[dailyarchive/2005_02/exchange_rates.htm]
Daily Edition: San José, Costa Rica, February 16, 2005
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New Technology to
Combat Illegal Felling
In an effort to control illegal felling, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) now has 60 hand-held computers at its disposal to detect where the illegal practice is taking place in the country, Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez announced at President Abel Pacheco's weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday.
(Click for more)
Legislator Held Hostage
At Neighborhood School
Legislative Assembly member Rodolfo Delgado, of the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC), stopped by his neighborhood school yesterday in Jerico de Desamparados, 15 kilometers south of San José, to discuss personnel problems with teachers and residents – and was briefly held hostage.
(Click for more)
Exhibition of Mythological
Engravings
Opens at National
Theater Café
Prints in red, black and white from engravings lined the walls of the café at the National Theater in downtown San José yesterday as Gustavo Serrano inaugurated his exposition with the aplomb and endless wine bottles expected of the country's high-caliber artists.
(Click for more)
Tica Swimmer
In World Cup
Costa Rican swimmer Claudia Poll, who came in 9th and 10th place in the 400- and 200-meter freestyle races at the Olympics in Athens in 2004, traveled yesterday to Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where she will participate in the Swimming World Cup.
(Click for more)
February 16
Lecture: “Little Women Forever”
Today at 5:30 p.m. at the Librería Francesa. Info: 305-6074, eugalde@clubdelibros.com .
Books for the Indigenous of Costa Rica
Clubdelibros invites everyone to donate a notebook, a pencil and a children's book for the Maleku indigenous children in Guatuso. Donations should be dropped off at the Cámara del Libro, 100 meters south, 100 meters east of Casa Italia, Los Yoses, Mon.-Fri. 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
Special Concert by the National Symphony Orchestra
The repertoire includes Rossini's “William Tell Overture,” the first movement of Beethoven's Symphony #5, “Chinese Dance” from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, and the theme from “Star Wars,” by John Williams, tonight at 7 p.m. at the CENAC Auditorium. Admission is free.
Edited By Katherine Stanley
Tico Times Staff
kstanley@ticotimes.net
New Technology to
Combat Illegal Felling
By María Gabriela Díaz
Tico Times Staff
mgdiaz@ticotimes.net
In an effort to control illegal felling, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) now has 60 hand-held computers at its disposal to detect where the illegal practice is taking place in the country, Environment Minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez announced at President Abel Pacheco's weekly Cabinet meeting yesterday.
The new high-tech system, funded by a $350,000 donation from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), will allow environment officials to monitor a Web site that displays information on forests that are being managed adequately and those that are not, along with their location. The objective is to detect violations to the Forestry Law by detecting transformations of areas from forest to grazing land without the proper permits.
“At the beginning of his term (in 2002), President Pacheco asked us to prioritize the issue of illegal felling. In Costa Rica, 33-35% of felling is illegal,” Rodríguez said yesterday. “This system is very modern and will place us among the leading countries in the struggle against illegal felling.”
Of the 60 hand-held computers, 22 were donated by the Foundation for Development of the Central Volcanic Mountain Range (FUNDECOR), whose Web site is the host of the felling-detection system. The system is the product of an agreement signed last September by the Environment Ministry, FUNDECOR and the National Geographic Institute (IGN) of the Ministry of Public Works and Transport (MOPT).
“The system will allow anyone to visit a farm at any moment, and from there, you can (access the online maps) and see if there was a forest there before,” Minister Rodríguez said.
Among the areas that suffer most deforestation in Costa Rica are the Tortuguero conservation area in northeastern Costa Rica, the Caribbean province of Limón, the Northern Zone and the Central Valley, according to FUNDECOR.
To detect illegal felling and collaborate in the protection of Costa Rica's natural resources, visit the FUNDECOR Web site at www.fundecor.org .
Legislator Held Hostage
At Neighborhood School
By Katherine Stanley
Tico Times Staff
kstanley@ticotimes.net
Legislative Assembly member Rodolfo Delgado, of the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC), stopped by his neighborhood school yesterday in Jerico de Desamparados, 15 kilometers south of San José, to discuss personnel problems with teachers and residents – and was briefly held hostage.
The meeting's other participants refused to let Delgado leave until the matter was resolved. They said the school, which has 101 students, is operating with only two teachers and is missing a third teacher, a principal, a cook and someone to clean, according to wire service EFE.
The Ministry of Public Education has not yet provided the personnel. Delays in the naming and notification of school staff members have caused problems throughout the country since school started Feb. 7 (TT, Feb. 11).
“They obstructed (Delgado's) exit,” party spokesman Henry Méndez told The Tico Times. “He was kept there for approximately two hours.”
The impromptu, non-violent hostage situation ended when the Ministry of Education promised to appointed the necessary personnel, according to Méndez.
Exhibition of Mythological Engravings
Opens at National Theater Café
By Robert Goodier
Tico Times Staff
rgoodier@ticotimes.net
Prints in red, black and white from engravings lined the walls of the café at the National Theater in downtown San José yesterday as Gustavo Serrano inaugurated his exposition with the aplomb and endless wine bottles expected of the country's high-caliber artists.
Each print bears variations on a red, stylized bull's head overlaying the black silhouette of a woman with regal hair and bare shoulders. The colors bleed through in places, implying texture and shadow, and each is slashed with steel-colored lines, sometimes curled like noodles and sometimes stratified like a geology lesson.
“I like feminine and mythological subjects, and subjects that deal with duality,” Serrano said.
Every print is called “Pasifae,” named after the woman better known in English as Pasiphae, who was seduced by a bull to punish her husband. According to the myth, the god Poseidon gave a bull to Pasiphae's royal husband, Minos, king of an empire in Crete. The god offered the bull as an incentive for a sacrifice in his honor, but Minos kept it. Poseidon then cursed his wife, Pasiphae, made her fall in love with the bull, and the son she bore from the animal was the man-eating Minotaur.
The prints are the results of Serrano's exhaustive experimentation this past year, refining his technique through hundreds of attempts. Though the theme always revolves around the bull and Pasiphae, fellow printer Alberto Murillo suggests the positions of images, shades and squiggles invite multiple interpretations.
In a statement, Murillo described variations in the engravings “from the simple pleasure of the magnificent stamps, the passion of love between man and woman with flushed reds, the fixed masculinity (in the bull mask) as opposed to the feminine sensitivity (with finely drawn silhouettes), to the discrete reading of the legend of Pasiphae and the bull.”
The exhibit, which will last for two months, is open to the public. Serrano sells prints for $175; for information or to buy a print, call the artist at 224-9749.
Costa Rican swimmer Claudia Poll, who came in 9th and 10th place in the 400- and 200-meter freestyle races at the Olympics in Athens in 2004, traveled yesterday to Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where she will participate in the Swimming World Cup.
Poll traveled with her trainer, Francisco Rivas, and will be competing Feb. 18-20 in the 100-, 200- and 400-meter freestyle races. She will be facing competition from Camelia Potec of Romania, Olympic winner of the 200-meter freestyle, and the American Kaitlin Sandeno, 400-meter bronze medallist.
According to her trainer, this will be the last time she competes in short swimming pools (25 meters long), because after this tournament she will compete in large pools (50 meters long). She is intending to compete in the Long Swimming Pool World Championships in Montreal, Canada in July.
Claudia, 32, is an Olympic gold medallist (Atlanta 1996) and bronze medallist (Sydney 2000). Following her participation the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004, she has said she is not ready to retire.
--EFE
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