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Ready for renewal: The roof of the National Theater is set for repairs to start next week thanks to donations from Spain, Germany and private financiers. |
Meagan Robertson |
Tico Times
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To the summit: U.S. President Barack Obama, left, raises a glass with Mexico's Felipe Calderón during a dinner Thursday at the Mexico City Anthropology Museum, one day before the two leaders join heads of state from nations across the Americas – except Cuba – this weekend in Trinidad and Tobago. |
| Matthew Cavanaugh | EFE |
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| Is Obama a Sandinista? We’ll find out Sunday |
| MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Despite anxiousness among Nicaragua's business class as to what President Daniel Ortega might say during his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama this weekend in Trinidad, Nicaragua's former ambassador to Washington, D.C. thinks there's a possibility for real chemistry between the two. |
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| Results from survey paint picture of reader audience |
| In a year in which newspapers themselves made headlines for shrinking audiences and unsustainable profits, readers renewed their support for The Tico Times and its sister paper The Nica Times. |
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EU-Central America set for Brussels
meeting to decide future of trade talks |
| Negotiations between the European Union (EU) and Central America will take a decisive turn next week when all of the participants will meet in Brussels to determine, among other issues, the number of countries still in the game. |
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| National Theater gets financial aid for restoration |
| The first ever restoration efforts of the outer dome of the Costa Rican National Theater will begin next week thanks to foreign and private financing. |
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| Our Unsung Hero: Tropical Marine Bioproductivity |
Costa Rica's bio diversity has reached world consciousness and achieved fame and fortune. But do you know about this country's unsung hero, bioproductivity? While our forests boast a renowned terrestrial biodiversity rivaling any similar-sized area in the world, our oceans' surface waters, coasts and islands are not particularly high in marine biodiversity. |
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| Is Obama a Sandinista? We’ll find out Sunday |
By Tim Rogers
Nica Times Staff | trogers@ticotimes.net |
| MANAGUA, Nicaragua – Despite anxiousness among Nicaragua's business class as to what President Daniel Ortega might say during his meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama this weekend in Trinidad, Nicaragua's former ambassador to Washington, D.C. thinks there's a possibility for real chemistry between the two.
“I am sure that Obama, in the '80s, was probably a Sandinista. There could be an emotional link,” former Ambassador Arturo Cruz told The Nica Times yesterday.
Cruz, a respected intellectual and professor at the INCAE business school in Managua, returned to Nicaragua two months ago after completing two years as ambassador to Washington for the Ortega government. Cruz, one of the only non-Sandinistas to serve in the Ortega administration, says the Nicaraguan president has managed to find chemistry with several U.S. officials in one-on-one situations, and wouldn't be surprised if he does so again with Obama.
“I am a big believer that in politics, everything is personal,” Cruz said. “And watch out if in this meeting between Obama and Ortega there isn't chemistry, like there was between Obama and (Brazilian President Luiz Inácio) Lula.”
Obama this week invited the leaders of Central America and the Dominican Republic to a private meeting with him next Sunday morning, following this weekend's Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Ortega, as president pro tempore of the Central American Integration System (SICA), is the designated head and spokesman for the group.
Some in Nicaragua's business community are more leery of what Ortega might say, and hope he doesn't use the meeting as a soapbox to rail against yanqui imperialism.
Róger Arteaga, president of the Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), said he hopes – for the sake of all Central Americans – that Ortega acts prudently and addresses issues of interest to the region.
“I hope this won't be a rosary of complaints, reproaches and rhetoric about invasions and colonialism, which doesn't help to generate jobs or help resolve the problems facing Nicaraguans and Central Americans,” Arteaga said.
Don't miss next Friday's Nica Times for full coverage and exclusive interview with Ambassador Cruz. |
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| Results from survey paint picture of reader audience |
By Chrissie Long
Tico Times Staff | clong@ticotimes.net |
In a year in which newspapers themselves made headlines for shrinking audiences and unsustainable profits, readers renewed their support for The Tico Times and its sister paper The Nica Times.
Results from a reader survey published in four paper editions and posted online for a month show that respondents spend on average 53 minutes with The Tico Times and read it for all news, but are primarily attracted to political-, economic- and fraud-related articles, as well as restaurant reviews and tourism information.
They praised the papers for “unbiased reporting,” “good balance” and for offering a news source in English.
And they made suggestions for improvements such as offering more coverage on the coasts or more help finding services.
“I was pleased with the survey because enough people responded to make it a good sampling of our reader base,” said Abby Daniell, associate publisher of the Tico and Nica Times.
The results of the survey also help define the characteristics of the average reader. According to responses from 165 individuals out of an audience of roughly 8,400, Tico Times readers are generally male (69 percent of respondents), have a university degree or higher (86 percent) and make more than $50,000 a year (49 percent).
Due to a survey error, The Tico Times was unable to get accurate figures regarding readers' average age.
Tico Times readers live in all provinces of Costa Rica, but 59 percent of the respondents to the survey within the country reside in the Central Valley. Respondents also represent 22 states in the U.S.
Roughly six percent of readers are non-native speakers, a trend that Daniell wants to maintain or expand.
“We want to be a tool for English language learners, but also be an alternative news sources for Costa Rica,” she said. She pointed to numbers which indicate that 17 percent of readers also get their news from the Costa Rican daily La Nación and 37 percent say they watch television news.
The survey also reached out to Nica Times readers who praised the paper for courageous and hard-hitting journalism under a president who has restricted freedom of the press.
Currently, The Tico Times reaches 2,385 readers through paper subscriptions (up from 2,148 in 2007). Roughly 667 subscribe to The Tico Times online and 5,342 are purchased off newsstands every month.
“We are not suffering the fate of daily newspapers. We are a niche publication and niche publications are the ones that are surviving,” said Daniell, who views The Tico Times as a “community paper with a worldwide reach.”
To broaden the reader base of The Tico Times further, Daniell said The Tico Times will undergo a Web site makeover in the next year, creating interactive features and posting additional information to compliment the print product.
She said the primary reason for conducting the survey is to adjust coverage in order to provide the articles that readers want.
The Tico Times reader survey has been conducted on a regular basis since 1995. |
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EU-Central America set for Brussels
meeting to decide future of trade talks |
By Vanessa I. Garnica
Tico Times Staff | vgarnica@ticotimes.net |
Negotiations between the European Union (EU) and Central America will take a decisive turn next week when all of the participants will meet in Brussels to determine, among other issues, the number of countries still in the game.
The last round of negotiations, which took place in Honduras between March 30 and April 3, was stopped after the Nicaraguan delegation presented a cooperation fund proposal without the consensus of the other four Central American countries: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. After the other nations objected, the Nica team decided to leave the negotiations, halting the process altogether.
Nicaraguan government representatives met with Finance Minister Guillermo Zúñiga and Central Bank President Francisco de Paula Gutiérrez prior to the last round of negotiations, where they presented a proposal for the creation of a €20 billion (about $26 billion) fund. Nicaragua elevated the amount to €60 billion ($79 billion).
“This proposal needed to be studied in detail by the Central American Monetary Council (CECMCA) and Financial Ministers and Secretaries Council (COSEFIN) before it was presented (on April 1),” Zúñiga told reporters during a press conference at the Finance Ministry last week. “(The $79 billion) amount is too high. This would bring contingent debt to the (Central American) countries.”
Zúñiga, who insisted he has reservations on the viability of the fund, will meet today (April 17) with his isthmian counterparts in Guatemala where the next COSEFIN meeting is taking place. On Thursday morning, Zuñiga confirmed during a press conference that the cooperation fund will be among the items discussed at this summit.
The next round will take place April 23 and 24. |
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| National Theater gets financial aid for restoration |
By Meagan Robertson
Tico Times Staff | letters@ticotimes.net |
The first ever restoration efforts of the outer dome of the Costa Rican National Theater will begin next week thanks to foreign and private financing.
The National Theater was opened in 1897 and declared a National Monument in 1965. Though minor efforts have been made to limit damage to the dome, this will be the first official restoration.
The total cost of the restoration is $191,128, which has been covered by donations. The queen of Spain contributed $105,403, the German government contributed $72,355 and a private company, Holcim Costa Rica S.A., donated $15,246 to the project.
María Elena Carballo, youth and culture minister, is thrilled the National Theater is finally getting the attention it “needs and deserves.”
“This theater is indispensable to San José,” she said. “By making the effort to preserve it we are celebrating the love Costa Ricans have for their National Theater.”
“The dome of the theater is of significant importance because it originally came from Belgium,” said the theater's director, Manuel Salas.
“It is essential to maintaining the French influence of the structure.”
The entire roof and dome was initially painted red, but was later changed to green in hopes that green would show less discoloration resulting from exposure to the elements.
According to Rodrigo Llosent, head of the National Theater's Conservation Program, the most serious damage comes from rain and pigeon excrement.
“Due to these factors, oxidation of the metal has taken place at an accelerated rate,” said Llosent. “The new paint we are using will be more resistant to all the these damaging conditions.”
The culture authorities expect to complete the restoration by this time next year. |
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| Our Unsung Hero: Tropical Marine Bioproductivity |
Costa Rica's bio diversity has reached world consciousness and achieved fame and fortune. But do you know about this country's unsung hero, bioproductivity? While our forests boast a renowned terrestrial biodiversity rivaling any similar-sized area in the world, our oceans' surface waters, coasts and islands are not particularly high in marine biodiversity. The unexplored deep sea bottoms might hold world-class biodiversity, but we do not know yet. What we do have is perhaps the world's highest tropical marine bioproductivity. And bioproductivity is just as cool as biodiversity.
While other places boast tens of thousands more marine species than Costa Rica's ocean area, our high marine bioproductivity means that we have tens of thousands more animals in a given area, just of fewer species. Imagine 100 beautiful masked booby seabirds, then 1,000 frolicking spinner dolphins, with 10,000 rocketing yellowfin tuna below and 50,000 Audubon's shearwaters and brown boobies whirling and swooping above. Throw in 500,000 shimmering rainbow comb jelly plankton and a few million finger-sized lantern fish forming shape-changing bait balls. Not so many species, but a lot of animals. That's bioproductivity, and it's a unique quality of Costa Rica's Pacific.
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| Strength in Numbers: Spinner dolphins congregate by the thousands off the Osa Peninsula. High bioproductivity is a unique feature of these Pacific waters. |
Shawn Larkin | Tico Times |
This doesn't mean the nation's coral reefs are not wonderfully biodiverse ecosystems; they are, but they are nowhere near the most biodiverse in the world. The Indo-Pacific contains probably tens of thousands more marine species than Costa Rica's Pacific. Take our coral, for example: Our Pacific surface waters have just a few dominant species of corals, with about 30 or 40 species total, and most places covered with fewer than 10 species. Costa Rica's Caribbean grows perhaps 80 species of coral in coastal waters, more than twice as biodiverse as the west coast. But waters in Indonesia explode with hundreds or even thousands of coral species. The story is the same for shellfish, algae, starfish and urchins, sea cucumbers, sea grass, sponges, fish and others. Simply put, the Indo-Pacific has the world's greatest known marine biodiversity.
One indicator used by ocean hunters, naturalists and scientists to gauge marine bioproductivity is birds. The more birds you see, the greater the bioproductivity. Thousands of birds would not be flying over a slice of ocean without a reason, and the reason is food: small fish, crustaceans, plankton and other marine life that abound in and define productive waters.
Flying offshore of southwestern Costa Rica's Osa Peninsula, you can see congregations of more seabirds than seems possible to count, indicating that the marine bioproductivity must be off the scale. Large numbers of other top predators such as dolphins, tuna and commercial, sport and artisan fishers also act as flags to high bioproductivity and confirm a Costa Rican natural treasure: world-class tropical marine bioproductivity.
The Americas' equivalent in terrestrial bioproductivity may have once been the North American great plains, where roamed vast herds of buffalo, deer and antelope, with sky-darkening clouds of Carolina parakeets covering whole states, plenty of bears, wild cats, beavers, otters and mink mixed throughout. Birds of prey such as eagles and hawks were so common that many people made clothes out of their feathers. Of course, now these ecosystems are more the stuff of song and legend than reality.
Costa Rica is blessed with living, intact, astounding bioproductivity that you can see on a day trip in a boat. Vast pods of dolphins stretching out of sight, flocks of seabirds darkening the sky and fish clouding the sea. This ecosystem is as wonderful a natural attraction as anything in Costa Rica, a true world marvel, yet few besides fishermen know it. Though very underdeveloped here, pelagic or open-ocean tourism holds great potential, as an infrastructure of boats and facilities is already in place. The high bioproductivity could soon lead to greater human economic productivity, if the resource is managed well.
Luckily, there is still time to sing praises and perpetuate some of the world's greatest tropical marine bioproductivity.
Contact Shawn at 8835-6041 or shawndive@yahoo.com, or check out www.costacetacea.com, updated weekly.
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