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Vol. 3 • Edition 192 • Monthly • September, 2009 • Costa Rica, Central America •
americas P.21
global affairs P. 20
entertainment P.23
sports P.22
www.edica.co.crCERTIFICADA ISO 9001:2000
A “summery winter,” that’s how the behavior of pre-cipitations in this rainy season in the province of Gua-nacaste could be described, as a result of the effects of the climatic phenomenon commonly known as “El Niño.”
An atypical 50 percent reduction in precipitation lev-els, compared to the historical average usually falling in Guanacaste, plus an increase of two degrees Celsius in the province’s temperature, are the most visible ef-fects of the current weather conditions. Both have led to a drought impact the agricultural industry.
One of the most affected crops is rice. The lack of rain has resulted in a negative impact on rice planta-
tions all throughout Guanacaste — one of the main pro-ducers of this staple crop in Costa Rica.
According to data from the National Rice Corpo-ration (Conarroz), the situation generated by El Niño during the past two months has led to damage in 398 hectares planted with the water-intensive cereal.
Economic losses resulting from the drought in Gua-nacaste are estimated at $800,000, while the number of producers suffering from this situation has reached 71.
If the weather conditions persist, it’s even possible that rice producers will request an emergency declara-tion from the Ministry of Agriculture.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Inter-net giant Google is developing a payment platform for newspapers that would allow them to charge for content online, according to a report on Wednesday.
NEW YORK (AFP) - A year after the Wall Street calamity that battered the financial system and dragged the global economy into recession, investors appear to have regained their composure and are betting on recovery.
TORONTO (AFP) - Actor George Clooney pledged Friday to help his friend and fellow thespian Matt Damon shape up to reclaim the title of “sexiest man alive.”
SPRINGFIELD (AFP) - Mi-chael Jordan, perhaps basketball’s greatest player, was enshrined in the Hall of Fame Friday, thanking those who fueled his competitive fire.
Clooney to help Matt Damon regain ‘sexiest man alive’ title
Guanacaste feeling the effects of ‘El Niño’
Google developing payment platform for newspapers: Nieman
Investors see recovery year after Wall Street carnaje
NBA: ‘Air’ Jordan in rare company in Hall of Fame
www.journalcr.com
The “El Niño” weather phenomenon has caused a significant reduction in precipitation levels in Guanacaste province. Photo by Yazmin Ross/Luciano Capelli.
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(506) 2653.2478 • www.crystalsandscostarica.com
Edition 192 • September, 20092
P. 6 business & economyState banks can now invest more in public worksThanks to an executive decree, state-owned banks are now on level play-
ing field with private financial institutions when it comes to providing loans to the government of up to 20 percent of the bank’s capital. The move is expected to increase the number of public works undertaken by the govern-ment at lower interest rates.
P. 10 society Congress OKs report on marinasMembers of Congress rubber-stamped the decision made by the Commis-
sion on Constitutionality Consultations regarding Bill No. 148.36, which seeks to make changes to several articles of the Law for Concessions and Operation of Tourism Marinas.
P. 14 cultureRegistration for Guanacastearte Culture Regional Festival 2009 now openThe Guanacaste Regional Culture Office has begun the registration pro-
cess for the 2009 Guanacastearte Festival, a project that started last year with the goal of promoting the province’s artistic and cultural development so that more professional-quality productions are generated.
P. 18 HealtHMcDonalds rapped in Brazil for burger-only staff lunchesSAO PAULO (AFP) - US fast food group McDonald’s has been ordered
to pay 800 dollars in compensation to a former worker who was given only in-house burgers and fries to eat for his staff meals, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported Saturday.
P. 19 europe‘New Opel’, new worriesBERLIN (AFP) - Relief in Europe at GM choosing a buyer for Opel
turned on Friday to worries about job cuts and over whether “New Opel” can survive long term, as the EU warned Germany over state aid to the new owners.
P. 20 global affairsDollar partly recoups losses as US consumer sentiment risesNEW YORK (AFP) - The dollar recovered some of its losses but ended
mixed Friday after data showing improvement in US consumer sentiment helped the greenback move up from a nine-month low on the euro.
P. 21 americasWhite House wants regulatory reform this yearWASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama wants Congress to act
this year on what is billed as the most sweeping financial regulatory reform since the 1930s, despite a crush of other business, a senior aide said Friday.
P. 22 entertainmentDan Brown book to reveal secret... of publishing successNEW YORK (AFP) - The books are under guard, the plot’s secret, the
author silent, but all that will change when Dan Brown’s latest conspiracy potboiler, “The Lost Symbol,” is unleashed Tuesday.
P. 23 sportsBaseball: Jeter equals Gehrig for Yankees hits recordNEW YORK, (AFP) - Derek Jeter tied legendary Lou Gehrig for the New
York Yankees record for hits Wednesday, notching three hits in a 4-2 win over Tampa Bay to take his total to 2,721 in Yankees pinstripes.
Emergency Medical ServiceToll Free 800-EMS2000
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Call center 8380-4125 • 24hrsQuepos - Jaco - Cobano - Tamarindo
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COSta RiCa BaSiCSArea: 51,000 km2Population: 4,509,290 (Nov 2008)Capital: San JoseLanguage: SpanishTime Zone: UTC/GMT-6 hours
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EmergenciesEMERGENCY SERVICES 911Fire 2688-8918Medical Alert (Ambulance) 2670-0258OIJ (Police Special Branch) 2690-0128Red Cross 2666-0994Hospital Liberia 2666-0011Hospital Nicoya 2685-8400Hospital San José 2257-7922Clinic (Coco) 2670-0987Clinic (Liberia) 2666-1881Emergency Medical Service 8380 41 25 24 hrs.Santa Monica Radialogy Center 2665-0704
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Vol3•Edition192 September,2009 Costa Rica, Central America OUR TEAM
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ALSO INSIDE
P.04 Lead StoryP.06 Business & EconomyP.10 SocietyP.14 CultureP.15 Science & Technology
P.16 Week In BriefP.18 HealthP.19 EuropeP.20 Global AffairsP.21 AmericasP.22 EntertainmentP.23 Sports
Contents
COStA rICA tIDES ChArt Information for Pacific Coast
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Edition 192 • September, 20094 Edition 192 • September, 2009 5lead STory
In Costa Rica, we enjoy the blessings of being free and independent!
A group of neighbors living in the vicin-ity of the Las Baulas Marine National Park in Guanacaste, along with environmentalists from several organizations, showed up re-cently in Congress to express their discon-tent regarding a bill called “Law for Rectifi-cation of Borders of the Las Baulas Marine National Park and Creation of the Las Baulas Mixed Property Wildlife Refuge.”
According to foes of the bill, the proposal is loaded with 14 unconstitutional issues and clearly violates article 50 of the country’s Constitution.
Hugo Brenes, a priest from Santa Barbara de Santa Cruz and who wrote a graduate the-sis analyzing the situation at Las Baulas, if this bill is approved the unique park’s current size would be reduced by 35 percent.
“This bill doesn’t have any technical, sci-entific or environmental foundation, only answering to the interests of so-called ‘de-velopers,’ better known as real estate firms,” Brenes indicated. “Guanacaste’s main prob-lem is that, despite its tourism development, this has not translated in wellbeing for its inhabitants.”
The group opposing the bill presented a document with 2,500 signatures from citi-zens asking legislators not to approve this piece of legislation. The document was re-ceived by legislators Grettel Ortiz, Patricia
Romero and Lesvia Villalobos.“What we need to kick out all investors
who build in the (restricted and publicly owned) Land Maritime Zone is political will,” Villalobos said. “Nobody can become the owner of land that doesn’t any commer-
cial value because it belongs to all Costa Ri-cans.”
In fact, the Constitutional Court ordered last Jan. 14, through resolution No. 2008-18529, to revoke the environmental viability of any properties located within the Las Bau-
las Marine National Park.In this resolution, the Constitutional Court
nullified all environmental viability permits given to properties located inside the park and ordered the Ministry of the Environment to immediately continue with the process of expropriating such land.
The resolution also ordered Sonia Espi-noza Valverde, secretary general of the Na-tional Environmental Technical Secretariat (SETENA), to provide instructions to offi-cials within here entity not to authorize any new permits within Las Baulas.
Also ordered by the Constitutional Court was to suspend the viability of any permits given to properties located within the buffer zone (500 meters from the coastline) of the marine park until a comprehensive study is completed. The same goes for all construc-tion permits given to properties located in-side the buffer zone.
Finally, the Constitutional Court nullified all construction permits given to properties within the park’s buffer zone that didn’t have environmental viability studies, even if the Municipality of Santa Cruz had issued such permits.
The Las Baulas Marine National Park is one of the main nesting sites for endangered leatherback turtles around the world.
NeighborsopposeLasBaulasparkplan
The Las Baulas National Park helps protect leatherback turtles, which are in danger of going extinct. Photo by The Letherback Trust.
SAN JOSE (AFP) - Costa Rica’s legal watchdog on Thursday cleared a billion-dollar contract the government signed with China to jointly build an oil refinery after it was held up in legal wrangling for months.
The Comptroller’s Office reversed its own earlier ruling in March, when it said an agreement signed in 2008 for the Costa Ri-can Oil Refinery (RECOPE) to form a joint venture with the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) was invalid.
The government of President Oscar Arias, which severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2007 to open ties with China, signed an agreement for the joint venture during the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The Arias administration insisted on the legality of the agreement, and reacted with joy Thursday when the office cleared the contract.
“This is extraordinary news for the coun-try,” said the president’s brother Rodrigo, who is also head of the cabinet ministers.
The Comptroller’s Office -- an indepen-dent bureau that monitors government ac-tions to make sure they are within the law -- had said the joint venture would have vio-lated the RECOPE’s legal monopoly on oil refining and distribution.
It was not immediately clear under what
circumstances the Comptroller’s Office re-versed its earlier ruling, but in April the of-fice said the project could proceed only if legislators changed the law.
The agreement includes the creation of a joint venture binational company “in charge of developing and putting in operation the project to broaden the Moin refinery, to in-crease its production to 60,000 barrels a day,”
the Comptroller’s Office said in a statement.The refinery will be built in the town of
Moin, on the Caribbean coast, and is expect-ed to dramatically increase the country’s cur-rent refining capacity.
The refinery is expected to generate be-tween 1,000 and 1,500 direct jobs, and some 5,000 more jobs indirectly in the province of
Limon, according to the government.In other hand, China and Costa Rica con-
cluded the fourth round of negotiations in Beijing aimed at reaching a free trade agree-ment, the foreign trade ministry said Friday.
Costa Rica -- which gave up six decades of ties with Taiwan in favor of China two years ago -- is the third Latin American country to negotiate a free trade deal with China, after Chile and Peru.
In the round of talks that ended Thursday agreements were reached for more than 90 percent of each country’s exports, the trade ministry said.
Costa Rican exports include coffee, ba-nanas, fruit juices, cigars, pork, beef and chicken, said Costa Rican chief negotiator Fernando Ocampo.
Costa Rican negotiators face intense pres-sure from the local business community, which is calling for a long list of potential Chinese exports to be banned, fearing they will be overwhelmed by cheap imports.
Advances in trade talks were also made in other areas such as labor, investment, envi-ronment, and immigration.
Ocampo said he was very satisfied with the advances, but said that important issues were still pending.
Costa Rica watchdog approves China oil contract
With the investment is expected refinery in Moin increase the country’s refining capacity. / Photo by RECOPE
Edition 192 • September, 20096 Edition 192 • September, 2009 7BuSineSS
“There are never stupid questions, just misinformed ones.” You might have heard this statement time and time again (or a variation thereof), but just never managed to connect the dots when trying to make a tech-nology purchase or seek ways to improve your overall business with technology. Tech consultants and companies are really not all that helpful at times either in Costa Rica, as they normally try to push their clients into buying a specific product they sell or that only solves a portion of their problem, or orienting clients into expensive and lengthy projects or maintenance contracts that end up burying the project before it is even born.
For those few clients that do manage to view things in a different perspective and more on the technology side so to speak, the overall process is a lot simpler as they tend to venture more towards Open Source solu-tions rather than proprietary ones. Utilizing a popular Open Source product (Wikimedia), we search through Wikipedia.org to look up the definition that they provide for this term and find the following:
“Open source is an approach to the de-sign, development, and distribution of soft-ware, offering practical accessibility to a software’s source code. Some consider open source as one of various possible design ap-
proaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, devel-opers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Inter-net, which provided access to diverse pro-duction models, communication paths, and interactive communities.”
As mentioned, Open Source is an ap-proach, and depending on your area of busi-ness, could mean the difference between spending a three figure number for a basic application or site, to spending a four to five figure number for the same work done with something in the commercial realm like .NET solutions often do (not to mention the cost in licensing for the operating systems, the databases used, and so on and so forth). In the end, all of this development cost is transferred to the client, as well as the hid-den maintenance costs, which can account to several times the actual construction of a software system. This last statement re-garding the maintenance costs does not mean that Open Source has no maintenance costs, but the overall upgrade and improvement of the base of these products is being actively done by a community of developers around the world, and tested daily by thousands of developers and end users (this depends on
how popular the specific piece of software you are using is).
Now that we have a better understanding of Open Source and software solutions ori-ented within that bracket, let’s look at how we can use this piece of information to better improve the overall operation of a business. Normal operating costs for running a busi-ness will include two basic cost categories: fixed and variable. Variable costs we can juggle here and there as long as it does not diminish the quality or quantity of our spe-cific service. The fixed costs are the ones we normally have to squash and compress as much as possible, so that if under the circum-stances of a slow month, trimester, semester, or year (yes, we are in a recession after all), these month to month variations do not affect your business in such a way that may cause a lapse or variation in the quality or continuity of the service you offer.
“How would software systems and tech-nology in general aid me then in achieving these goals?” This is the question our cus-tomers normally make after the explanation you’ve just read above. First off, and with a minimal investment, our BPA (business pro-cess analysts) would start out by analyzing what business processes are at play at your specific company, decompose them into a proper representation that would provide two things for your business for starters:
Visibility over the current business pro-cesses at play within your company.
A rough draft of a possible implementa-tion path, that could translate into a software based process and improve your company’s bottom line.
The next step would be to review these possible implementation paths with the stakeholders, and decide on a proper course of action. The courses of action normally will depend on the client´s urgency, time-line and budget. Estimates are drawn up so that the build process for a specific piece of software does not catch them off guard, and a delivery timeline is agreed upon. The cli-ent then sits back and evaluates the product as it is being constructed for them. As un-fortunate as it may sound, our process will generally assist in the downsizing of unnec-essary personnel, elimination of many paper based processes in lieu of digital based ones run by database systems, and a more efficient operation in general as all production and op-erations are streamlined to achieve the same goals.
The other great risk in business is down-time. Downtime translates to opportunities and possible income that could have been made is lost as the operation faces either a loss of information (fire, theft, accidental loss), or some sort of infrastructure prob-lem that renders them useless at the revenue generating level. In software systems, this is not often the case, but this risk can be mini-mized by utilizing Open Source once again. Backup systems are much less expensive by utilizing Open Source software like Linux to run their servers as well as the whole um-brella of products made for this platform
that are much easier on a client´s operating budget when ROI (Return On Investment) is concerned. Also, support costs can be yet an-other source for expenses, but for those uti-lizing Linux based platforms, understand the simplicity and ease of use that they provide when remote support is concerned. QXD´s current client base consists of mostly remote support and development clients, as this pro-vides a cost effective and quick answer to their problems when needed. We also offer on-site services when needed.
Let’s look at some real world cases and see what this is all about. These are taken from actual and existing clients that the firm has, and whom have put their trust on our compa-ny’s expertise in the field of Open Source to leverage what they need to get their job done.
How Quality XP Development helped PDVCR.com develop their IT infrastructure for data analysis- PDVCR.com-Point of Sale brand tracking and data analysis services
Starting a new business is a real un-dertaking, specially when you have an excel-lent idea, but no clue as to how to help that idea evolve into a profitable business, much less how to cut costs at the very start to let the business evolve in a proper and hopefully very profitable manner for the investor. This was the challenge before us, take a tradition-al paper based process that would normally take a team of people to get done, and trans-late that into software tools and hardware that could be easily attainable (like inexpensive PDA equipment and the Internet), and allow that same process to be reduced to be run by 50% of the current personnel involved.
Through a review of the business processes, Quality XP Development was able to provide a joint solution of PDA based software for their mobile workforce and a Web based application, that allowed them to achieve their business goals. They now service several companies including Kraft, Reckitt Beckinser, Sardimar and SCA to mention a few, providing data collection and analysis services for their point of sale mar-ket nationwide. They attained a 60% reduc-tion of their fixed costs, that translated to an improvement of the overall client retention and product delivery that they currently had.
How Quality XP Development helps companies embrace Open Source technology to cut costs and circumvent down time
Thanks to an executive decree, state-owned banks are now on level playing field with private financial institutions when it comes to providing loans to the government of up to 20 percent of the bank’s capital. The move is expected to increase the number of public works undertaken by the government at lower interest rates.
During the signing of the executive de-cree, Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias rec-ognized the work of legislators from various parties in supporting this initiative, which made it possible to make reforms to the ex-isting law on financing levels possible.
“In the case of financing projects by the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), the Costa Rican Social Security System (CCSS) and the National Water and Sewer Institute (AyA), this percentage (20 percent) can be higher if the projects are of strategic impor-tance,” Arias said.
The reform makes an exception to the credit limit allowed for ICE, so that this insti-tution can receive loans for up to 30 percent of non-redeemable reserves held by state-owned banks. In this way, ICE will have ac-cess to more elevated credit amounts to carry out investment and infrastructure project in both the energy and telecommunications sec-tors.
The decree specifically makes changes to line 5 of article 61 of the National Banking System Organic Law, and article 135 of the Costa Rican Central Bank Organic Law. It was debated in Congress as Bill No. 16.574. Once President Oscar Arias signs it, it will be sent for publication in the official govern-ment newspaper, La Gaceta.
This reforms joins another recent initia-tive aimed at boosting credit availability and investment: the National Development Bank. This effort is centered around the creation of a trust fund, the National Development Trust Fund (FINADE), whose goal is to provide better credit access to small businesses to in-centivize their projects. Management of the trust fund will be given to the state-owned bank that better meets the government’s re-quirements.
The goal of this initiative is to coordinate efforts aimed at promoting development, productivity, competitiveness and social mobility within production sectors through financing of viable sustainable projects by entrepreneurs who, due to their conditions and characteristics, cannot access financing in any other national bank.
Monies for the trust fund will come from a percentage of the revenue of state-owned banks.
Business owners from Costa Rica and 34 other countries took part in early September in the 9th edition of the Buyers Mission, or-ganized by the Costa Rican Foreign Trade Promoter (PROCOMER).
During the event, more than 2,500 busi-ness meetings were arranged between ap-proximately 270 national exporters in the food, agricultural, flowers and ornamental plants, metal, construction, plastics, chemi-cal and pharmaceutical sectors. They had the chance to promote their products to 210 in-ternational buyers, which are known abroad as recognized distributors, wholesalers and retailers.
Interim Foreign Trade Minister Amparo Pacheco said this mission is equivalent to taking 270 exporting companies to visit 34 countries in search of business opportunities. She added this is a great way to show the quality of Costa Rican products and facili-tate the placing of such products in foreign markets — particularly those that have estab-lished trade deals with Costa Rica.
“In this edition, our special proposal was to offer support and closer ties to new mar-kets in issues related to exporting, so that lo-cal businesses will be better informed about exporting opportunities, can get in touch with potential clients and can make success-ful deals with prestigious firms all in one
single place,” said Emamanuel Hess, PRO-COMER’s general manager.
The event featured 50 booths from local companies, including a “green” or ecological booth where firms could show environmen-tally friendly products that contribution to the conservation of natural resources.
Also part of the fair were 30 displays with products from Costa Rican suppliers and providers, in order to promote their use as an innovative option for consumption or raw material supply for foreign buyers.
Another novelty included the establish-ment, for the first time, of a PROCOMER institutional booth through which local busi-nesses could learn, in a single place, about legal requirements, logistics and investments related to exporting.
The Buyers Mission is an annual event sponsored by PROCOMER that has taken place for the past 10 years in Costa Rica now as a mechanism to promote the country’s exporting base through interactions with for-eign transnational firms.
In 2009, those companies came from three continents, including countries such as Can-ada, the United States, Mexico, the Domini-can Republic, Puerto Rico, Panama, China, Singapore and the European Union.
State banks can now invest more in public works
Buyers mission promotes CR goods in 3 continents
Now, state-owned banks will be able to invest more resources for financing public infrastructure projects such as the new access route to Nicoya. Photo by Fitsroy Villalobos.
This event has become a window to promote Costa Rican export products. Some 2,500 business meetings were arranged. Photo courtesy of PROCOMER.
Quality XP Development is a costarrican owned and run com-
pany, based out of San José. Call us to assist with any of your Website, Internet or desktop based software
production needs.
Tel. CR: +506 2235-5304, E-mail: [email protected],
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Edition 192 • September, 20098 Edition 192 • September, 2009 9SocieTy SocieTy
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Establishing a legal framework specific to the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge, which would at once help accomplish con-servation efforts and formalize the status of those people now living there, is one of the goals set forth in a bill seeking to organize land use in the park and protect its natural resources.
The bill would help create conditions of social and economic stability necessary for the refuge to meet its conservation objec-tives, with the active participation of local communities. The proposal seeks to establish allowed land uses within the refuge; regular-ize certain abnormal situations taking place in the Guanacaste coastal park; define the competencies of organizations and public institutions within the borders of the refuge, and provide legal protection to holders of state land and other public entities involved.
Supporters of the bill are trying to avoid a possible conflict and social issues stemming from the removal of a large number of people living in coastal communities established in the region where the Ostional National Wild-life Refuge was incorporated.
Right now, there is an order from the Con-stitutional Court, based on the interpretation of current legislation, which would allow for the removal of residents six months after the notification of sentence No. 2020-09. The
notification was issued last July 10, meaning the Ministry of the Environment (MINAET) has until Jan. 10, 2010, to carry out the re-moval order.
Because of this situation, MINAET is in need of a legal framework that would al-low it to meet its conservation objectives at Ostional while legalizing the status of those occupants of park land. Such a framework would have to establish the criteria needed for occupants to be legalized, as long as they are not encroaching on areas that would be deemed off limits and are engaged in land uses that are fully authorized according to the technical standards set forth in a manage-ment plan for the refuge.
The bill’s goal is that state-owned land and private land can coexist at Ostional, as long as both uses meet the conservation goals of the refuge.
To accomplish such an objective, the bill would classify Ostional as a mixed-use ref-uge, so that individuals can legally occupy state land. This would prevent the need to expropriate the land currently occupied by individuals at national refuges, which is a requirement according to article 37 of the Environmental Law.
The National Chamber of Tourism (CA-NATUR) is forecasting a recovery in the country’s tourism activity during the second semester of 2009, following the severe ef-fects of the global recession.
One of the factors the industry group is trusting as part of the recovery is the change of hands in the management of San Jose’s Juan Santamaria International Airport, which is the backbone of travel to Costa Rica — with nearly 5 million tourists entering and leaving that airport every year.
CANATUR also highlighted the tourism businesses’ will to improve competitiveness and provide better services. The election of a new president early next year is also a factor being considered.
Regarding this last point, tourism business owners are hoping presidential candidates define clear policies that would benefit the tourism sector, which in 2008 injected $2.16 billion into the local economy when combin-ing regular tourist visitation and short cruise ship stops in the country.
“The country is facing an electoral period during which, as a business sector, we will speak about our needs and will — something we have never lacked — to support any ini-tiative that would strengthen us as industry and would improve the competitiveness of companies that day by day give the best of themselves to make the experience of tour-ists who come here the best of their lives,” said Gonzalo Vargas, president of CANA-TUR.
Vargas believes it is urgent to provide so-lutions to issues that derail the effectiveness of the tourism industry, including problems at the country’s airports, lack of legal secu-rity for local and foreign investors — whom, according to CANATUR’s president, deserve guarantees that their investments here will be sustainable, profitable and will result in em-ployment generation.
Other concerns of the tourism sector in-clude port infrastructure, accessibility to national parks, and better roads without potholes and traffic jams and with adequate signage.
“(Solving these issues) is our way to sur-vive in a world where more and more coun-tries every day see tourism as their option for eradicating poverty and solve the problems of their economies,” Vargas pointed out. “This leads to very strong competition for at-tracting tourists.”
Although the first half of 2009 ended with dismal numbers for an industry that had be-come accustomed to great gains, Vargas said, it is important to increase efforts to better compete.
According to preliminary data, influx of tourists from the United States during the first semester of 2009 contracted by 13 percent; Mexican tourists declined by 23 percent; and travel by Canadians fell by 12 percent. As a region, North America sent 13 percent less tourists during the first six months of this year. The European market, on which Costa Rica had bet by investing heavily in joint promotional campaigns, also shrank, but not as much, by 5 percent.
The Central American market, which is important in the business tourism category, has also suffered from the current recession. During the same period of time, travel has been slashed by 9 percent compared with the same period in 2008. Last year, a total of 2,089,174 tourists visited Costa Rica overall.
Ostional conservation, development plan unveiled
CR’s tourism industry sees signs of recovery
If this bill is approved, this protected area will be known as the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge. Photo by Yazmin Ross/Luciano Capelli.
Following a first quarter of little activity, it is expected that the second part of this year the number of tourists coming to Costa Rica will increase. TGJ file photo.
Edition 192 • September, 200910 Edition 192 • September, 2009 11SocieTy
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As a sign of solidarity with the work the Costa Rican Red Cross carries out in favor of the most needy, the Japanese Ambassador to San Jose, Hidekazu Yamaguchi, presented a donation of three ambulances to the Red Cross committees in Laurel and Buenos Aires (Southern Zone) and Sardinal (Gua-nacaste) — in addition to a all-wheel-drive rescue unit that will be assigned to the Met-ropolitan Emergency and Rescue Service (COMSER).
During the ceremony, which was held Aug. 25 at the Costa Rican Red Cross head-quarters in San Jose, the fully equipped vehicles — valued at 100 million colones ($176,000) — were officially handed over to the humanitarian organization.
Ambassador Yamaguchi recalled that the Costa Rican Red Cross has been the benefi-ciary of hundreds of projects the Japanese Embassy has been involved in here in the past 17 years.
“Our cooperation is a small grain of sand compared with the magnitude of the respon-sibility you carry, but I’m sure that both the rescue unit and the three ambulances will be employed as much as possible to continue the work of providing services to those in need,” Yamaguchi said.
Miguel Carmona, president of the Costa Rican Red Cross, pointed out that the real beneficiaries of this contribution will be the thousands of residents from the Southern Zone, Guanacaste and the Central Valley who will be impacted by the donation. In San Jose’s metropolitan area alone, more than 1 million people and 120,000 vehicles circu-
late every day during the work week.
The ceremony wrapped up the agreement signed between the Red Cross and the Japa-nese Embassy as part of the program “As-sistance for Project and Citizen Security,” which benefited four Red Cross committees in total and will strengthen the work of these institution in several communities.
Each ambulance comes with a stretcher, oxygen tank, siren, speakers and radio com-municators. The rescue unit, meanwhile, is also outfitted with equipment for car crash and vertical rescue.
This donation adds to the availability of emergency equipment in Guanacaste. Re-cently, Liberia’s Daniel Oduber International Airport received three new fire trucks.
The firefighting units were acquired through a contract entered into by the Costa Rican government and the Oshkosh-OACI company (associated with the International Civil Aviation Organization). The units are of the Striker model, with four of them hav-ing capacity for 3,000 gallons of water and the remaining three being able to hold 1,500 gallons of water each. Two of the seven units have an extension arm that allows them to inject water and foam into large aircraft, such as Boeing 747 and Airbus A340.
Additionally, these vehicles carry special equipment such as video cameras, infrared cameras (in the two units with extension arms), portable infrared cameras that allow to scan the inside of plans to detect heat, portable hydraulic “jaws of life,” chemical foam, compressed air cylinders, trouble-shooting software, stretchers, safety vests, rescue equipment, and others.
Sardinal will have new ambulance thanks to Japanese donation
Now, the community of Sardinal will be a new ally to deal with emergencies thanks to this new ambulance. Photo by Noemi Coto.
Members of Congress rubber-stamped the decision made by the Commission on Consti-tutionality Consultations regarding Bill No. 148.36, which seeks to make changes to sev-eral articles of the Law for Concessions and Operation of Tourism Marinas.
The bill would authorize the construction, management and exploitation of marinas and other tourism dock on Costa Rican ports, as well as the rendering of services in those ar-eas under concession contracts.
The bill would also create an Inter-institu-tional Commission on Marinas and Tourism Docks (CIMAT) as a decentralized entity, as-sociated with the Costa Rican Tourism Insti-tute (ICT).
The commission would include the head or a representative from the following or-ganizations: ICT (president of the commis-sion), the National Housing and Urban Plan-ning Institute, the Ministry of Transportation and Public Infrastructure, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy, and the Ministry of Health. Additionally, the commission would also have a representative from the munici-palities having jurisdiction over the respec-tive Land Maritime Zone, appointed by the
National Local Governments Union, which will see that representation from both coasts (Pacific and Caribbean) is alternated; and a representative from the private sector ap-pointed by the National Chamber of Tourism.
The new proposal for changes to the mari-nas law includes articles seeking to simplify the paperwork needed for requesting and ap-
proving concessions in stages. To accomplish such a goal, several fundamental reforms are being formulated.
Some of the most important modifica-tions include streamlining of the approval process; better organization of the law’s text; establishment of minimum requirements and a mandate for CIMAT to set up the corre-
sponding technical requisites; reduction in waiting times and clear definition of such waiting times so all parties involved can have more clarity about what to expect, this with the goal of providing better legal security and due process.
Another important aspect that was taken into consideration for the modification of this law was the inclusion of technical terms re-garding the evaluation of a project’s environ-mental impact, which at the same time gives the National Environmental Technical Secre-tariat (SETENA) shorter deadlines to carry out environmental impact studies. Currently, such studies are included in an earlier stage of the project’s process, almost at the begin-ning, which means investors incur in impor-tant expenses without having any certainty of whether the concession will be approved — which hinges upon the approval of the en-vironmental impact study by SETENA.
The bill also seeks to create a “single win-dow” at CIMAT, so that all paperwork will be processed in the same place so that wait-ing times are reduced. Finally, the number of years for which a concession would be grant-ed are expanded under the proposed bill.
Congress OKs report on marinas
Last Aug. 31, Costa Rica celebrated 50 years of having declared the guanacaste (Enterolobium cyclocarpurm) as its official “national tree.”
The guanacaste tree became a national symbol during the presidency of Mario Echandi Jimenez via decree No. 7. It was chosen as a way to recognize the people of Guanacaste province for their decision to be-come a part of Costa Rica in 1825. The word “guanacaste” comes from the Indigenous Nahuatl, meaning “ear tree” because its fruit resembles a human ear.
In parts of Guanacaste where the dry sea-son gives way to hot weather, guanacaste trees are protected so they can provide shade to cattle ranches or farms. The tree’s wood is easy to work with and is used for boards and beams in rural construction, kitchen utensils, canoes, oxcart wheels, furniture, truck beds and many other uses. The wood is also resis-tant to fire and termites and lasts long even when exposed to water and wet soil. While guanacaste dry wood is odorless, its sawdust has a very strong smell. It is said that this wood shouldn’t be thrown in rivers because it kills fish and cattle.
The tree’s aromatic sap has been used in the country for various medicinal applica-tions dealing with respiratory diseases. The
guanacaste’s tannin has high value as a tan-ning material. Additionally, the tree’s bark has been employed as a medicine against colds and as substitute for soap, same use given to the pulp of its fruit — particularly to wash wool fabrics.
The tree’s fruits or pods are commonly eaten by cattle, which like to graze under the shade of guanacastes and swallow the pods whole — reason for which so many seed-lings sprout in corrals and other places where cattle are kept.
The guanacaste’s habitat includes low-lands with high temperatures. Its range goes from Mexico to the northern parts of South America. It can reach up to 30 meters (90 feet) in height, with a trunk measuring 2.5 meters (7.5 feet) in diameter. This tree flow-ers from January to March, fruiting in Janu-ary to May. Its fruit is a very important food source for wildlife during the dry season.
The guanacaste tree’s seeds have a hard covering, reason for which germination re-quires some kind of mechanical action or that the seeds be eaten and excreted by animals. The seeds can also be made to germinate by soaking them in water for a while.
The tree’s flowers are white, grouped in small, spherical blooms, with very long stems. Its leaves — compound, alternate, bi-pinnated — fall during the dry season.
In 2005, the Costa Rican Biodiversity Institute (INBio) gave a guanacaste tree lo-cated at Liberia’s Hector Zuñiga Park the “Exceptional Tree Award.” The judges based their decision on the tree’s natural character-istics — 44 meter canopy, 5.2 meter diam-eter trunk, 40 meter shade, and 15 meters in height, approximate age of 75 years — and its importance for the community.
50thanniversaryofguanacastebeingnamed‘nationaltree’ celebrated
The guanacaste tree has been Costa Rica’s “national tree for the past 50 years. Photo from Wikipedia.
The new legislation regarding marinas is expected to make the construction of these projects (such as Marina Papagayo) easier by simplifying procedures and paperwork. Photo by Kellie Umaña.
Edition 192 • September, 200912 Edition 192 • September, 2009 13conSTrucTion conSTrucTion
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Edition 192 • September, 200914 Edition 192 • September, 2009 15culTure SocieTy
The Guanacaste Regional Culture Office has begun the registration process for the 2009 Guanacastearte Festival, a project that started last year with the goal of promoting the province’s artistic and cultural develop-ment so that more professional-quality pro-ductions are generated.
The 2nd Guanacastearte Culture Regional Festival will take place in the city of Hojan-cha next Nov. 12-14. The festival will in-clude three different venues featuring dance, folkloric expressions, music, theater, pup-pets, storytelling, film, visual art exhibits, small business fairs, and more.
The festival’s objective is to put on stage quality work by Guanacaste artists as well as invited artists from other parts of the country and other countries, said Vera Vargas Leon, of the Guanacaste Regional Culture Office — which is part of the Ministry of Culture and Youth.
Artists interested in being part of the festi-
val need to send an audio CD (for music), a DVD (for dance, theater, oral narration, folk-lore, music, film), or a CR-ROM (for visual arts, painting, sculpture, and related produc-tions) containing the work they will present. Those materials will be given to a panel of judges, who will evaluate the work and select participants by Oct. 8.
This call for art is directed at solo artists and groups with a track record at the region-al, national or international level and whose work is professionally done. Each scenic piece can be from one hour to one hour and half hours long.
Although there is no limit in the number of group members, there is a limit in the num-ber of groups that can be accepted to partici-pate in the festival.
The three venues this year are the Hojan-cha Municipal Gymnasium (scenic arts), the main stage of the city’s central park (music and folkloric groups playing live music);
the main area of the central park (culture/art small business fair); and the CEMPRO-DECA headquarters (literature, film, story-telling, etc.).
Each participating group will provide technical details about their work to the audi-ence. The festival’s organizers will take are of technical needs, such as dressing rooms, lighting, sound, and others.
All artists and groups will receive a cer-tificate of participation. For regional groups, they will be given time for meals right after their performances. National and internation-al groups will have all their lodging and meal expenses covered by the organizers.
This year, all presentations will be free to the public, and there will be no registration fee for artists and groups. Those register-ing for the festival are being asked to pres-ent details about their expected expenses so that organizers can evaluate if they can cover their costs.
Registration for Guanacastearte Culture Regional Festival2009nowopen
Vera Vargas Leon spoke about the details of the festival, which seeks to showcase the talent of Guanacaste artists. Photo by Erick Murillo.
An expedition team of National Geo-graphic Society scientists and videographers, joined by Costa Rican experts, began explor-ing some of the mysteries of Cocos Island beginning Sept. 9.
The expedition is part of “Ocean Now,” a project designed to survey the last pristine sites in the ocean.
The group of scientists will be the first to explore the Las Gemelas (“twin sisters”) seamounts, which have been identified as a marine conservation gap in Costa Rica. Las Gemelas are 35 nautical miles south of Co-cos Island National Park, the largest and best known marine protected area in the country.
The surveys will provide the first scientific data and images on the biodiversity of these deep bottoms, which will become a baseline for other seamounts in Costa Rica and the eastern tropical Pacific.
“This is an important expedition because Las Gemelas seamounts have never been seen by humans before, we believe they har-bor huge biodiversity, and we don’t know if they have been fished and how much,” said Enric Sala, National Geographic fellow and expedition leader.
Sala said, “Cocos Island is an important refuge for oceanic species that are
vulnerable to fishing, which use these wa-ters to feed and reproduce. It is
essential to understand the migratory movements of these species at a regional scale to design appropriate conservation strategies.”
This research will also measure the health of Cocos Island National Park, where the team wants to quantify illegal fishing and, with the help of GeoEye, test the use of satel-lite for remote surveillance.
During the expedition, the team will send daily blog dispatches with photos and videos
showing the research progress; their bios are also posted here:
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/.The expedition partners include Google,
Waitt Family Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, Oracle Education Foundation, Cocos Island National Park, The Nature
Conservancy, Conservation International, MarViva and the University of Costa Rica.
The Costa Rican government created Cocos Island National Park in 1978, later becoming the nucleus of a marine conserva-tion area of the same name. Because of its exceptional marine biodiversity, history and location, UNESCO declared Cocos Island a
natural heritage site of humanity in 1997, and in 1998 the island was named a Ramsar wet-land of international importance.
On Oct. 11, 2002, the government of Costa Rica also listed Cocos Island as a historical-architectural heritage site.
National Geographic experts will explore depths of Cocos Island
This expedition will explore for the first time some unknown areas of Cocos Island, such as the underground Las Gemelas mountain. Photo by Karla Sarquis/Danny Gonzalez.
Frederick W. Lange¹The well-known Plumbate ceramic type
was manufactured in a restricted region along the Guatemala coast from a clay prep-aration with high iron and alumina content. Under reduction firing conditions, these ma-terials and firing resulted in a hard or semi-vitrified ceramic with a shiny lead-colored surface. Because of the kind of clay that is required and the specialized “firing” tech-niques, we can be sure that this small pot was manufactured in Guatemala approxi-mately 1,000 years ago, and then brought to Greater Nicoya. There is no evidence in the archaeological record in Greater Nicoya for the “technology transfer” that would have permitted local production of these kinds of ceramics in Greater Nicoya. Plumbate is present in Greater Nicoya in very limited quantity and probably does not represent any special ceremonial presence, or presence of Mesoamerican ceramicists, but simply an object that happened to be traded from place
to place until it reached where it was ulti-mately found by archaeologists many centu-ries afterwards.
The illustration that accompanies this ar-ticle is a small Plumbate jar that has been identified as showing the basic characteris-tics of one of the principal prehistoric Me-soamerican deities, rain god, Tlaloc. How do we know it is Tlaloc? This identification is based on the donut shaped eyes, the mous-tache and the similarity in form to small ce-ramic pots such as this found farther north in Mesoamerica and in Mexico. Can we be sure that by the time this image reached Greater Nicoya that it was still interpreted as the image of Tlaloc, or had it acquired another meaning, or lost all meaning? Think of simi-lar religious symbolism in the modern world, symbolism that is often unknown or misun-derstood if it is displayed outside the context of the broader understanding of the religion. Just because it was a rain god to the Meso-americans, there is no guarantee that it held
similar meaning in Greater Nicoya. Many of the Plumbate tripod vessel
shapes and dimensions are very similar to the shapes and dimensions of the Papagayo Polychrome and Pataky Polychrome tripod vessel group. But, did these forms go north from Greater Nicoya or come south from Guatemala? The presence of Plumbate far-ther north dates to roughly AD850/900-1200 (800 to 1,150 years ago), while the dates for tripod vessel forms of Papagayo Polychrome begin around AD800 (1,200 years ago) and the Pataky Polychrome forms are thought to begin around AD1000-1350 (650 to 1,000 years ago). It would appear, unless archae-ologists obtain earlier dates for Papagayo Polychrome and Pataky Polychrome, that the distribution of Plumbate ceramics was from north to south.
How did the Plumbate pottery research Greater Nicoya? While it is often difficult to transport ceramics over land because of their fragility and the possibility of break-age en route, this ceramic is small enough
that it could easily have been tucked away in someone’s woven-net sling without much danger of loss. The other possibility is that this small pot was shipped with larger pots, or other commerce, and because of the other commodities involved everything arrived over water.
Javier Segura M.general Manager-DCl realty ConSultantS
Well, we cannot say that the crisis is over yet, but at least, there are many signs of re-covery, and, for many, there is a real light at the end of the tunnel.
There are too, some businessmen that may be thinking that, just because their company, or project, has survived this far, they have reached the other side of the river, and that their endeavor is now crisis proof. That may be right –in some cases-, but the basic busi-ness principles say that now is too early to start celebrations. So, Where are we? What do we do, between the middle of the crisis and the end of it? What have to be our focus, as business people, in this very moment? Let us explore some thoughts regarding this is-sue.
First of all, keep going with the emergen-
cy measures that you have taken months ago; we are still in delicate times, and any weak-ness can be deadly for any project or compa-ny. Do not take lightly any sign of troubles, act at once. Obviously, if you have not taken any emergency measures by now, then it is probably too late for that, and you may not be aware, but chances are that your project is already lost, or your company is already in trouble.
Second, Do not waste your time, you have to set the wheels of your project, or company, in motion again. Some of these days one potential client told me that he “shouldn’t waited that much to visit you”, when he realizes that during that period of time, he has been wasting money and time. So, please do not wait until Mr. Obama says that the crisis is officially over; by that time, your competence will be miles ahead of you. Sit with your advisors, and make an estima-tion of when, in your particular industry, do
you feel that the waters are going to be at its normal levels; and use that point of time for doing your planning.
What have to be done by that moment? That is the main question. What is needed to be ready at that specific point of time? The product for sale? The condos? The permits? The refinancing? A corporate project? What is it…? Whatever it is, do not wait anymore; start moving your business ahead. Because if you do not do that; you may be able to cross the river of the crisis unharmed, just to get massacred at the other riverbank by your competitors; they will be waiting for you, with sharper knifes than before. Remember that the survivors will be that, survivors. If you think that, after the crisis, things are go-ing to be softer than before, just because so few have survived; let me tell you are wrong, because only the strongest will survive, and those are the most dangerous competitors.
And, meanwhile you are executing your plans, take some time to fix things that you do not like. For example, many businessmen and project managers are not happy with some of their suppliers: Banks, architects, lawyers, developers, are among the suppli-ers that you may want to replace, even key executives. If you are not happy with some of them; then, now is when you can replace the weak links of your support team. Go out and get new deals, hire new people, and with them, get better support, better ideas, and better financing. Now is the moment for changing those pieces of your company that you may not feel comfortable with.
So, start planning, and executing your post crisis plans. It may cost you some mon-ey, but now is when you have to start to in-vest again, remember that the future is com-ing, and it will not wait for nobody.
Plumbate pottery from Guatemala in Greater Nicoya
¹Dr. Frederick W. Lange has a doc-toral degree in anthropology, awarded by the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971. He is the author of the popu-lar book BEFORE GUANACASTE, an account of the first 10,000 years of this wonderful place. BG is available at the Jaime Peligro Book Store in Tamarindo, the Café Britt Book Store at Peninsula de Papagayo, and in Libreria Inter-nacional bookstores in San Jose and throughout Costa Rica. Fred’s e-mail address is: [email protected]
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Edition 192 • September, 200916
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business & economyeconomy contracted 2.05% in July
(El Financiero) — The Costa Rican economy continues to be in the midst of a contraction, but the drop is smaller than on previous months, which is being taken as a sign that the country is beginning a slow recovery. The Monthly Economic Activity Index (IMAE) for July showed a negative intra-annual variation of 2.05 percent, which compares to -2.2 percent in May and -3.8 percent in April. Data provided by the Cen-tral Bank shows that Costa Rica’s productiv-ity suffered its worst contraction in February, when the IMAE fell 5.1 percent compared to the same month in 2008. According to the Central Bank, the latest results of the intra-annual variation coincide with the opinion of businesses and consumers that the economy is slowly recovering.
businesses satisfied with changes to duty-free zones
(La Republica) — Companies that oper-ate under the duty-free zone system in Costa Rica said they are satisfied with the approval in commission of a bill to make changes to this system, seeing this as a sign that the full Congress will give quick approval to the pro-posal. The main components of the bill were supported despite the amendments made to the text as it was discussed within the Eco-nomic Affairs Commission of the Legislative Assembly. Following almost five months of discussion, legislators reached consensus on deadlines regarding payments of revenue taxes by businesses. The bill proposes to in-crease from 5 percent to 6 percent the taxes firms located in the Great Metropolitan Area of San Jose will pay during the first eight years. During the next five years, the will pay 15 percent.
commission named to oversee Limon port project
(El Financiero) — With the goal of begin-ning work on the “Limon City-Port” redevel-opment project in this Caribbean city, Inter-institutional Coordination Minister Marco Vargas has appointed a commission that will oversee this endeavor. The commission in-cludes members from the Ministry of the Treasury, the Japdeva Atlantic Development Board, the Costa Rican Water and Sewer Institute (AyA), the National Irrigation and Subterranean Waters Service (Senara), and the Municipality of Limon.
societytransit Law won’t go into effect
until march(La Prensa Libre) — Legislators voted in
first debate the reforms to the new Transit Law that would go into effect in six months and not on September 23. The vote was 37 and favor and 4 against. Jorge Mendez, head of the ruling National Liberation Party (PLN), said the six month extention would apply to the new fines and point system called for in the new law passed las Decem-ber. The objection to the extension came from the four Libertarian Movement legislators. Although the proposal, if and when approved in second debate, pushes back its introduc-tion to March 1, 2010, the drunk and reckless driving provisions will go into effect on Sep-tember 23, when drunk drivers and drivers under the influence of drugs will have to pay a 227,000 colones fine and face possible jail. The second and required vote was expected on Wednesday, September 16.
2,000 health employees go on strike
(Al Dia) — At least 2,000 employees with the Costa Rican Social Security System (CCSS) have gone on strike, supported by their labor union, Undeca. This caused that several hospitals around the country were impacted, particularly in the areas of surgery and nutrition, as well as laundry janitorial services. Health Minister Maria Luisa Avila said those responsible for the strike will be held responsible for their actions in a court of law. Undeca secretary general Luis Cha-varria said the strike was well supported, and he hopes CCSS officials will be open to dialogue to negotiate better conditions for workers.
court forces ice to reduce electricity rates
(La Nacion) — The Costa Rican Electric-ity Institute (ICE) was forced to lower its rates beginning Sept. 10, after a court re-jected an appeal the state-owner power and telecom company filed to keep its rates as be-fore. The resolution made effective a reduc-tion of 7.2 percent that all electrical suppliers in the country had to make beginning Sept. 1. ICE customers are expected to save 128 million colones daily thanks to the reduction.
catholic church protests ‘anti-catholic’ movements, criticizes
President Arias(CNA) — In response to attempts by
lawmakers to eliminate a clause from the country’s constitution that states the official religion of Costa Rica is the Catholic faith, Bishop Jose Francisco Ulloa of Cartago said the Church “will not be silent” and will not abandon her mission to defend human life and the family. In a recent homily at the cathedral, the bishop remarked, “Certain groups and ideologies exist that pretend to weaken and even eliminate the mission that Jesus Christ entrusted to his Church, as if the Church of Jesus were dependent upon human whims or on some part of a political constitu-tion. The Church is divine and nobody can destroy her,” he said. Referring to the Costa Rican constitution, which declares that the country’s official religion is the Catholic faith, but that the state shall not interfere with the free exercise of any religion that does not contradict “universal morality or good mor-als,” Bishop Ulloa said there are some who mistakenly believe that “the Catholic Church is going to be silent” about the proposed changes or that it will “compromise the prin-ciples that God has entrusted her to proclaim throughout history for the good of the human person and of humanity.” He went on to note that some lawmakers believe that with these changes “they will kill God. They are totally wrong. God does not die. He is the God of life, He is eternal, unchangeable. All creation depends on Him and only in Him does hu-man life find meaning.” Bishop Ulloa went on to encourage Costa Ricans to choose wisely those who will occupy political of-fice and to cast their votes for candidates that defend life, marriage and the family. “Let us protest loudly and without fear against these anti-human, anti-Christian and atheistic poli-cies that some wish to impose upon us,” he said.
tilarán Wind Farm Announces Possible closure
(Inside Cosa Rica) The first generating project using wind energy in Latin America would cease to exist next March because of money problems. Plantas Eólicas, Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, which has been operating in Tilarán for the last 15 years says it may stop operating next March.
The company cites the payment by the In-stituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE) is not enough to keep operating.
Plantas Eólicas was charging us$0.05 per kilowatt hour when it first began operating. Currently it receives only us$0.09 per KWh based on increases allowed in the original contract for adjustment in inflation.
The company has recevied increases ap-proved by the Autoridad Reguladora de los Servicios Públicos (Aresep), but says it is not nearly enough to keep pace with the cost of operations and produce a profit.
Costa Rica Celebrates Tuesday 188 Years Of Independence
(Inside Cosa Rica) This week the Costa Rican flags on display everywhere - private homes, public buildings, store windows, etc - are not to support the Costa Rican na-tional soccer team, “the sele”, but, rather to
celebrate the country’s 188th day of indepen-dence which is on Tuesday, September 15.
Beating drums have been a fixture at all public schools this week, as teachers have been stressing the importance of the inde-pendence and instill patriotism.
To mark the celebration is the arrival of the independence torch, arriving tomorrow at the north border from Nicaragua and be in San José Monday night.
Tuesday, traditional parades will be on hand in all the provinces, children beating their drums, to remind the public of liberty and independence that is a privilege in Costa Rica, which has shown does not have to be defended by arms. (Costa Rican abolished its army in 1948).
Costa Rica joined other Central American provinces in 1821 in a joint declaration of in-dependence from Spain.
costa Rica seeks to Achieve the Guarantee of All child Rights by
2021(Inside Cosa Rica) As part of the celebra-
tion for the Dia del Niño (National Day of Children), the President of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sánchez, accompanied by Ministers, members of the National Council on Chil-dren and Child Welfare Services and a group of about 25 children, signed the country’s first Public Policy for Children and Adoles-cents 2009 – 2021.
President Arias inaugurated the event by addressing the children
present: “Today, we celebrate your day, the Day
of Children, in a special manner: by signing the first Public Policy for Children and Ado-lescents in Costa Rica. Some of you might think that a document like this will not affect you…but as you see today, there are a lot of people here who believe and know that these types of documents can change lives.”
The President went on to show the docu-ment’s significance by relating it to the im-portant Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which as he said “changed genera-tions”.
sPoRtsKenton will remain as national
soccer team coach (La Nacion) — The executive committee
of the Costa Rican Football Federation de-cided to retain the services of Rodrigo Ken-ton as coach of the National Soccer Team, despite the fact the squad has lost three con-secutive games during the World Cup quali-fying phase. Kenton said he will continue to work to improve the team’s performance as it readies to play Trinidad and Tobago at home (Oct. 10) and the United States (Oct. 14) on the road. Right now, Costa Rica is 4th in the six-team CONCACAF group. The first three teams qualify for the World Cup next year in South Africa, while the 4th squad would have to play a home-and-away series against a team from South America.
Edition 192 • September, 200918 Edition 192 • September, 2009 19healTh europe
www.journalcr.comThe deadline for each edition is the Wednesday preceding publication.
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VIENNA (AFP) - Oil ministers from top crude-pumping countries looked set to hold output steady at talks early Thursday, hop-ing cautiously for a recovery from the world economic downturn that has battered oil de-mand.
“We are optimistic that the darkest days of financial turmoil and economic recession are behind us,” the current head of the cartel, Angolan oil minister Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos, announced at the start of the talks.
But he added that “there are still great un-certainties” over oil prices, “not only for the remainder of 2009 but also well into the sec-ond half of 2010.”
He also insisted that the OPEC oil produc-ers should push to assert their interests when world powers meet for a landmark United Nations summit in December to seal a new accord to fight climate change.
“There is much at stake here for both pres-ent and future generations in our member countries,” Botelho de Vasconcelos said, stressing that the meeting would address the climate issue.
A recovery of the world economy, he add-ed, “should leave us with more time to ad-dress bigger issues facing mankind, notably eradication of poverty, sustainable develop-ment and the environment.”
Most ministers gave an upbeat view of
the oil market as they prepared for the talks, which started at night due to the Muslim fast of Ramadan.
They said crude prices were acceptably high and forecast that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries would seek to hold oil production levels steady.
Ministers said they would seek instead to press for greater compliance by members with the hefty cuts agreed in late 2008, which were aimed at propping up crumbling prices.
OPEC, whose 12 members pump 40 per-cent of the world’s oil, agreed in late 2008 to remove a massive 4.2 million barrels of daily output from the market.
A vicious global economic downturn has sapped demand for energy, dragging crude prices from record highs of above 147 dol-lars in July 2008 to 32.40 dollars in Decem-ber. They have since recovered to hover around 70 dollars.
This price level “is good for everybody, consumer (and) producer,” said Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, whose country is the biggest OPEC oil producer and its most in-fluential member, ahead of the talks.
Now ministers from OPEC countries, which are highly dependent on oil exports, must steer a careful course, supporting prices but not alarming markets by trying to do so too aggressively.
OPEC’s official daily output quota has stood at 24.84 million barrels per day since January but analysts say that compliance with the cuts has slipped over recent months.
The International Energy Agency said in a recent survey that total production by OPEC members excluding Iraq, which is not bound by quotas, was above the quota, at 26.12 mil-lion barrels a day.
Analysts blame the overproduction mainly on Iran as well as on Angola and Venezuela -- regarded as hawks with a strong desire for stronger prices.
Oil prices edged higher Wednesday as in-vestors awaited the outcome of the OPEC meeting.
New York’s main contract, light sweet crude for October delivery climbed 21 cents to 71.31 dollars a barrel.
Brent North Sea crude for October deliv-ery gained 41 cents to 69.83 dollars a barrel in afternoon London trade.
Analysts say most member countries are satisfied with prices in the range of 70 to 80 dollars, enough to fund investment in future production.
“We are probably going to see the price at 75 (dollars per barrel) by the end of the year, probably higher prices early next year,” Al-geria’s oil minister Chakib Khelil told report-ers at the start of the meeting.
OPEC president Eng Jose Maria Botelho de Vasconcelos of Angola opens the 154th regular meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna on September 9, 2009. OPEC oil ministers met on Wednesday night looking set to hold crude output steady as they wait cautiously for a recovery from the world economic downturn that has battered energy demand. / Joe Klamar-AFPç
OPEC oil states meet on economy, climate
THE HAGUE (AFP) - The Dutch govern-ment vowed Friday to change the law to keep bars smoke free after it suffered two succes-sive defeats in court against bar owners chal-lenging a smoking ban.
A cabinet statement said the government would introduce changes to legislation in or-der to make sure that “a uniform obligation” applied to all.
Dutch bar owners won two victories ear-lier this year in their fight against a smoking ban on their premises.
Two different courts found that the law, aimed at protecting staff from second-hand smoke inhalation, unfairly discriminated against small, one-man operations that em-ployed none.
Several thousand small bars and cafes in the Netherlands united late last year to defy the ban that entered into force in July 2008, creating a joint legal defence fund, arguing they lacked the floor space and money to erect separate smoking-only areas.
The cabinet said the planned changes
would make allowances for the introduction of “innovative air sytstems” if they could be proven effective enough to be an alternative to a dedicated smoking area in small bars.
SAO PAULO (AFP) - US fast food group McDonald’s has been ordered to pay 800 dollars in compensation to a former worker who was given only in-house burgers and fries to eat for his staff meals, the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reported Saturday.
The court in the southern city of Riberao Preto awarded the money to Rafael Luiz, 22, who claimed he should have been given a grocery allowance or coupons to buy his own food for the two years he worked for the firm.
The verdict overturned a lower court’s dis-missal of Luiz’s case after his lawyer used the 2004 US documentary film “Super Size Me,” which showed the ill-effects on the health of the filmmaker of eating only Mc-Donald’s products for a month.
McDonald’s said it was studying the judgement and may appeal. It stressed that the food it sold conformed to relevant Brazil-ian laws.
Boston-IDGNSScientists at the Washington University
School of Medicine are creating something of a nanobee to fight cancerous tumors
Scientists at the St. Louis medical school announced this week that they are us-ing nanoparticles to deliver the bee venom melittin through the body to kill cancerous tumor cells. In an experiment with mice, the nanobees targeted the tumors and effectively stopped them from growing and even shrank them in some cases.
The university also reported that while the melittin-carrying nanoparticles can slow or even shrink some tumors, they also may be able to act at early stages to prevent cancer from even developing.
“The nanobees fly in, land on the surface of cells and deposit their cargo of melittin which rapidly merges with the target cells,” says Dr. Samuel Wickline, who heads the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnol-ogy Excellence at Washington University. “We’ve shown that the bee toxin gets taken into the cells where it pokes holes in their in-ternal structures.”
Nanotechnology has playing an increas-ingly big role in battling cancer and other diseases.
Earlier this month, researchers at MIT an-nounced that they have killed ovarian tumors in mice using nanoparticles that deliver killer
genes to the cancer cells. According to MIT, the findings could lead to a new treatment for ovarian cancer.
And in May, MIT scientists announced that they had developed gold nanoparticles
that can target tumors and heat them with minimal side effects to nearby healthy cells. The researchers said tumors in mice that received the gold nanorod treatment disap-peared within 15 days. The cancer did not re-
cur for the duration of the three-month study.This news comes just months after MIT
announced that a group of scientists had de-veloped nanotechnology that can be placed inside living cells to determine whether chemotherapy drugs used to treat cancer are reaching their targets or attacking healthy cells. Researchers use carbon nanotubes wrapped in DNA so they can be safely in-jected into living tissue.
In this week’s news out of Washington University, researchers tested the nanotube/melittin treatment on mice with breast tu-mors and mice with melanoma. The univer-sity reported that after four to five injections of the melittin-carrying nanoparticles over several days, growth of the tumors slowed by nearly 25%, and the size of the mice’s mela-noma tumors decreased by 88% compared to untreated tumors.
Melittin is a small protein that is strongly attracted to cell membranes. Once it reach-es the membrane, it can open up pores and break up the cells.
“Nanobees are an effective way to package the useful, but potentially deadly, melittin, sequestering it so that it neither harms nor-mal cells nor gets degraded before it reaches its target,” said Paul Schlesinger, a medical doctor and associate professor of cell biology and physiology, in a statement
Researchers use nanobees to attack, prevent cancer
Nanoparticles effectively deliver cancer-killing bee venom to tumor cells. / NNCR
McDonald’s said it was studying the judgement and may appeal. / Getty Images royalty free
Dutch bar owners won two victories in their fight against a smoking ban on their premises. / Getty Images royalty free
McDonaldsrappedinBrazilfor burger-only staff lunches
Dutch govt to change smoking law after court defeat
BERLIN (AFP) - Relief in Europe at GM choosing a buyer for Opel turned on Friday to worries about job cuts and over whether “New Opel” can survive long term, as the EU warned Germany over state aid to the new owners.
Further concerns focused on the involve-ment of the Russian government in the loss-making new firm, and over whether the agreement announced on Thursday may yet fall apart over what General Motors called “several key issues” remaining.
Under the deal, GM will sell a 55-percent stake in Opel to a consortium owned 50:50 by Canadian auto parts maker Magna and state-owned Russian lender Sberbank. GM will retain 35 percent and employees the rest.
The agreement covers all GM’s European operations except Swedish unit Saab, which is likely to be bought by a Swedish company with support from Chinese interests. GM emerged from bankruptcy in July.
The breakthrough was seen as a coup for Germany, where the government under Chancellor Angela Merkel had pressed hard for GM to choose Magna, offering 4.5 billion euros’ worth of state aid.
Half of Opel’s 50,000 jobs are in Germany, and in a boost for Merkel’s chances of win-ning a second term in elections on September 27, Opel’s new owners have pledged to keep
open its four main plants in the country.“I am exceptionally happy about this de-
cision, which is along the lines of what the government wanted,” a visibly relieved Merkel said in Berlin on Thursday, as she rushed to unveil the news even before GM.
But with Magna expected to cut 10,000 jobs, elsewhere in Europe there were worries about where Opel’s new owners would make the major cuts that analysts say are crucial for long-term survival.
Opel has about 7,000 employees in Spain, 4,700 at Vauxhall in Britain, 5,500 in Bel-gium, 1,800 in Italy, 1,600 in Austria and 1,500 in France, according to GM Europe’s website.
GM vice-president John Smith said in Berlin on Thursday that Opel’s new owners were “contemplating” winding down a plant in Antwerp, Belgium, and shifting some pro-duction from Spain to Germany.
“We knew the news would be bad for Bel-gium, now we just have to hope we can get a good pay-off. We don’t have any hope, it’s finished here,” 33-year-old Ali Aycicek, a machinist at the Antwerp plant, told AFP.
In Britain, Vauxhall workers were wor-ried, with one saying: “I’m absolutely devas-tated, for the simple reason it doesn’t secure the long-term future for this place. The mo-rale is low.”
In Spain, Finance Minister Elena Salgado said that Madrid was striving to prevent any job losses, while a UGT trade union official in Spain warned of “a major conflict.”
One hope for the workers is the European Commission, which warned Berlin on Friday that its aid was illegal if it is conditional on sites staying open in Germany.
European Commission spokesman Jo-hannes Laitenberger said that some mem-ber states have already expressed concern,
although there had not yet been any formal complaints lodged.
Merkel’s government aims to persuade other European governments to contribute to Germany’s state aid package.
It is also far from certain that Magna and Sberbank will be able to carve out a place for “New Opel” in a still struggling global auto industry where in Europe and North America too many cars are being made for too few customers.
“The winner today could be the loser to-morrow,” analyst Juergen Pieper from Met-zler Bank told AFP. “Everyone knows there is enormous over-capacity in the market ... and Opel is by far the weakest player in Eu-rope today.”
German mass circulation daily Bild was also sceptical: “Who is going to pay? The German taxpayer ... Germany is carrying all the risk. Opel is not rescued yet by a long shot.”
Newspapers also raised concerns about the Kremlin’s involvement, with Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine saying that “no one knows what the Russians are really planning, what extra demands they will have.”
Magna and Sberbank want Russian car maker GAZ, owned by billionaire oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to use its plant in the city of Nizhny Novgorod to make Opels for the depressed Russian market.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday said that he hoped the deal was “one of the first steps that will take us towards real integration into the European economy.”
‘New Opel’, new worries
Workers walk out of the Opel car factory in Antwerp on September 11, 2009. General Motors vice-president John Smith said Thursday in Berlin that the planned new owners of Opel’s European division, Canada’s Magna and Russia’s Sberbank, were considering “winding down” a plant employing more than 2,500 people in Antwerp. Kris Peeters, the head of the government of Belgium’s Flanders region, said about 12,000 people would be affected in all. / Georges Gobet - AFP
Edition 192 • September, 200920 Edition 192 • September, 2009 21aMericaSgloBal aFFairS
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Internet giant Google is developing a payment platform for newspapers that would allow them to charge for content online, according to a report on Wednesday.
Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism Lab said that Google had submitted a pay-ment platform proposal to the Newspaper Association of America in response to a request made by the NAA to several major technology companies.
Nieman published the Google proposal on its website, niemanlab.org, and described Google’s initiative as somewhat “surprising” given “the newspaper industry’s tenuous re-lationship with Google.”
Google’s popular news aggregator website Google News has drawn fire from some US newspaper publishers for linking to their ar-ticles without payment.
Google has dismissed the criticism and countered that it is providing newspapers a
free service by driving traffic to their web-sites.
With print advertising revenue and circu-lation declining, US newspaper publishers have been looking at ways to begin charging for content on the Internet and the NAA has been involved in the effort.
The Google document obtained by Nie-man said the payment platform under devel-opment by the Internet giant, an extension of Google Checkout, would be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year.”
“Google believes that an open Web ben-efits all users and publishers,” the document said. “However, ‘open’ need not mean free.
“We believe that content on the Internet can thrive supported by multiple business models -- including content available only via subscription.
“While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for
most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue,” Google said.
“Google has experience not only with our e-commerce products; we have successfully built consumer products used by millions around the world,” it said. “We can use this expertise to help create a successful e-com-merce platform for publishers.”
Google also suggested it would share rev-enue with newspapers like Apple does with
music companies on its online music store iTunes.
Google is not the only company seeking to develop a payment platform for newspapers.
Journalism Online, a company launched in April which seeks to help news organiza-tions make money on the Web, announced last month that more than 500 newspapers and magazines have agreed to join the ven-ture as affiliates.
It said a payment platform would go on-line in the fall which would allow subscrib-ers to access paid content at the websites of the affiliates using a universal Journalism Online account.
The Los Angeles Times also reported last month that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has held talks with The New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., Hearst Corp. and Tri-bune Co., publisher of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, on forming a con-sortium that would charge for news online.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Barack Obama wants Congress to act this year on what is billed as the most sweeping financial regulatory reform since the 1930s, despite a crush of other business, a senior aide said Friday.
Lawrence Summers, chairman of Obama’s National Economic Council, also said that despite hopes for a return to economic growth in the third quarter this year, US un-employment would remain “unacceptably high” for years.
He also warned that the government would not declare premature victory and pull its bil-lions of dollars in support funding out of the finance and banking sector too quickly.
Obama, who is set to give a major speech in New York on Monday on the next steps in his economic rescue effort, is hoping to add a transformation of the finance sector to a historic health care overhaul before the end of 2009.
“The president famously said during the campaign that to be president you have to be able to do more than one thing at once,” Summers said.
“I think that same idea applies to the 535 members of the Congress.”
Summers said he was confident that the banking and financial service committees in the Senate and House of Representatives could slog through the ultra-complicated ad-ministration plans quickly enough to permit votes in 2009.
“We believe it is very important to pass fi-nancial regulatory reform this year,” he said.
Popular Washington wisdom holds that Congress and the US political system can only handle one big ticket issue at a time, so passing regulatory reform would be a challenge with Capitol Hill consumed by Obama’s health care fight.
Lawmakers are also consumed with what would be an historic energy bill designed to cut global warming emissions, though doubts have surfaced in recent weeks over the timetable for passing the legislation.
Summers argued that defining new regula-tions for a financial industry that ran amok before the crisis was vital to underpinning the fragile recovery expected to be under
way soon, and to head off future crises.“We can no longer afford to take an ap-
proach that is institution by institution, but instead have to focus on the stability of the system,” Summers told a small group of re-porters.
“If an institution is so large and so inter-connected that its failure poses a threat to systemic stability ... it has to be the respon-sibility of some regulator to insure its safety and soundness.
“We cannot have a viable private sector financial system in which failure is not a pos-sibility. Our financial system will not be fail safe until it is safe for failure,” he said.
Obama’s speech on Monday at historic Federal Hall on Wall Street will come on the anniversary of the collapse of 158-year-old Lehman Brothers, which shook confidence in the US financial system and set off a glob-al panic.
His proposals for greater regulation would give the Federal Reserve expanded powers to oversee regulation on all finance firms or banks that pose a significant systemic risk to the wider financial infrastructure.
They would introduce new discipline and transparency into financial markets and would enable investors to better ride out the failure of one or more large financial institu-tion.
The reforms will include the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to shield Americans from the extremes of cred-it, savings and mortgage markets.
Google developing payment platform for newspapers: Nieman
Google document payment platform would be within the next year/ Google
White House wants regulatory reform this year
Obama: “We believe it is very important to pass financial regulatory reform this year.”/Chip Somodevilla-AFP
NEW YORK (AFP) - The dollar recov-ered some of its losses but ended mixed Fri-day after data showing improvement in US consumer sentiment helped the greenback move up from a nine-month low on the euro.
The single European currency fetched 1.4573 dollars at 2100 GMT, against 1.4583 late Thursday in New York. The euro had earlier surged to a nine-month high of 1.4634 dollars.
The US currency fell to 90.64 yen, down from 91.74.
Analysts attributed the market action to lower “risk aversion,” with investors -- con-fident in prospects for the global economy -- emboldened to invest in riskier assets, such as mining assets or the euro.
But the dollar managed to firm during the course of trade Friday, boosted by news that the University of Michigan consumer confidence index had risen in the first part of September after two months of decline. The index rose to a better-than-expected 70.2 points.
“It has been a tough day for the US dol-lar but the stronger-than-expected consumer confidence report has helped the greenback recover,” said Kathy Lien at Global Forex Trading.
“The dollar is finally rising on good data but it remains to be seen whether the drivers for the currency market has really changed from risk appetite to economic fundamen-tals.”
John Kicklighter, currency strategist at Forex Capital Markets, said it was unclear how far the optimism will carry.
“We have seen the trend in risk appetite extend its advance and the dollar inversely maintain its bearish trajectory,” he said.
“Fear continues to dissipate and the de-
mand for yield is steadily growing. How-ever, you can’t point out these bullish signs without also noticing the fading momentum behind the advance.”
Jessica Hoversen at MF Global said inves-tors may be waiting for more economic data next week before shifting positions.
“You have a pretty heavy US economic calendar next week,” she said. “I think the near-term outlook for the dollar is still bear-ish.”
She added that markets expect central banks to start looking at raising interest rates as the recovery gains momentum, which could help their respective currencies.
“The question is who is going to tighten first?” she said. “If we examine the funda-mentals, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be the US.”
In late New York trade, the dollar stood at 1.0376 Swiss francs after 1.0381 Thursday.
The pound was at 1.6671 dollars from 1.6651.
By Germain Moyon NEW YORK (AFP) - A year after the Wall
Street calamity that battered the financial system and dragged the global economy into recession, investors appear to have regained their composure and are betting on recovery.
The main US indexes nearly recovered most of the losses that followed the panicked events of last September, which froze up fi-nancial markets and kept stocks on a down-ward track until March.
“Investors are increasingly convinced that a sustainable global recovery is emerging out of the wreckage,” said Albert Edwards, ana-lyst at Societe Generale.
Over the week to Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 1.74 percent to 9,605.41, after touching an 11-month high earlier in the week.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite ral-lied 3.08 percent to 2,080.90 and the broad-market Standard & Poor’s 500 index jumped 2.59 percent to 1,042.73.
Despite the latest rebound, the main in-dexes are still well below their historic highs.
The blue-chip Dow is 32 percent below its all-time high of October 2007 of 14,164.53 and the S&P 500 some 33 percent short of its record of the same day of 1,565.15. The Nasdaq remains at less than half the level of the tech bubble high of 5,048.62.
This gives ammunition to both bulls and bears, fueling debate on how much further the market can run after a surge of some 50
percent from lows in early March.“The question at this stage of the stock
market advance is, if we’re in a recovery, how strong can it be?” said Linda Duessel at Federated Investors.
“We very well may have a V-shaped re-covery, a catalyst for the S&P 500 reaching 1,200.”
Others are less sanguine.“People are optimistic about the third
quarter, but still questioning how much is being driven by (the government) stimulus and how much is really organic, real growth that’s sustainable,” says Marc Pado, analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald.
David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff & Associates and a longtime bear, says he sees “a hope-based rally in the equity markets” that flies in the face of eco-nomic fundamentals.
“What we are seeing transpire is without precedent -- the magnitude of the employ-ment slide versus the magnitude of the mar-ket advance,” Rosenberg said.
“The fundamentals take a back seat be-cause there is so much liquidity to be put to work, and it all must go into equities. This reminds us of all the liquidity talk during the bubble peak of late 2007.”
Mace Blicksilver at Marblehead Asset Management said he remains cautious about the rally.
“The whole thing that powered the bull market from 1992 to 2000 was that you had
Dollar partly recoups losses as US consumer sentiment rises
Investors see recovery year after Wall Street carnaje
lower taxes and less regulation,” he said. “Now you have the exact opposite.”
Others say the recovery from recession is here and is gaining momentum. making stocks an attractive bet.
Kent Engelke at Capitol Securities Man-agement said the market now expects the economy to grow 2.3 percent in 2010 and that profits for the main S&P 500 firms will rise 25 percent in 2010 after a two-year slump, but argues this may underestimate the recovery.
“I believe both economic and jobs growth will surprise most,” he said.
John Praveen at Prudential Financial agreed, saying that “the global recession appears to be ending faster than expected,” with growth already turning positive in Ja-pan, Germany, France and Australia.
Praveen said the US economy “is on track to post positive GDP (gross domestic prod-uct) growth in the third quarter” of around 3.5 percent amid improving business con-fidence, consumer spending and housing trends.
Bonds rallied for the week. The yield on the 10-year Treasury bond dropped to 3.342 percent from 3.442 percent a week earlier while that on the 30-year bond declined to 4.175 percent from 4.273 percent. Bond yields and prices move in opposite direc-tions.
In the coming week, investors will mark the one-year anniversary of the Lehman Brothers collapse that sent markets reeling. Also on tap are reports on inflation, retail sales, housing starts and industrial produc-tion.
Some say the recovery from recession is here and is gaining momentum./ Stan Honda- AFP
Kathy Lien at Global Forex Trading: “It has been a tough day for the US dollar but the stronger-than-expected consumer confidence report has helped the greenback recover.”/ Getty Images royalty free
Edition 192 • September, 200922 Edition 192 • September, 2009 23SporTSenTerTainMenT
Each column, row and box must contain each number from 1 to 9. There is only one solution, wich is shown here.
NEW YORK, (AFP) - Derek Jeter tied legendary Lou Gehrig for the New York Yankees record for hits Wednesday, notching three hits in a 4-2 win over Tampa Bay to take his total to 2,721 in Yankees pinstripes.
Gehrig got his 2,721st hit on April 29, 1939, a single against the Washington Sena-tors.
The Iron Horse had held the club record for hits since September 6, 1937, when he passed Babe Ruth.
Jeter had a chance to break Gehrig’s re-cord in the eighth inning, but he walked against Rays reliever Grant Balfour.
Fans at new Yankee Stadium were on their feet in anticipation when Jeter sent a ground ball inside the first-base line in the seventh inning, the ball eluding a diving Chris Rich-ard.
Jeter took off his helmet and twice waved it to the cheering throng. As he stood at first base, Rays players and coaches applauded.
Jeter went into the game in an 0-for-12 slump, his longest stretch without a hit this season.
He led off the bottom of the first with a bunt single toward third, earning his first ovation of the night.
Jeter grounded out in the third, and
smacked a ground-rule double to straight-away center in the fifth.
On his first chance to tie Gehrig, Jeter de-livered with an opposite-field hit.
In the middle of the eighth inning, the vid-eo screen in center field displayed a replay and the message “Congratulations Derek!”
Jeter notched another mileste when he stole second base in the first inning his 300th career steal. He ranks second on the Yankees list for stolen bases, behind the 326 of Rick-ey Henderson.
SPRINGFIELD (AFP) - Michael Jordan, perhaps basketball’s greatest player, was en-shrined in the Hall of Fame Friday, thanking those who fueled his competitive fire.
“I’d do anything to win,” Jordan said, de-fining the key trait that led him to six Na-tional Basketball Association titles, five NBA Most Valuable Player Awards and two Olympic gold medals.
Along the way Jordan supplied enduring images - from determined defensive moves to gravity-defying dunks - that raised the NBA’s profile around the world.
In his enshrinement speech, Jordan re-called the high school coach who snubbed him - and the last player to try to defend him in the NBA finals.
He thanked his own coaches and rival coaches, his teammates and his opponents for continually prodding him to greater heights of achievement.
To that high school coach who passed him over:
“I wanted to make sure you understood: You made a mistake, dude,” Jordan said with a sly smile.
He took a poke at onetime Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy, who once claimed Jordan “conned” players by acting friendly off the court, then attacking them in games.
“I just so happen to be a friendly guy,” Jor-dan said. “I get along with everybody, but at the same time, when the light comes on, I’m as competitive as anybody you know.”
Pundits who predicted that Jordan, though a great player, would never win like Larry Bird or Magic Johnson, were particularly motivating.
“I had to listen to all that, and that put so much wood on that fire that it kept me each and every day trying to get better as a basket-ball player,” Jordan said.
Jordan was temporarily retired in 1994 when young Utah forward Bryon Russell told him he would have been able to guard the great man.
When Jordan came out of retirement, Rus-sell got two chances at him in the NBA finals. Russell was the well-beaten defender when Jordan hit the clinching shot to win the 1998 crown.
“From this day forward, if I ever see him in shorts, I’m coming at him,” Jordan said.
Taking the stage to an extended ovation, Jordan had to fight to get tears under control.
Jordan was elected to the hall in his first year of eligibility, and certainly his arrival there had never been in doubt.
But prior to the ceremony, the 46-year-old shied away from the wave of “greatest ever” praise.
“It’s a privilege, but I would never give myself that type of accolade because I never competed against everybody in this Hall of Fame,” he said. “So it’s too much for me to ask, and too much for me to accept.”
But Jordan, whose amazing aerial acrobat-ics, fierce competitive streak and marketing savvy transformed both his sport and sports business around the world, was the undis-puted superstar of a stellar class of 2009 in-ductees.
The group also included Jordan’s 1992 Olympic Dream Team colleague and San An-tonio Spurs standout David Robinson, Utah Jazz stalwart and ‘92 Dream Teamer John
Stockton, longtime Jazz coach Jerry Sloan and Rutgers University women’s coach C. Vivian Stringer.
“It’s truly a pleasure for me to be a part of this and contrary to what you guys believe, it’s not just me going into the Hall of Fame, it’s a group of us,” Jordan said.
Robinson won two NBA championships with San Antonio and was NBA Rookie of the year in 1990 and Most Valuable Player in 1995.
Stockton is the NBA’s all-time leader in
assists and steals. But Stockton caught the mood when he joked that some of his invited guests were really there to see Jordan.
“He makes one big shot and everybody thinks he’s kind of cool,” Stockton quipped. “I don’t get it.”
“Everybody’s here to see Michael,” Charles Barkley said before the festivities. “He’s the greatest player of all-time.”
“I think this is a greater honor for the Hall of Fame than it is for Michael,” Bulls Chair-man Jerry Reinsdorf said Thursday.
“It’s really incredible that this many years after he retired he’s still probably only be-hind Tiger (Woods) as the second-most pop-ular athlete in the world. That’s a wonderful tribute to him.”
In fact, Jordan blazed the path that golfer Woods now treads as a global star whose popularity transcends his sport.
Shoes bearing his nickname, “Air”, helped Jordan make more than 100 million dollars a year from endorsements and salaries above 30 million dollars. Children all over the world sported replicas of his jersey number 23 as they tried to be like Mike.
Jordan’s drawing power remains so huge that Friday evening’s ceremony was moved from the Hall of Fame to Springfield’s Sym-phony Hall, where the capacity of 2,600 is more than double that of the Hall of Fame facilities.
His fellow inductee Sloan said it was no more than Jordan’s due.
“To see what Michael has done not only for the Chicago Bulls but throughout the whole world of basketball is really mind-boggling,” Sloan said.
NBA: ‘Air’ Jordan in rare company in Hall of Fame
Michael Jordan is inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame during a ceremony on September 11, 2009 in Springfield, Massachusetts/ Jim Rogash-AFP
Derek Jeter #2 of the New York Yankees hits a single to right field in the third inning during a game against the Baltimore Orioles at Yankee Stadium on September 11, 2009 in the Bronx borough of New York City. Jeter’s hit was his 2,722nd, passing Lou Gehrig’s all-time club record of 2,721 / Jared Wickerham-AFP
Baseball: Jeter equals Gehrig forYankeeshitsrecord
TORONTO (AFP) - Actor George Cloo-ney pledged Friday to help his friend and fellow thespian Matt Damon shape up to re-claim the title of “sexiest man alive.”
“Matt is very competitive with both Brad (Pitt) and myself, and Brad and I are two-time ‘sexiest men alive,’ and Matt’s only won it that one time, and I kinda consider that a fluke,” Clooney quipped.
“Having seen him recently, he’s got a lot of work to do if he wants to get back up there,” he said. “But I’m going to work with him and he’s going to run a strong campaign this year.”
Damon was named “sexiest man alive” by People magazine in 2007, for his piercing blue eyes and family-guy demeanor.
But he gained almost 30 pounds (13.5 ki-lograms) eating pizza and drinking beer for his latest role as a whistleblower in film “The Informant!” -- the last time Clooney saw him.
Since then, Damon has actually shed the weight.
Clooney and Pitt remain the only two-time recipients of the honor in 1997 and 2006, and 1995 and 2000, respectively. The pair have shamelessly campaigned for Damon in the past.
Actor Hugh Jackson won last year.
“Matt was pretty upset about the whole Hugh Jackson thing,” Clooney commented. “I’m going to train him, I’m going to work with him, and with any luck at all...”
Clooney, with a bandage on his hand after slamming a car door on it accidentally, was
in Toronto promoting the film “Men Who Stare at Goats.”
In the film, scoop-hungry journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor) happens upon Clooney’s character, Lyn Cassady, embark-ing on a mission to find Bill Django (Jeff Bridges), founder of the US Army’s secret “psychic soldier” program, in Iraq.
The film is based on a book by Jon Ron-son about the army’s experimentation with New Age concepts and the paranormal, for instance the ability to kill goats by staring at them, begun in the 1970s.
His hand “should be fine in two weeks,” Clooney said.
Others who have received the People mag-azine accolade, which has been announced yearly since 1985 when Mel Gibson was the winner, include Tom Cruise (1990), Denzel Washington (1996) and Jude Law (2004).
by SebaStian SMith
NEW YORK (AFP) - The books are under guard, the plot’s secret, the author silent, but all that will change when Dan Brown’s latest conspiracy potboiler, “The Lost Symbol,” is unleashed Tuesday.
Extraordinary measures have been taken to keep the sequel to 2003 mega hit “The Da Vinci Code” under wraps, right down to posting guards in book warehouses.
But much as in Brown’s tangled -- some say nonsensical -- plots about secret soci-eties, the Catholic Church, and symbolo-gist Robert Langdon, not everything is as it seems.
The secretive treatment is all part of a huge publicity campaign reaching fever pitch September 15, as Doubleday publishers try to repeat the success of the “Code’s” record-setting 80 million sales.
Five million copies have been printed and, in a bold step, an e-version of the novel will be released on the same day. Pre-sales have already rocketed “The Lost Symbol” to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list.
Expect a PR blitz from Tuesday, including a rare appearance by the reclusive American writer on NBC television.
But for now, silence -- or at least talking loudly about being silent -- is golden.
NBC’s Today Show reported that anyone coming into contact with the book at Double-day has had to sign a non-disclosure agree-ment, while copies of the finished product are literally under lock and key.
“We have closed circuit TVs that are mon-itoring the books at all times in a secure area that is also guarded,” said Jacqueline Up-dike, at Random House, parent company of Doubleday.
The cover of the book, third in a series featuring Langdon, shows the Capitol in Washington and a wax seal containing a double-headed phoenix, the numeral 33, and the words “ordo ae chao,” Latin for “order to chaos.”
The design supports rumors that Freema-sons are at the heart of the story.
But beyond these tidbits, and the revela-tion by Brown’s editor Jason Kaufman that the narrative takes place in a 12-hour period, almost nothing is known.
Speculation, fueled by specially seeded clues, is raging on Facebook, Twitter and Widget accounts linked to the book and au-thor.
However, the clues are reportedly con-cocted by employees who have not actually read the book and are therefore of limited value.
“Felled in 6 days at a church of sound,” a recent Twitter entry says. “At the head of the Niagra, Parade of Dark Horses.”
Similarly, the author’s site www.dan-brown.com provides only the barest bio-graphical information. Instead, you are in-vited to play “the symbol quest,” a game of guessing which of a collection of esoteric symbols fit in a compass-like circle.
If Brown’s financial success seems pre-dictable, so does the reaction his new work is likely to provoke around the world.
Serious literary critics have long been hor-rified by what they consider Brown’s appall-ing writing. Salman Rushdie famously said “The Da Vinci Code” is “a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.”
The Vatican accused the “The Da Vinci Code” and multitude of spinoffs, including a popular film starring Tom Hanks, of anti-Catholic prejudice.
But fans are salivating in anticipation.
“Already booked advanced copy since I am in India waiting for three extra more days to read your book,” a Widget message from Pavan Kumar on the book’ site reads.
“When are you due in London to sign cop-ies?? Cant wait!!” writes Boe Locks from London.
They’ll have to wait.
As the official site says by the ticking clock: “All will be revealed.”
Clooney to help Matt Damon regain ‘sexiest man alive’ title
Actors George Clooney (L) and Jeff Bridges on stage at the “The Men Who Stare At Goats” premiere introduction during the Toronto International Film Festival held at Roy Thomson Hall on September 11, 2009 in Toronto, Canada/ Malcolm Taylor-AFP
Dan Brown book to reveal secret... of publishing success
“The Lost Symbol,” Dan Brown’s latest conspiracy potboiler was unleashed last Tuesday. / BBC
