Women's Club talks chocolate
Featuring talk on Old World chocolate by Julio Fernández, founding partner of Sibú Chocolates, June 11, 9:30 a.m., for location call 2268-6130 or 2267-7042, www.wccr.org.

Diving classes
Classes start tomorrow, 7 p.m., Centro de Aventura Oceánica, Moravia, 200 m. west, 200 m. north and 25 m. west of Banco Nacional. Info: 2236-7486, www.mundoceanica.com

Malpaís in concert
Trova, June 11, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú. 

French film festival
“Selon Charlie” today and tomorrow at 3, 5 and 7 p.m.; “L'homme de sa vie” on Fri. and Sat. at 3 and 5 p.m.; “Transylvania” on Sun. and Mon. at 3 and 5 p.m.; “Le serpent,” June 17 and 18 at 3, 5 and 7 p.m., Variedades Theater.

Lawmakers applied a fast-track procedure yesterday to the last bill required to implement the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA).

After days of intense negotiations with Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias, five lawmakers from the Libertarian Movement Party agreed to fast-track the bill, which protects intellectual property rights and punishes violations. Arias convinced the Libertarians by agreeing to reduce prison terms for violators and increase the number of lawmakers able to vote on a certain clause.

The Libertarians, together with lawmakers from the government's National Liberation Party, the Social Christian Unity Party (PUSC) and independent legislators, completed the 38 votes required to apply the fast-track process, which can limit debate to less than a month. Bills can otherwise take years to pass.

Costa Rica has until October to enter the free-trade pact. To do that, the country must pass five more bills that would open up the insurance market, regulate the telecommunications market and strengthen intellectual property rights, among other things.

The almost two-year freeze on renewing permanent resident cards is over, Costa Rican Immigration announced this week. As of Monday, foreigners can begin requesting new resident cards.

Director Mario Zamora said his agency installed a new high-tech document system, thanks to a $750,000 donation from a U.S.-based private company called Laser Card.

“The previous cards were of low quality and the photos on them disappeared over a relatively short period of time,” he said. “But with this new technology, the same they use in the United States, the same level of security is being transferred to Costa Rica.”

Zamora suspended the issuing of new cards under the old system in 2006 shortly after he took the post.

He said the $2.6 million contract that GTK-TML, a private consortium of businesses, won from the Public Security Ministry – then under Rogelio Ramos – in 2003 was a failure. The cards, because of their low quality and photo disappearance issues, were easily abused to perpetrate identity theft and bank fraud.

The director also said his agency awarded a contract to a private call center to manage a new Immigration phone number – 900-1234567 – for people to call to schedule appointments. He said staff is available to speak English and the hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

However, when The Tico Times called yesterday at 5:30 p.m., there was no answer. Laser Card official Luis Sciupac did not return an e-mail request for comment.

Latin America's problem with armed violence has reached “epidemic proportions,” according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

Nils Kastberg, UNICEF's regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said this region has earned the “poor reputation” for having the highest rate of violence, accounting for 42 percent of the world's homicides.

This situation has worsened with “the easy access to small arms and a growing gap between the richest and poorest segments of society,” Kastberg said in a statement from the regional office in Panama City.

“Unfortunately children and teenagers are objects of violence and the Caribbean tops the list, worldwide, in terms of the murder rate and has the highest rate of homicide among adolescents ages 15 to 17,” he said.

Boys are six times more likely than girls to fall victim to armed violence, according to UNICEF. Violence is the No. 1 cause of death among males in the 15-24 age bracket in the Caribbean and in certain Latin American countries, Kastberg said.

He cited Guatemala as a danger zone, where 418 youths were killed in 2005, 322 of them by gunfire. In Haiti, he said, child kidnapping has increased “exponentially” in recent months, with 50 cases so far in 2008 alone.