Art show: Francisco Rodríguez
“Marquetería, entrelazando maderas con imaginación,” through Aug. 13, Sophia Wanamaker Gallery, Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center (CCCN), www.cccncr.com.

ArtCamp
Starting today, Bello Horizonte, registration with Rosario Mendivil, 8346- 3030, 8382-5604, artcamp07@gmail.com.

Computer course for elderly
Word, Power Point, Internet, 40 lessons, starting today, 2:30 p.m., at L@b Multimedia, CCCN, San Pedro.

‘Faust'
Opera by Charles Gounod, 5 p.m., National Theater, tel: 2221-5341. 

Master class with Doelen Quartet
Dutch invitees to the Credomatic Music Festival, 2-5 p.m., music school at University of Costa Rica.

Jazz jam session
10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Zurdo, Parque en el Espacio in concert
Trip hop, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

The Olympics of surfing are coming to Costa Rica.

“There are no other words to describe it,” said José Ureña, president of the Surf Federation of Costa Rica, upon announcing that the 2009 International Surfing Association (ISA) World Surfing Games will take place in Playa Hermosa, just south of Jacó on the central Pacific coast. Some 35 countries are expected to be represented in the prestigious competition set for July 31 through Aug. 9 of next year.

“This is an Olympic game because you have more than 35 different countries and cultures, and they will become clients for our country in the future after the competition,” Ureña said. “And in each country, people are going to follow what their surfers are doing by Internet, because it is going to be broadcast live for eight days to 80 million people.”

Ureña claims it was the federation's diligence that resulted in Costa Rica being chosen to host the games out of a field that included Brazil, South Africa and other hopeful nations.

Every year since the games' 2003 inception, Costa Rica has sent a team to an ISA event. In addition, the country's world-class surf and popularity as a surf tourist destination distinguished it as a host for the games, according to Ureña.

“This will blow out Costa Rica's reputation as a surf country,” Ureña said. “At the 2006 ISA World Surfing Games, we as a team placed eighth, which gave our country a lot of exposure as a surfing nation. Now, with our waves, we have one of the best fields to organize this 2009 contest. If we send one of the best messages of what we have got … we'll get a huge impact for years to come as a surf tourist destination.”

Read Friday's print or digital edition of The Tico Times for more in the surf column.

Dreams not made of this: Annie Lennox speaks yesterday at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City, where she was set to present a report by nongovernmental organization Oxfam.

Mario Guzmán ¦ EFE

MEXICO CITY – HIV/AIDS activists and experts from around the world are urging Latin America to take swift action to prevent the outbreak of an AIDS epidemic on scale with the crisis affecting southern Africa.

Academy Award-winning singer and activist Annie Lennox called on Latin America to take advantage of this “golden window of opportunity” to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS before the epidemic reaches levels of infection comparable to Africa.

“This is not the time for complacency,” said the Scottish singer, one of thousands of panelists in this week's 2008 International AIDS Conference in Mexico City. “Take action now, the time bomb is ticking.”

Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS and a keynote speaker at the opening ceremony to the conference, stresses that it's “better to act now that pay later.”

Piot says that proactive measures are especially important in Central American countries such as Nicaragua, which appears to be in a privileged position due to its low prevalence rate of HIV infection.

In Nicaragua, the government claims that only 0.2 percent of the population, or some 3,300 Nicaraguans, is infected with the virus. As a result, the government doesn't view the issue as a major health problem for the country and has not allocated any funding for any HIV/AIDS prevention or treatment programs.

“We've studied the budget and the Nicaraguan government has not dedicated a penny to HIV or AIDS,” said Ivo Rosales, a Nicaraguan rights activist who presented the “Nicaraguan report card” on HIV/AIDS. “The government says that the money for AIDS is ‘dispersed' in other budget expenditures, but there are no specific programs for AIDS.”

Because Nicaragua doesn't consider HIV/AIDS to be a problem, the government has no surveillance program to properly monitor the spread of HIV, which is thought to be seriously under-reported in Nicaragua.

The statistics are also contradictory. While the Nicaraguan government claims there are only 3,275 infected, non-governmental calculations put that number at two to five times higher.

By comparison, Costa Rica has 9,700 people infected with HIV, El Salvador has 35,000 reported infections, Honduras 28,000 and Guatemala 59,000, according to Web site globalhealthfacts.org.

While the overall prevalence rate in Central America is still below 1 percent – compared to Botswana's more alarming 34 percent prevalence, or Swaziland's 36 percent – the region should be considered vulnerable, experts warn.

“ Nicaragua and Central America are vulnerable because of migration patters, inequality in access to health services and machismo and homophobia, which push (gay men) underground,” UNAIDS Piot told The Nica Times. “Just because HIV is not a problem today doesn't mean it won't be a problem tomorrow. Southern African countries are paying the price now for a lack of action in the past.”

Tim Rogers is covering the conference on a Journalist to Journalist fellowship from the U.S. National Press Foundation.

Costa Ricans continue to bow under rising consumer prices as inflation reached 8.83 percent at the end of July, compared to 5.62 percent the same period last year, according to the National Statistics and Census Institute (INEC).

With prices rising at such a clip, the Central Bank's year-end inflation goal of 14 percent, revised last week from its original 8 percent, could be far from reach.

According to INEC, the price of basic goods and services rose by 2.14 percent in July alone. That bumps inflation year to date to 8.83 percent, and year-on-year inflation (July 2007 to July6 2008) to 14.17 percent.

Of the 292 items INEC measures as part of its “basic basket” of goods and services, 75 percent increased in price and 17 percent dropped.

Transportation, food and beverages were the areas that saw the biggest jumps. Rising prices at the pump and at car dealerships pushed transportation costs, while milk increased even more for dairy lovers.

Among those items that fell in price were tomatoes, eggs and cilantro.

At the end of June 2008, Costa Rica placed eighth among Latin American countries for semester-end inflation, at 6.55 percent. Venezuela topped the list at 15.1 percent and Mexico saw the least inflation at 2.03 percent.