National Music Institute Flute Choir
7 p.m., National Theater.

Jazz jam
Jazz Café Trio, Jazz Café, San Pedro, 10 p.m.

Aesthetic medicine conference
Today and tomorrow, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Costa Rica Tennis Club, 2280-8639.

MANAGUA – Skinnier and on the verge of serious health problems, legendary guerrilla leader Dora María Téllez ended her 12-day hunger strike yesterday and announced that she is now taking her protest movement to phase two: winning the streets.

At the behest of doctors and friends, Téllez, the heroic Sandinista rebel leader known as “Comandante Dos,” decided to call off her hunger strike yesterday morning after the medics performing her daily exams warned her that she was on the verge of “irreversible complications” to her health, including diabetes.

The doctors said that due to the heat in downtown Managua and her insistence on giving interviews and remaining active, Téllez had worn down her body much faster than if she had conducted her hunger strike under different conditions.

So instead of moving her hunger strike to an indoor, air-conditioned location under constant medical care, Téllez decided to call it off, along with her young hunger strike companion, Roger Arias, a candidate for Managua city council for the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS).

Téllez and Arias declared their hunger strike in protest of the government's efforts to remove the MRS and other minority parties from the upcoming municipal elections – just one more step, she said, in the Ortega administration's efforts to impose an “institutional dictatorship.”

As forewarned by Téllez, the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Elections Tribunal (CSE) eventually ruled June 11 to outlaw the MRS and Conservative Party – a decision that has been decried by civil society and foreign governments.

Read Friday's Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times, for more on this story.

Costa Rica's Ombudsman's Office said the government put business interests above the public good when it signed a contract authorizing private developers in Guanacaste to build a pipeline to a neighboring town to get their water.

Speaking yesterday, Ombudswoman Lisbeth Quesda and adjunct Ombudsman Daniel Soley questioned the legality of the contract, which established a trust fund to pay for the project.

“We are very concerned with what we found in this trust,” Soley said.

The Ombudsman's Office has been investigating the project since April, and has filed suit with the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court to have the project suspended. Work has already been stopped by the local municipal council.

The $8 million pipeline would draw water from the aquifer currently feeding the small, inland town of Sardinal to supply the aqueduct servicing Ocotal and Playas del Coco, two booming tourist beach towns. Development on the coast has sapped the local water supply for Coco and Ocotal, effectively freezing construction of new hotels and real estate projects.

The project is a private-public partnership, where the developers pay for and contract the construction of the pipeline through a bank-held trust, guaranteeing their own connections. The project would create at least 8,000 new connections, which are currently being sold for more than $3,000 apiece, Soley said.

Once built, the pipeline would be handed over to the government and become part of the public infrastructure.

Following a legal study of the contract that created the trust fund, the Ombudsman's Office found that the National Water and Sewer Institute (AyA) handed exclusive governmental authority over water management to the developers, guaranteeing water availability first to them, while locals will be “sent to the back of the line,” Quesada said.

The ombudswoman also noted that the terms of the contract are confidential, held by the bank and inaccessible to the public.

The Ombudman's Office has previously denounced a lack of technical studies of the Sardinal aquifer that would show just how much water could be taken without risking its collapse.

Steve Hershberger, the language arts department chairman at Fairfield High School in Goshen, Indiana, drowned last week while trying to rescue a struggling student in the ocean off Limón province, according to Limón police spokeswoman Lillian Acuña.

“They had just finished eating lunch and (the group was) swimming in the sea,” Acuña said.

Hershberger, 44, and a high-schooler were trying to reach another pupil who had been dragged out to sea by a riptide on the public beach near Hotel Colón Caribe in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, where the group was staying, the spokeswoman said.

All three ended up stranded and a kayak was sent out to rescue them, she said.

Hershberger was dead when he got to the beach, and attempts to revive him failed, police said.

The two teens were hospitalized, Acuña said.

The hotel frequently advises guests not to swim in the treacherous waters.

Hershberger was one of five adults chaperoning a group of 32 students on a Spanish immersion trip when the June 12 incident occurred, according to a statement on the school's Web site.

Hershberger taught at Fairfield for 14 years. In addition to his language arts duties, he directed plays and helped coach the tennis team, according to the Web site.