Happy Valentine's Day!

Sasha Campbell
Soul singer at Café Liberia, 7:30 p.m.

Alberto Plaza
Chilean singer-songwriter, Hotel Crowne Plaza Corobicí, 8 p.m., www.todoticketcr.com, telephone: 232-8122 and 231-0455.

Giovanni Rodríguez
Casa Luisa, la Sabana, 7 p.m.

Malpaís – sold out
No tickets left to see the popular Tico band at Jazz Café, San Pedro.

Free concert
San José National Band is playing a concert of ballads tonight at Parque Central.

Dominical Little Theatre Valentine's Day Gala
Featuring dress rehearsal of “Anna in the Tropics” and romantic dinner, Feb. 14, 4:30 p.m., Restaurante Confusione, Hotel Roca Verde, Dominical, Puntarenas. Info: 850-7477.

Remodelarte fashion show
Featuring clothes made from recycled materials, Feb. 14, 7-9 p.m., La Pulpe de Arte, Centro Comercial El Boulevard, 300 m south of Multiplaza, Escazú.

Liberia crafts fair
Today through Sunday, Parque Central in Liberia, Guanacaste.

8th Annual ‘Have a Heart' Charity Golf Tournament
To benefit area schools, four people per team, Feb. 14, 8:30 a.m. tee-off, Hacienda Pinilla Golf Course, Guanacaste. Info: 653-0270.

Lawmakers have approved the General Telecommunications Law, the sixth and most controversial piece of legislation required to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA).

The legislation promises to open the country's telecommunications industry to foreign companies to compete with the state-run Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE), currently the only player on the field.

Yesterday, the Legislative Assembly green-lighted the law, slated to undergo a second and final debate in coming weeks, with 55 of 57 members of the assembly present, voting 36-19 in favor.

Backing the bill was the “alliance of 38,” a cross-party bloc composed of the ruling National Liberation Party (PLN), the Libertarian Movement, Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) and several independent legislators.

Seventeen legislators of the Citizen Action Party (PAC), the main opposition group, and two independents voted against it.

Eleven  bills need approval before CAFTA, which was passed in an Oct. 7 referendum, can go into force.

-ACAN-EFE

President George W. Bush has announced his intention to nominate

Peter E. Cianchette, 2002 Republican nominee for governor of Maine, to be the new U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica.

In the next few weeks, Cianchette's nomination will go to the U.S. Senate for confirmation, the White House said in a statement.

The appointment is meant to replace former Ambassador Mark Langdale, who left his San José post to head the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation in Dallas starting Jan. 1.

Cianchette (pronounced “chin-kett”) served as a state lawmaker from 1996-2000, representing South Portland and Cape Elizabeth in Maine's House of Representatives, according to his Republican Party biography. In 2004, he led the Bush-Cheney campaign in Maine, where he is currently the state's Republican national committeeman.

Son of Ival “Bud” Cianchette, one of the founders of construction firm Cianbro Corp., the nominee-to-be is a partner at CHK Capital Partners, a strategic planning firm. His business credentials also include serving as chief operations officer of business and public affairs consulting firms Pierce Atwood Consulting and The Cianchette Group.

-Tico Times

By Dave Sherwood
Tico Times Staff | dsherwood@ticotimes.net

Officials began investigating the Hotel Occidental Grand Papagayo this week to determine whether the 169-room hotel is pumping wastewater into the ocean fronting a coral reef.

Eduardo Céspedes, director of Health in Carillo, said inspectors from the Health Ministry, the Liberia Prosecutors Office and the Costa Rican Water and Sewer Institute (AyA) took seawater samples for testing Tuesday.

Results could be available as early as next week, he said.

Like the Allegro Papagayo, a neighboring hotel that was closed last week when it was discovered pumping sewage into an estuary, the Grand Papagayo has been accused by its neighbors of pumping wastewater into ocean waters fronting a coral reef near Playa Buena, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste.

Both hotels are part of the government-run Papagayo Tourism Project, the largest such development in Central America.

After The Tico Times' series of reports on the Occidental hotels (see http://www.ticotimes.net/topstory.htm ), word spread quickly across such well-known Internet travel forums as The Lonely Planet and TripAdvisor.com.

Prospective visitors panicked, and some that had visited the Allegro Papagayo, even after it had been ordered closed on Jan. 31, reportedly took ill.

“My husband became very ill Sunday night Feb. 3 after having dinner at the buffet,” wrote Lisa McIntyre, of California, in a letter addressed to well-known Internet travel agencies Orbitz.com and Expedia.com.

It's about to get easier to visit Web sites hosted in Costa Rica. Starting soon, Costa Rican Web sites will be able to end with a “.cr” domain. At the moment, sites must use a “.co.cr” domain or some variation thereof, such as “.go.cr” or “.or.cr.”

Network Information Center-Costa Rica – a Costa Rican entity empowered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to administer the “.cr” domain – will make the domain available first to Web sites owning “.co.cr” real estate.

For instance, someone owning www.test.co.cr will have 90 days to register www.test.cr, after which that domain will be first come, first served.

The annual fee for registering a “.cr” domain will be $100, according to government newspaper La Gaceta. For more details, see NIC-Costa Rica's Web site, www.nic.cr.