Colombia’s government said on Tuesday it has asked truckers to consider a raft of proposals to end the month old strike that its causing cargo delays and putting pressure on food prices amid already high inflation.
Colombian retail businesspeople expressed their concern about the astronomic hike in food prices, in the middle of a cargo transporters strike that is now over a month old.
Directives of Conalco (National Corporation of Food Retailers of Colombia) expressed on Thursday their worry because the government has not made enough emphasis on this problem.
Present price increases are over the inflation rate reported by the National Administrative Department of Statistics, that is 5.3% for the capital and we see there are increases of over 60 percent, said Hector Veloza, one of Conalco’s executives.
He added it is worrying the Minister of Agriculture and the Corabastos enterprise have not referred to the exorbitant increase in food prices.
For his part, officials of the National Association of Businesspeople of Colombia, also expressed their worry with the strike of cargo transporters that has reduced by 70 percent the cargo capacity for the goods imported by the country.
They added the effects of the drop in transportation are felt mostly in the port of Buenaventura, where they failed to load 220 thousand tons of cereals for the poultry and livestock industry.
Meanwhile, the president of the guild of small and medium enterprises, Rosmery Quintero, said the national truck crusade has increased by 40 percent the logistic costs of freight and by 55 percent those of storage.
When referring to the criticism coming from different fronts, the minister of Agriculture, Aurelio Iragorri, assured there are perishable products like onions and tomatoes and supplies have been maintained.
He admitted, however, tyhere are great difficulties in departments such as Cauca, Nariño and Valle with supplies of fruits, vegetables and potatoes which are sold 100 percent above from the normal price.
He also recognized inflation in June is like a stuck mule amid the economic difficulties suffered by Colombians.
Similar inconformities are found in industrial sectors such as steel, cement, cosmetics, chemicals, among others, whose activities are being affected by transportation, which influence with an overcost equivalent to 12 billion dollars in freight, parking and other expenses related to the strike.
While speaking before the US Congress’ Central America Caucus on July 6, InSight Crime Co-Director Steven Dudley outlined how drug trafficking organizations on the isthmus operate and the implications for rule of law and security, before offering three concrete ways the US government can improve its counternarcotics strategy in the region.
Central America has long been a bridge that connects the producer countries in South America to the consumer nations in the north, principally the United States. This role has led to the development of several different types of criminal organizations, some of them transnational, some of them local, and many more of them hyper-local.
Some of the transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) have familiar names: the Sinaloa Cartel, the Gulf Cartel, the Zetas, and the Urabeños all have operatives in Central America. They purchase cocaine or coca base from producer nations like Colombia and Peru. And they oversee the movement of that product from production point to market.
In Central America, they oversee the second tier criminal organizations in these countries that provide the transportation for the illicit drugs. These so-called “transportistas” are often family-based groups with long criminal histories in contraband, human smuggling and other criminal activities, which give them a strong foundation to jump into narcotics trafficking.
Examples include the Cachiros, a Honduran-based organization that once controlled a prominent route through northern Honduras, between Nicaragua and Guatemala. The Cachiros started as cattle rustlers who sold their stolen cattle to one of the country’s most prominent elite families. Over the years, their land titles grew as did their role in illicit trafficking. By September 2013, the year the United States Treasury Department placed them on its “Kingpin” list, the Cachiros had accumulated anywhere between $500 million and $800 million in assets, much of which they had put into African Palm plantations, mining licenses, hotels, a prominent zoo-resort, and a local soccer team.
It is these second tier, or transportista groups that inflict the most damaging consequences as it relates to drug trafficking. The Cachiros financed political parties of all stripes from would-be mayors to congressmen and perhaps above. They undermined local investigations against them and others by infiltrating the police, the local Attorney General’s Office and courthouses throughout the country. They bought construction companies, so they could win government contracts, then kicked money back to the politicians who supported their bids. They backed land invasions of their business rivals. And they killed their drug trafficking rivals and others who opposed them with impunity.
The increased drug trafficking in the region has had a trickle-down effect as well. Drug trafficking groups, from the TCOs to the local transportistas, pay local contractors and collaborators in-kind. The resulting flood of illicit drugs has turned traditional economics on its head: at InSight Crime, we found evidence of powdered cocaine being sold in the poorest Honduran neighborhoods. To be sure, that is not the drug of choice in those neighborhoods. Marijuana is. But it gives you an idea of the amount of drugs in the country and illustrates that supply can sometimes drive demand.
The local dealers of these drugs are very often the street gangs. The gangs have no role in international drug trafficking. They are restricted to dealing drugs on the hyper-local level. This drug dealing has become a critical part of the gangs’ criminal economy and thus a strong source of tension between gangs. In other words, the fight for the proverbial corner has become extremely violent in the last few years and helps us account for what has made Central America and, in particular the Northern Triangle nations of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, the most violent region in the world that is not at war.
Local drug dealing has also allowed the gangs to accumulate more sophisticated weaponry, establish safe houses, buy businesses and expand their political reach. In some places, we have found gangs who are controlling the wholesale drug market. And in all three Northern Triangle countries, there are some parts of the gangs that are trying to become transportistas themselves. It appears they are still a long way from achieving that goal, but some of them are trying.
Implications of Drug Trafficking
The implications of drug trafficking in the region are devastating. Here are four major ones:
1) Corruption
The aforementioned transportista networks make the difference between how much the drugs cost when they receive them and how much they cost when they are passed to the next transportista. Our calculations are that an organization like the Cachiros can make between $5 million and $12 million per month at these rates. On the whole, trafficking in a country like Honduras can make close to $700 million per year, which is 4 percent of the GDP, or about half the value of the country’s top export, coffee. Guatemala and El Salvador have similar estimations, although El Salvador is more of a money laundering hub due to the dollarized economy.
The money is more than just economic capital. It is political and social capital as well. Proceeds from these transport networks go into legitimate and illegitimate businesses, which provide thousands of jobs and are a key motor of the economy in many areas. They fund political parties and candidates, giving the transportistas a say about security as well as economic development strategies. They fund social functions, church events, and soccer clubs, many of which leap to the first divisions and compete for championships, like the Cachiros’ funded club did from one year to the next.
We in the US understand how important sports are to local pride. And at InSight Crime, when we crossed various social networks working with the Cachiros, we found the soccer team was the most important place where the country’s elites, politicians and traffickers met and socialized. In the Cachiros case, their main business partners were from the Rosenthals, a prominent business and political family in the country. Jaime Rosenthal, the family patriarch, was thought to be one of the wealthiest people in Central America and was once vice president of Honduras. The Rosenthals own banks, insurance companies, television and media, telephone and communications companies, as well as soccer teams and many other businesses.
When I met with Jaime Rosenthal in June 2015, and asked him directly about his relationship with the Cachiros, he told me he first met them in the late 1970s. The family that would become the Cachiros would arrive to the Rosenthal’s meat-packing plant in a beat-up old truck to sell their cattle. Then they would sleep in the parking lot before driving back the next day. Over time, the Cachiros parked large amounts of their capital in the Rosenthal’s banks. The US government indicted the Rosenthals last October, presumably for some of these interactions they had with the Cachiros. But these relationships between criminal groups and elites continue in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
2) Impunity
The transportistas also buy off prosecutors, police, and judges. They influence the judicial process from the beginning, first trying to make sure no one gets started on an investigation; then thwarting these investigations if they do get started.
The Cachiros, for instance, were untouchable for years. No one even mentioned the name of the family at the center of it when I first started looking at the group in 2010. At InSight Crime, we spoke openly about them, but that is largely because we are not based in Honduras. Journalists in Honduras told me that they were too afraid to speak up, or that drug traffickers paid journalists to keep them out of the press.
The impunity that results is contagious and the patterns set by the transportistas are repeated by other criminal groups. Judicial and security forces are bought off. Journalists are frightened or paid off.
3) Violence
Although it is hard to quantify because the data is flawed or unavailable, the transportistas are involved in the violence that is afflicting this region. The maps of the most violent areas coincide with the areas presumed to be the drug trafficking routes. This includes the area where the Cachiros once operated, the municipality of Tocoa, which consistently has homicide rates of close to 100 per 100,000 inhabitants.
In addition to the transportistas’ role in the violence, which is largely rural in nature, we have to consider the spillover effect their activities have in urban areas. Specifically, we are talking about gang violence in the region’s largest cities. As described earlier, these gangs control many of the local drug markets where they sell everything from powdered cocaine to forms of crack to marijuana. Between them, they are fighting for the proverbial corner, which InSight Crime believes is one of the main causes of homicide in these countries.
4) Migration
The combination of corruption, impunity, and violence is a powerful push factor when it comes to migration. The areas from where we are seeing some of the most migrants are the areas of transportista and gang violence. The frustration and lack of trust these migrants have with their own authorities is evident in the countless testimonies that come across my desk. Others have done more systematic studies of these push factors, which I urge the Caucus to consult as they consider how to deal with this issue.
US Policy
US policy as it relates to drug trafficking in the region is slowly evolving. I will mention three key strategies that are at the core of dealing with this issue.
a) Kingpin Strategy
The United States is focused on removing kingpins from the equation by either capturing or killing them. In some cases, the threat of a US capture leads suspects to hand themselves in to US authorities. This is what happened to the core of the Cachiros organization, which turned themselves in to the US in January 2015.
The strategy has its positives. It disrupts the distribution chain, although transportista groups are fairly easily replaced. It also requires a certain amount of political will and coordination, so it is an illustration of progress of the local government and an important political sign to the country that impunity is waning.
However, the kingpin strategy has its negatives. Cutting off the head of an organization can lead to chaos in the organization’s area of influence, leading to upticks in violence as the groups reorganize and a new leading organization emerges. This strategy also requires a huge commitment of resources on the part of the local government, something that can take away from other strategies it might deem more important, such as going after the most violent criminal groups (instead of the most prolific drug trafficking groups).
b) Interdiction
The second core strategy as it relates to dealing with drug trafficking is to interdict the flow of drugs. Intercepting drugs is a difficult and never-ending job, the fruits of which are rarely felt. The estimated amounts of drugs intercepted is small in the best of circumstances and miniscule in the case of the Northern Triangle nations. It requires a huge amount of resources, good will and practice. Yet it remains a key part of the US strategy.
c) Reforming/rebuilding the police
The third core strategy worth mentioning is that of reforming and rebuilding police forces. The perennial issue as it relates to US counter-drug assistance is how to purge and restock the police forces. The US also assists in developing special units that assist the US counternarcotics agents in capturing or killing drug traffickers, and interdicting drug loads. The work has had some good results, and many police who go through the US filtering system become important agents of change within their institutions.
The case of Guatemala is worth mentioning in this regard. Guatemala has added hundreds of new police in recent years, which have come through a more rigorous filter and passed through a longer training period. Honduras has also showed signs that it is ready to purge the police. A special Honduran police commission, with the blessing of the presidency, has started to remove questionable characters from the police. As opposed to most police commissions, this Honduran commission is starting from the top and moving its way downward. The US is assisting by prosecuting a number of police commanders for their involvement in a drug trafficking case.
Recommendations
It is difficult to completely change the course of counternarcotic strategy. It is less like the go-fast boats that carry drugs and more like the battleship that tries to corral them. But there is a need to update these strategies. Here are three recommendations of how to tweak US counternarcotic strategy:
1) Reconcile the US agenda with that of the local governments
Many local governments are happy to get the assistance from the United States. It helps them beef up intelligence services, train personnel across the board, and it comes with additional equipment and other resources.
But their agenda does not necessarily coincide with the US agenda, especially as it relates to counternarcotics. Many of these local governments are focused on violence, specifically homicides. And while the US agenda looks for results as it relates to the capture, killings and extraditions of kingpins, the locals want lower homicide rates and ways to reduce crimes like extortion.
The US would do better by these countries if it allowed for the assistance to be put towards fulfilling the local agenda. In some cases, such as police reform, these agendas overlap nicely. But in others, such as the aforementioned kingpin strategy, they do not. Be sensitive to this and allow for shifts in resources that correspond to these local decisions rather than insisting on diverting resources towards US goals. In the case of stemming violence and extortion, this approach would also help these countries stem the flow of migration.
2) Focus on the money
As noted, the US Treasury department has begun to play an important role in counternarcotics strategy. Indeed, it was not until Treasury put the Cachiros on the kingpin list in September of 2013, that things began to turn against the criminal group. The Treasury also put the Rosenthals on the kingpin list to coincide with the US Justice Department indictment of various family members in October 2015, including Jaime Rosenthal.
Much of this work can be done from the United States. The US Treasury, in particular, can essentially shut down an operation just by adding its business to the kingpin list, as it did with the Rosenthals. This strategy has its negatives, not the least of which is the lack of transparency in the process and the lack of due process given to the accused.
So in addition to adding more transparency to this process and providing some way to more effectively appeal these decisions before they become effective, the US government should devote more resources to dismantling the money side of these organizations. In the best case scenario, these designations for the kingpin list would go hand-in-hand with indictments.
Going after the money side has an additional benefit. It is part of the way to extract political and economic elites from organized crime. These elites can open or shut the doors to organized crime and drug trafficking interests. Too often that door is wide open. The US can change that calculation by investigating and prosecuting these elites more vigorously. The Rosenthal case sent shudders through the region’s elites. But the US cannot stop with the Rosenthals.
3) Provide more assistance to Attorney General’s Offices
The police are on the front lines of the battle against drug trafficking interests, and the US has long assisted in the strengthening of this institution, but the Attorney General’s Offices are where the war is won or lost. These offices are generally devoid of resources, and in some cases systematically starved. Yet, as we can see from the case of Guatemala — where the Attorney General’s Office is at the center of nothing less than a revolutionary transformation of how people conceive of justice and political reform in that country following the resignation last year of the president and vice president for corruption — these offices are forgotten by the US agencies that can most help them with training, resources, and support.
That support goes beyond just providing better facilities, more wire-tapping services, and witness protection programs. It involves providing them with important political support, especially as it relates to cases in which powerful elites who have long treated the government as their own guard dogs are under judicial scrutiny. The Attorney General’s Offices need political allies as much as they need financial support. The US can be that ally, ensuring judicial independence and ultimately opening the door for reform.
African migrants camped out at the Peñas Blancas border are living a nightmare, waiting, hoping Nicaragua will let them pass through their country
African migrants camped out at the Peñas Blancas border are living a nightmare, waiting, hoping Nicaragua will let them pass through their country
Stuck in Costa Rica, no way to move forward to their final destination, the United States, some 700 migrants amassed at the Peñas Blancas border waiting, hoping Nicaragua will open its border. are living a nightmare.
“Nosotros aquí estamos sufriendo mucho.”>”We here are suffering. We arrived in Costa Rica as immigrants, but they do not treat us as immigrants. We do not have where to sleep or live. We are sufferning here,” many say.
Of the 700, nearly 400 have received documents to move freely in Costa Rica. They mainly come from Africa, but also from Asia. Many arrive by air in Ecuador or Brasil, others by cargo ships, then by land start their trip north, through Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica, the last stop due to the closed border at Nicaragua.
Authorities do not know what to do: they cannot deport them for a number of reasons, among is the risk to their lives if they are sent back to the home country. Authorities also fear that some 10.000 or more are headed this way, which could cause a humanitarian crisis.
Costa Rica was able to resolve the Cuban migrant crisis earlier this year, after more than 8.000 Cubans were stuck at the Nicaragua border for more than two months. Costa Rica was finally able to negotiate an airlift (the Cubans had to pay the cost of the fligth) to Mexico, near the U.S. border. The majority of the Cubans, almost 5,000 did fly out of Costa Rica, the other 3,000 or so are believed to have left the country by way of coyotes (traffickers), making their way to the U.S. by land.
However, the Cubans have special status setting foot in the United States. By way of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1963, that permits Cuban refugees to adjust to lawful permanent residence. The migrants now stuck in Costa Rica do not.
In Costa Rica it takes years from arrest to investigation to trial to conviction.
Adrián Salmerón Silva, the perpetrator of the Matapalo Massacre, Santa Cruz, last February was arrested in Nicaragua on February 19, had a hearing on April 29 and this past week was sentenced to 183 years in prison for the crimes he had committed in Costa Rica.
Silva, a Nicaraguan national, fled Costa Rica for his native land, where that country’s constitution does not permit extradition, but it can try it citizens for crimes committed abroad.
The rapidity of the Nicaraguan judicial system has left many in Costa Rica to ask why is the Costa Rica judicial process so slow compared to Nicaragua?
Alexander Rodriguez, a lawyer who took part in the creation of the Criminal Procedures Code of Nicaragua, says the answer is simple: “In Costa Rica there are no fixed deadlines for the duration of processes. The only thing there is, is the principle of reasonable process, but not stated is the time frame.”
Rodriguez explains that the current Nicaragua Criminal Procedures Code, in place since 2002, establishes a time frame for each stage of the process and if disobeyed it calls for an immediate release of the accused.
The legal expert added that Nicaragua’s Article 134 of the Criminal Procedures Code requires, in the case of a major crime, a judge is to pronounce a verdict within a period of not more than three months from the first hearing. For lesser crimes, the period is two months.
The only exception to the rule is a “force majeure“.
According to Rodriguez, in Nicaragua, as in other countries such as Colombia and Ecuador, prosecutors receive the complaint, define what is admissible as evidence and map out a strict procedural time frame.
“This makes everything flow better and faster. Clearly, there are judicial controls, but everything runs smoothly,” added the lawyer.
However, the Criminal Procedures Code in Costa Rica, in the 1996 reform, included a the concept of a “meticulous control of an investigation”, with the objective that the inquiry would be flexible and quick, but, in reality, the trial is burdened with voluminous files of evidence.
“This is what is called bureaucratic or formal investigation. This occurs even though the most important evidence is during the public oral hearing,” criticized the legal expert.
In addition, explains Rodriguez, the Costa Rica criminal process consists of three stages: the preparatory (gathering of evidence), intermediate (preliminary hearing for a judge to decide if the case is elevated to trial; and the trial.
Rodriguez said in Nicaragua there is no intermediate stage.
Carlos Chinchilla, president of Costa Rica’s Sala Tercera (Criminal Court), admits the intermediate stage slows the process. “If I remove that stage of the preliminary hearing, if I rip out that page, I save two years in the process,” said the judge.
Judge Chinchilla believes that the Costa Rica Criminal Procedures Code could be reformed to make it less cumbersome. In addition, he said he could present such a proposal for the reform.
For his part, Rodriguez added that in Costa Rica, the heavy case load of the prosecutor’s office (Ministerio Publico) and the courts (Tribunales) adds to prolonged trials.
Rodriguez that in Nicaragua, for example, the prosecutor’s office does not have the workload as Costa Rica’s. The lawyer added that courts (in Costa Rica) are saturated such that the earliest trial dates are in 2017.
Prof. Felipe Montoya of York University, seen here with his teenage son Nico, called immigration rules that barred his family from Canada medieval and barbaric. (Felipe Montoya/ Facebook) CBC news.
Felipe Montoya and Alejandra García-Prieto are back in Costa Rica with their family after Immigration Canada declared “inadmissible” their 13 year-old son Nicholas, because he has Down Syndrome.
Prof. Felipe Montoya of York University, seen here with his teenage son Nico, called immigration rules that barred his family from Canada medieval and barbaric. (Felipe Montoya/ Facebook) CBC news.
The “Nico” case began last March, when Felipe uploaded a video on YouTube to report that Canada, a country they have lived in for more than three years, denied them residency on the grounds the care required by Nico would generate “high costs” to Canadian health or social services, exceeding the average Canadian per capita cost.
Despite the help of a Canadian woman, who preferred to remain anonymous, launching a campaign on Change.org, to gather signatures to ask the Canadian government to review the Immigration and Refugee Protection.
The campaign gathered 1,000 signatures, Montoya told La Nacion in an interview.
Also, a group of Canadian citizens formed a committee to support the Montoya-Garcia family and follow through on the family’s legal issue with the government.
Felipe Montoya, who as a temporary foreign worker taught environmental studies at York University (in Toronto), said that after more than three of living in Canada and being refused residency, they had to make the decision to return to their native Costa Rica. Montoya will now be working as a professor at the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR).
The family hopes their return to Costa Rica is temporary, “perhaps two or three years”, said Felipe, while the case continues with the Canadian government.
The family will live in Cuidad Colon, prior to leaving Costa Rica they had lived in nearby Santa Ana. Felipe added that, in the move, they had to leave a lot behind. Now are waiting for what they could ship to arrive, for their settlement back in Costa Rica.
“I went to Ottawa with a lawyer friend, we met with the director of case processing and the policy director of immigration. They said they were interested in moving forward with the policy changes,” said Montoya.
But that could take time. Montoya explained that one of the options is a change in the law, the other is a change in the processing regulations for permanent residency applications; and yet another option is change int he interpretation of the regulations.
Montoya said that Immigration Canada estimated the cost of care for Nicolas was about $25,000 a year and that the government can only spend $3,600 a year in the case of people with health problems.
Although now in Costa Rica, Montoya said he will take up the issue to as far as he can with the objective of setting a precedent and that his situation will not be lived by others.
Editor’s note: a search of Canadian online media has no reports, other than the initial reports in March/April of this family’s ordeal with the Canadian government.
René Jiménez y Andrés Arias fueron los ganadores del reto Red Bull escape San Lucas (Rafael Laurent / Red Bull)
René Jiménez and Andrés Arias winners of the 2016 Red Bull San Lucas Escape challenge. Photo Rafael Laurent / Red Bull
Under the hot Puntarenas sun, 158 athletes took part in the second edition of the Red Bull San Lucas Escape challenge.
The competition challenged the intrepid athletes to run 10 kilometres through the rugged terrain of San Lucas island (off the coast of the town of Puntareans) to reach the waters, get on a kayak and paddle the seven kilometres to back to the Puntarenas coast. Not all of the participants were entitled to the rafts to leave the island, on 85% could achieve a successful escape from the island that once housed Costa Rica’s infamous prison.
The participants, as part of the escape challenge, had to run 10 kilometres before reaching the waters to paddle back from the San Lucas island to the Puntarenas coast. Photo Camilo Quiroga / Red Bull
Rene Jimenez and Andres Arias were the winning team, taking home an all expenses paid trip to the Wings For Life World Run 2017. Their time was 2:02:38, 25 seconds ahead of runners-up Deybi Quiros and Mario Zumbado.
Last year, Jimenez and Arias were also the winners, with a time of 2:12:43.
Red Bull brand created this competition in Costa Rica last year (2015) because it lines up perfectly with the feel of the brand: adventure destinations that challenge and extreme sports athletes to give their best, in beautiful settings.
To make the race interesting, the participants were being chased by two professional athletes, Costa Rica’s Ivannia Fonseca and New Zeeland’s Braden Currie, who role played the part of prison guards.
In this Nov. 28, 2015 file photo, United Nations Climate Chief Christiana Figueres looks on during a press conference ahead of the U.N Climate Conference in Le Bourget, outside Paris, France. Costa Rica's government announced on Thursday, July 7, 2016 that they are nominating Figueres for U.N. Secretary General. Laurent Cipriani, File AP Photo
In this Nov. 28, 2015 file photo, United Nations Climate Chief Christiana Figueres looks on during a press conference ahead of the U.N Climate Conference in Le Bourget, outside Paris, France. Costa Rica’s government announced on Thursday, July 7, 2016 that they are nominating Figueres for U.N. Secretary General. Laurent Cipriani, File AP Photo
It’s official, Christiana Figueres is Costa Rica’s candidate to to be the next secretary-general of the United Nations.
Figueres, daughter of Jose Maria Figueres Ferrer, served as President of Costa Rica on three occasions: 1948–1949, 1953–1958, and 1970–1974 and during his term in office abolished the country’s army, is the 12th contender in the race to succeed Ban Ki-moon after his second five-year term as U.N. chief ends on Dec. 31.
Christiana Figueres is also the sister of former President of Costa Rica, Jose Maria Figueres Olsen (the country’s youngest president in the 20th century, 39 of age in whe elected in 1994), and who is expected to run for President in 2018.
Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solis said the United Nations and the world need Christiana Figueres because she is a proven “bridge builder” who can listen, consult, help resolve disputes, build agreements and anticipate problems.
“At a time when the U.N. faces great challenges both within and outside the organization, she is the candidate who can help the world’s most relevant multilateral body reclaim its standing among the people of the world,” Solis said.
Figueres helped shape the Paris Agreement to combat global warming as executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, and her performance has raised her international profile.
The Costa Rican diplomat described herself as a leader with organizational skills and “a strong moral compass” who can inspire the world. She said her “learning curve” will be issues of peace and security.
In response to a question that she would not be a “secretary” or a “general” if elected, Figueres said, “I’m not going to be a secretary because I will not take instructions and I will not be a general because I will not give orders,” she said. “I’m going to be the secretary-general of the United Nations,” which means devoting time to increasing prospects for peace, preventing conflicts, and promoting dialogue.
The 11 other candidates — six men and five women — have already made their case to be the next secretary-general to the 193-member General Assembly. Figueres will have her two-hour question-and-answer session on July 14.
According to the U.N. Charter, the secretary-general is chosen by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the 15-member Security Council. In practice, this has meant that the council’s five permanent members — the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France — have veto power over the candidates.
The Security Council is expected to hold its first “straw poll” on July 21 where the 15 members will cast ballots saying “encourage,” “discourage” or “no opinion” for each candidate.
There is no deadline for candidates to apply and additional contenders could enter the race at any time before a final vote. No date has been set, but it’s likely to take place in September or October.
Turrialba is more than just a volcano, it is a small city in Cartago Province with an estimated population of 35,618. The main industries are textiles, agriculture and tourism. The Pacuare and Reventazón Rivers are notable for whitewater rafting, making Turrialba a mecca for the sport.
“Several cities developed and prospered as a result of the building of the railroad to the Caribbean; Turrialba is one of these, and its architectural, spatial and ethnic makeup is different from other towns. Declared a City of National Archeological Interest, this town is the entryway to the Costa Rican Caribbean.
San Jose traffic during downpours (and even without). Photo from Diario Extra.
File photo of San Jose traffic during downpours (and even without). From Diario Extra.
“El Veranillo de San Juan” will take a break today (and may for the coming day or two) as a Tropical Wave (Onda Tropical in Spanish) is expected to drench the Central Valley and North Pacific coast this morning (Thursday).
The national weather service, the Instituto Meteorológico Nacional (IMN), says the phenomenon causes a decrease in the trade winds and sets conditions for downpours.
“During the morning there will be windy conditions in the Caribbean and Northern Zone, in the afternoon there will rains and downpours (aguaceros) accompanied by storm conditions in the Pacific coast and Central Valley,” says the IMN in their weather notice.
Children from the Wayuu tribes in a school in western Venezuela wait for their daily meal.
The widespread shortages of food and medicine in Venezuela are so dire that they can only be compared to that of countries living post-wars periods. But Venezuela is in no war, unless you believe President Nicolás Maduro’s scapegoat rhetoric.
According to 2015 data, 87 out of every 100 Venezuelans don’t have enough money for food.
This year’s situation is even scarier; over 13 percent of Venezuelans could only eat once or twice a day. And according to studies, in the state of Miranda, next to the capital Caracas, 30 percent of children and up to half of teachers skip at least one meal.
Many Venezuelan children skip classes altogether if no free lunch is served at school, for in many cases that’s the only meal they will have that day.
These alarming conclusions were revealed during the forum “Scarcity and Hunger in Venezuela as a new reality” organized on June 30 in Caracas by Cesap, an organization of the Venezuelan Catholic Church, and the Bengoa Foundation, an NGO that tackles malnutrition among children and women.
Even though all the participants in the forum made it clear that famine hasn’t taken over Venezuela yet, Maritza Landaeta, general coordinator for Bengoa and main speaker at the event, said “we do have begun witnessing massive hunger among people in extreme poverty.”
The Catholic Church carries out many social programs in Venezuela through its several NGOs. Luis Pernalte, spokesman for the Catholic school aid network Fe y Alegría, said the Church is worried over the increase in poverty and its effects on children’s upbringing and violence.
At the forum, they shared two dramatic stories: two teachers of Fe y Alegría were murdered this year, shot outside their schools. And a construction worker who reached out to Fe y Alegría’s medical service because he was feeling ill turned out his symptom was just hunger.
The Venezuelan government is supposed to provide schools with at least one meal a day, but it is sporadic and insufficient for all students. “The government doesn’t offer any solutions to these problems,” said Pernalte.
One Third, Slipping into Poverty
In her talk, Landaeta argued that Venezuela’s crisis — over 500 percent inflation, scarcity affecting 82 percent of food products and 95 percent of medicine — has created a new social segment, the “new poor,” those who have recently slipped into poverty.
This segment covers 34 percent of the country’s population. With 19 percent being in regular poverty and 28 percent in extreme poverty, this means that the “non poor” in Venezuela is just 19 percent of the population.
These figures only concern 2015 and is the result of polls made by the most important universities in the country and several NGOs, since the government stopped published poverty statistics in 2014.
The data for 2016 are still being collected, but the situation is expected to be dire.
The most alarming conclusion is the rate of malnutrition: it affected 10 percent of Venezuelan children in 2010. It climbed to 22.5 percent in 2015.
“For each malnourished child that reaches a hospital, it is estimated that 20 children from that area are malnourished,” the expert pointed out. There is no reliable data, but hospital administrators talk about a huge rise in children going hungry.
Besides children not getting enough food, the little they do eat does not meet nutritional standards. Landaeta says almost 40 percent of what Venezuelan children eats are fats or carbohydrates. The intake of animal sources of protein like milk, eggs, fish, and meat, has fallen dramatically in the last two years.
“The brain of a child who doesn’t eat protein will not develop adequately,” she pointed out. “In Venezuela there’s a food crisis and a humanitarian crisis. And because of the hunger there’s violence,” she explained.
According to Venezuelan congresswoman Karin Salanova, 28 children die each day in Venezuela due to hunger or lack of medicine. “They are the future of this country, you don’t play with that,” she said during a congressional session when the opposition passed a resolution to protect children and teenagers.
The ruling-party legislators of course refused to vote. For them, everything is fine in Venezuela.
Population Control
Marisol Ramírez of Psychologists without Borders also spoke at the event. She explained that her NGO has been studying how shortages have affected the population, and they found out that the main concern of Venezuelans has shifted from violence to hunger.
“It’s not the case that violence has subsided, but rather that hunger is catching up and overcoming violence,” she said.
Ramírez argues that scarcity and violence has become the Maduro administration’s new tool of social control for three reasons:
It weakens free will
It keeps people focused on surviving
It generates rivalry and resentment, decreasing empathy
Susana Rafalli, a nutritionist with Fundación Bengoa and who has had social work in several countries of Central America, said the government is violating all four aspects of the right to a proper nutrition as guaranteed by a United Nations treaty signed by Venezuela:
Availability (violated by scarcity)
Accessibility (inflation has eroded Venezuela’s purchasing power and the government has a monopoly on food distribution)
Adaptability (Venezuelans have altered their diets and must find replacements for products that are scarce)
Acceptability (the available food is of lower nutritional content, quality and standards)
In the meanwhile, Ramírez quotes José Virtuoso, the Salesian priest and president of the Andrés Bello Catholic University:
The government has declared war on Venezuelan society. Society now swings between chaos and the titanic effort to survive… To save our brothers is an inescapable duty.
Perhaps Venezuela is at war after all. It’s a country where a regime fights its own starving, terrified citizens.
by Henry Morales, Vozdeguanacaste.com – The Public Force will reinforce security in Playas del Coco (Guanacaste) with 12 tourist police in the area and training for neighborhood groups to form community security committees, as well as lectures in local elementary and high schools to prevent crime and drug use.
These are the measures that the Ministry of Public Security (MSP- Ministerio de Seguridad Publica) opted to take after the crime against young Alejo Leiva, who was murdered on this beach last March.
With the tourist police presence, the district will be patrolled by 24 officers in total, including the 12 Public Force police in blue uniforms currently working in the area.
Daniel Calderon, regional director of the Guanacaste Public Force, said the goal is to prevent the crimes that they detected in recent joint operations conducted in Coco and Tamarindo.
Since early April, the Public Force, Immigration, Civil Aviation, the Coast Guard, Traffic Police and the Operational Support Group have been conducting joint operations in Tamarindo Beach and Coco. According to the MSP press report, during the police operations, they have arrested 179 people, the majority for possession and sale of drugs, illegal possession of firearms, reckless driving and violation of immigration and foreign affairs law.
In total, 21 stolen vehicles, 34 motorcycles, weapons and drugs were seized.
To Calderon, those numbers are normal in coastal areas, but the work of the authorities is to prevent and minimize the crime rate in the area.
After the operations, Coco residents say they feel safe with the police presence, but they also plan to put security cameras in their businesses.
Dixon Vasquez, a resident of Coco Beach, commented that, at first, he and the neighbors were afraid of the number of police that they saw.
“Neighbors were nervous since we are not used to seeing so many police on the streets, but many things are changing for the better,” Vasquez said.
On the other hand, William Ayre, owner of The Lookout restaurant in Coco, said tourists view the area as a peaceful place.
“The feeling that tourists have is that it is a peaceful place here. Foreign tourists didn’t even realize what happened (with the death of Alejo),” Ayre said.
Calderon said that the joint operations that have been carried out since April in Coco and Tamarindo beaches will continue indefinitely and that they will be expanded to Samara in the coming months.
The Secret Life of Panama City By Jon Lee Anderson
By Jon Lee Anderson, The New Yorker – Panama, which offers up its national flag to international shippers, local addresses to ghost corporations, and an anything-goes banking system to anyone with money, has long been renowned as an accommodating place for business.
On a visit to the country in the late nineties, I was shown around by a Panamanian businessman, a friend, who took me to a newly built hotel and office tower in downtown Panama City.
The gleaming green-glass tower rose incongruously above an otherwise pleasant district of one- and two-story residential homes and embassies, overlooking the blue waters of the bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Very few of the tower’s offices appeared to be occupied, I noted. “It’s a money laundry,” my friend said matter-of-factly.
I asked my friend what exactly he meant by “money laundry.” Over the next few minutes, with beautiful simplicity, he told me how it worked. A Panama-registered company was, like a Tijuana wedding, something that could be swiftly drawn up by one of Panama’s slew of sharp-suited lawyers.
If you were a narco-trafficker, and needed to launder several million dollars a month in illegal income, for instance, you could set up several dozen Panamanian businesses, all of them entirely fictitious, and then make arrangements with the owner of the new tower to “rent” as many offices as you needed.
After a few minutes of calculations made by eyeballing the tower and counting its number of floors, my friend concluded that it would be possible to launder as much as a hundred million dollars a year through that tower alone.
There are, of course, many other ways to hide or to launder money, and this week’s spectacular public dumping of documents from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca, the so-called Panama Papers, shows some of the ways the global offshore banking system, of which Panama is an integral part, allows wealthy people of all kinds—not exclusively narco-traffickers—to do so.
(Banking havens like Panama’s also exist in the Caribbean quasi-nation of Grand Cayman; on the island of Jersey and the Isle of Man; in the Pyrenean sub-nation of Andorra; and in several other aeries around the world. Perhaps the most famous, and possibly most lucrative, offshore bank of all is the nation of Switzerland.)
But as demonstrated by my friend, using the gleaming office tower as a case in point, bricks and mortar are a clever way to hide one’s money, and Panama has long made itself available to real-estate developers who cater to this booming economy. So successful has this resource been for Panama that, seventeen years later, the low-level neighborhood around the tower has wholly disappeared, replaced by scores of newer towers of every hue and description; one, almost lost amid the welter of steel and glass, is shaped fancifully to resemble a corkscrew.
The last President of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, who ran the country from 2009 to 2014, and who is now living in Miami, accused of corruption by Panama’s Supreme Court, was a great believer in public-infrastructure projects, building highways, ocean causeways, and a subway system that will cost billions of dollars. The firm that Martinelli favored with the bulk of these costly projects, the Brazilian engineering giant Odebrecht, is currently caught up in a sweeping corruption scandal at home.
In 1999, when the Panama Canal was finally returned to Panamanian sovereignty, a great sell-off of property in the former U.S. Canal Zone ensued, and I reported on it for the magazine. One day, I accompanied Nicolás Ardito Barletta, a patrician Panamanian economist and former World Bank vice-president, who had been put in charge of the investment-promotion campaign, on a helicopter tour of the Zone. Everything from former military bases to ports was up for grabs.
On our tour, Barletta told me that the vision for the future of the country was to be “a little bit of Singapore and a little of Rotterdam.” For one of our rides, he took along two prospective investors, from Spain’s Catalan region. They were uneasy in my presence, and later I found out why. One, a man named Juan Manuel Rosillo, was out on bail for criminal charges relating to a multimillion-dollar tax-fraud scam in Spain. His friend and partner was none other than Josep Pujol, a son of Catalan President Jordi Pujol. (A few months later, back in Spain, Rosillo was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for his crimes but was released on appeal.
A year later, he was sentenced to a new prison term after a traffic incident in which his Bentley struck and killed a young man, but Rosillo fled the country—back to Panama, where he lived until his death, of an apparent heart attack, in 2007. In 2014, Jordi Pujol, the former Catalan President, acknowledged to police investigators that he had used offshore bank accounts for decades to move sums of money, which he said were accrued from an inheritance, around the world. Among the countries involved in his activity, which is still being investigated, was Panama.)
On that trip, I also met with a couple of prominent foreign fugitives who were resident in Panama, among them Jorge Serrano Elías, the former President of Guatemala. Serrano had skipped his home country for Panama after being overthrown in 1993. He had been formally accused in Guatemala of stealing tens of millions of dollars in public funds, but had been given a warm welcome in Panama, and he seemed at ease when we met on the grounds of a luxury housing estate and polo club he was building outside the city.
A few days later, I asked Panama City’s mayor, Juan Carlos Navarro, a Harvard-educated man with Presidential ambitions, about his own vision for Panama and how he felt about its louche reputation, especially its tradition of harboring questionable characters like Serrano. He did not like my line of questioning. “I’ve always thought of Panama as sort of like Switzerland,” he told me. He had scowled when I suggested that his country’s reputation abroad was more like that of Casablanca, or Tangiers. “
They bring money, they invest here. What’s wrong with that?” he said. But, I asked, what if someone like a war criminal or the next Mengele decided to come to Panama? Navarro shrugged. “That would be no problem, either,” he said. “I look at it as a kind of service provided by Panama to the international community. The world can think of Panama as a refuge of last resort. . . . And if they want to live here quietly, bienvenidos.’”
It may be mere coincidence, but it was interesting to note that Erhard Mossack, the father of Jürgen Mossack, a part owner of Mossack Fonseca, was a former Waffen-S.S. officer who immigrated to Panama with his family after the Second World War. Then, as now, Panama was an extremely accommodating place.
Sometimes you’re not looking for the Right One, but rather the One Right Now. A casual dating site is a a good place to find a short-term romance to hit the spot. Casual dating sites are out there to help you cruise a high volume of interested singles that are also looking for low-key no-strings fun. You want to get to the point where the next question is “Your place or mine?” To get there begin online.
There are lots of reasons to choose casual dating. Many people these days lead busy lives that don’t allow for a full-time relationship commitment. You may not be ready to settle down and pick out curtains just yet. You may be fond of travel and want to meet new people in foreign lands without strings attached back home. You may have just left a serious relationship and you’re ready for wild nights on the town.
Yet when you meet those cute singles on the town how can you tell if they are searching for a sure thing or a fun fling like you?
Remember to always discuss your intentions, and be as up front as possible. It may put a damper on the evening to point out to your flirty new friend that you are not open to long-term possibilities. And you will still have to expect hearts to be broken and egos to be stepped on sometimes with casual dating.
Is there any way to reduce the heart ache and trouble when it comes to low-commitment love?
The answer lies online, with casual dating sites set up for singles just like you.
The biggest benefit to using sites centered on casual dating rather than general dating is that each user has the same goal in mind. People looking for serious relationships are not going to have any success on this kind of site. If you are more interested in a solid relationship than a light-hearted dalliance do not make the mistake of signing up on a casual dating site! You are only sowing the seeds for future heartbreak.
It’s always best to go out there with a well-written, honest profile about what you’re looking for and what level of dating you want. Tailor your profile to reflect what you’d like to read in your match’s profile. Let them know if you are looking for a salsa dance partner/friend with benefits!
Show your fun side in your profile! Casual dating is all about fun, so don’t sound like the dullest guest at the party, and make sure you look snappy in your pictures.
Discuss your active hobbies like rock climbing. Talk about how you’d love a partner to climb with and have a picnic together later, but don’t mention roses and champagne or you could be sounding more serious than you mean.
Former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, denies making the statement but it was recorded
Former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, denies making the controversial statement but it was recorded: “we are all going to die, those who have an AK7 ready it, we will not give up…”
Former president of Honduras and current congressman for the leftist Liberty and Refoundation Party (Libre), José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, struck controversy on June 30 when he called on his sympathizers “ready you AK-47s” to fight those who wish to push him out of 2017 presidential race.
According to Zelaya, who was ousted from the presidency seven years ago, “this country entered into a process of political dictatorship since the 2009 coup d’état. The government has kept denying the breakdown of constitutional order in Honduras ever since.”
He argued that Hondurans need to take up arms because the “country has fallen into the claws of a political dictatorship, a repressive and criminal one that only cares to benefit the most right-wing groups.”
Zelaya believes that President Juan Orlando Hernández “has no interest in the country” due to high levels of poverty and insecurity.
“So whoever has an AK-47, get ready. The process is to eliminate them. We are ready for that, we will not give up neither to internal nor external critics,” the former president warned.
Nevertheless, Zelaya didn’t mince words for those within his own party who do not support him: “We are looking for people who are going to stay with us and be conscious that the democratic socialist process is our fatherland and nothing can stop it. There are some who don’t understand that this fight is a matter of life and death for the people who are suffering.”
“There are only two sides here, we do not accept anyone in between. We do not accept grey or black areas. Either you are on this side fighting against the dictatorship or you are supporting it,” he argued.
He said his enemies want him out of the presidential race because he can easily beat the ruling National Party. General elections will be held in November 2017.
The most recent tax declaration will become a requirement for some companies when applying for a loan at banks in Costa Rica. The move is part of the Regulation on the Qualification of the Debtors, which has been in effect since June 17.
The tax statement will be indispensable for evaluating applications for business loan and apply only to new credit. Banks, cooperatives, mutuals and financial are required to ask for such a requirement to its corporate customers.
Companies that will be asked for this requirement are those who “… have a good credit record, low currency risk in the event of abrupt changes in the dollar and have audited financial statements.”
Javier Cascante, chief of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (SUGEF), told Nacion.com that ‘Asking for a declaration of income tax is a healthy practice for analyzing the origin of the funds.The goal is to analyze customers, not for banks to become an assistant to the tax office’. “
Bankers consulted by La Nacion agreed that asking for this document will make the granting of credit lines to the business sector more complex.
“The new requirement is not in line with the objective of simplifying procedures. Obviously, by making it mandatory, there will be a higher degree of operational complexity for banks and the credit process,” said Ana Isabel Cortés, executive director of the Costa Rican Banking Association (ABC).
Avocados. Probably one of the nature’s little miracle foods.
Avocados. Probably one of the nature’s little miracle foods which should be eaten whenever you have chance and preferably several times a week.
Native to the Caribbean, Mexico, South and Central America, avocados (Persea americana) are part of the flowering Lauraceae plant family – the avocado tree’s unlikely cousins include bay laurel, camphor and cinnamon.
In Costa Rica, the can be found everywhere imported Hass avocado is – the small, dark-skinned variety familiar to most avocado lovers – is available year-round. Costa Rican avocados – at least 19 different varieties that flourish at different altitudes – are larger than the Hass and feature soft, green skin and fruit that is high in fatty acids. Local varieties are offered at nearly every roadside stand, grocery store and farmers’ market across the country.
The Costa Rica variety are offered at nearly every roadside stand, grocery store and farmers’ market across the country.
These little green fruits can do so much for your body and keep you healthy so you should never skip them because they’re simply too good to pass up. Please note that results may vary from person to person!
Below we will present to you few reasons for eating them more often:
1. Avocados won’t make you fat!
Fat will not make you fat. If you’re still avoiding avocados because of some misguided, belief that avocados will make you fat, you’re totally wrong. With avoiding them you’re also missing out on an excellent source of monounsaturated fat – the good fat also can be found in olive oil and which helps boost heart health.
What’s more, those fiber-rich avocados can help you kill the hunger. Studies indicate that meal which include avocados can increase feelings of satiety for longer time, so consider adding a few avocado slices to your daily diet to help you with your hunger attack between-meal munchies.
2. An Avocado is a nutrient-bomb
Avocados are a real nutritional goldmine. In addition to ‘good’ monounsaturated fat, avocados contain plenty nutrients to help your boost the health of your body. They contain over 14 minerals, protein, all 18 essential amino acids; soluble fiber which help in ‘catching’ the excess cholesterol and send it out of the system, phytosterols, polyphenols, carotenoids, omega 3s; vitamins B-complex, C, E and K and more.
3. They are excellent for your long-term health
Now, how avocados can help you with your health? In a way to make you feel satiety for longer period of time; your brain will be well-supplied with all the nutrients needed to function optimally: and a body that’s getting the nutrition it needs in order to help protect it from cancer, diabetes, heart disease and brain diseases.
If you enjoyed this article, like and share it with your friends!
In a strategic alliance with Costa Rica's Fifco, Mexico's Lala milk brand will soon start appearing in Costa Rican supermarkets
In a strategic alliance with Costa Rica’s Fifco, Mexico’s Lala milk brand will soon start appearing in Costa Rican supermarkets
In a strategic alliance with Costa Rica’s Florida Ice and Farm (Fifco) and Coopeleche, Mexico’s Grupo Lala will begin marking its milk brand, “Lala”, in the country.
The milk production will be in San Ramon, with its own separate production line in the same factory that currently produces the “Mu!” milk brand by Fifco. Lala says the raw material will come from Coopeleche, the dairy producer owned by Fifco.
Meanwhile, Flordia Bebidas (a division of Fifco) will continue to market the Mu! brand and, additional, will sell and distribute Lala products through its distribution channels.
Lala’s alliance with Fifco is an aggressive entry into a market that it has found to difficult in terms of distribution and dominated by Cooperativa de Productores de Leche R.L. (Dos Pinos). The move puts pressure on Dos Pinos who has dominated the Costa Rican dairy market for years.
“With this initiative we add a new production and distribution infrastructure, thus achieving higher capacities that will allow us to respond in a timely manner to the needs of consumers,” said Miguel Garcia, Grupo Lala director of Corporate Affairs.
Florida Ice and Farm is a Costa Rican food and beverages company headquartered in the province of Heredia, Costa Rica. It has a catalog of over 2,000 products, sold in over 15 countries. It’s signature product is the Imperial beer. Besides producing beer in Costa Rica, in 2012 through its subsidiary Cerverceria Costa Rica, Fifco purchased North American Breweries Holdings (NAB) that sells Genesee and Labatt beer in the United States. In 2008 Fifco began exporting its beer and refreshments to China, as well as importing Chinese beverages into Costa Rica. Fifco’s brands include the Cristal water, the distribution rights for Pepsi Cola in the country, Musmanni bakeries and locally brews Heneiken beer at its facility at La Ribera de Belen.
Grupo Lala is the only dairy company that operates nationwide in Mexico. It expanded into the United States in 2008, acquiring a manufacturing plant in Omaha, Nebraska, and in 2009, LALA acquired National Dairy, Farmland Dairies and Promised Land. LALA is now the largest dairy company in Latin America.
Oscar Lopes, was the first blind legislator in Latin America. He was first elected to the legislature in 2006.
The legislator for the Partido Accesibilidad sin Exclusión (PASE), Óscar López, said Wednesday after in the legislature that the National Institute for Women (INAMU) should be called “National Institute of Lesbians”.
The legislator made the statement in a speech in which he criticized the INAMU’s silence in cases of violence by women against men.
“I don’t know if that institution must be renamed, and instead of calling it the National Women’s Institute, it should be called the National Institute of Lesbians, because any man is frowned upon by the Inamu and I stand by the consequences, in any case, I don’t care what the Inamu think of me,” said Lopez.
The legislator referred to the case of Gerardo Cruz, the young man who denounced street harassment and days later was later killed in an unrelated attack, in a case where two women are allegedly behind the crime.
Lopez criticized the Inamu for not addressing the matter.
The legislator also called “nonsense” the Institute’s use of inclusive language.
Women confront Venezuelan national guardsmen at a crossing point on Venezuela’s border with Colombia. Twitter/@Unaybayona
Venezuela — mired in political conflict — is also dealing with widespread economic distortions that have made day-to-day life an ordeal.
But that ordeal is not spread evenly among the population. The strain of hunting ever scarcer food, medicine, and other goods has had an outsize effect on the country’s women and children, and a near riot in a town on the Colombian border shows how desperate some in the country have become.
On Tuesday, a group of 500 women, clad in white and traveling together, approached the Francisco de Paula Santander bridge that connects Ureña in Venezuela’s restive Táchira state with the Colombian town of Cúcuta, pushing their way past a cordon of police and national guard.
Hundreds of women were reportedly able to make it past the police barriers, making their way to Cúcuta’s supermarkets to seek out goods like toilet paper, cooking oil, corn flour, and other products that are hard to find in Venezuela.
Because of the exchange rate between the Venezuelan bolivar and Colombian peso, the women who made it to Cúcuta could have paid 10 times more than the official prices of the same goods at home, according to The Guardian. But they were motivated by need rather than frugality.
“We decided to cross the border because we don’t have food in our homes and our children are going hungry. There is much need,” a woman told local newspaper La Opinión. “We found everything and the cordiality of the Colombian people was very good,” she added.
On their return to Venezuelan soil, the women and others who crossed the border sang the country’s national anthem, perhaps a sardonic tribute to the country’s independence from Spain, celebrated on July 5.
Their protest followed demonstrations over food shortages in four states on Monday, and Venezuela’s chamber of commerce has warned that shortages could grow worse in the second half the year.
The women who crossed the border did so in defiance of the nearly yearlong closure of Venezuela’s roughly 1,300-mile border with Colombia, put in place by President Nicolás Maduro.
Shutting the border was meant to stymie smugglers who illegally exported goods to Colombia to resell at much higher prices and was followed by the mass deportation of Colombians living in the border area.
‘It’s affecting all of us’
A woman holding food and other staple goods walks outside a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, June 30, 2016. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo
While neighboring Colombia has become an outlet for desperate shoppers in western Venezuela, conditions farther east also dire.
In the capital, Caracas, day-to-day economic misery is acute, especially for women.
“The situation has us housewives juggling to make ends meet,” an Afro-Venezuelan grandmother named Xiomara told NPR. “And it’s affecting all of us, but especially we women who have to feed our children.”
Venezuela derives about 95% of its export earnings from oil sales. Amid the global oil-price slump, which has made less money available for imports. The Venezuelan government has also held price controls in place.
People buy food and other staple goods inside a supermarket in Caracas, Venezuela, June 30, 2016. REUTERS/Mariana Bazo
The result has been that local producers stop making essential goods because price controls reduce their profits, just as the government reduces its imports of those goods. Some products now have exorbitant prices while others are ever more scarce. Falling production and imports have spurred on inflation, which reached 180% in May.
“There simply are not enough goods to go around,” Tulane professor David Smilde, who lives in Caracas, wrote this week.
Black-market and informal-market alternatives exist for Venezuelans looking for food, but the vast majority struggle to find things to eat, and they get by on unhealthy or extremely limited diets.
“There is not starvation in Venezuela right now,” Smilde wrote. “But there is significant hunger and malnourishment that could turn into starvation this year if something does not change.”
People carry goods past Venezuelan soldiers as they disembark from a boat at Boca del Grita in Venezuela after crossing the border from Puerto Santander, Colombia, June 3, 2016. Thomson Reuters
Not all demonstrations in response to these shortages have been as calm as the women in white in Ureña. Multiple food riots have occurred across the country, including in the streets around the presidential palace in Caracas. In June, three people were killed at food-related demonstrations.
Tension in the streets, and rising rates of theft and crime, have led to explosions of vigilante violence, including lynchings, 70 of which took place in the first four months of 2016.
A girl does her homework by candlelight at her home during a power cut in San Cristobal, in the state of Tachira, Venezuela, April 25, 2016. REUTERS/Carlos Eduardo Ramirez
Public discontent was exacerbated by the onset of the country’s hot season, and with it drought conditions that caused rolling blackouts and led to electricity rationing and other power-saving measures (though that rationing program has been discontinued.)
Even as Maduro and his political allies blame “economic warfare” by the US and its allies in Venezuela, the popular classes — those who have traditionally supported Maduro, his predecessor Hugo Chavez, and their socialist party — have borne the brunt of the crisis.
Their anger with this suffering likely contributed to the socialist party’s resounding defeat in parliamentary elections in December.
This month, a poll found that Maduro’s support had fallen to 23%, while 80% of the country wants him out of power this year. An effort to launch a recall referendum against the president has stalled, as the government contests many of the signatures gathered in support of the recall.
Venezuela’s debt has climbed to $125 billion, with a total of $5.8 billion due in the latter of half of this year. In spite of its ever more unstable financial situation, the country has continued to make payments on its foreign debt, which requires a significant amount of its foreign reserves.
“The government has chosen to prioritize paying their foreign debts over people’s consumption and that explains why people are suffering,” Smilde noted.
An oil tank is seen at PDVSA’s Jose Antonio Anzoategui industrial complex in the state of Anzoategui, April 15, 2015. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
conomic and legal experts argue that defaulting would allow Venezuela to open up more money to direct toward imports.
However, the Venezuelan government likely regards the penalties default would bring against state-run oil operations — which still bring in cash, though less than before — as unacceptable, and it would prefer to muddle through the oil-price downturn, despite the consequences for Venezuelans.
For the people spending hours in the streets, waiting to buy scarce goods at high prices, such political and economic calculations are likely to be unpersuasive.
“I really believed in the whole revolution and what Chavez did,” one woman told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. “And now I would never vote for these guys again.”
Michael Adrián Salmerón Silva, 24, perpetrator of the Matapalo Massacre last February in Costa Rica, was sentenced by a Nicaraguan court to 183 years and six months in prison.
However, he will only spend 30 years behind bars, the maximum penalty in that country.
Om June 10, Salmeron admitted to a Nicaragua court to killing Yeimmy Jéssica Durán Guerra, 38, and her husband, Dirk Beauchamp, 57, and their three children of aged 12, 8 and 6. Salmeron also admitted to raping the 12 year old girl before killing her.
Michael Adrián Salmerón Silva following his arrest in Nicaragua in February
A four year old girl, fathered by Salmeron, survived the attack and after spending two and half months recovering at the Children’s Hospital, she is now in the care of the Costa Rica child welfare agency, the PANI.
That same day, criminal court judge Fabiola Betancourt found Salmeron guilty on the crimes of murder, femicide, rape and abandonment.
The crime occurred in Matapalo, Santa Cruz de Guanacaste on February 12, 2016. The crime was discovered two days later, Costa Rica authorities fingering Salmeron as their main suspect.
But by then Salmeron had fled to his native Nicaragua, where he was turned over to police by his own father after learning of what his son had done in Costa Rica.
Nicaragua’s constitution does not allow extradition of its citizens, though it does allow to try for crimes committed abroad.
The court ordered the sentence to be served out at the “Jorge Navarro” de Managua prison.
Gilberto Monge, mayor of the Canton de Mora, is taking a hardline to delinquencies in paying for garbage pickup. Residents not paying for the service face a fine from ¢420.000 to ¢4 million colones
Gilberto Monge, mayor of the Canton de Mora, is taking a hardline to delinquencies in paying for garbage pickup. Residents not paying for the service face a fine from ¢424.000 to ¢4.2 million colones
Residents of the Canton de Mora putting out their trash on the curb, but if delinquent in payment for municipal garbage pick up services, face a fine between ¢424.000 to ¢4.242 million colones.
The measure was taken by the Mayor of Mora, Gilbero Monge, supported by article 50b of Ley 8839 (Law for Integrated Solid Waste Management), with the aim of residents paying for garbage collection and reduce delinquencies.
“When a citizen puts out their garbage at the curb it is because they are current with their (public waste service) payment and are not part of the environmental problem…” said Monge.
The Mayor explained that municipalities are required by law to collect the garbage from public streets, but it is also empowered, by law, to punish citizens for dumping waste on public roads without paying the established fees.
“Like any domiciliary public service provided by the municipality and any other public institution, one of the conditions is that the user who receives it must pay for it,” he said.
The difference with water service, electricity, etc., it is that the user is disconnected if they don’t pay and then are charged a reconnection fee, while the municipality cannot stop collecting solid waste, which is a public health issue.
The Canton de Mora, located between Santa Ana and Puriscal, takes in the communities of Cuidad Colon, Tabarcia and Piedras Negras, among others.
According to the Instituto Nacional Estadística y Censo (INEC) – census – in 2008 the population of Mora was 24.208 people, with the majority living in rural areas. Life expectancy is Mora is 79 on average, though women tend to outlive men: average life of women 81.6 years, to 76.6 for men.
Costing him almost ¢300.000 colones, legislator for the Movimiento Libertario, Otto Guevara, said he was able to obtain a list of public officials earning more than ¢10 million colones (US$18.500 dollars) monthly.
Guevara said the list is from the April payroll report to the Caja Costarricense del Seguro Social (CCSS), costing him ¢297.021 colones to obtain the information that reveals the salaries of some 270 public officials earning big salaries.
The list of high salaried officials work at the Elections Tribunal, the University of Costa Rica, the Costa Rica Institute of Technology, the CCSS, the Supreme Court, Poder Judicial (Judiciary), the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), the Institute for Rural Development and the Banco Nacional de Costa Rica (BNCR), among others.
On Monday, at a press conference, the legislator revealed the names, the salaries and their position. In total, the information covers 224 public institutions, employing 483.485 people.
The legislator said he requested each institution a formal request to verify the data, some of which responded, while others have filed court injunctions, which he won.
“While poorly pay our police some sectors of the government prescribe themselves large payouts,” said the legislator on his Facebook page.
Nicaragua president, Daniel Ortega, is back at it again, his administration once again making claims on Costa Rican territory, this time the Isla Bolaños, a tiny piece of land in the Bahia Salinas, located in the Pacific ocean, at the northern end of the Guanacaste province, which clearly belongs to Costa Rica.
Experts believe the claim is Ortega’s way of strengthening his image in his country, as he faces re-election in his country.
Eduardo Ubarri, former Costa Rica Ambassador to the United Nations, reminds us that Nicaragua lost a similar claim, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruling in favor of Costa Rica with respect tot he Isla Portillo/Isla Calero and the alleged evnironmental damage by Costa Rica to the San Juan river border.
“The adventurism of Ortega is directly proportional to its internal political maneuvering. In reality he (Ortega) is seeking re-election in a process devoid of legitimacy and that is highly questioned inside and outside the country,” said Ubarri.
In the same vein, Carlos Cascante, director of the career of International Relations at the National University, had this to say about the motives behind Ortega claim: “The proximity to the elections in Nicaragua has caused both Daniel Ortega, as his Foreign Minister, Samuel Santos, to use the latest developments related to Costa Rica to strengthen the image of Ortega”.
Meanwhile, political scientist Constantino Urcuyo described the claim as “an act of thuggery by the Nicaraguan government,” knowing that Costa Rica has no weapons to defend itself.
The Peñas Blancas border with Nicaragua. Photo from files.
In order to protect Costa Rican tourists of any capricious or unreasonable acts by Nicaraguan authorities, the Foreign Ministry (Cancielleria in Spanish) asks travelers to report to authorities before leaving Costa Rica for travel to Nicaragua.
The objective is to have knowledge of the immigration status of Costa Ricans in the neighbouring country and their return to home soil, according to Gustavo Campos, an official of the Consular Section of the Foreign Ministry .
The idea of (travellers) advising the Foreign Ministry is so that it can offer consular assistance in case of arrest in Nicaragua, also advising nationals on what cannot be done in that country to avoid legal problems there.
The travel advisory fo Costa Ricans travelling to Nicaragua has been in place since the last quarter of 2015, when Nicaragua closed its borders to Cuban migrants, and now with the new assertions this week by the Ortega administration of Nicaragua’s claim on the Isla Bolaños located in the Pacific ocean, in Costa Rican territory.
The Tempisque river crocodiles have made their way to the tilapia ponds after discovering the delicacy meal.
One of the riskiest and strangest jobs in the world has to be in Costa Rica. Imagine yourself getting up in the morning, to head out to go capture crocodiles. Yes, crocodiles.
Though it may seem crazy, someone has to do it. And that job falls to a crew working trapping crocodiles entering the tilapia ponds of the Aqua Corporation in Guanacaste.
Watch the video.
More than a decade ago, this international company that has been cultivating tilapia in the country since the mid 1980s, had to create the strangest job of “professional crocodile trappers”.
Aqua is based in Cañas, Guanacaste and over the years has become the largest producer of tilapia in the country. However, the founders of the company never imagined that they would have to deal with the unique situation of a high crocodile population in their area.
The company operates on some 600 acres of land with over a dozen ponds fed by the Arenal reservoir and irrigation connections to the Tempisque river basin. What was not imagined is that the crocodiles would use those same river connections to reach the ponds, becoming a serious security threat to employees and causing a significant reduction in the tilapia production. In short, the Tempisque crocodiles found in the ponds a delicacy of free fish.
To stop the crocs from reaching the ponds, the company first tried to set traps in the water channels. That failed.
The Tempisque river is the third largest river in Costa Rica and host to one of the largest crocodile populations in Central America. Since hunting was banned more than 15 years ago, the croc population in the Tempisque tripled.
Desperate for a solution and concerned about the safety of the animals, the company had to resort to environmental authorities for advice. After a long search, guided by biologists, the best solution was to create a crew of crocodile trappers to capture them and safely remove them from the ponds. As strange as this sounded, the company had to create the special job.
The biologist and founder of the Asociación de Especialistas en Cocodrílidos de Centroamérica (Association of Central American Crocodiles Specialists), Juan Rafael Bolaños described in the journal of the Universidad Nacional, Ambientico, a summary of the working dynamics used by the Aqua Corporation to deal with reptiles.
Bolaños wrote that it was necessary certify 12 people in capture techniques and handling of crocodiles. One of the curious anecdotes for this group of workers was providing them an insurance policy against risks of the trade, given there was nothing remotely similar or as risky a job in the country.
Company employees are constantly on the look out for crocs. When an employee spots a crocodile entering one of the ponds, he/she is to immediately notify the capture crew, who will then seek out the animal and using an extended mesh, trap it. The crocodile is then moved to a corner of the pond, the mesh is unraveled, the animla is placed in a rib-lock tube, its snout tied, eyes covered and move to a temporary home and then, with the help of authorized biologists, released into their habitat.
Besides being exhausting, the task is extremely dangerous, testing the courage of these Guanacaste men.
Bolaños says the crew can capture up to 15, even 20, crocs a day, the majority more than 2 metres long.
This is also a very frustrating job, given that an estimated 73% of the crocodiles released get back to the ponds because they know they now know the way.
In addition, crocodiles don’t easily lose their way. In a 2010 experiment, six crocodiles captured at the Aqua site were released in the Tarcoles river, in the Central Pacific, some 150 kilometres away. Nine months later, three of the crocs were back in the Aqua ponds, a fourth was recaptured 18 months after release.
Like it not, the company has had to learn to live with and adapt to this unique feature of Costa Rica, a phenomenon that shows it is possible to create sustainable solutions between industry and nature. But above all, it shows us the courageous spirit of these Guanacastecans (the men of Guanacaste), dedicated to one of the most dangerous and strangest jobs in the world.
How much are these men paid? The company did not provide the information and the job description is not listed in the Ministry of Labour job classifications.
What do you think of these guys? Would you be up to the challenge of trapping and releasing crocodiles for a living? Use the comments section below or post to our Facebook page your opinion.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia said the tax is no longer necessary in light of the upcoming peace deal with the Colombian government.
Leftist rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) patrol by a roadway near to San Vicente de Caguan, Caqueta province, Colombia, January 9. 1999. REUTERS/ Jose Miguel Gomez/File Photo
The leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) ordered an end to its decades’-old “revolutionary tax” on local businesses in parts of Colombia under its control.Rodrigo “Timochenko” Londoño, the Marxist guerrilla group’s leader, said Monday the tax was no longer needed because of the upcoming peace agreement with the Colombian government.
Colombia Reports quoted the FARC leader as saying:
“We hadn’t done this before not because of a lack of will but because we need to eat,” said Timochenko.
“We’re almost there and we believe that with what we have we will make it to the end,” the FARC chief added.
FARC was a political movement that later became a designated terrorist organization. To sustain itself, it long relied upon the extortion tax levied on businesses operating in areas it controls, as well as on kidnapping, illegal mining, and drug trafficking. FARC once counted 20,000 soldiers among its ranks. Its decades-long war with the government has killed more than 250,000 people, and displaced more than 6 million.
Last month Timochenko signed a cease-fire agreement with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in preparation of a peace treaty and full demobilization of the remaining 8,000 FARC soldiers. A peace deal is expected before the end of the month.
The Ministry of Labour establishes minimum wages for the private sector depending on the type of work, and with or without a diploma, college or university degree.
The new adjustments to the minimum wages in the private sector and domestic workers went into effect this month. The increase, starting on July 1 to December 31 is between 0.5% and 2%.
The minimum wage depends on the work. The minimum salaries are established by the Ministry of Labour (Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social – MTSS) for work in agriculture, livestock, fishing, tourism, services, trades and transport among others.
Salaries are based on a day wage, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
For example, an unskilled labourer will earn ¢9.711 colones daily; a kitchen helper ¢10.560; construction worker ¢10.754 and specialized worker, ie. dental assistant, ¢12.685.
For workers who perform “heavy or dangerous work” their salary is on an hourly wage equivalent to one sixth of the wage of day for unskilled labour, according to labour authorities.
An agricultural labourer should earn ¢289.828 monthly. The monthly minimum wage with a college degree is now ¢518.566, and ¢622.300 for university graduates.
Salaries for “professionals” apply only to those duly incorporated or authorized by the professional association, with the exception of workers or professionals in nursing, whose salaries are governed by other legislation.
The minimum salary for domestic workers is now ¢176.062.
Image from the The Panama Papers - The Secretrs of Dirty Money
Image from the The Panama Papers – The Secretrs of Dirty Money
The Costa Rica Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados in Spanish) said on Monday that accusations against honour in the case known as Panama Papers must be carefully analyzed.
The warning was issued by Juan León, Attorney from the Bar Association, during an appearance before the legislative commission investigating the local implications of the case.
The attorney said that generalizing can lead to mistakes and stated that appearing in a record does not necessarily have legal implications, and stressed the need to respect the principle of innocence and asked legislators to close loopholes for tax evasion.
León also added that this does not mean that corporations and business relations with companies in other countries are inadequate.
In a post by Q’s own Rick Philps, on Facebook has this to say, “It must be remembered that ‘The Panama Papers’ do not indicate anything more than the names of parties who have offshore companies registered in Panama, which is not a crime. The ‘Papers’ do not show anyone to be guilty of tax evasion, which would have to be the subject of a separate inquiry, on a case-by-case basis.”
The unstoppable trafficking that occurs within the prison system allows for cellular phones to be accessible to prisoners. Photo Eyleen Vargas, La Nacion
Putting a stop to prisoners carrying out scams and other crimes, mainly extortions, from behind bars is the aim of a bill proposed by the government, that would compel telecommunication companies to block their cellular signals within prisons.
According to the Organismo de Investigación Judicial (OIJ), in 2014 the number of crimes carried out from prisons were 468, by 2015 it rose to 685.
The OIJ noted that in 2015 a total of 28 computer frauds were committed, however, in January of this year alone, 77 crimes were recorded.
The bill proposes to give the telecoms (Kolbi, Movistar and Claro) six months to implement the necessary measures to their networks to block their cellular signals past the prison walls.
The effort is not new, nor are the complaints. As smartphone technology increases, so does the opportunities for convicted criminals to continue operating the other side of the bars.
In 2009, prison authorities installed antennas to block cellular calls from La Reforma prison in Alajuela, however, extortion and scams continued to increase. The reason, the antennas placed only blocked GSM signals, while inmates committing crimes continued to use the older TDMA phones.
Another attempt was made in 2011, when the Ministerio de Justicia (ministry of Justice*) banned the use of cell phones in prisons. However, it allowed the sale phone cards (for use on public pay phones). The thinking behind that was that calls originating from prisons would be announced to the caller.
Despite the efforts, the unstoppable trafficking that occurs within the prison system allows for cellular phones to be accessible to prisoners, and rarely, if any punishment is handed out for violations.
The new plan places the burden on the telecommunications companies.
Empty streets, no line at the banks and supermarkets a breeze to shop and check out are some of the benefits of the mid-year vacation period in Costa Rica that began Monday and lasts to the Monday after next.
The mid-year vacation is the traditional two week break from school that occurs in the first two weeks of July. It is also a break from the rainy season, referred to as “veranillo de San Juan” – Costa Rica’s Little Dry Season – loosely translated as “indian summer”.
It is also a great time to take care of pending chores are government offices and state institutions, yes, there is a good chance of a fewer workers, but, definitely fewer people.
This year the vacation period caught me by surprise. The past couple of months have been rather hectic for me, a trip up to Toronto and Cuba two weeks ago.
I had not realized how a trip into the time tunnel (Cuba) really affected me.
For example, it’s been 10 days since my return and I have watched far less television since, after a week no television at all while in Cuba. I have also taken the time to appreciate the freedom we enjoy here. I was only in Cuba for a total of 7 days.
So, as I do most end/beginning of month and mid-month, I decided not to go out unless I really had to. So, today (Tuesday) when I did go out I was taken shocked by almost no traffic in Santa Ana. I breezed through the Cruz Roja and Rio de Oro intersections. The BCR Santa Ana branch was practically empty. The parking lot at the Mas x Menos was deserted, only a few customers inside. I was the only customer at the local ferreteria (hardware store).
“Hey, what’s going on?” I asked. “It’s vacation time,” Carlos, who was very helpful today, informed me.
Oh yeah, I had forgotten.
And that also reminded the reason for the gas hike on Friday, which, had I remembered of the vacations I would not have expected it on Saturday.
You see, Recope (the refinery), the Aresep (the government regulator) and the central government (that takes in half of the price at the pumps in taxes) are very good at planning and executing the plan of raising gasoline prices right at the start of any vacation or holiday period. Globalvia, the concessionaire of Ruta 27 also got into the act, conveniently raising tolls on Friday.
The Sarcastic Onions, from left, Natalie Martin (keyboard), Sam Daniels(drums) and Danny Spence (guitar).
Inspired by their travels and experiences peforming across Central America and Ontario (Canada), Natalie Martin and Danny Spence created the multi-genre layer sound of The Sarcastic Onions.
The Sarcastic Onions. From left, Natalie Martin (keyboard), Sam Daniels(drums) and Danny Spence (guitar). Photo from The Sarcastic Onions website.
Martin and Spence, together for 11 years, have been performing and writing music together since 2005.
Their song “Chicken Again” is a hilarious summary of the Spence and Martin “road trip to hell.”
“We thought we were going somewhere that we ultimately weren’t with this terrible road and we just could not seem to turn back. Dan said ‘let’s just give up’ and I said ‘no, we will keep going’,” recalls Martin, adding they get lost somewhere past Thunder Bay near Pukaswka National Park in northwestern Ontario.
“Another hour goes by and I thought Oh God this is just terrible. The whole time we kept seeing wild animals, like a black bear and a deer. So I was driving and Danny had the guitar in the passenger’s seat. We started grunge singing about all the weird things that we were seeing on this road. Shortly after that, baaaaad chicken (from a major chain grocery store) got purchased,” she adds.
The Central American connection comes through Spence’s retired mother who lives in Costa Rica, where Spence began vacationing and then performing in the late ’90s, learning to play music and work with Calypso musicians. In 2005, Martin joined him and the pair now plays full-time in resorts for special groups and holidays during the winter months which included a 2015 tour with acclaimed reggae band Plan B.
Martin says they have a Caribbean band called Coconut Cross comprised of polar opposites.
“There are two older guys, two younger guys, two black guys and two white people,” she notes, “Then there is a Calypso guy, a Patois kind of guy, plus Danny and me. It’s just such a mixture. We came up with that name and it seems to suit us pretty well,” says Martin adding the music on the next Onions album is inspired by their time in Costa Rica.
“There are a couple of reggae songs we are excited about,” she says. “We got a little bit political but not too crazy. We touched on the Mike Duffy scandal, so stayed tuned for “Senator Pig.”
[su_box title=”The Sarcastic Onions” box_color=”#f8f8f8″ title_color=”#141212″ radius=”0″]”Cruising on King Street” – Marina’s Bar – 323 King St. E., Kitchener – Friday, July 8, 8 p.m. – FREE. www.thesarcasticonions.com [/su_box]
Martin and Spence say The Sarcastic Onion was inspired by the by the acerbic wit of John Lennon. “The Beatles are our all-time favourite band. And John Lennon is the ultimate sarcastic onion, so the name’s definitely a nod to him,” says singer/keyboardist/bass player Natalie Martin, who is one layer of the Onions along with lead guitarist (and Martin’s partner), Danny Spence (Bad Pickle), and drummer Sam Daniels.
“We like to glorify the mundane!” says Martin with a raucous laugh.
That explains Spence’s Peter Sellers-style German narration to the apocalypse-tinged 10-minute Spinal-Tap-ish “turn-volume-up-to-11” “Planet X” on their debut CD. Spence’s prog flourishes and wailing solos are set to Martin’s cry of alarm, “Open your eyes and wake up.”
“Planet X” was produced by Ron Roy at Threshold Sound. Martin says the songs were tracks that she and Spence had been working on for a few years in the studio.
“We had a couple of guest musicians but mostly the drums were crafted from good drum tracks. Ron is fantastic at filling in all the blanks,” notes Martin. “We would do all of the harmonies and play all of the instruments. Now that we have Sam we really feel like our sound has come together in terms of our harmonies.”
The Sarcastic Onion will plays Kitchener’s Marina’s Bar on July 8.
Original article appeared at the The Hamilton Spectator
This frog looks like it’s got something to say. The strawberry poison-dart frog is native to Central America and the species varies widely in colour, from bright red all over to splashes of blue on its limbs – giving it the nickname blue jeans frog.
Photo Cristobal Serrano
Cristobal Serrano has been photographing these creatures for years, but this one, spotted in the humid lowlands of a forest near the city of Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí in Costa Rica, was special.
The frog (Oophaga pumilio) had particularly well-defined blue trousers and sleeves and was perched in a Venus wine cup fungus. Its proud stance and outspread arm looked to Serrano like a speaker addressing a crowd, making an oratorical gesture.
To illuminate the scene, Serrano carefully set up three flashes: one backlight, one from the right and a spotlight just the right size for the frog. “In macro photography, you need to control the flashes very well,” he says.
He named the photo The Speaker to reference both the theatrical amphibian and the fungus cups, which look like audio speakers.
The photo won a string of awards, including France’s Nature Images Award, and the Memorial Maria Luisa contest and LUX award, both in Spain. Serrano attributes his success to the image’s lighting and composition – as well as the popularity of the animal under his spotlight. “This frog is the most iconic of the poison-dart frogs,” he says.
