A crash on the autopista General Cañas or Ruta 1 in the early hours of Thursday morning and the delayed response by authorities to clear the crash site caused San Jose – Alajuela bound traffic to back up for more than 8 kilometers (5 miles), from La Uruca.
Photos from Facebook
The fatal crash occurred at 1:00 am when a passenger vehicle crashed past the Francisco J. Orlich bridge west of the Cariari exit. The driver was strewn from the vehicle and lay, covered with a white sheet to well after 7:00 am before authorities were able to begin clearing the scene.
Photos from Facebook
At this point on the autopista, the turn can be tight, if excessive speeding you are on the retainer wall before you know it. Add to that the possibility of slow-moving traffic not visible until you are at the bridge and possible condensation that converts any braking action into a skid.
The crash occurred shortly after 1:00 am Thursday. Photos from Facebook
The passenger, whose identity was not made public, is in critical condition at the San Vicente de Paul hospital in Heredia. The driver, also not identified publicly, according to police was male, 25 years of age.
It wasn’t hours before the respective authorities arrived on the scene to order the removal of the body and clear the scene of the crash. Photos from Facebook
The Policia de Transito (Traffic Police) closed all Alajuela bound lanes, redirecting traffic onto the Cariari exit. Minutes before 7:00 am two lanes of the four lanes section of the General Cañas were re-opened to traffic.
Photos from Facebook
Many are questioning why it took more than six hours for the respective authorities, typically a judger and/or fiscal (prosecutor) and others where there is a fatality, to arrive at the scene.
This is the second early morning crash in weeks resulting in a fatality and collapsing a major artery.
On February 23, a crash on the Circunvalacion, on the bridge over the Ruta 27, caused a similar road collapse.
Following that crash, Waler Espinoza, director of the Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ) explained: “the presence of a judge and fiscal is vital for them for the removal of the body; however, these officials do not always arrive immediately”.
“They look like humans, but they are not. Its anatomical structure is different,” the researchers said, speculating that the remains may be extraterrestrial.
The beings lived between 6,500 and 4,000 years ago and were likely wiped out by a comet or flood, researchers say. | Photo: EFE
Mummified remains found in an ancient Peruvian temple in Nazca last year are not human and may in fact be alien in origin, scientists claim.
One of the six three-fingered mummies, called Maria, was analyzed by Russian researcher Konstantin Korotkov and a radiologist specializing in computer tomography, Natalya Zaloznaya. Tissue samples taken from the body were analyzed by the pair, who concluded that the creature is humanoid, but not human.
Covered in a layer of white dust later identified as cadmium chloride, a natural antibacterial, Maria’s body and inner organs were perfectly preserved. Zaloznaya says that down to the 23 chromosomes, the heart, trachea, liver, spleen and diaphragm are consistent with those of a modern human.
Photo Gaia.com
Korotkov, a professor at the National Research University of Russia, said: “Each of the small mummies has two arms, two legs, a head, a pair of eyes and a mouth. The tomographic scans reveal their skeletons.”
Korotkov speculates the beings may be extraterrestrial, bio-robots or a prehistoric tribe: “The tissue has a biological nature and its chemical composition indicates that they are human. Its DNA presents 23 pairs of chromosomes, just like us. The four are men, each with a chromosome. They look like humans, but they are not. Its anatomical structure is different.”
The elongated skull, six fingers and six toes tell a different story. Among these more obvious oddities, the mummy also differs from human anatomy with a keel-shaped upper rib section, no nasal cavities, no outer ears and an immovable lower jaw.
Photo Gaia.com
The 70cm-tall beings lived somewhere between 6,500 and 4,000 years ago and were most likely wiped out by either a comet or a major flood.
“A handful of those who survived met savage tribes of prehistoric men and taught them crafts and agriculture. They mated with local women. They had three fingers and this genetic characteristic could become evident in future generations,” said the professor, adding that the community may have reached a higher stage of advancement thousands of years ago.
“By the way, you can see three-toed creatures in the petroglyphic drawings found in Peru,” Korotkov said.
Amid rising skepticism, skeletal specialist Dr Edson Vivanco confirmed their legitimacy in an interview with British newspaper the Daily Express: “There are lots of details that indicate that the bodies are real. To recreate a skull with these characteristics is a very difficult task. So far, we haven’t found anything to say it is a fraud, or that the bodies have been modified or altered in any way.
“At the moment we are doing a detailed analysis to see if the shape and the position of all the chromosomes, of all the amino acids, coincide with ours.”
Protesters claim the disputed Harbour Head lagoon and San Juan river belong to Nicaragua. April 5, 2011. | Photo: EFE
After five years of diplomatic conflict, Nicaragua has paid Costa Rica US$378,890 for environmental damages its occupation of Isla Calero as it is known in Costa Rica, in 2010.
Protesters claim the disputed Harbour Head lagoon and San Juan river belong to Nicaragua. April 5, 2011. | Photo: EFE
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague ruled on December 16, 2015, that Nicaragua should pay Costa Rica for the environmental damages, related to the military occupation of the small island, located in a disputed border area between the two countries.
On February 2 of this year, the ICJ ordered Nicaragua to pay up for the environmental damage and other costs incurred by Costa Rica, the amount a lot less than the US$6.7 million Costa Rica had demanded.
The Nicaraguan Foreign Minister, Denis Moncada, told his Costa Rican counterpart Manuel Gonzalez that the money had been transferred on March 7 to Costa Rica’s Central Bank.
“We have verified that the money was transferred and we’re happy that the Government of Nicaragua fulfilled its obligation with Costa Rica according to the ruling of the International Court of Justice,” said Gonzalez in a press release. “Actions such as this contribute to the improvement of relations between both countries in benefit of the people.”
“Nicaragua has carried out several activities in the disputed territory since 2010, including excavations for three pipes and establishing a military presence in some parts of the territory. These activities violate Costa Rica’s territorial sovereignty. Nicaragua is responsible for such violations and is obligated to compensate for the damage caused by its illegal activities,” said Ronny Abraham, president of the ICJ.
Semana Santa Heredia Costa Rica 2017 Procesión Jesús Expulsando A Los Mercaderes Del Templo
If your travel plans include spending Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Costa Rica, there are some things you should be aware of. In Costa Rica and the rest of Latin America, Easter is not just Easter Sunday, April 1 this year, rather a week that is different than the normal.
Semana Santa Heredia Costa Rica 2017 Procesión Jesús Expulsando A Los Mercaderes Del Templo. (YouTube)
Semana Santa or Easter Week starts officially on March 25. However, in Costa Rica, it is really a few days before that, when many businesses, government offices, schools, universities close and re-open ten or more days later.
In Costa Rica, Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa are legal holidays. In days past, they were also ‘dry’, days when no liquor, beer or wine could be sold. Supermarkets would empty (or block off) their areas of alcohol, liquor stores closed, police would at 12:01 am Thursday start shutting down bars by placing a seal on the liquor or on the front door. Restaurants could not serve a cold beer with the Gallo Pinto.
That has all changed. Now, local municipalities have the decision to prohibit or not. While most, especially in the tourist areas, opt to let the tap flow, some continue with the prohibition.
Though a major Catholic holiday, Semana Santa in Costa Rica is also about traditions and everyone enjoys their time off work.
Week-long celebrations include parades, religious processions, mini-festivals and time at the beach or mountain resort.
This Semana Santa is different than the others, as it also includes a presidential election, the run-off vote that will be held on April 1. This is a very important election as the two candidates, Carlos Alvarado and Fabricio Alvarado – no relation – one which will govern for the next four years, have extremely opposing views.
Things to remember for Semana Santa is that though banks, government, professional offices and businesses are closed on Thursday and Friday, many are also closed all week. If you have doctor’s appointment, for example, best to check ahead.
Due to the election, there may be fewer people traveling around the country, staying close to their polling station, the opposite could be the reality. What is important for visitors is, if your flight is on Saturday or Sunday (March 31 or April 1), allow lots of extra time if you are heading to the airport from the beaches and resorts, in particular, if your departure is from the San Jose’s Juan Santamaria international airport (SJO).
Driving in Costa Rica is definitely an adventure, Semana Santa perhaps more as you can expect greater volume of traffic and with that many drivers who, one can’t drive or are not used to driving on highways or for long periods.
Renting a car is one way to see the country, make sure you have firm reservations, this is the high season and this year car rental companies report higher than usual volume.
The same goes for public buses and private transportation. Leaving your travel arrangements to the last minute may leave you disappointed. Public buses, for example, besides the reduced service for the Easter holidays, there is greater than normal demand.
Will you be in Costa Rica during Semana Santa? Use the comments section below or post your questions and/or advice on our official Facebook page.
If you are planning to travel to Costa Rica in the near future, here are upcoming notable statutory (legal) holidays to be aware of:
April 11 – Juan Santamaria Day
May 1 – Labor day
July 25 – Guanacaste Day or the annexation of Guanacaste from Nicaragua
On Friday, March 9, Nature Air fired 31 people, according to the company in a statement. The mass firing came days following rumors about the airline’s critical financial situation.
The airline suffered a major blow when one of its planes went down on December 31, 2017, claiming the lives of 10 passengers and two crew.
The airline acknowledges that this is the second group of dismissals in the month, affecting some 80 families.
“This has caused a very heavy burden from every point of view, because for two months we have externalized our widespread concern that, if not addressed immediately, would lead us to this critical reality. The truth of the matter is that the unusual amount The time it took the authorities to remove the suspension of our license for an administrative issue and not safety, increased the situation,” explained Alex E. Khajavi, CEO of Nature Air, according to the statement.
The airline suffered a major blow when one of its planes went down on December 31, 2017, claiming the lives of 10 passengers and two crew.
Subsequently, the General Directorate of Civil Aviation (Dirección General de Aviación Civil) temporarily suspended the airline’s operation license.
The situation of the company “not only affects the 80 families that depend on our livelihood or the productive chain that emerges from the business or the vacations of some 26,000 local and foreign tourists who find themselves in a situation of uncertainty, because they do not know how to move around the country, but this has a negative impact on the international image, as well as on the credibility of Costa Rica’s external tourism campaigns, “Nature Air alleged after the announcement of the dismissals.
In spite of everything, Nature Air CEO expressed his intention to regularize his operations. “As soon as this situation takes a different direction, we will communicate with our customers and the other members of the tourism industry who have been affected by this situation,” Khajavi said in the statement.
Meanwhile, an email from a Nature Air customer from Sydney, Australia reacting to our article https://qcostarica.com/nature-air-grounded/ explains how the company continues to jerk around customers, making notifications of canceled flights at the last minute and delaying refunds.
The email is representative of many similar posts on social media.
The customer wrote, “We made and paid for two sets of return flights using Air Nature (sic). About a week later (no) we received an email canceling the first return flights. When we rang up to get a credit return we checked on the second flight and found that was cancelled as well. They informed us that they would have told us a week later. They seem to have a policy of waiting approximately a week before telling you and then inform you that it will take 6 to 8 weeks to get your money reimbursed. Is this a method of accepting money when they know they cant fly, just to stay solvent?.”
CARACAS — A bag of rice on a hungry family’s kitchen table could be the key to Nicolas Maduro retaining the support of poor Venezuelans in May’s presidential election.
The contents of a CLAP box, a Venezuelan government handout of basic food supplies, is pictured at Viviana Colmenares’ house in the slum of Petare in Caracas, Feb. 23, 2018.
For millions of Venezuelans suffering an unprecedented economic crisis, a monthly handout of a box of heavily-subsidized basic food supplies by Maduro’s unpopular government has offered a tenuous lifeline in their once-prosperous OPEC nation.
The 55-year-old successor to Hugo Chavez introduced the so-called CLAP boxes in 2016 in a signature policy of his rule, continuing the socialist government’s strategy of seeking public support with cash bonuses and other giveaways.
Now, running for re-election on May 20, Maduro says the CLAPs are his “most powerful weapon” to combat an “economic war” being waged by Washington, which brands him a “dictator” and has imposed sanctions.
Mariana, a single mother who lives in the poor hillside neighborhood of Petare in the capital Caracas, says the handouts will decide her vote.
“I and other women I know are going to vote for Maduro because he’s promising to keep giving CLAPs, which at least help fix some problems,” said the 30-year-old cook, who asked not to give her surname for fear of losing the benefit.
“When you earn minimum wage, which doesn’t cover exorbitant prices, the box helps.”
Maduro’s rule since 2013 has coincided with a deep recession caused by a plunge in global oil prices and failed state-led economic policies.
Yet the worse the economy gets, the more dependent some poor Venezuelans become on the state.
Life in the South American country’s poor ‘barrios’ revolves around the CLAP boxes. According to the government, six million families receive the benefit, from a population of around 30 million people.
Venezuelans, many of whom are undernourished, anxiously wait for their monthly delivery, and a thriving black market has sprung up to sell CLAP products.
The government sources almost all the CLAP goods from abroad, especially from Mexico, since Venezuela’s food production has shriveled and currency controls restrict private imports.
Critics, including Maduro’s main challenger for the May 20 vote, Henri Falcon, say the CLAPs are a cynical form of political patronage and are rife with corruption.
Erratic supply and control of distribution by government-affiliated groups have sown resentment among others.
“I can’t count on it. Sometimes it comes, sometimes not,” said Viviana Colmenares, 24, an unemployed mother of six struggling to get by in Petare.
The children of Viviana Colmenares (C) have lunch in a community diner at the slum of Petare in Caracas, Feb. 22, 2018.
“Instrument of the Revolution”
Stamped with the faces of Maduro and Chavez, the CLAP boxes usually contain rice, pasta, grains, cooking oil, powdered milk, canned tuna and other basic goods. Recipients pay 25,000 bolivars per box, or about $0.12 at the black market rate.
That is a godsend in a country where the minimum monthly wage is less than $2 at that rate – and would be swallowed up by two boxes of eggs or a small tin of powdered milk.
Inflation, at more than 4,000 percent annually according to opposition data, is pulverizing household income.
The administration of the CLAP — the Local Supply and Production Committees — does not hide its political motivation.
“The CLAPs are here to stay. They are an instrument of the revolution,” said Freddy Bernal, CLAP chief administrator.
“It has helped us stop a social explosion and enabled us to win elections and to keep winning them,” he told Reuters, referring to government victories in 2017 local polls.
Sometimes, though, the tactic backfires, as it did when promised free pork failed to arrive over Christmas, prompting street protests.
Maduro’s inability to halt rising hunger has jarred with the experience of many under Chavez, who won the presidency in 1998 and improved Venezuela’s social indicators with oil-fueled welfare policies.
Even though Maduro’s approval rating is only around 26 percent, according to one recent poll, his re-election looks likely as Venezuela’s opposition coalition is boycotting the vote on accusations it is rigged.
His most popular rivals are banned from standing and the election board favors the government.
Former state governor Falcon has broken with the coalition to stand. One survey by pollster Datanalisis in February showed that in a two-way race, he would defeat Maduro by 45.8 percent to 32.2 percent of likely voters.
Falcon’s critics counter that those numbers mean nothing in the face of electoral irregularities that could arbitrarily tip the balance in favor of Maduro.
Several other minor figures have registered for the single-round election, but have little chance of making an impact.
‘Can’t Depend on the Box’
Juan Luis Hernandez, a food specialist at the Central University of Venezuela, estimates the country generates just 44 percent of the basic food supplies it produced in 2008.
Meanwhile, food imports fell 67 percent between the start of 2016 and the end of 2017 as the crisis bit, he said.
Almost two-thirds of Venezuelans surveyed in a university study published in February said they had lost on average 11 kilograms (24 lbs) in body weight last year. Eighty-seven percent were assessed to live in poverty.
The same study found that seven out of 10 Venezuelans had received CLAPs.
“They (the government) don’t care about the food issue, just about getting people something to eat while they get through the elections,” said Susana Raffalli, a consultant with charity Caritas.
Some Venezuelans fear they would be found out should they vote against Maduro and be punished by no longer receiving food bags.
Already handouts are far from guaranteed.
A dozen recipients told Reuters that often they arrived half-full and would only come every few months. Outside of the capital Caracas, delivery was even more sporadic.
Antonia Torres, mother of Yuni Perez, cooks for seven people a packet of pasta received in a CLAP box, a Venezuelan government handout of basic food supplies, in her home at the slum of Petare in Caracas, March 9, 2018.
“I can’t depend on the box, otherwise I would die from hunger,” said Yuni Perez, a 48-year-old rubbish collector and mother of three.
Perez, who lives in a ramshackle house made from breeze blocks and corrugated steel at the top of Petare, said a CLAP box provided her family with food for a week. Often they would receive one every two months.
When her family is short of food, she hunts for leftovers dumped on the side of Petare’s winding streets. She said she had found several newborn babies discarded in the gutter, which she attributed to mothers unable to face providing food for another child.
Another Petare resident, mother-of-three Yaneidy Guzman said she dropped from 68kg to 48kg last year, despite receiving the CLAP.
“At least for 10 days you don’t have to think about finding food,” the 32-year-old said of the handouts, her cheekbones protruding from her face.
COLON, PANAMA — A protest over infrastructure and insecurity turned into violent clashes with police Tuesday in Panama’s second biggest city, which is home to a strategic port at the northern end of the Panama Canal.
Residents stand next to a barricade on fire as they call for a strike during a protest against unfinished public works in Colon, Panama, March 13, 2018.
Preliminary reports from national police said four officers were injured and 18 people were arrested for looting, vandalism and attacks on police. There was no information on civilian injuries.
Demonstrators are angry over what they see as the slow pace of a project to revitalize Colon’s collapsed sewer system, deficient water supply and crumbling housing. Ditches left open for protracted periods have regularly filled with dirty water and flooded streets, giving off a foul stench and making life more unpleasant in an already dilapidated city.
Demonstrators shouting slogans hold a banner with a message that reads in Spanish: “Colon united for the cause” in Colon, Panama, March 13, 2018.
A march called by a social and labor movement ended without incident in the city center. Protest leader Edgardo Voitier called on supporters to return to the streets Wednesday and announced that a general strike in Colon province would continue for another 24 hours.
But splinter groups of protesters broke off and threw rocks at police, set at least one patrol car aflame, burned tires and wooden pallets, and looted some businesses. Riot officers responded with tear gas.
Public transportation was paralyzed and stores were shuttered, though activity was normal at the canal, port facilities and the Colon Free Trade Zone.
Government public works official Jorge Gonzalez asked Colon residents to be patient and said the revitalization project is more than 50 percent complete.
A man is detained by police as he takes part in a protest against the unfinished public works in Colon, Panama, March 13, 2018.
“We are not applying makeup. We are rebuilding,” Gonzalez said.
Decades of neglect
Despite being a key commercial port, Colon has seen decades of neglect from a succession of governments in Panama City, leading to a protracted decline in the quality of infrastructure.
President Juan Carlos Varela, who visited Colon after taking office in 2014 and promised people there a turnaround, has said his government is spending more than $1.2 billion on public and social works in the city.
Residents of Colon “have been abused for many decades, and the current president promised them that he was going to improve their quality of life,” said Marco Gandasegui, a sociologist at the University of Panama. “Nearly four years have gone by and not only has that promise become hollow, it has hurt the great majority [of people] with a project that openly cheated them.”
Protesters also demanded more attention be paid to combating crime in the province, which has one of the highest homicide rates in Panama.
Tuesday’s protests were the most serious in Colon since violent demonstrations in 2012 against an initiative to sell off property in the free trade zone.
MEXICO CITY – Alphabet’s Google said on Tuesday that it will launch a network of free Wi-Fi hotspots across Mexico, part of the search giant’s effort to improve connectivity in emerging markets and put its products in the hands of more users.
Journalists wait at a news conference, for the launch of Google Station, a network of free WI-FI hotspots across the country, beginning in Mexico City, March 13, 2018.
Google Station, an ad-supported network of Wi-Fi hotspots in high-traffic locations, is launching in Mexico with 56 hotspots and others planned, the company said.
Mexico will be Google Station’s third market following India and Indonesia, and the first in Latin America.
Mexico has made great strides in connectivity since a 2013-14 telecom reform intended to loosen the grip of billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil, which has long dominated the market.
Vice President of Product Management at Google, Anjali Joshi, looks on during a news conference to announce the launching of Google Station in Mexico City, March 13, 2018
From 2013 to 2016, the number of people accessing the Internet in Mexico rose by 20 million, according to a report last fall by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Still, the country lags behind other OECD nations in terms of internet access, the report said.
Vice President of Product Management at Google, Anjali Joshi, looks on during a news conference to announce the launching of Google Station in Mexico City, March 13, 2018.
“We are finding that public Wi-Fi remains still a very important way to get online,” Anjali Joshi, a vice president for product management at Google, told reporters.
She added that Google saw Mexico as a good entrypoint for the product in Latin America. Mexico-based SitWifi provided equipment for the hotspots.
Google’s initial batch of Wi-Fi zones is scattered across the country, from the Ciudad Juarez airport at the U.S. border to posh shopping centers in Mexico City.
Google Station now counts roughly 8 million users a month in India, where the program began in 2016.
Maira Figueroa is released from prison in El Salvador after serving 15 years of a 30-year sentence for having an abortion
MARVIN RECINOS, AFP
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/el-salvador-releases-second-woman-jailed-over-abortion/article/517238#ixzz59h5coiH1
A Salvadoran woman serving a 30-year sentence for aggravated homicide over an alleged abortion after she was raped was released from prison on Tuesday having served half her sentence.
Maira Figueroa is released from prison in El Salvador after serving 15 years of a 30-year sentence for having an abortion MARVIN RECINOS, AFP
Maira Figueroa is the second woman jailed under the Central American country’s severe anti-abortion laws to have her sentence commuted by the Supreme Court this year.
“I am happy to be with my family,” Figueroa, 34, told reporters outside the Women’s Prison in San Salvador following her release.
“I hope that other women are given the opportunity to go free.”
She had served 15 years of her sentence, imposed when she was 19 years old.
Another Salvadoran woman, Teodora Vasquez, was freed in February. She had served 11 years of a 30-year sentence after being accused of an abortion following a stillbirth.
Vasquez was among those waiting to greet Figueroa on her release. The two women embraced outside the prison walls.
Under a law that came into force in 1998, all abortions are illegal in El Salvador, regardless of whether the pregnancy results from rape — as in Figueroa’s case — or poses a medical threat to the woman.
Prison terms range from two to eight years, but women can be charged with more serious crimes instead, as in both women’s cases.
Two dozen women remain behind bars after running afoul of the country’s strict abortion laws, activists say.
Figueroa was convicted in 2003 by a court in the western city of Ahuachapan for aggravated homicide.
She had been hospitalized after suffering an obstetric emergency and blood loss at a home where she worked as a domestic employee.
Aggravated homicide
Prosecutors accused her of aggravated homicide and she received a 30-year prison sentence.
The baby died in hospital and “she was arrested and accused of having caused an abortion,” the Citizens’ Association for the Decriminalization of Abortion said in a statement.
The pressure group representing 15 women’s rights organizations had petitioned the Supreme Court for her release.
In a interview after she was freed last month, Vasquez said part of the problem in El Salvador was that poor women found themselves “abandoned” by the public hospital system.
Instead of receiving medical help, they risked being turned over to police because of problems encountered during pregnancy.
“A woman with money who wants to have an abortion finds a clinic and gets it done, and nothing happens. But a poor woman does that and she is sent to prison,” Vasquez said.
Morena Herrera, the group’s coordinator, said 24 other women are currently incarcerated in the heavily Roman Catholic country for abortions that were classified as homicides under state law.
“They were all convicted because of prejudice, so we hope that their cases will be reviewed or they will be granted a pardon,” Herrera said.
Beyond the problem of incarceration, Herrera said there was a need to “decriminalize abortion in specific circumstances, such as when the health of the mother is at risk.”
With voter turnout for Cuba’s legislative election Sunday at almost 80%, the island completed the second stage of its general elections that will culminate in the election of a new executive in April.
According to the National Electoral Commission (CEN), about 78.5% of voters – almost seven million people – participated in the election.
More than eight million Cubans were eligible to vote for the 605 deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power and the 1,265 delegates to the 15 Provincial Assemblies of People’s Power.
On April 16, the incoming National Assembly will elect a new Council of State, who will then determine the body’s president.
The vote for a new National Assembly on Sunday, was a key step in a process leading to the election of a new president, the first in nearly 60 years from outside the Castro family. The new members of the National Assembly will be tasked with choosing a successor to 86-year-old President Raul Castro when he steps down next month.
President Raul Castro announced in 2017 that he would not be seeking reelection. Under Cuba’s 1992 election law, those registered could cast their ballot in “a free, equal and secret vote” in some 24,470 polling stations across the country’s 168 municipalities.
Raul took over in 2006 from his ailing brother Fidel, who had governed since seizing power during the 1959 revolution.
According to official, no incidents were reported although heavy rainfall complicated voting in some areas.
The provinces that reported highest voter turnout were Mayabeque, Pinar del Rio and Granma.
Scrutiny of the vote and tally took place in the presence of more than 200,000 electoral authorities, as well as any community members who desired to observe the count, as permitted under Cuban law.
Although he does not feel inclined to vote for any of the two candidates in the second round on April 1, former president José María Figueres Olsen(1994-1998), made it clear that he does not know any country in the world, where the combination of politics and religion, “It went well”.
Figueres made the statement on Saturday during a meeting with PLN militants in Pérez Zeledón, according to a video published on Facebook.
On the recommendation for the vote, this was what he said: “everyone casts their own vote, depending on their conscience, moving forward, because no one here is promoting one or the other”.
Figueres is not coming out in support of any one of the two candidates, but strongly criticized the Partido Restauracion Nacional (PRN) candidate, Fabricio Alvarado, a devout Evangelical Christian, who gained in popularity because of his opposition to same-sex marriage, with his ‘political-religious combination’ comments in Perez Zeledon.
For his part, the candidate of the Partido Accion Cauidada (PAC), Carlos Alvarado, denies any approach with Figueres but says to share the opinions.
Fabricio Alvarado did not comment on the former President’s statement.
If you were like me, you got by surprise in the start of daylight saving time (DST). I found ou Monday while watching CNN, they really screwed up, I thought, in comparing my time with the CNN’s Eastern Time. Oh, wait, Pacific Time (PT) if off too. Wolf Blitzer is not supposed to be on yet. Your favorite programs are CBS and ABC (no NBC in Costa Rica) are now one hour earlier.
Growing up in Canada, I remember that it was “spring forward and fall back”; spring meaning near the end of March or beginning of April and fall in October. But that has all changed, now Daylight time runs from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, and since Costa Rica does not subscribe to DST and that the sun rises and pretty much sets at the same time of the day, every day, we tend to forget that the northern part of the Americas goes through the change.
In the first, we learn that even with the extra daylight, the facts don’t look so good. The American public has had a love-hate relationship with daylight saving time since it first became law in 1918. Personal preferences aside, the empirical evidence for the intended benefits of daylight saving time are mixed at best, whereas the costs of the switch to daylight saving time are becoming increasingly evident.
At the crux of these costs is the effect of the time shift on our sleep patterns. When we spring forward, the clocks on the wall advance, but our body clocks do not change so readily. It generally takes a few days for us to adapt to the time change in a way that allows us to fall asleep at our typical time. The upshot is that Americans sleep approximately 40 minutes less than usual on the Sunday to Monday night following the switch.
Misusing computers at work can be costly. rawpixel/Shutterstock.com
In Costa Rica, since the sun comes up around 5 each morning, there is no time shift in our sleep. The traffic congestion on the roads starts at the same time.
“The time change affects our judgment. The research revealed that the shift to daylight saving time influences our ability to perceive the moral features of a given situation. We again examined internet search behavior and followed up with our own experiment. In the experiment we kept half of our research participants awake throughout the night and allowed the other half to get a full night of sleep. The next day we presented them with scenarios that contained varying levels of moral content,” writes David Wagner, author of the ‘Dark Side’ article.
An interesting shift on the DST is happening in Florida. Michael Downing, lecturer in Creative Writing at Tufts University, in his ‘100 years article’ writes about Florida’s lawmakers last week passing the Sunshine Protection Act which will make daylight saving a year-round reality in the Sunshine State.
If approved by the federal government, this will effectively move Florida’s residents one time zone to the east, aligning cities from Jacksonville to Miami with Nova Scotia rather than New York and Washington, D.C.
Interesting. If the Florida change to ADT (Atlantic Daylight Time) is approved you will need to keep in mind that Miami would be three hours ahead of Costa Rica and not two as is the rest of the eastern US and Canada.
Actress Barbara Lawrence reminds television viewers to set the clock ahead, from 1 a.m. to 2 a.m., on April 29, 1956. AP Photo
In the words of Micheal Downing, “It’s absurd – and fitting – that a century later, opponents and supporters of daylight saving are still not sure exactly what it does. Despite its name, daylight saving has never saved anyone anything. But it has proven to be a fantastically effective retail spending plan.”
Six months have passed since a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico City, toppling 40 buildings and killing over 300, but the memory remains fresh.
Condemned structures dot many neighborhoods, their facades crumbling. And after an earthquake 225 miles away in Oaxaca state shook the capital city again on Feb. 16, 2018, the city mayor said hospitals treated dozens of people for panic attacks.
Seismologists, too, are still studying the Sept. 19 earthquake, trying to better understand what’s happening underneath Mexico City. Our new paper in Geophysical Research Letters brings critical findings to light.
Since the damaging quake, we have been analyzing data from the national network of seismological sensors, as well as high-quality GPS stations around the country. Together, these instruments measure shaking across Mexico. We wanted to know what caused this magnitude 7.1 earthquake and whether a future shock could strike even closer to this city of 20 million.
That catastrophe marked an entire generation of Mexicans, including ourselves, back when we were just kids.
Now, as working seismologists, we have discovered that the 2017 earthquake, called Puebla-Morelos, was fundamentally unlike its 1985 predecessor. In fact, it was different than most big Mexican earthquakes, which typically happen along the country’s Pacific coast, where two tectonic plates collide.
The Puebla-Morelos quake occurred well inland – just 70 miles south of Mexico City, in Puebla state. Since the 1920s, only five other large earthquakes have originated in central Mexico.
The zone of potential ‘bending’ earthquakes, where the subducted tectonic plate that runs beneath Mexico juts downward at a sharp angle, is a band spanning the country from center to south. Only five earthquakes have struck this region in the past century, including the deadly Sept. 18, 2017 quake that killed 300 in Mexico City. Major earthquakes typically occur along the Pacific coast. D. Melgar, CC BY-SA
How earthquakes happen
Most major earthquakes worldwide happen along the unstable intersections in the Earth’s crust, where two tectonic plates – that is, the underground slabs that make up the planet’s rocky shell – collide, one plate sliding beneath the other.
These are called subduction zones, and continued plate movements in those areas are responsible for the world’s largest earthquakes – the kinds that occasionally rattle Alaska, Japan, Chile and Indonesia.
At most subduction zones, after one tectonic plate slides beneath a neighboring plate, it continues on a diagonal downward dive and sinks deep into the Earth’s mantle.
Not in Mexico. There, the initial contact between the two tectonic plates – which collide off the country’s southern Pacific coast – starts off normally enough, with the subducted plate sinking diagonally downwards.
But then, just as it begins to jut underneath the Mexican mainland, the plate – which is made of dense, heavy rocks – reverses course. It bends upward, sliding itself horizontally beneath the plate Mexico sits on top of. This setup continues for about 125 miles or so.
Then, underneath Puebla state – just south of Mexico City – at a depth of about 30 miles below ground, the subducted plate abruptly changes direction once more. It dives almost vertically downward, plunging itself deep into the Earth’s mantle.
What is a ‘bending’ quake?
When the plate bends downward, some of the rocks in the plate break. Think of a sturdy piece of wood. Flexed lightly, it bends. But when the flexing becomes too strong, it will splinter violently.
This is what causes “bending” earthquakes like Mexico City’s. After the bent tectonic plate snaps, seismic waves emanate outwards from the breaking point, causing the Earth to tremble. The closer you are to the epicenter, the stronger the shaking.
This kind of rare Mexican quake typically has a relatively lower magnitude than the more common Pacific coast variety. But that doesn’t mean the shaking above ground feels weak. Because “bending” quakes strike in Mexico’s densely populated central region, beneath the feet of many millions, the shaking can be very strong indeed.
And when they hit near Mexico City, as September 2017 demonstrated, the consequences can be devastating.
It is here – from Michoacán state, part way up the Pacific coast, all the way down to southernmost Oaxaca – that bending earthquakes could occur.
But the tectonic plate’s bend, we learned, is only half of the story behind central Mexico’s shaking. The plate’s texture matters, too.
High-resolution images of the ocean bottom off Mexico’s Pacific shore reveal that the seafloor terrain is rugged in a very organized fashion. There, beneath thousands of feet of water, we see high, narrow ridges and deep valleys that run lengthwise in a northwest-to-southeast direction.
This “fabric” was created about 8 million years ago, when the rocks first formed – way before tectonic plates collided to give Mexico its subduction zone. Even so, the plate’s texture – marked by this linear fabric of underground mountains and canyons – turns out to be relevant in determining where these rare, bending earthquakes might occur.
High-resoulution images of the Pacific Ocean seafloor off Mexico’s coast reveals that the subducted plate there has a linear texture comprised of ridges, valleys and bumps. This ‘fabric’ continues when the plate slides beneath the Mexican mainland and then angles downward, plunging itself into deep into the Earth’s mantle. ‘Bending’ earthquakes are most likely to occur where the plate bends in the same northwest-to-southeast direction as its ridges and valleys run. Global Multi-Resolution Topography Data Synthesis, CC BY-NC-SA
Our research found that because its ridges and valleys are oriented uniformly – think of the grain on a sturdy piece of wood – a tectonic plate is far less likely to snap if the force that bends it is at an angle perpendicular to the direction the fabric runs. Like a sheet of plywood, a tectonic plate is more resistant to pressure when bent against the grain.
In other words, large, damaging “bending” earthquakes are most likely to occur where the subducted plate’s own texture aligns with the direction of its downward bend.
This is good news for cities like Morelia, in Michoacán, where we believe the plate’s fabric runs almost perpendicular to the direction of the plate’s break – the wrong setup for a strong earthquake.
But it is bad news for neighboring Puebla and Oaxaca. There, plate texture and plate bend are almost perfectly aligned – off by less than 10 degrees. Under such circumstances, the bent plate can more easily snap and break from continued tectonic movement.
What’s in store for Mexico City?
The part of the plate bend near Mexico City, where the Sept. 19 quake occurred, falls somewhere in between. The alignment between texture and plate is not perfect – but they’re off angle by just 20 to 30 degrees.
That means the capital could see another large quake. And, based on our analysis, the epicenter could actually be closer to the city: This volatile tectonic band extends as far north as the city of Cuernavaca, 30 miles from Mexico City’s southern edge.
These findings are a step forward in understanding Mexico’s complex geology. But we still don’t know how often “bending” earthquakes might happen – whether once a century or every decade. Seismologists worldwide are still far from being able to predict where, when and how the next big one will strike.
What our new study can do, we hope, is help Mexicans nationwide understand what’s happening beneath their feet.
This article by Diego Melgar, Assistant Professor of Geophysics, University of Oregon and Xyoli Pérez-Campos, Professor, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Cattle ranching, agriculture and other human activities are breaking up Costa Rican forests into isolated patchy fragments, but causing more problems for native plant populations than for monkey species sharing the same habitat.
Spider monkey in Costa Rica. Credit: Laura Bolt
A study published in the journal Primates shows that while plants growing near the edges of cleared regions are negatively impacted by human activity, monkeys sharing the same habitat do not fare as poorly.
“These results suggest that the monkey species studied are resilient enough to withstand some fragmentation of their habitat,” said Laura Bolt, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto, and lead author of the study.
Bolt and her colleagues conducted vegetation and monkey population surveys at the La Suerte Biological Research Station site in northeastern Costa Rica, a patch of tropical rainforest in a largely deforested region.
The researchers measured the presence of vegetation and three different monkey species: mantled howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata); white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus); and Central American spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). They compared the density of each species in forest edge and interior regions. Forest edge regions were within 100 metres of barbed wire fences marking the edge of the forest and the start of coconut plantations or cattle pasture, while forest interior regions were more than 100 metres from the edge of the forest.
The researchers found less diversity of tree species at the forest edge compared to the interior, and noted that these trees were smaller. In contrast, the monkeys did not show any preferences for forest edge or interior.
The results provide hope that primates and other wildlife are able to withstand severe habitat fragmentation.
“The rainforest fragment we studied was 3 square kilometres and was large enough that the monkey species did not demonstrate significant adverse effects,” said Bolt. “But these monkey species may not be able to live in forest fragments that are smaller without negative effects.”
Bolt says the study informs conservation efforts for these monkey species and for the Costa Rican rainforest.
“People tend to think of Costa Rica as a very green country with large patches of continuous rainforest,” said Bolt. “While this represents effective marketing to tourists, the reality is that Costa Rica is deforested in many regions.”
She notes that, “as more and more forests are destroyed in Costa Rica and throughout Central and South America because of cattle ranching and large-scale banana and pineapple production, it becomes increasingly important to understand the effects of forest fragmentation on the primate species that live there.”
A 5.0 magnitude earthquake shook a great part of Costa Rican territory at 3:42 pm this Monday afternoon.
The Red Sismológica Nacional (RSN) – National Seismological Network – said the epicenter of was 18 kilometers east of Jacó, in Garabito de Puntarenas, at a depth of 40 kms.
For its part, the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica (Ovsicori) – Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica – calculated the magnitude of the quake by 4.4 and located its epicenter 2.8 kilometers southeast of Parrita, in Puntarenas.
According to the Ovsicori, the depth of the earthquake was 41 kilometers.
Up to a few years ago, not living far from the La Sabana Metropolitan park, I would be in the park daily. Each morning my 45-90 minute walk included the lake, the playfields, and track of La Saban park. It was great to see athletes make use of the facilities.
In the last couple of years, my walk through the park is maybe monthly. I miss it, but my distance from the park, I am now in Santa Ana and the morning traffic, just doesn’t allow me the ability to walk park as much as I would like. So, it is no surprise that I take whatever opportunity to do as was Saturday morning.
This time, however, I was not happy to see what had become of my favorite San Jose place, in particular, the track: it was worn down, dirty and worst of all, encroached by vendors.
As you will see from the photo.
The track that not long ago was full of runners, joggers, sprinters, cyclists, kids, was not camp for vendors and litter. Even my favorite pack of dogs were gone, probably decided to move to better grounds.
A shame. The jewel of the city quickly become a pigsty.
Please, Mr. Araya, take a walk from your home or office from the Muni, each only a few blocks away, and take note. Don’t let this great space go to the way some of the other spaces of the city.
Rather spend the resources in building a bicycle path that is used by motorcyclists to dodge traffic along Avenidas 6 and 8 to keep up the park. Enforce illegal parking and use the fines to upkeep the lungs of the city.
The cutting of the trees makes the park look bare.
Photos by “Rico” taken with iPhone SE, Saturday, March 10, 2018
Anyone how has lived or continues to live in Guanacaste knows the problem with the water, a province that has been hit by water shortages due to weather conditions in recent years.
Coca Cola in the supermarket shelves
But that is no hindrance to the plans by the Coca-Cola Company to uproot its La Uruca plant to Liberia. The company confirms they are aware of the water problem that plagues the business and tourism sector, and as such will take measures to maintain their plant. Also, their operations of production of concentrates are not intensive in the use of the natural liquid.
For the new plant, some 34,000 square meters (366,000 square feet), Coca-Cola says it will use its own wells for production and will reinforce consumption with other wells that are within Solarium free zone (Zona Franca), across from the Daniel Oduber international airport, also known as the Liberia airport, where the new facilities will be built.
The new Coca-Cola Concentrate plant is expected to start production on January 1, 2020, which will be among the best in the world, will create 130 direct jobs locally and some 65 to 100 indirect.
As to the water, “Yes there was planning foreseeing this issue and authorized wells will be used. A bottler of any product uses more water, but we work with concentrates and the plant will use high-tech equipment that saves resources,” said William Segura, manager of Corporate Affairs and Communications at Coca-Cola Centroamérica.
According to the Coca-Cola Company, it will apply strategies to ration the use of water in toilets, irrigation systems, cooling towers, and production.
The decision to move operations to Guanacaste was more about logistical advantage, the proximity to the Daniel Oduber international airport, the ease of getting to other parts of Central America and the commitment to invest outside the Greater Metropolitan Area of San Jose or GAM.
With the start of operations of the new plant in Liberia, the doors of the facilities that operated in La Uruca for the last 50 years will be closed.
The La Uruca plant produces packages of concentrates used for the Coca-Cola drink and exported to bottling plants in Central America, the Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile and the European Union.
The Guancaste plant, that will be twice the size of the San Jose plant will allow double production, according to company spokespersons.
“With the US$50 million investment being made by Coca-Cola in the new plant, we aim to double exports by 2024,” said Roberto Mercadé, president of Coca-Cola for Latin America and Central America.
This year marks a decade of the last fiscal surplus that Costa Rica had. Ever since there has been a deficit, and it has grown, worsening year by year without there being any solution, neither for increasing income nor for a reduction of expenses.
In 2008, the country had an excess of ¢30 billion colones. By the end of 2018 we will have ¢2 billion (¢ 2,021,101,800,000) deficit. This year the Costa Rican State will cost 21.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the highest value in the region, according to data from the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies (Icefi).
The data indicates that Costa Rica is the worst, even though our neighbors not doing so great in that area. Honduras GDP cost is 21.5%, Nicaragua 19% and Panama 18.7%.
It is essential to bear in mind that these costs are also related to the level of services provided by each State, and the social indicators of the region mark Costa Rica as a leader.
The country’s human development index ranks Costa Rica 66th in the world, behind Panama at 60, while, ahead of El Salvador in 117, Nicaragua is 124, Guatemala at 125 and Honduras at 130.
Despite this, the need to improve the country’s income, whether through tax reform and combating tax evasion, spending cuts or a healthy combination of both, is obvious.
The tax burden in the country is below the average for the region and has remained stagnant for the last three years, at 13.4% of GDP, according to the Icefi report.
The countries with the highest burden in the isthmus are Honduras with 17.8% of GDP, Nicaragua with 16.4% and El Salvador with 16%.
Analyzing all the information in the report, Costa Rica is doing things wrong: It has the most expensive State, an intermediate collection, and, by far, the worst fiscal perspective.
If Costa Rica intends to improve its situation, it must reach some kind of social-economic pact, in which all the agents are willing to give part to solve the problem. It cannot do everything through an adjustment of the State so that the quality of the services it provides is not endangered, but neither can one expect the private sector to bear the full responsibility, especially taking into account the impact that it will have in production, consumption and employment.
Several of the Central American countries that have improved their situation have done so at the cost of cutting their investment in education and health, as is the case in El Salvador, where the importance of total spending fell by one percentage point of GDP in each.
Guatemala is another of the cases that have opted to moderate their spending to contain the deficit at the expense of not touching taxes, which has impacted on the quality of the services provided to the population.
Today, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) in collaboration with the Business Association for Development (AED), released a case study on the sustainability reporting in Costa Rica. The report was compiled using data from The Reporting Exchange, the global resource for corporate sustainability reporting.
The research showed that there is a significant interest in sustainability reporting in the country, as there are currently 40 reporting requirements and resources for environmental, social and governance (ESG) – related issues in Costa Rica.
The Reporting Exchange: An overview of sustainability and corporate reporting in Costa Rica Case Study.
The major driver of the country’s sustainable development agenda is Costa Rica’s bid to become a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – an intergovernmental economic organisation with 35 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and world trade.
The evaluation process that the country is going through has led to an assessment of Costa Rica’s policies against the standards set by OECD countries. The country is also integrating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda into national planning, becoming one of the countries to sign a multi-stakeholder National Pact on SDGs.
As Costa Rica decouples economic development and environmental degradation, further legislation and revisions in sustainability reporting are likely to impact all sectors.
On moving forward, Olga Sauma, Executive Director at Business Association for Development – WBCSD’s network partner in Costa Rica – elaborates: “The Reporting Exchange will provide a vital resource to understand and compare requirements from different countries, to help Costa Rica identify good practice, and understand what could work in our circumstances and context.”
The students of the Liceo de Costa Rica enter on one side and on the other, the black tie for the death of Sebastián Díaz. Photo: Eduardo Vega
“What is going to happen with my son from now on?” Is the BIG question that Don Jorge Valverde, from Desamparados, leaving his son who is in seventh grade, at the gates of the Liceo de Costa Rica after week the school was closed due to the death of Sebastián Díaz, also a seventh student, who was hit by the train in an alleged bullying.
A black tie is placed at the entrance to the Liceo de Costa Rica for the death of Sebastián Díaz. Photo: Eduardo Vega
Don Marco Vinicio Naranjo, the school director, responded to Don Jorge and all the other parents, that they can rest assured that he has worked extensively in the past week with the teachers of the 800 students who fill the classrooms of the institution every day.
All teachers were prepared by the authorities of the Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educacion Publica – MEP) in psychological first aid, so they can help their students overcome the trauma of Sebastian’s death.
Several mothers who did not give their name to the press could be seen crying after dropping off their children.
One who did speak to La Nacion, who gave her name as Hazel, said it was with great pain of not knowing how her son will be at school because she is horrified by bullying, however, she trusts that the teachers will manage to change the environment to something very positive.
On February 28, 2018, 12-year-old Sebastián Díaz González threw himself in front of the train that runs near the school in a challenge or alleged bullying of other students.
The tragic death of 12-year-old Sebastián Díaz González occurred on February 28. The school was closed for more than a week.
Wálter Espinoza, head of the Organismo de Investigacion Judicial (OIJ), said last Monday afternoon that according to the interviews and the videos they have analyzed, there is nothing to indicate that the young man was pressured by someone to get in front of the train.
As she sipped a cappuccino in a buzzing café on a tree-lined street in Medellin, Cindy Crawford Thomas said that escaping South Florida to retire in what was once the world’s most notorious city seemed like a no-brainer.
Medellin is Colombia’s second-largest city with a population of 2.5 million. Once the world’s murder capital, it’s now a hotspot for U.S. retirees Jim Wyss Miami Herald
“Deciding to leave Florida was easy,” said the former Coral Springs high school teacher. “It was too hectic. … You seldom knew your neighbors. It was all these people but no community.”
In Medellin — once the home of Pablo Escobar and the world’s bloodiest drug cartel — Thomas and her husband, David, say they’ve found a friendly, cosmopolitan city where rent is cheap, the weather is fine and the healthcare puts the U.S. to shame.
And in many ways, they say, they feel safer here than back home in Florida.
“People still think that Medellin is the murder capital of the world,” she said, “but it’s not.”
The couple are part of a growing wave of adventurous expat retirees who are calling Colombia’s second city their new home.
In 2017, the U.S. Social Security Administration sent 6,704 retirement checks to Colombia — an 85 percent increase compared to 2010 and more checks than are sent to any other country in Latin America or the Caribbean except Mexico, according to preliminary data.
While that figure doesn’t tell the whole story — it excludes those who are retired but too young to receive Social Security and those who have their checks deposited in U.S. bank accounts — it does provide a window into the country’s growing popularity.
And Medellin, in particular, has been getting glowing reviews in the retirement press and has been prominently featured in television shows like House Hunters International.
For decades the city was a no-go zone, rattled by car bombs and hit squads as Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel used it as their headquarters. During parts of the 1990s, the city had the highest murder rate in the world, peaking in 1995 at 225 homicides per 100,000 residents.
And while that bloody reputation persists, Medellin now has a homicide rate of about 20 per 100,000 residents — far below places like St. Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans and Detroit.
Nancy Kiernan, a former healthcare executive from Maine, moved to Medellin, Colombia, almost six years ago. The city, once the murder capital of the world, has become a hotspot for U.S. retirees. Jim Wyss Miami Herald
And as safety has increased, tourists and retirees have responded, said Juliana Cardona Quiros, the city’s undersecretary of tourism.
Medellin saw more than 735,000 foreign visitors in 2017, up 5 percent from the previous year. And it’s not just the MacBook-toting millennials who are cramming the cafes.
“Older people are also seeing a lot of potential in Medellin,” Cardona said “They like our spring-like climate, the public transportation and the mix of nature and an urban setting.”
Even so, popular television shows likeNetflix’s “Narcos” and Colombia’s “El Patron del Mal,” or “The Drug Lord,” which revel in the city’s blood-soaked past, are hard on the city’s reputation.
When Nancy Kiernan and her husband began thinking about retiring in Latin America several years ago, she remembers meeting a man who was raving about Medellin.
“We smiled politely,” she recalls, “and I said to myself, ‘This guy is an idiot. Why would anyone want to go there?’”
Kiernan, a 59-year-old healthcare executive from Maine, said that when she moved here almost six years ago, she rarely met expats her age. But now that the city is being highlighted in retirement journals, it’s not only attracting people from the United States but also those who had already set up homes in places like Ecuador and Panama.
“There are parts of the city where you can’t spit without hitting a gringo,” she said.
The Thomases moved to Medellin six weeks ago from Boquete, a town of about 25,000 in northern Panama, where they lived for five years.
Boquete had wonderful weather and small-town charm, but they eventually outgrew it, said David Thomas, 68, noting that it’s the sort of place where the opening of a new restaurant would be the talk of the town for weeks.
“I just got so bored,” Cindy Thomas recalled. “So I said ‘Why don’t we check out Medellin.’”
Here they found a three-bedroom, 4 1/2-bath apartment that they share with their three dogs and three cats for about $1,400 a month. They say their total monthly expenses — along with gym memberships and frequent dining out — are “well under $3,000.”
Kiernan said most people will find they can live comfortably for less than $2,000 a month.
“It’s not the cheapest place you can live in Colombia, but there’s a balance,” she said, as she sipped tangerine juice at a gleaming shopping center crammed with international brands. “The weather is great, it’s cosmopolitan, you can drink the water and the utilities don’t go out every time the wind blows.”
Along with having an international airport that gives Medellin quick access to the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, the city also has world class healthcare.
A 2017 survey by América Economia magazine found the city had seven of the top 49 hospitals in Latin America. And a World Health Organization report from 2000 found Colombia ranked 22nd out of 190 countries in terms of its health facilities — above the United States, which ranked 37th, and Canada at 33rd.
In 2001, a car bomb in Medellin’s Lleras park killed nine and left more than 120 wounded amid Colombia’s drug wars. Now the park is the epicenter of Medellin’s tourism and bar district. Jim Wyss Miami Herald
Permanent residents here can buy into the state-run healthcare system, which can be as cheap as $30 a month. David Thomas said a friend of the couple’s with a local health plan recently had to be rushed to the hospital for a heart attack. His total out-of-pocket expense: $14.
Another U.S. couple visiting from Panama got a $30 house call from a doctor for a possible broken leg.
“They weren’t seeing Medellin very positively until the doctor showed up,” David Thomas said. “After that, they said they would consider moving here just because it was the best medical care they had ever seen.”
Despite all the hype around Medellin, it’s not the solution for everyone, said Brad Hinkelman, the founder of Casacol, a property development company that caters to investors and retirees looking for a second home or investment property in the city.
He blames the press for setting unrealistic expectations about Medellin, alternately portraying it as a lethal drug den or “the Paris of Latin America.”
“We have people who come to our office who are not suited for living here,” he said. “They think they are going to live off of their Social Security and live in the Taj Mahal, and we have to kind of bring them down.”
And broader problems do persist in Colombia. The nation remains the world’s top cocaine producer, the government is still fighting leftist guerrillas, and political assassinations are alarmingly commonplace.
Even so, the influential retiree publication, International Living, ranked Colombia No. 6 in its best places to retire for 2018.
Botero Plaza in downtown Medellin, Colombia. The country’s second-largest city, once-troubled Medellin has become a hotspot for U.S. retirees. Jim Wyss Miami Herald
“One of the things that keeps us from the top of that list is that we’re still an emerging destination,” said Kiernan, who writes for the publication. The density of expats isn’t such that retirees can get by on their English alone — most need to speak at least some Spanish — and there aren’t many services specifically directed at the expat crowd.
The Thomases used to teach at J.P. Taravella High School in Broward County, about five miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, where 17 students and educators were killed last month in a mass shooting. And David’s mother had once been a resident at the nursing home in Hollywood, where 12 people died in 2017 after Hurricane Irma knocked out the power.
It’s events like those that help put the rest of the world into perspective and can make even infamous cities like Medellin seem safe.
“I don’t see us moving back to Florida ever,” Cindy Thomas said. However, the couple has been intrigued about living in Peru, or perhaps Spain and Portugal.
“The world is open,” she said. “There’s no sense in staying in one place.”
The United States should look beyond the traditional paradigm of security, migration, and narcotics when considering relations with Latin America. It is imperative to curb the influence of Russia, China, Iran and non-state actors like Hezbollah, in the region, and increase American trade to benefit our economy.
We should forge closer diplomatic and economic ties with those countries committed to the rule of law and free enterprise, while working with partners in the region to encourage other countries to follow their successful models. With elections in the next two years for many important countries in the region, including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and a potential transition of power in Cuba, it is important that, in 2018, the United States increases its efforts in the region.
Most countries in Latin America fall into two diverging blocs. The first consists of states trending toward democratization, strengthening the rule of law, and a free and open economy, including more interregional trade. The second bloc consists of states hindered by Bolivarian socialism, powerful criminal organizations and falling commodity prices.
The first bloc presents the United States with many opportunities for trade and alliances for security, and consists of our strongest partners. Colombia and the United States have had a strong relationship for many years, cooperating under Plan Colombia on fighting illegal narcotics and developing trade. As coca production has soared in the wake of the FARC agreement, mutual cooperation is more important now than ever.
Panama has one of the fastest growing economies in the Americas, and is one of the United States’ key partners in fighting against transnational crime and illegal migration. It has pushed back on the movement of coca from Colombia through the Darien Gap, and has widened the Panama Canal, which is a strategic asset for trade throughout the Western Hemisphere.
Argentina, under the leadership of President Mauricio Macri, has joined this group, offering a blueprint for other countries to follow. In just over two years, President Macri’s reforms have transitioned Argentina from the corrupt socialism and economic isolation of the Kirchner governments to prosperity, the rule of law and engagement in the global economy.
The second bloc of countries, led by Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, consists of several corrupt, socialist regimes that repeatedly violate the human rights of their citizens and destabilize the region by supporting drug and human trafficking, and transnational crime. Moreover, they rely on other illiberal regimes for support like China, Russia and Iran, nurturing our major geopolitical rivals right in our backyard.
Venezuela is particularly troubling. For years one of the most prosperous nations in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela has succumbed to corruption and Bolivarian socialism. The Maduro regime has continued to repress human rights, engage in narco-trafficking, and abuse the rights of its people. The election currently scheduled for May will inevitably be another whitewash organized to cement Maduro’s hold on power.
In Nicaragua right now, despite the regime’s politics, businesses and commerce flourish. A highly unusual asymmetry seems to exist in Nicaragua between the foreign policy of an authoritarian regime, which is wholly inimical to United States interests, and a domestic policy which tolerates the free market and has produced positive outcomes. Unemployment is at record lows, and very few people have emigrated from the country in the last two years, as opposed to emigration from the Northern Triangle. Nicaragua participates in the CAFTA/DR Trade Agreement and engages productively in counternarcotics efforts with the United States.
The trends for many countries toward democratization and free markets has vastly improved interregional ties, which aids United States strategic goals. Under Secretary-General Luis Almagro, a revitalized Organization of American States (OAS) has taken a stronger stand against the Maduro regime in Venezuela. An invitation to Maduro to attend the yearly Summit of the Americas has been withdrawn by Peru, the host nation, because of the illegitimacy of Venezuela’s upcoming election.
Further, hemispheric trade among free market economies has expanded. The Pacific Alliance, including Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile, has brought the members’ economies together to stimulate interregional commerce. Panama and Costa Rica are in the process of becoming full members.
There are significant asymmetries in the perception of the relationship between the United States and Mexico and its reality. Despite the media hype about illegal immigration and trade deficits, there is a strong cooperation between the two governments on combatting drug trafficking and security. Our relationship will be tested by the NAFTA renegotiations and by the potential election of the populist former mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as president in July.
As Vice President Pence said in a speech in Argentina in August 2017, “a secure Latin America means a more secure United States of America. A prosperous Latin America means a more prosperous United States of America. And the advance of freedom and democracy in Latin America benefits the cause of freedom everywhere.” As the vice president expressed, the United States must continue to champion the pursuit of democracy, just legal institutions, and the free market across the region. I encourage Washington to remember this message while implementing our foreign policy in Latin America to promote our strategic interests.
QCostarica.com was not involved in the creation of the content. This article Francis Rooney the U.S. Representative for Florida’s 19th congressional district was originally published on Thehill.com. Read the original article.
More and more tourists are going to discover this magical island and all that it has to offer. The time to get to Cuba is now, before the crowds.
Pro: Very low violence, slow life, lots of books and diversity. Lots of beaches and good weather for the most part. Free healthcare, nice organic food, low cost of living when compared with other Latin American countries.
Con: Little to no civil rights, free speech or freedom of assembly. No presumption of innocence. Poor infrastructure and internet access, low quality of service overall and few options for pretty much any activity or product you can think of. Also, a lot of common things are completely absent outside the larger cities.
So, if you are a young, ambitious person? Cuba is not the place for you. If you are looking to start a company or make a living in high tech or something similarly demanding of developed infrastructure? Not the place.
If you are an older person living on memories and family visits? Excellent place to be. For a holiday to remember and put a postcard in your cubicle? This is the place for it.
Are you LGBT+? The LGB could get along fairly well in the cities, not necessarily in the countryside. The T+ will have a hard time anywhere.
Police detention kept by the Public Force in the community of Tres Equis de Turrialba, to try to find the assailants. Photo: MSP for LN
A total of 11 tourists of different nationalities participating in rafting, in the Pacuare River, Saturday afternoon were assaulted by three armed men when they stopped to eat some fruits and snacks on the banks of the river.
Police maintained a check point in the community of Tres Equis de Turrialba, in seach of the assailants. Photo: Ministerio de Seguridad Publica (MSP)
The robbery occurred at 2:30 pm in the area known as Dos Montañas, passing through Siquirres, where they had stopped before continuing with the last part of the journey, confirmed the Ministerio de Seguridad Pública (MSP).
The police report said the assailants brandished several .38 caliber revolvers, pointing it at the tourists, and stripped them of their cameras, cell phones, several passports and an unspecified amount of cash.
The area where the assault occurred is pretty remove, access is an hour long walk along the river banks towards Tres Equis de Turrialba, police said.
The tourists were taking part in adventures promoted by Coast to Coast and Aventuras Naturals.
Four Costa Ricans were among the victims, who were recommended to file complaints with the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ). Some of the tourist victims were staying in luxury mountain hotels.
Police on Saturday maintained a checkpoint in Tres Equis, while other officials were tracking the suspects.
This is not the only attack on tourists this month. On March 8, two assailants with firearms assaulted the occupants of a boat sailing in the area of Pavonae, on the Tortuguero canals, in Pococi, Limon.
In that incident, six foreign tourists (four Israelis and two Germans), as well as three Costa Ricans (two guides and the boat captain) were victims, stripped of their cell phones, tablers, a gold chain, a watch and some ¢1 million colones and US$800 in cash, according to the police report.
On March 5, Gobakingrates.com presented the ranking of the cheapest – as in most economical – countries to live in the world. The site studied and compared 115 different countries and determined that India is the cheapest country; in Latin America the best is Mexico.
Mexico is tops in Latin America for low cost of living
Following Mexico in the cheapest Latin American countries live in the world, in order, are Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Ecuador,.
If you are you struggling to make ends meet, you could do what most people would suggest and put together a comprehensive budget to ensure that you’re carefully tracking your spending. But, based on the results from the latest GOBankingRates study, you could be overlooking a potential solution: moving to a different country.
Simple, the cost of living can be much lower outside the United States, Canada or Europe. So if you’re really that fed up with the high cost of living the place you call home, moving elsewhere could solve your problem.
The study scored five different metrics that measure affordability: the local purchasing power index, the rent index, the groceries index, the restaurant price index and the consumer price index.
If you’re looking for a new place to call home and you’re ready to think outside the box, the study’s results provide a range of options.
Here are the 50 cheapest countries to call home, with No. 1 being the cheapest (Latin American countries are highlighted):
1. India
2. Saudi Arabia
3. Pakistan
4. Tunisia
5. Zambia
6. Ukraine 7. Mexico
8. Egypt
9. Bangladesh
10. Macedonia
11. Romania
12. Algeria
13. Bosnia and Herzegovina
14. South Africa
15. Malaysia
16. Georgia 17. Bolivia
18. Nepal
19. Moldova 20. Colombia
21. Morocco
22. Poland
23. Iran
24. Philippines
25. Bulgaria
26. Turkey
27. Belarus
28. Oman
29. Serbia
30. Albania
31. Kazakhstan
32. Syria
33. Uganda
34. Armenia
35. Azerbaijan
36. Sri Lanka
37. China
38. Indonesia
39. Czech Republic
40. Montenegro 41. Peru
42. Iraq
43. Kenya
44. Vietnam
45. Slovakia
46. Taiwan 47. Honduras 48. Ecuador
49. Nigeria
50. Hungary
Methodology
Using information from online pricing database Numbeo.com, GOBankingRates assessed foreign nations to determine which were the most budget-friendly. Measuring each against prices found in New York City, we weighted and ranked countries based on these key affordability metrics: 1) Local purchasing power index: Measures the relative purchasing power of a typical salary in the country. A lower purchasing power buys fewer goods, while a higher purchasing power buys more; 2) Rent index: Includes typical home rental prices in the country; 3) Groceries index: Includes typical grocery prices in the country; 4) Cost of living index: Includes costs of local goods and services, such as restaurants, transportation and utilities; and 5) Restaurant price index: A comparison of prices of meals and drinks in restaurants and bars.
Starbucks in Costa Rica currently has 12 stores, with plans to add three more in 2018 and a goal of 25 by 2020
Starbucks Coffee Company last week opened the doors to its Visitor Center at Hacienda Alsacia, located on a 240 hectare (640 acres) coffee farm on the slope s of the Poas volcano, and by the end of the year will add three more coffee stores, bringing its total number in Costa Rica to 15.
Monica Bianchini, Starbucks Costa Rica operations manager and Howard Schultz, founder, president and CEO of Starbucks.
Monica Bianchini, country manager, did not specify where the locations will be but confirmed that the first opening will be this month.
Current Starbucks locations are: Avenida Escazú, Lincoln Plaza, Cronos Plaza, Plaza Real Alajuela, Plaza Itskatzu, Plaza Freses, Distrito 4, Los Yoses, Plaza de la Cultura, La Sabana, the Juan Santamaría international airport and Paseo de las Flores.
Back to the farm. Hacienda Alsacia, a working farm that has served as a global research and development facility for Starbucks since 2013, is now open to the public, where visitors will have the chance to experience coffee from seed to cup and see firsthand the agronomy work the company has been supporting and investing in for more than two decades.
“Much like the premium retail experiences we are designing around the world, the Visitor Center at Hacienda Alsacia is a fully immersive space and now, for the first time ever, Starbucks is connectingour customers to the entire coffee ecosystem from seedling to the craft of brewing,” said Starbucks boss Howard Schultz who recently told The Telegraph he’s not sorry he didn’t pay more UK tax, as the poor Brooklyn kid turned coffee billionaire tipped to run for US president, is making himself a black Americano halfway up the Costa Rican volcano.
Starbucks boss Howard Schultz has been tipped for a potential run for US president Credit: Mike Pont / Wireimage
According to the Starbucks’ website, the Hacienda Alsacia was designed by Starbucks in-house design team known for creating the “third place” experience in its Starbucks stores and its premium Reserve Roasteries. This 4,270 square meter (46,000-square foot) visitor center is an experiential environment helping to educate visitors on the full coffee ecosystem. Here visitors can tour the space on their own or with a guide, discovering everything from a coffee seedling nursery to a greenhouse with new, disease-resistant coffee varietals, coffee fields with ripe cherries at harvest, in addition to a wet mill and drying patio. These hands-on experiences culminate at a Starbucks café where coffee from Hacienda Alsacia is roasted fresh onsite and served using multiple brewing methods. The menu is inspired by Starbucks premium Reserve brand.
“Our farm allows us to learn firsthand the ongoing complexities that coffee farmers face in order to accelerate our comprehensive approach to ethical sourcing,” said Kevin Johnson, president and chief executive officer of Starbucks. “Now more than ever, we must ensure the future of coffee through sustainable practices so that it is available for generations to come.”
“The coffee we drink depends on the well-being of 25 million coffee producers, 10 million hectares of coffee farms and the continued ability of nature to sustain them,” said Dr. M. Sanjayan, chief executive officer for Conservation International.
“To meet projected demand, the industry will need to produce between four million and 14 million additional tons of coffee per year. Unless growers can significantly increase coffee productivity, the industry would need to double the area under production. This would increase the current area of land under coffee production, currently about the size of Iceland, to an area that would be four times the size of Costa Rica.”
Since 2012, Starbucks has been operating stores in Costa Rica with its license partner, Premium Restaurants of America.
Starbucks in Costa Rica currently has 12 stores, with plans to add three more in 2018 and a goal of 25 by 2020
Costa Rican coffee has been a part of Starbucks core offerings since it opened its doors in 1971, most recently a limited-edition offering of Hacienda Alsacia single-origin packaged coffee for customers around the world.
The presence of the brand increased when it opened its first support office for producers in 2004, with the purchase of Hacienda Alsacia in 2013 and the opening of the first cafeteria on Avenida Escazú in June 2012.
Since the 2012 opening, the brand was on an accelerated expansion strategy, opening ten locations in its first three years of operation. However, during 2016 and 2017 it only opened one store per year, a behavior that must change if they want to meet their goal of having 25 stores by 2020.
The Competition On whether the increase in competition from franchises like Colombia’s Juan Valdez and locals such as Café Arte or Café Miel, Bianchini assured that in Costa Rica there is a very dynamic environment of competitors.
Juan Valdez Cafe in La Sabana
“Specialty coffee shops are constantly being opened, which we see with positivism, since the demand for high-quality coffees and different preparation methods is growing in the Costa Rican consumer, and at Starbucks, we can satisfy coffee consumption for all tastes,” stressed Bianchini.
Though Café Arte and Juan Valdez slowed their growth plans, both are gearing up 2018 openings.
According to Elfinancierocr.com, Café Arte is in the process of franchising the brand, that will see eight new coffee shops this year, while Juan Valdez is looking to add five this year to its four coffee shops located in City Mall, Plaza Roble, Sabana andy Terrazas Lindora.
Photograph of Jose Maria Figueres, former president of Costa Rica (1994-1998) during the World Ocean Summit in Cancun, Mexico, Mar. 8, 2018. EPA-EFE/Alonso Cupul
Former President of Costa Rica, former Global Ocean Commissioner and co-founder of Ocean Unite, Jose Maria Figueres, said in Mexico on Friday that illegal fishing not only harms the oceans, but trails other objectionable activities in its wake.
Photograph of Jose Maria Figueres, former president of Costa Rica (1994-1998) during the World Ocean Summit in Cancun, Mexico, Mar. 8, 2018. EPA-EFE/Alonso Cupul
“This illegal activity, in addition to damaging the ocean and over-fishing species, comes with other illicit activities, such as arms, human and drug trafficking,” Figueres said in an interview with EFE on the sidelines of the World Ocean Summit in Playa Del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Figueres said that people engaged in clandestine fishing – a business that generates US$23.5 billion a year – tend to pursue other illegal activities to boost their income.
He also spoke about the need to stop climate change in order to diminish the acidification of the oceans and the consequent rise in water temperature.
“Many countries still see the fight against climate change and the lowering of carbon emissions as a cost, instead of seeing it as the opportunity it represents,” Figueres said, adding that changing the environment paradigm would mean “a much more efficient green economy.”
Figueres emphasized the need to develop public policies that send a message to markets to move toward this “green economy.”
“My fear is that we do not take advantage of this window of opportunity to make changes before it’s too late,” he said. “What greatly motivates me is that in all these transformations, I see great opportunities to re-launch the global economy.”
Figueres praised the Latin American countries who have “made a much stronger commitment toward ocean conservation” over the last few years, prompting a “nice competition” to see which country is able to better conserve the ocean.
Figueres is co-president of the Pacific Ocean Assembly, an organization aimed at uniting Latin American countries around the goal of ocean conservation.
On Thursday (March 8, 2018, the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI) reported at 11 am that the Turrialba Volcano generated seismic activity with ash fall in several communities of the Central Valley (Valle Central), San Pedro, Coronado, Moravia, and Ipís.
These rocks were cast in molten form at more than 800 degrees Celsius on March 7, the samples were collected by Dr. Geoffroy Avard.
The OVSICORI update Friday afternoon sais that the Turrialba seismic activity for the previous 24 hours: “continued relatively low, with the frequent recording of discrete earthquakes type LP (long period) of low amplitude and record of volcanic tremor of short amplitude and duration”.
According to the OVSICORI, the seismic vents are associated with the transfer of fluids (water and gases) and other materials (ash, lava) through cracks and cavities in the colossus.
“The emission of gases, fine aerosols and ash is maintained at a low and moderate flow, with sporadic exhalations from a denser ash plume, after the strombolian eruption that threw many fragments of molten fresh lava (bombs), ash and magmatic gases in the early morning of March 7, 2018. Mild ash fall has been reported in San José, Guadalupe, Moravia, Sabanilla, and Rohmoser. The plume rises around 300 -500 m above the Western Crater and is dispersed by the winds mainly towards the southwest. Continuous light is appreciated at night in the West Crater, which indicates the presence of a considerable flow of gases at high temperatures (600-800 ° C) and overheating of the rocks. n the interior of the crater,” noted the OVSICORI on its Facebook page.
The OVSICORI added that the OMI instruments from NASA’s AURA satellite detected a strong emission of sulfur dioxide gas, SO2, and was dispersed to some extent around the entire volcano, however, the satellite image also reveals that the largest proportion of the materials of the volcanic plume was transported in the atmosphere by the predominant winds to the north and northwest entering even into Nicaragua, in particular the Lake Nicaragua.
Click here for the OSVICORI activity level of Costa Rica’s volcanos.
In a farewell video, the U.S. ambassador to Panama, John Feeley, filmed a scene at a tin-roofed barbershop that sits in a graffiti-tagged neighborhood here under a clattering elevated highway.
Feeley, 56, seen in an image from one of his videos, left Panama on March 9, 2018, after serving for almost three decades as a diplomat. (U.S. Embassy in Panama)
This was Feeley’s barbershop, a place he visited regularly despite his Panamanian driver’s insisting he should not.
“I’ve been coming here for months,” Feeley said in another video last year. “I’m very loyal.”
But now, Feeley is leaving Latin America and the State Department after quitting in protest two months ago.
He has posted the last of a series of videos exhibiting the goofy, extroverted demeanor that gained him a wide viewership in Panama over the past two years. Their premise has the out-of-work ambassador ham-handedly applying for jobs in Panama — as a fireman, a taxi driver, a makeup artist to a flamboyant transvestite TV personality — because he likes the country so much he doesn’t want to leave.
It humanizes us,” he said, referring to the United States. “And right now, we need a little humanizing.”
Feeley, 56, flew home from Panama on Friday, capping almost three decades as a diplomat under Republican and Democratic administrations. In the past year, he said, he realized he was working for a president whose policies and tone he could no longer promote or even explain.
“As a junior foreign service officer, I signed an oath to serve faithfully the president and his administration in an apolitical fashion, even when I might not agree with certain policies,” he said in his Dec. 27 letter to President Trump, first reported by Reuters and confirmed by Feeley as his words. “My instructors made clear that if I believed I could not do that, I would be honor bound to resign. That time has come.”
U.S. Ambassador John Feeley, left, heads toward his regular barbershop in Panama City to record a scene for one of his farewell videos last month. (Joshua Partlow/The Washington Post)
After Feeley resigned, the State Department said it respected his decision.
“Everyone has a line that they will not cross,” said Steve Goldstein, the undersecretary for diplomacy.
With Feeley’s departure, however, the department loses one of its leading Latin Americanists. And because of the leaked resignation letter, he has come to symbolize a string of diplomats who have left their posts saying they feel marginalized and unwilling to represent an administration whose values they reject.
State Department officials insist that policy and procedures have not been adversely affected by the exodus.
“I don’t lose a wink of sleep over the fact that we may not have our nominees in” open positions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Friday in response to a question about departures hampering diplomacy. “We have very capable, skilled career diplomats ready to step up and serve in those positions, and they are serving superbly, and we are moving the policies forward.”
“Nothing is being held up,” Tillerson added. “I am very, very proud of the work of the State Department that we’re getting done.’’
Nevertheless, the diplomatic corps with experience in the Americas has been particularly hard hit by all the departures.
The State Department’s third-highest-ranking official, Thomas Shannon, who helped shift the U.S. focus in Latin America away from small Cold War battlegrounds toward the region’s big economies, announced his retirement last month. William Brownfield, a former ambassador to Colombia, Venezuela and Chile, stepped down last year, as did his wife, Kristie Kenney, also a three-time ambassador, once in Ecuador. All of them are or were career Foreign Service officers, not political appointees.
“With each of these people, and many others, you are losing encyclopedic knowledge,” said Roberta Jacobson, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, who will herself resign in May.
Feeley, a former Marine Corps helicopter pilot who grew up in the Bronx in a family of New York firefighters and police officers, is a registered independent. One of his former State Department bosses said Feeley “understood hierarchy” and “would salute and move forward” even if given instructions with which he vigorously disagreed.
The realization that he could not be an emissary for Trump was not reached easily, Feeley said.
“My decision was based on a sense of my values as a citizen and a representative of broader American values,” he said.
Advocating for democracy, free trade, human rights and economic development was a given, Feeley said, during his tenure in many posts, including the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Mexico. During Trump’s first year in office, he said, he saw this work diminished — eclipsed by warnings and insults from the president’s Twitter account.
“The whole idea of a rules-based, respectful conduct of diplomatic relations is pretty much what I spent my whole career doing. And we don’t do that now,” he said. “We’ve walked off the field. Not only are we walking off the field, we’re taking the ball and we’re throwing up a middle finger.”
Panama’s decision last June to abandon its decades-long alliance with Taiwan and establish diplomatic relations with China was one instance in which Feeley says he felt frustrated by the administration’s lack of response.
China had become the second-most-frequent user of the Panama Canal, planned to build a railroad to the border with Costa Rica and promised to bring billions of dollars more in investments.
Feeley says he did not fear that China would seize control of the canal. But he did worry that the Trump administration had no effective commercial policy for Latin America and that the United States was losing influence in the hemisphere. He thought a flood of Chinese money could worsen corruption and inhumane labor practices.
Feeley briefed Vice President Pence about the Chinese moves during Pence’s visit to Panama in August. Later, he followed up on Pence’s suggestion that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could lead a trade delegation to the region but says the department did not respond.
“I got nothing,” Feeley recalled.
Several U.S. diplomats in different countries have complained of a lack of guidance and information from headquarters under Tillerson.
In December, ahead of the U.N. vote on whether to condemn the United States for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, wrote to member countries saying that Trump “has requested I report back on those who voted against us.”
Feeley received angry calls from Panamanian officials about the letter; he said he had no idea it existed. This type of “foreign policy by ultimatum and by intimidation,” he said, displayed “rank amateurism.”
Goldstein said Friday that the State Department has been working to improve communications with overseas posts.
“Rex Tillerson is not a micromanager,” he said. “He allows people to do their job. And if people need additional support, they need to ask for it, and should be getting it.”
Before coming to Panama in December 2015, Feeley spent a decade working on Mexico issues, as a political officer and deputy ambassador in Mexico and as deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. He had aspired to one day be ambassador there.
He said he found Trump’s campaign statements about undocumented Mexicans in the United States — the president described them as “criminals” and “rapists” — to be “horribly off base, beyond insulting.”
As ambassador, one friend said, Feeley’s frustration grew.
“He’d say, ‘I’m not sure how much more of this I can take,’ even though his public persona was completely lockstep, as it should be,” said Edward Burris, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who has known Feeley for decades.
Feeley’s breaking point came in August with the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, when Trump failed to decisively condemn the neo-Nazis. He said he has long considered the civil rights movement one of the finest achievements in American history.
“I have spoken about those struggles for the last 25, 30 years of my life. I represented a country I knew had overcome significant structural racism,” he said. “I saw his reaction [to Charlottesville] as a complete negation of the positive trajectory.”
Feeley has decided to work as a consultant for Univision, focusing on the immigration debate in the United States. He discussed the plan with former Marine friends, some of whom urged him not to leave his ambassadorial post.
But Feeley said he could not ignore the oath he signed requiring him to put aside his personal misgivings to implement presidential policies.
“If you feel you can’t do that in good faith,” he said, “the honorable thing to do is resign.”
Cruise ships at Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Photo commons.wikimedia.org
During the 2016-2017 season, 250 cruise ships (cruceros in Spanish) arrived at the country’s ports: Limon and Puntarenas, representing an increase of 34% over the previous season, and the number of tourists on board increased by 16%.
Cruise ships at Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Photo commons.wikimedia.org
According to official figures, between the seasons 2015-2016 and 2016-2017, the number of tourists who arrived on board cruises grew by 16%, rising from 242,930 to 280,854.
From a statement issued by the Instituto Costarricense de Turismo (ICT) – Costa Rican Tourism Board:
In two years, Costa Rica reported the arrival of 100 additional cruise passengers to the country, which represents growth of close to 70%.
Arrival of cruise passengers to Costa Rica (all ports)
Season
Total Cruise Ships
Cruise Passengers
2014- 2015
150
223,037
2015- 2016
186
242,930
2016- 2017
250
280,854
Source: ICT with information from INCOP, JAPDEVA and regional offices of the DGME (immigration service)
According to Mauricio Ventura, Minister of Tourism, this growth is due to the strategy developed by the ICT to revive the cruise industry.
“During this administration we set ourselves the goal of recovering this industry which clearly brings benefits to the most depressed coastal areas of the country and thanks to the strategy we developed, today the country has 100 more cruise arrivals than it received two years ago” explained Ventura.
Costa Rica stands out as the 4th choice for American home buyers, falling 2 spots compared to 2015 when we launched a similar report and Costa Rica was 2nd.
Costa Rica is still recovering from the disaster caused by Tropical Storm Nate last October, but it has much to offer.
Here are the top 5 most looked-up Costa Rican destinations by Americans:
Tamarindo is U.S. residents’ favorite spot, with 1,920 searches per month this past year. A long-time surfer’s haven, this beach is perfect for both beginner and advanced wave masters.
The second most sought-after location in Costa Rica is Jacó, accounting for 1,380 searches. Jacó Beach is known for catering to those who want to live a life of luxury.
The province of Guanacaste comes in third (790 monthly searches), and is already famous to U.S. retirees who seem to be fueling local development.
The fourth place is held by Santa Teresa, or ‘the Next Tulum’ as it is also called, with 610 searches.
Fifth by none other than capital San José (560 searches), which has recently been named a top destination on the rise by TripAdvisor.
The research is based on U.S. users’ Google searches conducted from January 2017 to January 2018, using keywords regarding homes for sale abroad, in countries located in the Americas. These countries were ranked based on monthly search volume.
Costa Rica obtained 39,620 monthly searches from the United States. Here is the link to the full study, with extra details on all the 30 destinations.
For Canadians, Costa Rica stands out as the 3rd location when looking to buy a second home. To see the full Canadian perspective, click here.
For the median price of a U.S. home (~US$240,000), in Costa Rica you can buy:
a 3-bedroom condo in Tamarindo,
a 2-bedroom oceanfront apartment in Jacó,
a 3-bedroom apartment in San José.
Other Central American countries on the list incude:
Belize #5
Panama #7
Honduras #11
Nicaragua #14
Guatemala #23
QCostarica.com was not involved in the creation of the content. This article by Cristina Jisa was originally published on Point2homes.com. Read the original article.
A bill that is being discussed in the Legislative Assembly proposes establishing a tax of 5% on the net sale price of imported or locally produced cement.
The bill establishes that “… the tax on cement produced within the national territory or imported, will be of five percent (5%) on the net sale price, both in the case of the national producer at the level of the production plant and for the importer at the level of the dispatch or storage site, excluding the corresponding sales or value-added tax, as well as any other tax”.
In this regard, Randall Murillo, Executive Director of the Costa Rican Chamber of Construction, opined that “… this legal initiative will place more equitable rules in the cement market.’Fair competition will be supported by the Chamber’.”
In relation to the destination of the funds collected from the tax, a statement by the Legislative Assembly explains that they will be distributed “… between different provinces and cantons of Cartago, Guanacaste, Desamparados, places where this material is produced, while the rest of the country will also benefit, what is collected from production, in any of the other provinces not considered in the previous articles, will be distributed in the form of twenty-five percent (25%) for the canton where production occurs and the remaining seventy and five percent (75%) in equal parts for the cantons of the respective province’.”
What our new study can do, we hope, is help Mexicans nationwide understand what’s happening beneath their feet.
