Subscribe to our Daily News RSS feed.

Read the Daily News on your mobile device.

Art Camp
With Rosario Mendivil, July 12-16, 19-23, Aug. 9-13. Info: 8346-3030, ro.artcamp@gmail.com.

La paz perpetua ”
Drama, through July 12, Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 5 p.m., Oscar Fessler Theater, Barrio Escalante. Info: 2221-1273.

Ana Wien
Sculptures, July 8-13, Los Sueños Marriott Ocean & Golf Resort, Playa Herradura, Central Pacific; Aug. 12-Sept. 12, Confort Suizo, Plaza Itskatzú, Escazú. Info: www.anawien.com.

CHANGUINOLA, Panama – The governor of the northern Panamanian province of Bocas del Toro, Bonifacio Abrego, said Sunday that he had decided against declaring a curfew for the city of Changuinola. Abrego said that calm had returned to the city after three days of violent confrontation between striking banana workers and police. The province of Bocas del Toro borders Costa Rica on the Caribbean coast.

Meanwhile, the Panamanian president, Ricardo Martinelli, vowed that he would uphold the controversial Law 30, which was the cause of the strike.

On Saturday, the Panamanian government ordered the reopening of the Changuinola airport, and police confirmed that the highway that connects the city to the rest of the country had been cleared. The road had been blocked for three days by strikers.

Police sources told EFE that Changuinola was calm Sunday morning after a night during which the offices of the Labor Ministry were attacked and two cars and a boat belonging to the agency were burned. The latest violence threatened to derail negotiations between the government and unions in the city.

The workers are demanding the repeal of recently enacted Law 30, which modifies a series of existing laws, including the Labor Code. Union leaders claim the law significantly weakens the position of workers and unions. Among other things, Law 30 establishes that the payment of union dues is no longer obligatory, contracts of striking workers can be suspended, companies can hire replacement workers during strikes, and police can be used to guarantee the “protection” and continued operation of companies affected by strikes. Labor organizations are challenging the law's constitutionality.

Martinelli said that the government seeks dialogue and not confrontation, but accused union leaders of wanting to “sow violence in Changuinola,” and vowed that this would not be tolerated.

The strikes in Changuinola, which began last week, have left at least two dead and more than a hundred injured.

–EFE

The school principal who was shot in the head by a 17-year-old student on July 2 passed away early Sunday morning, according to hospital authorities.

Nancy María Chaverri, 49, was director of Colegio Montebello, a private school in Heredia, north of San José.

The incident has sparked a nationwide campaign to stem violence in the country's public schools, as educators across Costa Rica met to discuss how to prevent this type of incident in the future.

“We are doing some things, but we have to be doing more,” President Laura Chinchilla said. “We need a more ambitious program to confront violence in schools.”

If the celebration at the Club Campestre de España in San Antonio de Belén in Heredia in any way reflected the party in Spain on Sunday night, it's a safe bet that not much will be accomplished there on Monday.

On Sunday afternoon, hundreds of red- and yellow-clad Spanish fans sang, drank, ate paella and danced into the night as they celebrated Spain's first-ever FIFA World Cup championship, a 1-0 extra time victory over the Netherlands. It was a day the country of Spain and many Spanish-born Costa Rican residents will cherish forever.

“I don't think this was the best game we played all tournament,” said Ricardo Casero, who moved to Costa Rica from northern Spain several years ago. “But who cares. No one will remember that. They will only remember that this was the day Spain won their first ever World Cup. Viva España! Viva España! ”

After a scoreless, thrilling, first 115 minutes of play, Spanish midfielder Andres Iniesta broke the deadlock in extra time with a right footed blast that whizzed under the outstretched arm Dutch goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg into the far corner. Iniesta's goal, the biggest in the history of Spanish soccer, sent the Spanish fans at the Club Campestre into mass hysteria, expressing their jubilation through screams, song, tears or dance.

As is typical in soccer, had one kick or one deflection occurred a different way, it could have been the Dutch celebrating their first-ever World Cup championship. The opportunity that most Dutch fans and players will most lament occurred in the 62nd minute, when Dutch midfielder Wesley Sneijder played a pass through the defense to teammate Arjen Robben, who was barreling towards the Spanish goal. Robben, one of the world's best players, found himself alone with Spanish keeper Iker Casillas, who met Robben nearly at the top of his 18-yard box. Robben shot to his left and, though Casillas fell the opposite way, he was able to deflect the ball with his outstretched right foot. The deflection thwarted Holland's best scoring chance of the game.

“Casillas was an absolute hero for us in this World Cup,” said Jordi Triquell, a Spainard who has lived in Costa Rica for eight years. “He saved us time and time again. Thank God for ‘Saint Iker' (Casillas).”

In the tournament, the Spanish conceded only two goals in seven games. After losing their opening match to Switzerland, the Spanish won six games, including four consecutive 1-0 victories.

“When we scored, I had no idea who scored it,” Triquell. “I didn't know how to react. I was screaming and jumping and hugging everyone around me. Never have Spanish fans been able to enjoy a moment as marvellous as today. What a day! Viva España !”

The number of people who use the online social network Twitter in Costa Rica has grown 103 percent over the last year. An estimated 11,041 Ticos use it.

In Costa Rica and elsewhere, Twitter's become the platform for breaking news, as people post to twitter.com before any other medium.

For example, seconds after an earthquake, you'll see messages flash across the computer screen – so quickly you'd think the people posting had anticipated the tremor; with traditional news sources such as online newspapers or television, reports take minutes.

“It was first thought of as a social network. Now, more and more people are seeing it as an information network,” said Dom Sagolla, co-creater of Twitter, during an all-day seminar on Friday, which was part the Summit of the Future being held at Costa Rica's Real InterContinental Hotel.

He added that another benefit is that it turns everyone into a reporter.

When a plane landed in the Hudson River in New York City in January 2009, someone snapped a photo and uploaded it onto his Twitter account. It was that photo that was used on CNN.com and other news sources until other images could becompiled. The online network also helped in intelligence gathering during the November, 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, as people in hiding in their home alerted authorities as to the terrorists' locations.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is much like an online chat, except the text a user sends is visible to people beyond just those participating in a conversation. Posts are limited to 140 characters.

In Costa Rica, all the major media sources are posting, as well as President Laura Chinchilla and government agencies such as the Costa Rica Electricity Institute and museums, bringing real-time information to their followers.

Although the growth rate of Costa Ricans' use of Twitter is in the triple digits, it's far behind other countries in tweets per capita. Singapore tops the worldwide list, according to Sagolla, nearly doubling the number of tweets of the second place country, the Netherlands. Australia, New Zealand and the United States occupy third, fourth and fifth place respectively.

You can follow The Tico Times online at twitter.com/theticotimes.

Dave Morin envisions a future in which cars will be geared up to tell you what music friends are listening to and if friends are driving nearby. A guy at a bar will know if the woman sitting two tables away shares as much as 90 percent of common tastes in everything that matters – or just 2 percent.

He says it'll all be possible thanks to the online social networking giant Facebook, and that the future is almost here.

Speaking at the Summit of the Future at Costa Rica's Real InterContinental Hotel, Morin recounted the story of Facebook, where he worked until leaving earlier this year to create a startup of his own.

“The Web is not about information,” he said, taking a quiet jab at the network's rival, Google, which prides itself on supreme organization of information. “The argument we tried to make at Facebook is that the Web is about people.”

Morin detailed Facebook's transformation from its origins in 2004 as a virtual dorm room for college friends to a massive cyber landscape used by people from all walks of life around the globe. He was manager of Facebook Platform, a program that has enabled companies, from major news network CNN to beverage-maker and sports sponsor Red Bull, to integrate Facebook, accessing its millions of users.

Facebook has more than 400 million active users, all sharing information, photos, videos, personal updates, sometimes organizing parties or huge protests. Costa Rica experienced Facebook's protest pull-factor in February 2008 when residents were summoned through Facebook to join a multi-city march organized by Colombians against a drug-running rebel group called the FARC (TT, Feb. 8, 2008).

Morin spoke in detail about the “social graph,” a coveted cross-section of the world that companies like Facebook have tried to harness for years, noting that Facebook has had a viral reaction across the graph. “Facebook's mission is to map out the entire social graph of the entire world,” he said. Businesses, he said, are realizing the platform's potential, launching company pages, groups, events, even video games within the network site's framework.

After the summit, Arturo Garro, a 40-year-old Costa Rican frequent social media user who writes the blog Asi como lo oye (http://asicomolooye.ticoblogger.com/), said the event was engrossing.

“The talk in the morning on Twitter was very interesting, very illustrative,” he said. And on Morin's talk in the afternoon, he said, “all the future developments – in television, cars, picking up girls – that's what really called my attention.”