Concert by Medieval
At 9:30 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Rembrandt print exhibit
48 original prints by the Dutch master, through April 6, Central Bank Museums.

Eighties pop icons Duran Duran and ‘90s alternative rockers Incubus will make their Costa Rican debut at a rock festival here in April, management of national beer brand Imperial, the festival's organizer, said Friday.

The bands will join other confirmed acts including Costa Rican groups LePop and Porpartes for the 2008 Festival Imperial, scheduled for April 19 and 20 in La Guácima, a town in the Alajuela province (northwest of San José), the newswire ACAN-EFE reported.

Best known for early-career hits “ Rio ” and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” new-wave fav's Duran Duran came out with a fresh release in November, “Red Carpet Massacre,” their first album since 2004's “Astronaut.” The CD sees the boys from Birmingham, England, outfitted with spruced up beats and rapping bits by hip hop producer Timbaland, plus intermittent vocals by Justin Timberlake. But despite the contemporary veneer, hints of the classic Duran Duran style – labeled “new romantic” – still show through.

Incubus, by contrast, creates a harder, more guitar-driven sound. Although, like Duran Duran, the California band fronted by singer Brandon Boyd features vocals front and center. This can be heard in the ballad “Love Hurts” and other tracks on the November 2006 album “Light Grenades.”

Harder still was Incubus' 1995 disc “Fungus Amungus,” with the thrashing first single, “Take Me To Your Leader.”

Incubus initially scheduled to play in Costa Rica in December, according to the daily La Nación, but rescheduled for the Guácima event.

For a taste of the latest material by the bands, visit their MySpace profiles at www.myspace.com/duranduran and www.myspace.com/incubus.

To follow Festival Imperial as its lineup gets pieced together or for ticket information, check out the event's Web site: www.festivalimperial.com.

On their first visit with Pope Benedict XVI, Costa Rican bishops took instruction to keep Catholicism alive in their changing society. The Pontiff called on the seven bishops, who comprise the Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica, to “constantly revitalize their ancient and deep Christian roots” and beware of their compatriots' faith becoming “lethargic and superficial,” the Catholic News Agency (CNA) and the daily La Nación reported Friday.

The bishops were fulfilling their obligatory quinquennial ad limina visit to the Vatican that began last Monday (TT, Jan. 25).

Benedict, elected in April 2005, said that in Costa Rica's developing society, the Church must seek “new ways to announce Christ” emphasizing “the missionary character of all pastoral activity,” according to CNA.

The agency is a news source with global coverage of the Catholic Church.

Its report said the Pope also noted a tendency taking root throughout Latin America that is the rise of Evangelical and Protestant factions.

Here 76.3% of the population professes to be Roman Catholic, while 13.7% are Evangelical, 1.3% Jehovah's Witness, 0.7% Protestant and 4.8% belong to other groups, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's “World Factbook.”

The remaining 3.2%, the factbook says, claims no religious faith.

Within this country's transforming society, people with “lethargic and superficial faith” risk falling into “the multiple promises of easy and immediate well being … or the spread of ideologies which, while claiming to exalt human beings, actually debase them,” the Pope said according to the Catholic agency.

Recent reports have suggested that an increasing number of Costa Rican couples are moving in together before marriage and choosing to either hold off on children or to forego having kids altogether – tendencies that do not reflect the portrait of the traditional Catholic Central American family of past generations.

The Pope spoke to the Episcopal Conference's fears raised by this phenomenon. “You are right to be concerned at the increasing deterioration of the institution of the family, which has such grave repercussions on the fabric of society and on ecclesial life,” he said.

The National Liberation Party (PLN) kept its centrist bent by electing Antonio Calderón as secretary general Saturday.

Calderón, backed by President Oscar Arias' administration, roundly defeated the more leftwing candidate Rolando González in an internal party election. The secretary general helps define the party's ideology and influences the selection of a candidate for the 2010 presidential election, which Liberation is favored to win.

The party's National Assembly, with 124 representatives from across the country, gave 73 votes to Calderón and 41 to Gonzaléz. There were one blank and one null vote, and the remaining delegates were absent. 

Calderón, 49, is a practicing lawyer and member of the party's political board. He has less party experience than González, 57, who was secretary general for six years and legislator for four.

Calderón campaigned for the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), while González remained publicly neutral. 

A group of disadvantaged schoolchildren will show up for the first day of class this morning equipped with notebooks, rulers, colored pencils and other supplies thanks to the San José-based Association for Children's Smiles (ASONI) of Cristo Rey.

The back-to-school gift pack came as a donation from Hotel Presidente and is set to benefit 315 children from two of the association's shelters, one located in the San José barrios of Cristo Rey and Sagrada Familia.

“We firmly believe that the best way to guarantee a healthy and successful future for children is through education. Education is the best way to keep youngsters off the street and safe from its dangers,” said Hotel Presidente's operations manager Katherine Carter in a statement. The hotel gave the gift, worth ¢3 million (about $6,000), as part of its corporate social responsibility program.

However, unlike these supply-carrying pupils, the schools themselves will not be so prepared. Costa Rican children by the busload (almost 1 million) are descending on schools this morning for the first day of the new academic year, but public education authorities haven't done their homework – and there might not be enough buses to get the kids there.

As of last week, the Education Ministry was still scrambling to hire school-buses and teachers.

Many school buildings are in dire shape and many more lack desks, ministry officials told The Tico Times.

Read the current print or digital edition of The Tico Times for more on Costa Rica's back to school blues.