Free film screening
“El Cielo Rojo,” 5 p.m., Cartago Culture Center, Cartago.

Martes por la noche c oncerts
Christian González (flute), Yamileth Pérez (clarinet), Isabel Jeremías (bassoon), Cristian Guandique (cello) and Manuel Matarrita (piano), playing works by Haydn and Mendelssohn, 7 p.m., UCR School of Music, San Pedro.

Sunset Music
Featuring soprano Laura Corrales and tenor Juan Pablo Marín, 5 p.m. National Theater.

“El lugar de los seres imaginados”
Drama, Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m., Vargas Calvo Theater, in National Theater. Info: 2257-1612.

Costa Rica is the second-most attractive country for foreign investors in the Central American and Caribbean region, according to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Magazine.

In a report published Tuesday, FDI magazine released rankings of the region's “foreign direct investment countries of the future,” in which Puerto Rico placed first, with Costa Rica close on its heels.

A panel of three judges graded 31 Central American and Caribbean destinations across seven categories to determine final rankings. The categories scored were: economic potential, business friendliness, quality of life, human resources, infrastructure, cost effectiveness and FDI strategy. Each category was scored on a 10-point scale.

Of the seven categories, Costa Rica ranked in the top five out of five of them, including first in human resources. Costa Rica's lowest ranking was in cost effectiveness, the only category in which they did not receive a top 10 ranking.

This is the second consecutive top billing for Puerto Rico by FDI Magazine, which ranked the Caribbean island No. 1 in 2007, the last time rankings were tabulated. Costa Rica finished just three points behind the Caribbean island.

The Dominican Republic ranked third and earned the top ranking in the categories of economic potential and FDI strategy. Panama was ranked fourth and Guatemala fifth.

According to FDI Magazine, two programs, known as FDI Markets and FDI Benchmark, were used to generate scores for the rankings. FDI Markets is a database that tracks foreign direct investment on a real-time basis while FDI Benchmark is a database that ranks global locations on how appealing they are to foreign investors. FDI Magazine reports that the data compiled by FDI Markets and FDI Benchmark provided an objective measure to create the “Countries of the Future” rankings.

The judges included Alfredo Coutino, the d irector for Latin America Moody's Economy.com, John Bowers, owner of Bowers Consulting, and Darryl White, h ead of investment banking at the RBTT Merchant Bank Limited, which serves Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean region.

Costa Rica's Isla de Coco has received ¢34.5 million (about $60,000) worth of new equipment from Conservation International, a global nonprofit organization, to help protect the treasured island.

The group made the donation as part of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape Project, a program dedicated to marine area protection in Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama.

The equipment donated consists of two three-person kayaks, several communication radios and GPS systems and an electric generator.

“This donation is of transcendental importance for the conservation of the marine species of the island,” said Environment Minister Jorge Rodríguez in a statement.

The Isla de Coco covers approximately nine square miles, and its waters are famous for impressive populations of hammerhead sharks, rays, dolphins and a host of other marine animals.

A recent spike in poaching on and around the island has led to increased pressure for closer surveillance of the area. The Costa Rican government has been accused by some environmental organizations of being too passive in its enforcement of international laws that prohibit shark finning and the capture of other endangered species around the island.

A collaborative center that will link industry leaders and scientists in the search for biological innovation in the agro-industrial sector was opened Tuesday in the western San José district of Pavas.

The facility for the National Center for Biotechnological Innovation (CENIBiot) is meant to provide space and opportunity for companies to work with some of the leading biological researchers in the region, said Patricia Ugalde, a spokeswoman for the center.

“The idea, right now, is that the projects will be pursued through an alliance between the companies and the researchers,” Ugalde said. The agro-industrial sector will team up with researchers to increase productivity or by developing bio-fuels and pharmaceuticals, for example.

President Oscar Arias drew headlines for his appearance at the opening. It was his first public appearance since he secluded himself in his home a week earlier after discovering he had contracted the H1N1 flu virus. The antivirus had done its job and helped him with a swift recovery, he said.

The 1,690 square meter CENIBiot facility contains an administrative center and offices, but more prominent are the five laboratories, each with a separate purpose.

The labs will focus on microorganism research, the cell structure of plants, analytical research, genome and molecular biology experimentation, and digital image analysis.

Twenty-five projects are already lined up to begin work, Ugalde said, and the facility provides more than enough space and equipment.

The facility is the only one of its kind in all of Central America, and rivals Mexican and South American competitors in size and capacity, Ugalde said.

The Science and Technology Ministry and the European Union were the project's main funders. According to a statement, the European Union is the second largest market for the output of Costa Rica's agro-industrial sector, which is composed of close to 3,000 companies providing nearly 240,000 jobs across the country.