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Central Bank
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| BUY ¢564.08 SELL ¢575.72 |
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Try this on: Following a survey that showed a high rate of young Ticos engage in unprotected sex, three organizations, including International Planned Parenthood Federation, have teamed up to talk about sex on the Internet with Costa Rican youths. Read more about the “Login to prevention” campaign in an upcoming 17 print or digital edition of The Tico Times. |
Ronald Reyes | Tico Times |
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Feels like new: Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) President Luis Fischman beams Wednesday during his party's attempted re-launch – with a new name, La Unidad, and a new logo – which aims at revive the downtrodden center-right party, whose leader and presidential hopeful is on trial for alleged bribery. |
Nick Coté | Tico Times |
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| Weakened political party redefines image, message |
| As their party leader sits on trial on corruption charges, members of Costa Rica's Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) are in the process of revamping their image. |
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| Costa Rica demand for fuel falling fast |
| Costa Ricans are buying and burning considerably less fuel than last year, according to the nation's oil authority, which registered a 23 percent drop in demand last month from March 2008. |
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| Barceló gets new hotels on Jacó, Playa Azul |
| The Spanish chain Barceló Hotels & Resorts said Tuesday it has signed contracts to operate two five-star hotels on Costa Rica's Pacific coast. |
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| China trade talks enter second round |
| Teams from Costa Rica and China kicked off the second round of negotiations this week in Shanghai for a free trade agreement between the two countries, with each side making initial offers that fell short of the other's expectations. |
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Coffee-Table Book
Paints Portrait of Guanacaste |
Many cameras find themselves pointed west from Costa Rica's renowned northern Pacific coast, capturing fiery sunsets over the azure sea. |
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| Weakened political party redefines image, message |
By Chrissie Long
Tico Times Staff | clong@ticotimes.net |
| As their party leader sits on trial on corruption charges, members of Costa Rica's Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) are in the process of revamping their image.
In front of a room of reporters and camera crews at the Hotel Grano de Oro in San José on Wednesday morning, they unrolled a new logo, previewed a series of television commercials and adopted a new name, all in the hopes of resurfacing in time to make an impact on the February 2010 election.
“We are a party with 25 years of experience, which has accomplished great things for this country,” said Luis Fischman, president of the center-right party. “Despite great challenges ahead, we should evolve politically to benefit all Costa Ricans.”
But Fischman acknowledged that the party is in recovery mode, after its reputation plunged in 2004 with the incarceration of an individual who long-defined the group.
Former president and party leader Rafael Angel Calderón is currently on trial under allegations that he bribed public officials to secure a deal between a Finnish medical equipment firm and the Costa Rican government in 2005. During the following Legislative Assembly election in 2006, PUSC lost 14 seats.
But Fischman and other party members are throwing their support behind Calderón, under full faith that he will be proven innocent when the trial comes to a close.
Speaking of the people leveling accusations against Calderón, Fischman said, “I think they would be happy if this party disappeared.”
The political party's makeover includes a new official name – La Unidad (Unity) – and a logo representing promised protection by the party for the country's workers and needy; two groups that PUSC has traditionally represented, according to Fischman. |
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| Costa Rica demand for fuel falling fast |
Costa Ricans are buying and burning considerably less fuel than last year, according to the nation's oil authority, which registered a 23 percent drop in demand last month from March 2008.
The fall in demand has been gaining speed throughout the first three months of the year, the National Oil Refinery (RECOPE) said in a press release Wednesday. January saw a 6.28 percent decrease in fuel consumption from the same month in 2008, and February dropped 14 percent. All told, in the first quarter of 2009 oil demand was 15.13 percent below that of first quarter 2008 – down to just under 4.2 million barrels from 4.9 million.
Fueling the fall most was consumption of diesel fuel for the generation of electricity, which plummeted 99.64 percent in March compared with the same month last year. Fuels for ships (IFO) and planes (JET A-1) have also been on the decrease, down 67.58 percent and 31.74 percent in March respectively.
Bucking the trend, however, demand for super gasoline rose 5.86 percent last month from the prior March. |
-Tico Times |
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| Barceló gets new hotels on Jacó, Playa Azul |
The Spanish chain Barceló Hotels & Resorts said Tuesday it has signed contracts to operate two five-star hotels on Costa Rica's Pacific coast.
The first establishment, the 150-room Barceló Jacó Beach, on the central Pacific coast, is scheduled to open in 2010 after a remodeling costing an estimated €49 million ($65 million).
The second establishment, the Barceló Playa Azul, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste with 248 rooms, will cost an estimated €178 million ($236 million) and is set to open in 2011.
With these new establishments, Barceló Hotels & Resorts will have a total of six hotels in Costa Rica: Barceló San José Palacio, Palma Real, Tambor Beach, Langosta, Jacó Beach and Playa Azul, with a total of 1,319 rooms.
Barceló currently has 187 hotels in 16 countries.
The new Costa Rica hotels come on the heels of the opening in February of a five-star lodging in the Nicaraguan capital, Barceló Managua. See http://www.ticotimes.net/dailyarchive/2009_02/0223093.htm for details. |
–EFE |
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| China trade talks enter second round |
By Patrick Fitzgerald
Tico Times Staff | editorial@ticotimes.net |
Teams from Costa Rica and China kicked off the second round of negotiations this week in Shanghai for a free trade agreement between the two countries, with each side making initial offers that fell short of the other's expectations.
Speaking with reporters via videoconference Tuesday, head Tico negotiator Fernando Ocampo said Costa Rica had made a “conservative offer” that included tariff reductions on 53 percent of goods, leaving 47 percent for future rounds.
Negotiators have placed six issues on the table for the round: market access, sanitary norms and origin certification, technical obstacles to trade, intellectual property, technological cooperation and unfair competition.
Trade with China has risen dramatically over the past few years and is expected to grow further under a free trade pact.
In 2007, 9 percent of Costa Rica's exports were to China, compared with just 0.64 percent five years earlier.
Exports to China totaled $848.2 million in 2007, making the Asian giant Costa Rica's second-largest trade partner, after the United States.
The negotiations, which began in January, are expected to continue through 2010. |
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| Coffee-Table Book Paints Portrait of Guanacaste |
Many cameras find themselves pointed west from Costa Rica's renowned northern Pacific coast, capturing fiery sunsets over the azure sea.
In “Guanacaste: Life Portraits,” a book of photographs published last year, photographer Zoraida Díaz turns around and trains her lens on the landscape and people found inland from the “Gold Coast.”
“I found that Guanacaste was like a secret. Everybody knows Costa Rica because of its natural beauty, and that includes the beautiful beaches of the northern Pacific and the volcanoes,” Díaz said. “But I felt that nobody really knows how amazing and diverse the culture of Guanacaste is, and nobody had really taken a look at these people and done a cohesive body of work on that.”
Throughout the book, Díaz presents a rich and textured vision of the province she has called home for the past several years, capturing the fiestas, traditions, towns, characters and natural settings of Guanacaste.
Díaz, a Colombian-born photojournalist who spent much of her professional life covering South America for the news agency Reuters, draws many of her photos from the pages of The Beach Times, a newspaper she co-founded in 2004 with former husband Ralph Nicholson in Playa Potrero.
“The project was born of the last five years of work at The Beach Times. At the end of 2007, I just had so many images, I didn't know where to put them,” Díaz said.
Habitual readers of the paper, now online only, may recognize some of the images, which anchored the paper's front page and illustrated its stories on development, politics and life in the northwestern province. Other photos came from the archives of unpublished images, and many more were added as Díaz worked on the book, looking to fill in areas she felt were missing.
The images tell of the often simple life of the region, traditionally built around cattle and farming and now adapting to an unforeseen boom of tourism and construction.
A young girl peers out from the coffee bushes where she works harvesting beans. Three men – one mounted on horseback – sip beers outside the town store. Baby turtles push up through black sand. A doorman in a jacket a few sizes too large waits for tickets outside a circus called Chicharrón y sus Estrellas (Pork Rind and his Superstars). Page after page shows both the daily rituals and special occasions that make up life here, set to the backdrop of Guanacaste's landscapes.
The book is split into sections touching on the people, the sea, the festivals and other themes in Díaz's photography. These sections are prefaced with short essays, presented in Spanish and English, by some of the region's most knowledgeable and authoritative voices, including folk singers Guadalupe Urbina and Eduardo “Balo” Gómez, journalist José Manuel Peña and marine biologist Giovanni Bassey.
“Being a photographer, I always thought that you don't need words if you have good pictures,” Díaz said. “But in the end, it seemed like there was something missing.”
“(The words) really added to the book. It was like the voice of Guanacaste made my pictures stronger,” she said. “The collaboration was amazing.”
“Guanacaste: Life Portraits” is available for about $43 at Universal department stores, Librería Internacional bookstores, Café Britt souvenir shops, Jaime Peligro bookstore in Tamarindo and Marie's restaurant in Flamingo.
In addition, some 13,000 copies of the book were donated to the nonprofit after-school center CEPIA, based in Tamarindo, which is selling them in several coastal towns in Guanacaste. Proceeds will help fund the group's programs.
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