Central Pacific Women's Group Meeting
9 a.m., Balcón del Mar, Jacó, Puntarenas. Info: 2643-2853. 

Poetry workshop
For teens and adults, today and Aug. 28, 5-7 p.m., Alajuela Culture Center. Info: 2440-1022. 

Coro Surá in concert
8 p.m., National Theater, Av. 2, Ca. 3/5. Info: 2221-9417. 

Pedro Guerra in concert
Trova, 8 p.m., National Auditorium, Children's Museum, end of Ca. 4, 2258-4929.

Piano recital
Tica Daniela Rodo plays classical, 8 p.m., Salón Dorado, Costa Rican Art Museum, 22909321 ext. 1226.

Malpaís in concert
Popular Costa Rican band, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Tico Jazz Band in concert
10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

The organizers of a visit by the Dalai Lama to Costa Rica claimed yesterday that President Oscar Arias asked them to “uninvite” the exiled Tibetan leader because of conflicts with China.

Arias' spokeswoman Mishelle Mitchel, however, “categorically” denied the allegations.

The Arias administration is planning to receive the president of China, Hu Jintao, later this year in his first visit here since the two nations began diplomatic relations last year. The Chinese government has called the Dalai Lama a terrorist, and accused him of attempting to destabilize China.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, preaches non-violence and calls for greater autonomy for his homeland of Tibet, which China controls and claims as its own.

At a press conference yesterday, President Arias said he asked the Dalai Lama to postpone his visit because he would be out of the country on a trip to Europe and wanted to be here to greet the leader.

The Dalai Lama was originally coming to Costa Rica to take part in a meeting of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, which include both himself and President Arias, organized here by the President's Oscar Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress. That meeting was called off earlier this year.

The Tibetan-Costa Rican Cultural Association then continued to plan for a visit from the Dalai Lama Sept. 10 to 12, scheduling a meeting between him and Tibetan Buddhists in Costa Rica, as well as a talk open to the public.

According to Maritza Pacheco, head of the cultural association, Oscar Arias' office called the association earlier this month to ask them to cancel the invite because, among other reasons, “Hu Jintao wasn't going to come if His Holiness (the Dalai Lama) came.”

“This was not an official visit. We had not asked the government for anything. It was all being managed as a private visit,” Pacheco said. “As a country we are losing our sovereignty if we cannot decide who visits us.”

Last night, however, Arias' spokeswoman Mitchell said she could not officially confirm any call from the president's office, and insisted the president's letter, which he made public yesterday, asked only to postpone the trip and had nothing to do with Jintao's visit.

Fishermen in Nicaragua's northern Pacific waters use as many as 40,000 makeshift bombs a week in the illegal blast fishing industry, with disastrous environmental effects, according to Capt. Juan Juárez of the Nicaraguan Navy.

Juárez told The Nica Times that blast fishing, in which fishermen drop homemade bombs into the sea in order to kill fish, is a practice still widely used in Nicaragua's Pacific by small-scale fishermen. The bombs are made in the León province in clandestine workshops, says Juárez, who is stationed in Puerto Corinto, Nicaragua's largest Pacific port.

Naval forces have seized about 300 bombs so far this year while patrolling Pacific waters, he said.

Find out more about Nicaragua's illegal blast fishing industry in an upcoming edition of The Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times.

San José's Calderón Guardia Hospital employees took action yesterday in what turned into an “indefinite strike” after Costa Rican health officials refused to answer a union demand to give the hospital's former director, Luis Paulino Hernández, his job back.

The strike was set today to spread to hospital staff in the Southern Zone town of Pérez Zeledón and the Caribbean slope town of Guápiles, according to Damaris Marín, a spokeswoman for the Social Security System (Caja), which m anages the nation's public health care.

Emergency unit workers did not participate in the strike, however, according to Alexis Castillo, spokesman for the Medical Science Professionals Union.

The union, along with members of the National Medical Union, called a strike to run yesterday from 7 to 11 a.m., after which time it would become “indefinite” if the demands weren't met.

A Caja management committee last week sacked Hernández, along with Carlos Vílchez, Calderón Guardia Hospital's administration chief, Fernando Roldán, its maintenance chief, after an investigation found they neglected internal control laws when a July 2005 fire raged through the hospital's fourth and fifth floors, killing 19 people.

Castillo said the suspensions break Costa Rican labor law and rules of due process.

Caja management, for its part, questioned the legality of a work stoppage as a means of overturning a decision that was made “in strict abidance to judicial regulations,” according to Caja President Dr. Eduardo Doryan.

“The strike is illegal and unconstitutional,” Doryan said repeatedly during a press conference yesterday.

He said he hopes the strike will not continue today, adding, with no specification, that “corrective measures” will be taken if it does.