Subscribe to our Daily News RSS feed.

Read the Daily News on your mobile device.

Musical “Evita”
Based on the life of former Argentinean First Lady, Evita Perón, in English and Spanish, July 23-24, 8 p.m., National Auditorium, Children's Museum. Info: 2222-7647, 2258-4929.

Sasha Campbell in Concert
Soul and disco, July 23, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú.

“Barroquísimo”
Classic and contemporary dance, July 23-24, 8 p.m., Teatro de la Danza, CENAC. Info: 8881-0552.

¿Dónde nos equivocamos?
Play, July 23-24, 7 p.m., Casa de la Ciudad, Cartago, Av. 2, Ca. 5.

Madera Nueva in Concert
Salsa, July 24, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú.

Gala Dace Shows
July 24-25, 4 p.m., Melico Salazar Theater.

Seminar about Asperger Syndrome in the classrooms
July 24, 8 a.m.-noon, Salón Bromelias, Balmoral Hotel, registration deadline July 23, noon. Info: 2280-0862.

Dance Show
By God's House Cultural Association, July 25, 6 p.m., Teatro de la Danza, CENAC.

Peña Cultural
Including live music, theater, dance, arts, July 25, 5-7 p.m., Cartago Culture House. Info: 2592-3070.

Triathlon
July 25, 8 a.m., Hacienda Pozo Azul, Sarapiquí. Info: 2294-8612, 8376-4938.

Strong rain from a tropical wave this week left dozens of homes destroyed and forced nearly 150 people to flee their homes across Costa Rica's Central Valley.

The storm swept across 20 cantons in the Central Valley and along the Pacific coast, collapsing sewer systems and flooding neighborhoods.

In Santo Domingo de Heredia, north of San José, the torrents and falling trees destroyed 27 houses and damaged an additional 50. In San Pablo de Heredia, 20 homes were flooded.

More than 100 of the evacuees are residents of Heredia.

Emergency officials said the evacuees began to return to their homes Thursday.

According to the National Meteorological Institute (IMN), 90 liters per square meter of rain fell in Barva de Heredia Tuesday night, almost half of July's monthly average of 210 liters per square meter.

River levels soared by up to 12 meters in Heredia during Tuesday night's downpour.

Liberia, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, was hit with 68 liters per square meter of rain Tuesday. The city's average amount for July is 147 liters.

Rains also washed out 15 homes in Pérez Zeledón, a canton in the Southern Zone.

Thursday's deluge has forced the closure of two bridges in Heredia – the Mercedes Norte bridge, 500 meters north of the Palacio de los Deportes, and the bridge that crosses the Río Pirro in Guararí.

The Public Works and Transport Ministry (MOPT) also has narrowed to one lane the bridge between Cinco Esquinas and Tibás, a district north of San José. One side of the two-lane bridge collapsed Tuesday. Crews will begin repairs to the bridge on Friday.

On Thursday, due to the threat of landslides from extremely saturated soil, the National Emergency Commission (CNE) issued a green alert for the Central Pacific, the Central Valley, the Brunca region in southern Costa Rica and Chorotega in Guanacaste, northwest of San José.

The green alert is the first of the three warning levels and the CNE recommends that residents in these areas be cautious of landslides and flooded sewer systems.

Laura Chinchilla's two-month track record as Costa Rican president has earned her a 64 percent approval rating, according to CID-Gallup, not quite as high as her colleagues in Panama and El Salvador, but on par with that of her predecessor Oscar Arias when he left office.

She assumed the reins of the country in May with 46.7 percent of the vote. And while her closest competitor in the election trailed behind her by 20 percentage points, a series of events in the first few weeks may give the reason for her runner-up status to El Salvadorian President Mauricio Funes (76 percent) and Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli (66 percent).

Chinchilla, 51, received the leftovers of two messes born out of the Arias administration: the premature opening of the Caldera Highway and the self-appointment of former Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno to the ambassadorship to the United Nations. But she created some stirrings of her own when she backed a 72 percent legislative pay raise, two weeks into her term – later to announce should would veto the wage increase.

She still outpaces Honduran President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo (60 percent), Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom (50 percent) and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega (38 percent).

The CID-Gallup polls were based on at least 1,000 interviews per country.

A fungal disease has wiped out at least 30 species of amphibians in central Panama, according to a study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Five of the species that became extinct had not yet even been formally identified.

The study confirmed a worldwide trend of amphibian populations being decimated by a fungal pathogen called chytrid. Three U.S. researchers studying amphibians in El Copé, Panama detailed the presence of the species from 1998 to 2003 – before the fungus' arrival – and then after the fungus' arrival from 2006 to 2008. They saw a drastic drop in the number of species from 63 to 33.

A sixth of those species now absent from Panama's Omar Torrijos National Park had not been catalogued before.

"It's sadly ironic that we are discovering new species nearly as fast as we are losing them," Andrew Crawford told the United Kingdom's daily the Independent. Crawford, of the University of the Andes in Colombia, led the study.

The fungus moves fast and it's difficult to stop the devastation once it infests a certain area. The Independent pointed out that one of the most exemplary cases of the fungus-driven decline in amphibian populations occurred in Costa Rica. In the 1980s, the fungus destroyed the golden toad population in Monteverde, in north-central Costa Rica. By 1989, the golden toad was extinct. Some experts say global warming contributed to the festering of the fungus in the areas where it has wreaked havoc on amphibian populations.