Belly dance
Latino Rock Café, south side of La Primavera gas station, Barrio La California, San José, 9 p.m. Info: 222-4719.

Jam session
Jazz Café, Calle Principal, San Pedro, 10 p.m., www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Puppet show
Performed by Cucaramácara puppet theater group, today and tomorrow, 11 a.m., Casa del Arco Iris, 50 m west of Calderón Guardia Hospital patients' entrance.

'Jerusalem from the Air'
Photo exhibit, through Feb. 24, Veritas University in Zapote, San José.

The government of South Korea has joined the rush to “bioprospect” the country's wealth of biodiversity.

According to online encyclopedias, bioprospecting is the collection of samples from animals, plants and microorganisms to be used to create new drugs, crops or industrial products.

Representatives from the South Korean government announced a partnership with the National Biodiversity Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cataloguing and facilitating the exploitation of the country's dizzying variety of wildlife and plant species.

Bioprospecting manager Lorena Guevara said the South Koreans are investing $643,000 to expand the Institute's current facilities in Santo Domingo de Heredia and another $1 million in projects, specifically tied to plant research. At least one Korean scientist will also be added to the staff.

With multinational corporations, such as Eli Lilly, Merck, Bristol-Mayer, and universities such as Harvard already partnering with the institute, Guevara said South Korea decided it was time to get on board.

Guevara said the best-known commercial results from bioprospecting so far in Costa Rica include two products – Quassia, a tree extract that helps with hangovers, and Estilo, an herb that serves as a sedative.

“Our mission is the systematic search for genes, molecules, chemical compounds that can be of pharmaceutical, agricultural or biotechnology use,” she said. “We have found some very interesting compounds, especially from microorganisms.”

The manager said the Institute is working on identifying compounds that could be used as cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, AIDS, malaria and asthma.

Tourism growth continued to be strong in January, despite fears that an economic slowdown in the United States might put a damper on this year.

Measured by traffic at the Juan Santamaría and Daniel Oduber Quirós international airports, tourism was up 13.7% over January 2007.

In raw numbers, that's 145,145 tourists that arrived last month at those airports, a figure Tourism Minister Carlos Benavides described as “getting off on the right foot.”

Visitors to Costa Rica in 2007 increased 11.5% over the previous year's numbers.

-Tico Times

The National Emergency Commission announced construction has started on projects to repair damage caused by last October's heavy rains. The rains resulted in mudslides that killed 18, left 3,100 without homes and caused an estimated $130 million in damage to the country's roads, bridges and dikes.

Authorities said even though they are short about $24 million to complete all the needed projects, they had already started spending the roughly $43 million raised by the government and donors, which includes about $20 million from China.

Commission President Daniel Gallardo said about $14 million is being spent to repair 136 bridges in all the country's provinces, with another $6 million dedicated to repairing over 350 kilometers of highway.

He also said more than $12 million was dedicated to dike repair in Corredores, Parrita, Filadelfia, Río Claro, Las Vegas, Caño Seco, Matina and Siquirres.

Under Gallardo's plan, there are also three stages of projects to construct housing for families whom the floods rendered homeless. The plan calls for spending about $15 million to build homes in Corredores, Golfito, Cañas, Aserrí, Desamparados, Cartago, Atenas, Matina, Aguirre de Puntarenas and Talamanca canton.

-Tico Times

Delta Air Lines announced the launch of nonstop flights between New York's JFK International Airport, and San José and Liberia international airports, in central and northwest Costa Rica, respectively. The flights are scheduled to begin this week, according to the airline's press release.

With the new service, Delta is offering a total of 31 weekly flights to Costa Rica from the United States, including routes from Atlanta, Los Angeles, and now, New York, a press release said yesterday.

Delta's flights come on the tail of an announcement last week that low-cost carrier ATA Airline would begin direct flights from Miami to San José, slated to start March 15.

-Tico Times