boat some three miles off Quepos. They were the survivors of a mishap that took the lives of two men. The crew of the tour boat Tom Cat II spotted the survivors and the craft shortly before 10 a.m., said the Ministerio de Seguridad Pública. The boat crew alerted authorities as they rescued the survivors. The boat was a six-meter (nearly 20 feet) panga, an open boat that had not been registered and did not have a name, said the Servicio Nacional de Guardacostas. The boat overturned about 5 p.m. Wednesday, said officials. |
The survivors
went to the Hospital de Quepos with hypohermia and
sunburn. A coast guard crew quickly located the body of one man, later
identified by the last name of Madrigal by the Judicial
Investigating
Organization. He was about 45 years old, agents said. Boat crews and members of the Servicio de Vigilancia Aérea spent the rest of the day trying to locate the second man. They found his body about 4:45 p.m. He was identified by the last name of Requenes. Judicial investigator still are trying to piece together what happened. The trip seems to have been sightseeing. Charges are unlikely because officials said that Requenes appears to have been the man in charge of the boat. |
U.S. files fraud charges against stock brokerages and
individuals here |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Costa Rican stock brokerage companies and individual listed as living here with fraud, manipulative trading, touting, and with registration violations. The criminal allegations say that the companies and individual engaged in a pump-and-dump operations to boost the price of stock shares with the purpose of selling them. It said they made many millions of dollars. The complaint alleges that Costa Rica-based Moneyline Brokers and its founder Harold Bailey “B.J.” Gallison II unlawfully operated as a broker-dealer for U.S.-based customers who engaged in pump-and-dump schemes to artificially inflate a stock’s price and then sell their own shares, said the federal agency. According to the complaint, Moneyline and certain of its employees routinely accepted transfers of stocks from the U.S. customers and had stock certificates reissued in Moneyline’s name to conceal the true owners of the shares, the agency said. In addition to Moneyline, the complaint alleges that two Costa Rica-based firms, Sandias Azucaradas CR, S.A. and Vanilla Sky, S.A., and three Nevada-based firms, Bastille Advisors, Inc., Club Consultants, Inc., and Jurojin, Inc., operated as unregistered broker-dealers. Employees of the firms who were charged are: Roger G. Coleman, Sr., of Las Vegas, Ann M. Hiskey of Costa Rica, Robin M. Rushing and David K. Rushing, both of Costa Rica and Spokane, Wash., and Michael J. Randles, of Costa Rica, said the agency. The case involves the sale of what are known as microcap stocks, which sometimes are referred to as penny stocks. The Security and Exchange Commission said that the over-the-counter market for securities, often referred to the microcap market, is designed for and comprised of companies with small amounts of assets and low stock prices. More than 10,000 companies have shares that trade on the over-the-counter market, including what is known as the pink sheet. While companies that trade their stocks on major |
exchanges
undergo a formal application process and must meet minimum
listing standards, companies quoted on
over-the-counter markets do not have to apply for listing or meet any
minimum financial standards, the agency noted. In all, 14 individuals and 19 entities were charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Some of the individuals appear to have had prior involving with the agency's enforcement division. Carl H. Kruse Sr. and Carl H. Kruse Jr., both of Miami, conspired with Moneyline and others to manipulate trading in Warrior Girl, a former shell company that the Kruses controlled, said the allegation. Warrior Girl’s purported business changed from hydroelectric power in 2008 to extracting oil from tar sands in 2009 to online education in 2010, and the Kruses engaged in multiple manipulations to profit from promotions to inflate the stock’s price, said the agency. As a result of the various campaigns the Kruses are alleged to have obtained illegal profits estimated to total $2.3 million, the agency said. Another scheme involved trading in Everock, Inc., a Canada-based mining company that relocated to Nevada and sold sandwich spreads after reorganizing itself with Nature’s Peak in 2008, said the Security and Exchange Commission. A concerted campaign promoting the mining-turned condiment company included videos and Facebook postings and produced more than $2.5 million in profits for defendants, the agency said. The case is in the federal district court in Manhattan, New York. The activities of the Costa Rican companies were well known to some who follow the microcap market. There were reports about Moneyline Brokers going back to 2009 and listing the prior activities of the principals. The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking to bar the individuals from working in stock sales and also to require them to surrender money. Usually in cases like this the U.S. Justice Department steps in and files additional charges. |
You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE! |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, July 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 140 |
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New study seeks to understand how mosquitoes seek a victim |
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By the University of Washington news staff
The itchy marks left by the punctured bite of a mosquito are more than pesky, unwelcomed mementos of a day at the beach. These aggravating bites can also be conduits for hitchhiking pathogens to worm their way into bodies. Mosquitoes spread malaria, dengue, yellow fever and West Nile virus, among others. As the bloodsucking insects evolve to resist the best pesticides, mosquito control may shift more to understanding how the mosquitoes find a tasty — and unsuspecting — human host. A team of biologists from the University of Washington and the California Institute of Technology has cracked the cues mosquitoes use to find a victim. As they report in a paper published in Current Biology, the minute insects employ a razor-sharp sense of smell to tip them off that a warm-blooded meal is nearby, and then use vision and other senses to hone in on the feast. “Very little was known about what a host looks like to the mosquito and how a mosquito decides where to land and begin to feed,” said university biologist Jeff Riffell, co-author on the paper and one of three professors collaborating on these efforts. Experiments by other scientists implied that the mosquito sense of smell might activate other senses in the quest for a host. But Riffell and his colleagues wanted to understand what those triggers are and which sensory pathways are most critical for finding a meal. They used wind tunnels to observe mosquitoes, placing them in an enclosed environment where they could record and track their behavior. “What’s great about this wind tunnel is that it provided a nice control of wind conditions and the environment these mosquitoes are flying around in,” said Riffell. “We can really test different cues and the mosquito’s response to them.” The wind tunnels were mostly featureless, with the exception of a small dark dot on the floor. To test the role scent played in mosquito behavior, the researchers released a plume of carbon dioxide — the gas that is exhaled with each breath — into the wind tunnel and observed how mosquito behavior changed. It turned out that carbon dioxide triggered a strong response in the mosquitoes. “When we gave them the odor stimulus, all of the sudden they were attracted to this black dot,” said Riffell. “It’s |
Centers for Disease Control photo
An Aedes aegypti mosquitoalmost like the carbon dioxide gas turned on the visual stimulus for the mosquitoes to go to this black dot.” Riffell believes the mosquitoes went to the black dot — a high-contrast spot in an otherwise featureless environment — thinking that a warm-blooded host was nearby. These results might mean that mosquitoes control their sensory systems. They may not seek a host until they smell one — in this case, due to the scent of exhaled breath. If this theory is correct, the scents picked up by the mosquito’s nose may determine whether or not it engages other sensory sensory systems in the search, especially vision. Adding heat or water vapor to the black dot increased the mosquitoes’ affinity for the dot after carbon dioxide was released into the wind tunnel. Riffell and his colleagues plan to study how other scents might affect mosquito behavior. “Carbon dioxide is the best signal for a warm-blooded animal, and they can sense that from up to 30 feet away — quite a distance,” said Riffell. “And then they start using vision and other body odors to discriminate whether we’re a dog or a deer or a cow or a human. That may be how they discriminate among potential blood hosts.” If so, the experiments Riffell and his collaborators are doing now may prove this theory. They are recording how the nerve cells in specific regions of the mosquito brain respond to other odors, which may indicate which scents are most important for attracting mosquitoes to feed. They may also identify odors that repel mosquitoes rather than attract them |
Here's reasonable medical care
Costa Rica's world class medical specialists are at your command. Get the top care for much less than U.S. prices. It is really a great way to spend a vacation. See our list of recommended professionals HERE!amcr-prom
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez
. . . in a booking photo after traffic stop Home-grown
jihadi murders
Marines in Tennessee drive-by By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Four U.S. Marines were killed and two other servicemen were wounded Thursday in shootings at two military facilities in the southern city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. The gunman who opened fire at the two facilities was also killed. Law enforcement identified the killer as Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, 24, of Hixson, Tennessee, just across the Tennessee River from Chattanooga. Authorities say he opened fire in a drive-by shooting at a military recruiting center at a shopping mall in Chattanooga where five branches of the military all have adjoining offices. The U.S. Defense Department said 25 to 30 shots were fired and one Marine Corps recruiter suffered a leg wound. He was treated at a local hospital and released. Witnesses said the shots began about 10:30 a.m. Sgt. 1st Class Robert Dodge, 36, the leader for Army recruiting at the center, said he and his colleagues then got on the ground and barricaded themselves in a safe place. Dodge said he did not see the shooter or a vehicle. The Army recruiting office was not damaged, but doors and glass were damaged at the neighboring Air Force, Navy and Marine offices, he said. The gunman next drove about 10 kilometers away to the Navy Operational Support Center where witnesses say he unleashed a barrage of gunfire. The four Marines were killed at that center, and a sailor was wounded. Reported to be seriously injured, he is still undergoing treatment. The assailant was killed by local law enforcement officials, who chased him from the first location. The names of the dead Marines were withheld pending notification of relatives. Law enforcement officials said that Abdulazeez was not immediately found on any terrorism data bases. Born in Kuwait, Abdulazeez was a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was a high school wrestler with a degree in engineering from the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga. The SITE Intelligence group reports that Abdulazeez wrote a blog and on Monday he said that "life is short and bitter." He added, according to SITE, that Muslims should not miss "the opportunity to submit to Allah." Last April, local police stopped Abdulazeez for erratic driving and for speeding, according to court documents. He was charged with driving under the influence. But a woman who attended Red Bank High School with Abdulazeez told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that he was a quiet kid and well-liked. "He was friendly, funny, kind," Kagan Wagner told the newspaper. "I never would have thought it would be him. "They were your average Chattanooga family," she added. The New York Times reported Abdulazeez's father was under investigation several years ago for possible ties to a foreign terrorist organization. Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters the gunman would have had no trouble gaining access to the military facilities. "We have our recruiting centers set up in places easily accessible to the public – for example, a strip mall. So security there is not like we would see at a Fort Bragg or at a Norfolk Naval Air Station or at Quantico. So this is something that we have to face," Warren said. He added, "This is because we have to be in contact with the American public." The Navy Operational Support Center, which sits in a light-industrial area, is used by Navy and Marine Corps personnel, and is often referred to as a reserve center. The two entrances to the fenced facility have unmanned gates. "The NOSC Chattanooga mission is to provide training and readiness support for our reserve component personnel to enable them to support the needs of the Navy and Marine Corps team," a Defense Department statement read. U.S. authorities are increasing security at federal facilities in the wake of the shootings. Homeland Secretary Secretary Jeh Johnson said his department is closely monitoring the shooting and the FBI investigation, but he cautioned, "there are many unconfirmed and possibly false reports about events." Defense officials said that because the gunman did not set foot on federal military property, the investigation of the shootings falls under the authority of local law enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI, which is taking the lead on the investigation with local law enforcement, said it is investigating the possible motive for the attack. The bureau has promised a thorough review. But Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was more blunt. "We are treating this as an act of domestic terrorism," he said. In a background briefing for reporters, a Defense official said chatter from terror cells had increased after the Islamic State group called for attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but that none of the chatter had mentioned military recruiting centers. Ramadan ends Friday. "Very publicly ISIL had called on their fellow jihadis to commit acts of terror," an official said. "In association with that public statement by ISIL, we did see an increase in chatter. None of it was very specific. The FBI has announced that they made some arrests. We monitor to see what force posture to take." From the Oval Office, President Barack Obama promised a thorough and prompt investigation, but said his main message right now is one of sympathy for the slain servicemen and their families. "It is a heartbreaking circumstance for these individuals who have served our country with great valor to be killed in this fashion," he said. "Today was a nightmare for the city of Chattanooga," Mayor Andy Berke said. "As a city, we will respond to this with every available resource that we have." "Lives have been lost from some faithful people who have been serving our country, and I think I join all Tennesseans in being both sickened and saddened by this," Gov. Bill Haslam said. Located in the southeastern part of Tennessee, Chattanooga is the fourth largest city in the state. Tucked between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Tennessee River, it is known as the Scenic City and is considered a travel destination. Ohio man held as supporter of Islamic State terrorists By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. Justice Department says a resident of the U.S. state of Ohio has been indicted on charges of providing material support to Islamic State militants. Amir Said Rahman Al-Gazhi, 38, was arrested last month after he attempted to buy an AK-47 from an undercover agent, a Justice Department statement said Thursday. "Al-Ghazi, who changed his name from Robert McCollum earlier this year, is alleged to have pledged his support to the Islamic State and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi via social media in 2014. From July 2014 to June 2015, Al-Ghazi made multiple statements trying to persuade others to join ISIL," the statement said. "He also expressed his own desire to perpetrate an attack on the United States and had attempted to purchase an AK-47 assault rifle." The Justice Department said Al-Ghazi is alleged to have communicated with individuals he believed to be Islamic State members in the Middle East, and he took steps to create propaganda videos for the militant group. Al-Ghazi also is facing charges related to firearms and narcotics violations. Pope facing some criticism for his anti-capitalist views By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Pope Francis has won praise from the political left and from environmentalists for saying that globalization is hurting the poor and contributing to climate change. But conservative Roman Catholics in America say his economic thinking is erroneous. During his recent visit to Bolivia, Francis said greed has created a subtle dictatorship over the global economy. Quoting an early church theologian, he called the unfettered pursuit of money “the dung of the Devil” and blamed it for a host of ills. “It ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity; it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home,” he told a meeting of grassroots activists in Santa Cruz with Bolivian President Evo Morales. It was seen as a revolutionary call for help for those who have not benefited from globalization. Stephen Schneck of the Catholic University of America in Washington said Francis is on fire with his concern for the poor. He said that comes from his experience as Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, when as archbishop of Buenos Aires he spent time in the city’s villas miserias, or shantytowns. “This pope is somebody who really came to this job as pontiff from the front lines, from working with some of the most marginalized people on the planet,” said Schneck. “He’s not arguing against the market per se,” Schneck added. “What he’s arguing is that the market can’t be idolized. In other words, we can’t turn the market and its operations into some sort of an idol.” The pope’s supporters say he is not advocating a Marxist solution. But his view is seen as a critique of the U.S. role in leading the global economy. Speaking in Bolivia, Francis declared, “Let us say NO to an economy of exclusion and inequality, where money rules, rather than service. That economy kills. That economy excludes. That economy destroys Mother Earth.” Kishore Jayabalan, an economist who formerly worked at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and its mission to the United Nations, rejected the current pope’s claims. “When the pope says that this economy kills, that this economy destroys the environment, I’m not quite sure what economy he’s talking about,” said Jayabalan, who now heads the Rome office of the conservative Acton Institute. When the pope suggested globalization was a factor in the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean, Jayabalan said, he had it backward. The solution is not less globalization but more of it in the migrants’ countries of origin, he said. “Poor people benefit from being part of this global economy, and the worst thing would be to exclude them and force them to become migrants, which is what’s happening today,” Jayabalan said. On the flight back to Rome, Francis conceded that he had heard about such criticism, coming mainly from American conservatives, but that he hadn’t read it yet. “Yes, I ought to study that criticism, no?” he said, noting that he will visit the United States in September. Deals with Iran and Cuba avoid rights, Congress told By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Leading human rights groups told U.S. lawmakers that historic diplomatic breakthroughs with Iran and Cuba should not shield either nation from rigorous American scrutiny of human rights violations. “In Iran and Cuba, the United States needs to leverage its diplomacy to look at human rights issues and not separate its diplomacy to either look, in the case of Iran, solely at the importance of nuclear peace — or in the case of Cuba, treating diplomacy as an end in itself,” said Mark Lagon, president of Washington-based Freedom House, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “The U.S. decision to plow forward, full speed ahead, with the restoration of diplomatic relations with Cuba just as 100 peaceful activists were being detained sends troubling and mixed messages,” Lagon added. The committee’s chairman, Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican, did not address human rights regarding Iran or Cuba, but acknowledged the issue more broadly on the world stage. “One of the greatest rubs that we have relative to human rights issues is that we have other equities, if you will, with governments that sometimes compromise our abilities,” said Corker. Also testifying was Tomasz Malinowski, U.S. assistant secretary of State for democracy and human rights. “I think it’s important to be completely honest about that. Of course we have other interests,” Malinowski said in response to Corker. “I tend to resist the notion that our interest in promoting human rights and our interest in protecting our security, our prosperity – that those interests are fundamentally at odds.” He added, “I think sometimes we face short-term trade-offs where we may have to work with a particular country on something that is essential to our security right now. And at times that may lead us to calibrate our efforts on other important issues.” Arctic bears have tough time getting their food in summer By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster than predicted, which is bad news for polar bears that hunt, mate and raise their young on the ice. A new study looks at the impact of ice loss on their health. Co-author Merav Ben David, who was among a team of University of Wyoming researchers whose field work in the Arctic is the basis for the new study, said that "many colleagues, even some on our own research team, doubted whether the study was possible, until we actually did it." “With shortening of spring hunting season, lengthening of summer season when they are food-deprived and still experiencing difficulties in gathering food in the winter, polar bears are stressed physiologically," Ms. Ben David said. "They have to rely on stored energy gained in spring to survive most of the year. If they don’t get enough food in the spring, the bears begin winter in poorer shape." Traveling by helicopters and icebreakers to remote Arctic regions, the team captured more than two dozen bears, taking blood samples and implanting sensors to track temperature. Between 2008 and 2010, the team monitored the bears’ movement on ice and on shore. “This project was logistically so intense that it may never be replicated," said co-author Hank Harlow, an eco-physiologist and colleague of Ms. Ben David’s in the University of Wyoming Department of Zoology and Physiology. Earlier work suggested that the bears could somewhat compensate for lack of food in the summer by going into a walking hibernation, slowing their activity and metabolic rate to be similar to what happens to bears in the winter. Ms. Ben David said this study proved otherwise. “We found that polar bears, like their nearest relatives, the brown bears, are incapable of reducing their metabolic rate to the level that we see during winter hibernation," she said. "We saw a gradual decline, but nothing even close to what bears do in regular hibernation, which means that they cannot conserve as much energy as we thought .There are limits on how long the bears can go without feeding in the summer." The summer activity and body temperature of bears on shore and on ice were typical of fasting, nonhibernating mammals, with little indication of walking hibernation. Because of the ice melt, bears are forced to swim longer distances for their meals. The study found they can withstand the frozen water by temporarily cooling the outermost tissue of their body core to form an insulating shell. The authors are not sure how long they can swim and still survive. In an earlier publication, the authors found that in a nine-day, 643-kilometer swim, a pregnant bear lost 22 percent of her body mass, as well as her cub. Between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears live in the Arctic. Ms. Ben David said the study adds to the urgent call to protect them. “If we want to be responsible citizens of this planet, we have to do everything in our power to stop, reverse the trend of sea ice loss,” she said. |
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What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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A.M. Costa Rica's sixth news page |
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San José, Costa Rica, Friday, July 17, 2015, Vol. 15, No. 140 | |||||||||
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University of Edinburgh
graphic
How Zhenyuanlong suni may have appeared'Jurassic
Park' kin is a feathered dino
By the University of Edinburgh news staff
A newly identified species of dinosaur is the largest ever discovered to have a well-preserved set of bird-like wings, research shows. Paleontologists working in China unearthed the fossil remains of the winged dinosaur, a close cousin of Velociraptor, which was made famous by the Jurassic Park films. Researchers say its wings, which are very short compared with other dinosaurs in the same family, consisted of multiple layers of large feathers. Although larger feathered dinosaurs have been identified before, none have possessed such complex wings made up of quill pen-like feathers, the team says. Scientists have known for some time that many species of dinosaur had feathers, but most of these were covered with simple filaments that looked more like hair than modern bird feathers. The discovery suggests winged dinosaurs with larger and more complex feathers were more diverse than previously thought. The species belonged to a family of feathered carnivores that was widespread during the Cretaceous Period, and lived around 125 million years ago, the team says. The near-complete skeleton of the animal was studied by scientists from the University of Edinburgh and the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences. The newly discovered species, named Zhenyuanlong suni, grew to more than five feet in length, and dense feathers covered the dinosaur’s wings and tail. Despite having bird-like wings, it probably could not fly, at least not using the same type of powerful muscle-driven flight as modern birds, researchers say. The species may have evolved from ancestors that could fly and used its wings solely for display purposes, in a similar way to how peacocks use their colourful tails, researchers say. |
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From Page 7: Customer service firm to add 300 employees By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Results Companies will be adding 300 employees by the end of the year to bring its total employment to 1,000, the Ministerio de Comercio Exterior said Thursday. The U.S. firm inaugurated its call center here in January 2014. The firm provides customer service to a variety of firms. The majority of the employees are bilingual. The firm is in the Parque America Free Zone west of San José in Heredia. The firm has 25,000 employes throughout the world. |