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09 Nov 2005 |
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Daily Edition: San José, Costa Rica, November 09, 2005
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Tourism Reduces
Poverty In Guanacaste
The northwest province of Guanacaste is directly reaping the benefits of tourism at last, Labor Minister Fernando Trejos announced yesterday. Unemployment in the Chorotega region, which includes Guanacaste, decreased from 7.6% in 2004 to 5.8% this year, according to the latest Household Survey, the results of which were released last week. Most of these jobs were created by tourism, the Minister said.
(Click for more)
Pirate Taxis Show
Support for Libertarians
Flying the red flags of the Libertarian Movement Party, approximately 150 pirate, or unlicensed, taxis motored through downtown San José yesterday morning proclaiming their support for the party, its free-market policies and its presidential candidate, Otto Guevara.
(Click for more)
Ticosonde Weather Balloons
Explore Atmospheric Mysteries
The engines generating global moisture and airflow patterns – the tropics and the sky above them – have divulged some of their secrets to international teams of balloon-launching and converted-U.S.-spy-plane-flying scientists in Costa Rica over the last four years. Now, rounding out the latest in a series of information-collecting projects that began with the 2001 construction of the sea-shell like tent hangar at Juan Santamaría International Airport in Alajuela, west of San José, researchers are prepping for a monumental worldwide tropical study in January. The new study, focused on Costa Rica, will encompass data-gathering stations in San José, Indonesia, Hawaii, Micronesia and the Galapagos Islands.
(Click for more)
November 09
Lyrical Concert
Cartago Youth Symphony Orchestra and Choir Students of Zamira Barquero are performing today at 5 p.m. at the José Figueres Cultural Center, San Ramón, Alajuela. Info: 447-2178
National Theater Festival
Features the play “ El Quinto Mandamiento,” at 8 p.m., at the Teatro 1887, FANAL, Av. 3/5, Ca. 11/15. Info: 221-2154.
Art Show Opening
Juanjo Cordero is opening his exhibit “Entre Tzuritches y Guatzcuches,” tonight at 8 p.m., at El Observatorio, Barrio La California, in front of Cine Magaly. Info: 223-0725.
Edited By Leland Baxter-Neal
Tico Times Staff
lbaxter@ticotimes.net
Tourism Reduces
Poverty In Guanacaste
By Rebecca Kimitch
Tico Times Staff
rkimitch@ticotimes.net
The northwest province of Guanacaste is directly reaping the benefits of tourism at last, Labor Minister Fernando Trejos announced yesterday. Unemployment in the Chorotega region, which includes Guanacaste, decreased from 7.6% in 2004 to 5.8% this year, according to the latest Household Survey, the results of which were released last week. Most of these jobs were created by tourism, the Minister said.
“ Guanacastecos have asked us in the past what they get from tourism when all of the jobs go to people from San José,” Trejos said. The government responded with efforts to train the residents of the region, and the results are finally being seen, he said.
The number of jobs in the country overall increased by 134,309, with more than half (76,294) going to women.
“During this year, we have returned to conditions where people who have looked for work, have found jobs,” he said.
Furthermore, the increase has not been in the informal sector, Trejos said; the increase is dominated by 130,840 new salaried jobs.
“This has made Costa Rica one of the countries in Latin America with the best rates of formal labor,” the minister said. The country also boasts one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the region.
“If we hadn't created these labor opportunities… we would likely have had an unemployment rate two or three points higher,” he said.
Although more women found jobs than men, the unemployment rate continues to be much higher for women – 9.6% compared to 5% for men – and increased from 8.6% in 2004.
“We have to work to close this gap,” Trejos said.
In addition to tourism and foreign investment, Trejos said, the labor market is benefiting from increases in non-traditional exports.
Pirate Taxis Show
Support for Libertarians
By Scott J. Krischke
Tico Times Staff
editorial@ticotimes.net
Flying the red flags of the Libertarian Movement Party, approximately 150 pirate, or unlicensed, taxis motored through downtown San José yesterday morning proclaiming their support for the party, its free-market policies and its presidential candidate, Otto Guevara.
“This is a visual example of how much we have grown,” said Alejandro Monge, a lawyer and a Libertarian legislative candidate in Cartago, referring to the taxi drivers' support. “We support their freedom to work, their freedom to grow, and opening the door to unrestricted development.”
The event was organized by the taxi drivers, Monge added, and was done mainly as a way to show their support for the policies of the Libertarian party.
“The Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT) has perpetrated a crime against these taxi drivers by not allowing them to have licenses,” Monge added. “This is why the Libertarian Movement is for free business and the right to work. If we aren't offered the freedom to work, we cannot develop and live our lives.”
The demonstration, which started at 9:30 a.m. and traveled from the west to the east of side of San José, is expected to repeat in other parts of the country in the coming weeks, Monge told The Tico Times.
According to the most recent CID-Gallup poll published in the daily La República, Guevara has the support of 11% of Costa Ricans, trailing Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) candidate Ricardo Toledo, with 14%, Citizen Action Party (PAC) candidate Ottón Solís, with 16%, and National Liberation Party (PLN) candidate Oscar Arias, with 45% (TT Oct. 28).
Ticosonde Weather Balloons
Explore Atmospheric Mysteries
By Robert Goodier
Tico Times Staff
rgoodier@ticotimes.net
The engines generating global moisture and airflow patterns – the tropics and the sky above them – have divulged some of their secrets to international teams of balloon-launching and converted-U.S.-spy-plane-flying scientists in Costa Rica over the last four years. Now, rounding out the latest in a series of information-collecting projects that began with the 2001 construction of the sea-shell like tent hangar at Juan Santamaría International Airport in Alajuela, west of San José, researchers are prepping for a monumental worldwide tropical study in January. The new study, focused on Costa Rica, will encompass data-gathering stations in San José, Indonesia, Hawaii, Micronesia and the Galapagos Islands.
Scientists from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), universities and private organizations have teamed with Costa Rican scientists from the two largest national universities, the National Meteorological Institute (IMN) and the National High Technology Center (CENAT) founded by U.S.-Costa Rican astronaut Franklin Chang, to gather atmospheric measurements and apply them to a handful of projects under way in both countries.
Yesterday, in a series of presentations at the Universidad Nacional in Heredia, northwest of San José, representatives of those projects unveiled their results and goals for further research with Ticosonde, the folksy Costa Rican moniker bestowed on extensive, periodic weather balloon launches that began last year. The thrust of their efforts is the calibration of cutting-edge atmospheric measurement instruments and a deeper understanding of the processes that govern worldwide weather patterns.
From June to September 2004 and again from June to August this year, researchers launched four balloons daily, each laden with an arsenal of sensors to calculate the humidity, temperature, wind speed and ozone content of the atmosphere and how they change as the balloon ascended up to 30 kilometers above Costa Rica.
So far, they have launched 24 helium-filled balloons shuttling the special cargo of a cryogenic frost point hygrometer – a humming bundle of Styrofoam boxes sprouting wires and a steel rod that uses a super-cold liquid, a cryogen, to measure humidity more accurately at high altitudes than other instruments can (TT, Aug. 19).
The information on how water and temperature interact in the atmosphere above the tropics will help scientists make more accurate computer models for weather patterns and understand the atmosphere's tantrums, such as hurricanes.
The information Ticosonde gathers is compared to the measurements taken by Aura, a NASA observation satellite, and the U.S. Air Force's network of satellites in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). Because they are in the air they are reporting on, the balloons provide on the scene information, called in situ in scientists' Latin jargon, as opposed to the satellite's remote sensing from above the atmosphere. The balloons' measurements are more reliable and are used to cross-check the satellites.
Also in the skies above Costa Rica, NASA and other U.S. research planes decked with sensors from nose cone to wingtip have gathered similar kinds of information in the quest to understand hurricanes and other weather phenomena (TT, July 1).
See Friday's print or online pdf edition of The Tico Times for more on the Ticosonde.
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