Nicoya fair
Including Tico bull fights, bull riding, food, rides, concerts, through Feb. 8, Nicoya fairgrounds, Guanacaste.

The Magic of Stories
Children's camp organized by Club de Libros, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Barrantes Ulate family finca, San Joaquín de Flores, Heredia. Info: 8305-6074.

Echando a Contar se Aprende
Comedy, through Feb. 14, Sat.-Sun., 8 p.m., Sala Calle 15, Avenida 2, opposite Plaza de la Democracia. Info: 2236-8940.

Bernardo Quesada & Edgar Oceransky, Ramon “Perrozompopo” Mejia, Masterkey
Singer songwriters, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, 2288-4740, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

If downtown Limón, on the Caribbean, and Tibás, on the north side of San José, were major U.S. cities, their murder rates would rank right up there with cities like Detroit, Baltimore and Newark.

The Limón canton counted 48 homicides in 2008, jumping 33 percent from the 36 in 2007, giving it a rate of 45.8 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. The canton of Tibás, home to León XIII, one of the country's most notorious neighborhoods, hit a rate of 39.2.

Downtown San José wasn't far behind, reaching a rate of 28.

All three numbers are considerably higher than the national homicide rate of 9.6, or even those of the greater Limón and San José provinces at 17.5 and 13.5, respectively.

Both Central Valley cantons saw their homicide numbers increase significantly over 2007, too: Tibás' doubled from 12 to 25, and San José's went up 52 percent from 63 to 96, according to numbers released by the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) on Thursday.

Homicides nationwide increased 25 percent, from 349 in 2007 to 435 in 2008. The national homicide rate in 2007 was just under 8 per 100,000 people.

Homicides in Alajuela and Puntarenas provinces each went up 27 percent. The number of murders in the provinces of Guanacaste rose from 16 to 24, in Cartago from 7 to 14, and in Heredia from 18 to 20.

Murder numbers in the Limón province, on the other hand, only went up 12 percent on the year, from 67 to 75.

These rates in Costa Rica are low compared to other countries in the region such as El Salvador and Honduras, who usually record over 50 murders per 100,000 citizens per year nationwide. Central America typically has one of the highest regional homicide rates in the world.

The U.S. national murder rate was 5.6 in 2007, the most recent year for which final stats are available, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That number saw no statistically significant change from 2006. In 1993, the homicide rate in the U.S. was 9.5, the highest of the last 20 years.

Detroit, for its part, saw the number of murders plummet from 182 in the first six months of 2007 to 136 in the same period in 2008.

A woman arrested with a blood-alcohol level three times the legal limit is temporarily off the hook after a judge suspended all reckless driving trials until discrepancies between the newly passed Traffic Law and the country's Penal Code can be resolved.

David Hernández, a judge in the fast-track court, known as the Tribunal de Flagrancia, says the new law does not specify sufficient criteria, including what and where a person is driving, to judge the event.

Crisan Acuña was arrested at 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 1. She allegedly registered a 2.24 blood-alcohol level, well above the 0.75 legal limit, and is charged with reckless driving and driving under the influence of alcohol. She is free until the courts resolve the matter and can address her case again.

This is the first serious legal challenge to the much-criticized reformed Traffic Law, which was enacted Dec. 23.

With pen and paper in hand and an abundance of cameras in tow, a group of coffee connoisseurs, mostly from Europe, have been making their way through Costa Rica this week.

Their goal is to examine every detail of the Costa Rican coffee making process, from the moment a bean picker grabs the fruit to the instant it's dropped off at the mills to be weighed, peeled, washed, dried and placed in storage.

The group is part of the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe (SCAE), whose members are coffee roasters, buyers and distributors from throughout the world.

The visitors, coming from places such as the Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine, England, Hungary, Sweden and South Korea are in search of quality coffee, but they are also interested in environmentally friendly coffee processes, fair-trade regulations and fair working conditions for the crop pickers.

See Friday's print or online edition of The Tico Times for more on this story.