Embrujarte
Four-day art exhibit, including photography, sculpture, painting, through Sunday, Escuela Presbitero Yanuario Quesada, opposite San Rafael de Escazú church. Info: 2290-9199.

38th National Orchid Exhibition
Friday and Saturday, 8 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m., La Aduana. Info: 2240-4269, www.ticorquideas.com.

Transitarte Summer Festival
Concerts, poetry, crafts fair Friday through Sunday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m., Parque Morazán, Parque España, Jardín de Paz and Parque Nacional.

National Symphony Orchestra
March 13, 8 p.m.; March 15, 10:30 a.m., National Theater, Av. 2, Ca. 3/5. Info: 2221-9417.

Black Light Theatre of Prague
Performing Las Aventuras de Fausto, Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 4 p.m., Melico Salazar Theater, Avenida 2, Calle Central. Tickets at www.mundoticket.com.

Quetzal watching tour
Saturday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m., leaving from Corobicí Hotel, north La Sabana Park, Finca de los Serrano (Mirador/Paraíso del Quetzal), km 70 (1.5 h). Info: 2280-0112, 2280-0114, www.mundoexpeditions.com

CENAC Summer Fest
Saturday, art exhibit by Grupo Aruko Wakia; Rockathlon, by Magmabeta, Elemento, Los Acetatos, Digital 80, The Virgin Zombies, Zopilot, Los Cuchillos, Poper and Raging Bull Lather Jacket, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday, 30-min. by Soniclaje and Zigzag (sax quartet), 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; dance show, 6 p.m. all at CENAC.

Palmares International Music Festival
With Luba Mason, Katia Cardenal, Malpaís, Manuel Obregón, March 14, 8 p.m.; March 15, 6 p.m., bullring, Palmares, Alajuela, www.madreverde.org.

Camerata Académica Bach in Concert
As part of Transitarte Festival, March 15, noon, Parque Nacional.

Say hola: U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, photographed Tuesday at a NATO meeting in Belgium, is scheduled to visit Costa Rica on March 29.

Dirk Waem | EFE

U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden will be visiting Costa Rica later this month, the Casa Presidencial announced Thursday.

Biden, the first member of the Barack Obama administration to visit Latin America, will stop by Costa Rica March 29 and 30, after participating in The Progressive Leaders Forum in Viña del Mar, Chile, on March 27 and 28.

Chile and Costa Rica are the only two Latin American countries currently on Biden's itinerary, according to news reports.

In a statement released Thursday, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias hailed the visit as a mark of increased engagement with Latin America on the part of the White House.

“The visit of Vice President Biden is a clear sign of renewed interest of the U.S. government with its closest partners and neighbors,” Arias said.

Biden, 66, is a seasoned hand in U.S. foreign policy, having previously served in the Senate, where he was chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. As a senator, Biden voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which Arias had lobbied hard to pass in Costa Rica, citing a lack of labor or environmental standards.

Biden will be accompanied by his wife, Jill, and is the highest-level visitor from the United States since then-President Bill Clinton came to Costa Rica in May 1997.

Arias had sent a letter to Obama following Obama's inauguration inviting the new U.S. president to visit Costa Rica. The first meeting between the two presidents will likely be at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, hosted by Trinidad and Tobago next month.

“In a few weeks will be the Summit of the Americas, in which I hope to see President Obama,” Arias said. “This visit offers us a valuable prior opportunity for dialogue and agreement with the U.S. government.”

A former presidential candidate before dropping out of the race in January 2008, Biden was named to the Democratic ticket in July, in part to help shore up Obama's foreign policy credentials. Already, the vice president has been one of Obama's primary envoys to the world, visiting U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Belgium this week.

Two moderately strong earthquakes hit Costa Rica's Southern Zone on Wednesday and were felt throughout much of the national territory, that much everybody could agree on. What caused a bit more consternation was just how big those earthquakes were, with measurements of everything from magnitude 5.2 to 6.3.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) preliminary reports registered a magnitude of 5.7 for the first quake, which struck at 11:24 a.m. near the mouth of the Golfo Dulce, and magnitude 5.9 for the second, which hit 3:03 p.m. a few kilometers farther north in the gulf. USGS have since revised the first quake's measurement to a 5.9 as well.

Local instruments, on the other hand, registered different numbers. The National Seismological Network (RSN) reported magnitudes of both 5.2 and 5.5 for the first quake, while the widely cited Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI) measured it at magnitude 6.3.

For the afternoon quake, RSN and the observatory came closer with their measurements, at 5.7 and 5.8, respectively.

Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist at the USGS' National & International Earthquake Center in Golden, Colorado, said all the readings were accurate and the discrepancies normal. “(Earthquakes) don't send out the same amount of energy in the same directions,” he said, adding that it was typical in his experience that readings for Wednesday's quakes could range from the high magnitude 4 range to the low 6 measurements.

Julie Dutton, Presgrave's colleague at the institute in Golden, however, called the range between magnitude 5.2 and 6.3 for readings on the first quake a “fairly large discrepancy.”

The RSN, a division of the University of Costa Rica, and OVSICORI, based at the National University in Heredia, use readings from local instruments. USGS readings, on the other hand, come from stations all over the world that pick up waves from tectonic movements, send the information to a USGS satellite, which in turn relays the information to USGS Colorado offices, where it is compiled.

Dutton said stations in as far-flung places such as Uzbekistan, Antarctica and Japan will pick up readings from waves generated by Wednesday's quakes in Costa Rica. Undulations from the recent temblors would take about seven to 10 minutes to reach Japan, she said.

“Definitely, you're going to have a better location and magnitude (readings) … if you've got a greater coverage around the earth. It's a matter of triangulation: If you have more spread out information, your results are going to be more precise,” said Dutton.

But Presgrave insisted on the accuracy of all the readings. “I wouldn't say (local institutes') solutions are wrong: They're different.”

USGS receives readings in Costa Rica from OVSICORI's monitoring station in Juntas de Abangares in the northwest province of Guanacaste, just above the Gulf of Nicoya. They also have stations near Barra Colorado Island in Panama and El Rosal in Colombia to the south, and just outside Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Tepiche on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Thursday at 5:23 p.m., a quake centered in the waters off Panama was felt in Costa Rica's Central Valley. OVSICORI reported a magnitude of 6.5, but by that time, local media directly cited USGS, which recorded magnitude 6.2.

Jorge Rodríguez was named Costa Rica's interim environment, energy and telecommunications minister Thursday following the resignation of Roberto Dobles amid an unfolding scandal.

Dobles stepped down after allegations that he awarded a mining concession potentially worth several million dollars to a company controlled by members of his and President Oscar Arias' family. Dobles and Arias are second cousins.

Rodríguez was vice minister under Dobles.

See www.ticotimes.net/topstory.htm for the full story.