Treissy Chavarría plays the violin during a concert last December at the Museo de los Niños.
An orchestra composed of chronically ill children will mark the group’s fifth anniversary with a free concert Saturday.
Not all the musicians are now in the Hospital Nacional de Niños, but all were at one time. The group is named Orquesta por la Vida and consists of 31 young musicians.
An announcement of the concert highlighted Treissy Chavarría, an 18-year-old violinist who joined the group at the beginning. She received a visit from the music teachers while she was in the hospital recovering from a kidney transplant. They brought her a violin. At one point, the announcement said, she left the intensive care ward at Hospital Calderón Guardia to participate in a concert.
The concert will be at 10 a.m. in the Iglesia Cristo Rey del Universo, in the Asociación Obras del Espíritu Santo in Barrio Cristo Rey.
This is not the opera with music composed by French composer Georges Bizet. The production dates from 1967 and is called “Suite Carmen.” The orchestra still promises ample doses of love and betrayal as in the opera, an announcement promised.
The composer of the latest work is Rodión Shchedrín, a Russian. The choreographer is Alberto Alonso, a Cuban. The first performance was at the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow.
The choreographer and performer here, Mario Vircha, is directing the dancers. The presentation is at 8 p.m. both days.
They’re seeds of the drug trade!
The ample seed of a mango might be big enough to hide a crack rock, but police are likely to become suspicious of someone carrying around such a seed.
The mango, of course, has a seed the size of a deck of cards. Fuerza Pública officers said that they stopped a man in San Rafael Arriba de Desamparados Tuesday night who had such a seed in a bag. Further inspection disclosed that the hollow seed contained 16 crack rocks. Each is usually sold for about 1,000 colons, a bit less than $2.
Police said this the second time they found a person carrying crack using a mango seed. That happened once in Guápiles in 2014, they said.
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The tax-collecting Ministerio de Hacienda has criticized tax avoidance as well as tax evasion in the wake of disclosures generated by the Panamá papers.
This has been a continuing theme by the ministry even though evasion is illegal and avoidance is structuring one’s financial affairs in a legal way in order to pay the lowest amount of taxes.
Even the U.S. Supreme Court has recognized the legality of tax avoidance: "The legal right of an individual to decrease the amount of what would otherwise be his taxes or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted." That was said in 1918.
Fallas is pushing for more income tax and higher tax rates. But he also wants a law that requires Costa Rican corporations to identify shareholders. Presumably the tax collectors would link these shareholder lists to dividends paid and verify that the amounts have been reported as income.
The business community generally opposes making the lists available even to tax officials. Some fear crooks will get a hold of the lists to pick kidnapping targets or for other evil purposes. Some simply prefer privacy.
Fallas also, like most other tax collectors, would like to end the use of offshore accounts located in countries with little or no tax. U.S. tax law requires reporting and payment of income derived worldwide. The Costa Rica code only covers income generated within the country.
Fallas blamed some of the avoidance on obsolete tax laws. He also criticized offshore corporations that are created to take advantage of the favorable tax treatment in places the government calls tax paradises.
He also blamed gaps in the the country’s regulations.
U.S. companies go so far as to establish subsidiaries in other countries to gain a tax break. Other firms simply move headquarters to a more tax-friendly jurisdiction.
Costa Ricans only have to go to nearby Panamá, although officials there have promised changes in the law after the disclosures stolen from a law firm showed heavy use of offshore accounts.
More than 2,000 U.S. citizens surrender their nationality each year to avoid the country’s tax code, although there can be a big financial penalty.
Offshore accounts at least are a counter weight to national legislatures enacting higher tax rates.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, was among those found to have power over an offshore account.
The finance ministry’s narrow view of how individuals and firms should avoid taxation shows up in the traditional Costa Rican policy of decreeing that many tax payments cannot be applied as tax deductions.
The government’s hopes for quick passage of its tax package have been dashed with the reappointment of Rosibel Ramos Madrigal as head of the legislature’s Comisión Permanente de Asuntos Hacendarios. She was less than enthusiastic last year in advancing the government’s proposal out of committee.
Age plays almost no role in accounting for differences in older people’s health and well-being, according to a large-scale study by a multidisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Chicago.
Using what they call a comprehensive model of health and aging, the team has shown how other factors such as psychological well-being, sensory function, mobility and health behaviors are essential parts of an overall health profile that better predicts mortality. The research presents a sharp departure from the traditional biomedical model’s reliance on a checklist of infirmities centered on heart disease, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
“The new comprehensive model of health identifies constellations of health completely hidden by the medical model and reclassifies about half of the people seen as healthy as having significant vulnerabilities that affect the chances that they may die or become incapacitated within five years,” said Martha McClintock, a biopsychologist and lead author of the article in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“At the same time, some people with chronic disease are revealed as having many strengths that lead to their reclassification as quite healthy, with low risks of death and incapacity,” added Linda Waite, a demographer and study co-author.
The study, part of the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, is a major longitudinal survey of a representative sample of 3,000 people aged 57 to 85 done by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago.
* Cancer itself is not related to other conditions that undermine health.
* Poor mental health, which afflicts one in eight older adults, undermines health in ways not previously recognized.
* Obesity seems to pose little risk to older adults with excellent physical and mental health.
* Sensory function and social participation play critical roles in sustaining or undermining health.
* Breaking a bone after age 45 is a major marker for future health issues.
* Older men and women have different patterns of health and well-being during aging.
* Mobility is one of the best markers of well-being.
The comprehensive model reflects a definition of health long advanced, but little studied, by the World Health Organization, which considers health to include psychological, social and physical factors in addition to the diseases that are the basis for the current medical model of health.
The comprehensive model’s healthiest category represented 22 percent of older Americans. This group was typified by higher obesity and blood pressure, but had fewer organ system diseases, better mobility, sensory function and psychological health. They had the lowest prevalence of dying or becoming incapacitated (6 percent) five years into the study.
A second category had normal weight, low prevalence of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but had one minor disease such as thyroid disease, peptic ulcers or anemia and were twice as likely to have died or become incapacitated within five years. Two emerging vulnerable classes of health traits, completely overlooked by the medical model, included 28 percent of the older population. One group included people who had broken a bone after age 45. A second new class had mental health problems, in addition to poor sleep patterns, engaged in heavy drinking, had a poor sense of smell and walked slowly, all of which correlate with depression.
The most vulnerable older people were in two classes, one characterized by immobility and uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension. A majority of people in each of these categories were women, who tend to outlive men.
“From a health system perspective, a shift of attention is needed from disease-focused management, such as medications for hypertension or high cholesterol, to overall well-being across many areas,” said another researcher, William Dale.
“Instead of policies focused on reducing obesity as a much lamented health condition, greater support for reducing loneliness among isolated older adults or restoring sensory functions would be more effective in enhancing health and well-being in the older population,” said Edward O. Laumann, another colleague.
In a major crackdown of Olympic drug cheats, the International Olympic Commission announced that 31 athletes could be banned from this year's Olympic Games in Rio after a re-testing of their samples from the 2008 Olympic Games came back positive for banned substances.
The commission says it has begun disciplinary actions against the 31 athletes who come from 12 countries and competed in six sports in the Beijing Games.
The positive tests came amid a recent re-testing of 454 doping samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Commission officials say they are also awaiting results from re-testing of 250 samples from the 2012 Games in London.
The testing focused on athletes who could compete in August at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, the commission said.
"All those athletes infringing anti-doping rules will be banned from competing at the Olympic Games," the commission said in a statement on its website.
The Olympic organization says it will also undertake a wider re-testing program of medalists from the Beijing and London games. Samples of athletes who could be awarded medals after the disqualification of others will also be re-tested.
The commission said it has also called on the World Anti-Doping Agency to launch a fully fledged investigation into allegations that drug testing at the 2014 Sochi Olympics was subverted by Russian officials.
"All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win," said the commission president, Thomas Bach.
"The re-tests from Beijing and London and the measures we are taking following the worrying allegations against the laboratory in Sochi are another major step to protect the clean athletes, irrespective of any sport or any nation," he added.
A prayer opens every day of business on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
A military chaplain buys religious vestments from a federal contractor. A religious charity sets up a soup kitchen using government grant dollars.
Each one of these acts reflects the complex everyday interactions between the U.S. government and religious communities, balancing religious freedom with individual rights.
An amendment attached to the 2017 defense budget bill considered on the floor of the House this week has sparked heated debate about that balance, drawing supporters and opponents of the amendment into the country’s ongoing battle over gay, lesbian and transgender rights.
The Russell Amendment seeks clarification of an apparent conflict between the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which allows religious organizations exemptions based on their beliefs, and a 2014 executive order from President Obama ordering protections for gay, lesbian and transgender employees of federal contractors. The stakes for both sides in the conflict are high, religious organizations want to receive federal funding while maintaining their freedom of conscience. Lesbian, gay, transgender people see the religious exception as an excuse for discrimination.
Republicans and Democrats debating on the House floor Thursday spoke about the amendment as if viewing two completely different pieces of legislation.
Rep. Steve Russell, a Republican from Oklahoma, said his amendment builds on existing U.S. law to protect the First Amendment rights of religious organizations working with the government.
“We didn’t introduce any new law. We simply said that these religious groups, religious contractors and service providers, that they will not be prohibited in their charters from being considered for contracts,” Russell said.
Chad Pecknold, an associate professor at Catholic University who studies the intersection between culture and religion, said the amendment provides needed clarity.
“Since the executive order was so ambiguous in the religious liberty protections it provided, it seems to me that the Russell Amendment is just a common sense clarification to keep intact the religious liberty protections that were already enjoyed,” he said.
Pecknold said the amendment would help resolve everyday conflicts of conscience, such as military chaplains having to purchase materials from federal contractors who do not share their beliefs.
But opponents say the amendment would allow federal contractors to refuse employment of lesbians, gays and transgender persons in a move that amounts to taxpayer funded discrimination.
Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said last week the amendment would be “a license to discriminate against the LGBT community and I stand strongly with the president to stop that discrimination any way we can, and we shouldn’t be doing business with businesses that discriminate,” Smith said.
“Congress owes it to LGBT workers and their families to ensure that they are equally protected by our laws and not singled out for mistreatment,” Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer said in a statement on the amendment released late Tuesday.
“When Republicans in Congress take actions that signal otherwise, it emboldens those who would bully, harass and discriminate,” Hoyer said.
The use of taxpayer dollars as directed in the Russell amendment is important, says Matthew Bulger, legislative associate for the American Humanist Association. A lesbian or gay person pays money into the government system that eventually could pay out their money in the form of a grant to a religious organization that could then turn around and legally discriminate against them.
Private organizations are free to do what they want with their money, but the use of taxpayer dollars takes the debate to a different level.
Bulger used the example of a religiously run soup kitchen that receives federal grant money. The soup kitchen cannot legally turn away a lesbian or gay person from using their services but it could refuse to hire them.
“They’re taking taxpayer money, using it to discriminate against those taxpayers and then claiming that the government is infringing upon their rights to discriminate against private citizens,” said Bulger.
The American Humanist Association joined with many religious organizations that believe the Russell Amendment would cheapen the important public service work they perform, bringing politics into an entirely new realm of American life.
“We want to make sure that Americans are able to practice their faith, but we also want to make sure that Americans aren’t being discriminated against with government backing,” said Bulger.
Rep. Russell disputed the taxpayer argument.
“That’s like saying the U.S. chaplain of the House of Representatives doesn’t have the right to open a session in prayer because his salary depends on taxpayer funding. That’s like saying to the military, you can’t have chaplains because they draw a military salary. It’s just absurd,” he said.
The Russell amendment could have implications beyond the debate between religious freedom supporters and advocates for lesbian, gay and transgender rights by stopping the entire 2017 defense spending bill at the president’s desk.
White women in the United States are dying too soon.
That is the simplest way of stating a problem that has become apparent over the past year through statistical analysis. Studies of death rates around the country carried out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics show that life expectancy for every demographic group has either gone up or remained stable, except for that of white women for whom life expectancy has gone down.
The decrease is not very large: The mortality rate for white women in 2013 was 81.2 years and the rate for that same group in 2014 was 81.1 years, a decrease of one-tenth of a percentage point. Health care researchers, like Jarron Saint Onge at the University of Kansas, however, are concerned.
The other problem is that if the trend continues, it could produce an even wider gap between white women and other demographic groups. For example, life expectancy among black people, while still lower than that of whites overall by a few percentage points, is higher than it was several years ago, and it continues to rise.
Hispanics have higher life expectancies than blacks or whites, even though a large percentage of that group earn low incomes and lack health insurance. Researchers think that may be due to strong community support, close families and a much lower rate of smoking among Hispanics.
Saint Onge found that the rise in premature deaths is more pronounced among white women in rural areas, and smaller cities and towns in southern states. Mental illness, alcohol abuse and drug addiction all have increased in those areas, as well, and many specific deaths can be linked to these problems.
There also has been a slight increase in suicides in some of these areas, along with deaths from such things as heart disease and liver failure. John O’Neill, director of Addiction Services at the world-renowned Menninger Clinic in Houston, said drug and alcohol abuse could be the underlying problem.
“We know that people who struggle with substance use are going to have more medical problems, we know that there are more motor vehicle accidents, we know that there is more crime, there is more domestic violence, more sexual assaults,” he said.
It wasn't that long ago that the political rise of billionaire Donald Trump prompted predictions of a Republican Party implosion. Certainly the party of Lincoln and Reagan would not hand over the reins of leadership to a former reality TV star with a penchant for self-promotion and social media insults?
Well, the Republicans seem to be moving past their crisis point. But in an unexpected twist, it's now the Democratic Party that is being forced to come to grips with the fallout from a divisive primary battle. And how the party deals with these tensions could go a long way toward determining whether Democrats will be able to hold the presidency for a third consecutive term beginning in 2017.
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton claimed a narrow victory in Tuesday's Kentucky primary, even as rival Bernie Sanders continued his winning ways with a victory in Oregon.
Mrs. Clinton remains on track to clinch the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, perhaps as early as June 7. But Sanders has given no sign of giving up, and tensions between the two campaigns are on the rise, raising fears among some Democrats that the party will have a difficult time unifying to face Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mrs. Clinton and Sanders effectively split the delegate count from the contests in Kentucky and Oregon, and that did little to change the overall trajectory of the race. Mrs. Clinton leads Sanders in the delegate count by a wide enough margin that the only way the Vermont senator could catch her is by winning the remaining primaries by huge margins, and by forcing defections of super-delegates who currently support Mrs. Clinton. Both are far-fetched at this point.
But Sanders made it clear at a rally Tuesday night in Carson, California, that he is not giving up.
"It will be a steep climb. I recognize that,” he said. “But we have the possibility of going to Philadelphia with a majority of the pledged delegates."
Sanders also said the Democratic Party needs to be more welcoming to his supporters who "are prepared to fight for real economic and social change." And he warned that it would be a very sad and tragic option for the party to maintain the status quo.
Tensions between the two campaigns were on display at a recent Democratic state convention in Nevada when Sanders supporters vented their frustration at party officials over the process of selecting delegates to attend the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.
Some Sanders activists threw chairs, and later some threats were made toward the state party chairwoman, Roberta Lange.
Some Democrats worry the simmering tensions over the primary battle could lead to problems at the July convention.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid urged Sanders to show leadership in calming his supporters.
Sanders issued a statement that condemned all forms of violence, but noted that there have been no incidents at his rallies around the country.
In her recent campaign rallies, Mrs. Clinton has been eager to turn her focus to Trump.
"He can say whatever he wants to say about me personally,” she told supporters in Kentucky. “I will stand up and fight for and speak out for every American that he attacks and he insults!"
But Sanders' ability to draw large crowds of intense supporters and win primaries acts as a brake on Mrs. Clinton's efforts to move past the divisive primary campaign and shift her focus to Trump.
Sanders' success in later primaries has historical precedent, according to analyst William Galston at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"Late victories by the losers are not at all unusual. We saw much the same thing, actually, in 1992 when Bill Clinton was vying for and ultimately claiming the Democratic Party nomination," Galston said.
He added that the current Democratic fissures pale in comparison with the first election he followed closely: the 1968 campaign when the Democratic Party came apart at the seams.
Sanders' continued success in the primaries and his ability to draw supporters could give him valuable political leverage at the national convention in Philadelphia.
"His goal at this point is obviously to influence the platform, influence Hillary Clinton and try to continue to keep her to the left," said Roll Call Editor Melinda Henneberger.
But eventually, Galston predicts, Sanders will have to take steps to unify the party behind Mrs. Clinton to take on Trump.
"She has some work to do, but so does Senator Sanders,” he said. “And I would say that the principal responsibility for bringing his supporters on board rests with him, not her."
At times, Sanders has indicated he would be willing to do so.
"While we may have many disagreements with Secretary Clinton, there is one area we agree, and that is we must defeat Donald Trump!" Sanders told supporters during a recent rally in Oregon.
In the end, despite the recent acrimony, many analysts expect that Democrats will be able to work out their differences and unite behind Clinton during and after the convention.
U.S. Senate Democrats sought to highlight the qualifications of President Barack Obama’s stymied Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, in a mock hearing that drew scorn from Republicans and conservative groups.
For more than an hour Wednesday, high-profile colleagues and friends of the nominee extolled Garland’s virtues in unofficial testimony before Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee.
Under normal circumstances, Garland himself would testify at confirmation hearings by the full Senate committee. But the chairman, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, has refused to consider his nomination, joining other Republicans who insist that the Supreme Court vacancy be filled by Obama’s successor next year.
For more than two months, Democrats have protested and pressured Republicans to relent to no avail. Wednesday’s mock event drew plenty of media coverage, but even its organizers admitted that it lacked the impact of a genuine confirmation hearing.
“This hearing is no substitute for the real thing,” lamented Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, a Democrat.
Republicans scoffed at the event before it began.
“It seems the more we hear from Democrats about the Supreme Court, the more we are reminded of how reasonable and common sense the Republican position is today,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
But the Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, insisted there is value in publicizing Garland’s qualifications and strengths, given that he has had to remain silent in the face of attacks by right-wing groups opposed to his nomination.
Among those speaking on Garland’s behalf was former federal judge Timothy Lewis, who was nominated by President George H. W. Bush in the early 1990s and confirmed by a Democratic-controlled Senate. Lewis bemoaned the hyper-partisanship surrounding judicial confirmations.
The Supreme Court has operated with eight justices since the death of arch conservative Antonin Scalia in February.
U.S. President Barack Obama extended overtime pay benefits Wednesday for 4.2 million American workers, an attempt to increase the paychecks for employees who often work long hours without getting any extra money.
Obama’s order doubles the pay threshold at which U.S. companies have to pay overtime to employees who work more than 40 hours a week, from $23,660 to nearly $47,500.
Obama's directive could especially affect workers in fast food restaurants and retail stores, where employees who supervise other workers are often called managers, even if their salaries barely exceed that of their subordinates.
"If you work more than 40 hours a week, you should get paid for it or get extra time off to spend with your family and loved ones," Obama said. "It's one of the most important steps we're taking to help grow middle-class wages."
The White House estimated that the order could annually put $1.2 billion a year into the pockets of workers over the next decade.
But whether that actually occurs is unclear.
The National Retail Federation, a lobbying group for stores across the country, said the Obama order could force businesses to cut the working hours for some employees to 40 hours a week so they would not be required to make overtime payments, which in the U.S. is one and a half times the normal pay rate for the first 40 hours of work each week. If that happens, workers would spend less time on the job, but not result in them getting any more money.
The White House said that under the old threshold, only 7 percent of U.S. workers qualified for overtime, a figure that will increase to 35 percent when the overtime requirement takes effect on Dec. 1.
The U.S. military is prepared to support a train-and-equip mission to fight the thousands of Islamic State militants in Libya when the Libyan government is ready for it, the head of U.S. Africa Command said Tuesday.
The commander, Gen. David Rodriguez, added that Libya's internal politics have made it unclear which armed groups are fighting alongside the Libyan Government of National Accord, leaving the U.S. really dependent on the Libyan interim government to determine who is with them and who is moving over to them.
Militias will likely be key to stopping the spread of Islamic State once friendly forces are identified and aided he said, but, "We're not at that point yet."
Libya is under a U.N. arms embargo, imposed to keep lethal weapons away from terrorists and militias vying for power.
However, a joint communique issued after international talks Monday in Vienna said that international powers, including the U.S., are set to provide arms and support to the Libyan government to fight the Islamic State.
"The thing that they need most is really ammunition and small arms," Rodriguez said. "It's not fighter aircraft and that kind of stuff."
Opposition leaders and frustrated Venezuelans took to the streets in Caracas Wednesday to march to the national election board's headquarters and demand a recall referendum to end President Nicolas Maduro's socialist rule.
"We're tired of this corruption. We're tired of the queues. We're tired that everyday they smack us in the face with this supposed economic war," protester Carlos Rodríguez said in Spanish.
The Venezuelan president, a former union leader and bus driver who narrowly won election to replace the late Hugo Chávez, accused the opposition coalition of seeking a coup with the help of the United States.
"We're going to tell imperialism and the international right that the people are present, with their farm instruments in one hand and a gun in the other . . . to defend this sacred land," Maduro said.
In a related development, the secretary general of the Organization of Aemrican States sent a very undiplomatic message to Maduro.
The author, Luis Almagro, denied allegations by Maduro that he was an agent for the U.S. Central Inteligence Agency. And Almagro denied being a traitor. The traitor is Maduro, he said, saying that the Venezuelan president was circumventing the will of the people on which all power rests.
The government is setting up a retail outlet at Juan Santamaría airport for some 42 small business operators who make mostly handicrafts.
Those involved have completed a training course. They are mainly female heads of households who are involved with the Insituto Mixto de Ayuda Social, the country’s main antipoverty agency.
The government orchestrated the creation in December of Coopemipymes RL, a cooperative that will handle the airport business. The Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social invested 50 million colons into the project, some $94,400.
The goal is to market authentic Costa Rican products to the air travelers who pass through the airport.
Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica, the Instituto Nacional de Fomento Cooperativo and the Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social participated in the training and planning.