Intellectual property officials from the Unidad de Investigación Especializada seized over 1,500 illegal compact discs at the Mercado Central in Heredia. 

Officials say that they found 10 booths selling the pirated discs at the local market. According to an official report, locals in the Heredia community notified authorities of pirated disc vendors. 

According to the report, all of those persons arrested were Nicaraguan. Each suspect could face up to three years in prison if found guilty. 

Copa Airlines makes deal
with No. 2 Colombian carrier

Representatives from Copa airlines and AeroRepublica announced that the two companies had forged a corporate alliance.

The alliance will offer both airlines a more solid fiscal foundation,  access to new markets, and will allow the airlines to offer more benefits to their customers, according to a release.

AeroRepublica, the second largest airline in Colombia, will continue to operate as an independent airline. The airline will maintain its corporate identity but will now be able to draw upon Copa’s resources.

The alliance comes a year after Copa’s failed attempt to acquire Colombia’s largest carrier, Avianca. Avianca was eventually purchased by Brazil’s Grupo Synergy.
 

'Utilitarian identity'
is theme of art show

The Sophia Wanamaker gallery will open its newest exhibition, UtilizARTE, March 31.

The exhibition features local ceramic pieces designed by Carmen Aguilar of Costa Rica. Ms. Aguilar has worked extensively with artists from the Universidad de Costa Rica. 

Ms. Aguilar’s work in the exhibition was created with a utilitarian vision. The pieces were designed from the ground up and are intended to display Costa Rica’s utilitarian identity. 

The Sophia Wanamaker gallery is located inside the Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano in Los Yoses.
 

Anti-disaster discussion
focuses on El Niño

Today is the final day of a forum held in San José to discuss preventative measures against natural disasters associated with El Niño.

The forum, which began Monday, was sponsored by the Grupo 
de Trabajo de Ciencia y Tecnología del Foro de Cooperación Asia del  Este-América Latina.

Costa Rica joined the group in 2001 and since then, the country has become an important leader, coordinating forums on work, education, and technology. 

At the meeting’s inauguration Monday, Marco Vinicio Vargas , acting minister of Relaciones Exteriores y Culto, said that the conference was vital for the region so that neighboring countries can share important knowledge.

Young artist to present
opera in Los Yoses

The Eugene O’Neill Theater in San Pedro will host a Young Artist Opera Wednesday at 8 p.m.

The opera will be performed by local youths along with several Americans from Florida State University.

Matthew Lata from the United States directs the semi-scenic opera. Several of the performers were coached by Christine  Komatsu, director of the Compañía Lírica Nacional 

The Eugene O’Neill Theater is located in the Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano, Los Yoses. For more information about the opera contact Isabel Zúñiga at the Compañía Lírica Nacional at 222-8571.

Leftover fireworks burn
generating white cloud

By the A.M. Costa Rica staff

After lighting the sky Sunday night with fireworks to mark the end of a nearby art festival, technicians seem to have left some unburned fireworks.

The scene was the rooftop of the Aurola Holiday Inn.

About 8 a.m. Monday rays from the sun ignited what was left behind giving the city yet another show. Thick clouds of white smoke swept  south from the hotel skyscraper in north San José.

There was little damage, and hotel guests were not forced into the street. However, firemen and the technicians in charge of the fireworks show differed on the quantity of material that ignited. Firemen said 50 kilos (some 110 pounds). The technicians said about a pound.

After a short drop in late 2004, illegal shark finning is back on the rise in Costa Rica, according to a local aquatic restoration group,

Shark finning involves cutting the fin off of a captured shark for use in soups and other delicacies. The sharks are thrown back into the water after their fins are cut off. Without their fins, however, the sharks sink to the bottom of the sea and die.

According to a statement released by the Programa Restauración de Tortugas Marinas, recent changes in harbor laws have once again left sharks in the areas near Costa Rica in danger. 

Costa Rica passed a law in November that forbade the landing of foreign vessels at private docks. Several aquatic organizations and shark experts backed the decision, stating that the law would prevent future shark finning.  Another law also prohibits finning.

Randall Arauz, president of the restoration program says that public docks must be used, "because the public interest cannot be protected behind the high walls and razor wire at the private docks."

Custom officials state that a lack of public docks forced the change. The restoration program’s statement, however, claims that customs officials have "had over eight years to make minor repairs to the public dock in Puntarenas and have done nothing."

The restoration group’s statement also reports that customs agents allowed the illegal docking of foreign ships at private docks before the resolution was passed.

"Customs has allowed illegal landings by foreign vessels at private docks to be the norm." Arauz said. 

The group filed a suit against customs at the Sala IV constitutional court a year ago for allowing foreign vessels to land at private docks. The court has not yet ruled on the case. A criminal case has also been filed against a customs manager, Omar Jimenez Camareno, in the Puntarenas court. 

The aquatic restoration group is a non-profit association, headquartered in San José. Its mission is to protect the diverse habitats along the Central American isthmus and international waters around Costa Rica.

Services ranging from Palm Sunday to Easter are scheduled by the Escazú  Christian Fellowship, an international, interdenominational,  English-language church serving residents throughout the metropolitan area. Included is an Easter sunrise service.

The week will begin with a Palm Sunday service at 5 p.m. March 20. The  sermon topic that day will be "The Kingdom, The Power and The Glory." This  service celebrates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem a week before his  death.

On Maundy Thursday, March 24, church members will participate in a foot washing service at the home of a church member. This service commemorates  the act of Jesus who washed his disciples’ feet as a sign of ministry and  love. This service will begin at 7 p.m.

The Good Friday service will be celebrated cooperatively with International  Baptist Church at 6 

On Easter Sunday, the members of Escazú Christian Fellowship will join with  International Baptist Church to sponsor a Community Sunrise Service,  starting at 7 a.m. Special seasonal music and worship thorough  interpretative dance will be a part of the service. An Easter Brunch and  Easter Egg Hunt will follow.

The Fellowship also will hold its regular weekly service at 5 p.m. Easter Sunday  evening.

All of these events are open to the public, and all except the Maundy  Thursday service will be held in the facilities of International Baptist  Church just north of the Guachipelin exit on the Santa Ana highway.

For information about these services or about Escazú Christian Fellowship,  call 395-9653.

Uruguay has become the latest in a string of South American nations to swear in a socialist or left-leaning president. But while many of today's leaders in the region profess socialist ideals and have pursued closer ties to Fidel Castro's Cuba, they have not opted to follow the Cuban model and have worked quietly to maintain a friendly posture to foreign business interests. 

"It is good that fraternal nations are united. In the name of the Uruguayan people, I am pleased to welcome the Cuban people, once again, in this house to strengthen the relationship and friendship that never should have been broken," he said.

"Uruguay can count on the Cuban revolution and the people of Cuba forever," said Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, who was appearing at the Uruguayan leader's side.

Uruguay is but the latest South American nation to elect a left-leaning leader, joining Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela. If the 1990s was an era of free-market reforms implemented by governments eager to trumpet closer ties with Washington, the new millennium has seen a reversal of the trend. 

No longer do the region's leaders speak of the privatization of government assets, except to lambaste what most regard as a failed experiment foisted on them by the International Monetary Fund and the United States. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and other leaders have been blunt in their criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and have placed an emphasis on strengthening regional trade over a hemisphere-wide pact that would include the United States.

Riordan Roett is director of Western Hemisphere studies at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. Roett says the ascendancy of left-of-center leaders in South America is no accident. 

But despite being swept to power on socialist rhetoric, President Lula da Silva and other South American leaders have surprised critics and angered core supporters by setting aside radical notions of massive state intervention in the economy. Professor Roett says today's South American governments want to be seen as business-friendly, but with a stronger emphasis on helping the poor and disadvantaged.

"They are less socialist than they are — not necessarily anti-market, but pro-people, pro-social distribution, pro-reducing income inequality, more for social justice. But in a relatively open-market framework, because this new generation understands perfectly well how the market operates," he said.

Even the man seen as South America's fiercest disciple of socialism, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, says his fellow-South American leaders are bound by pragmatism, not ideology.  "A good team is being organized. I would not say an ideological group, but a group of progressive people who are sympathetic to the needs of the people. This is what really matters," Chavez told reporters at the Vázquez inauguration in Montevideo.

Analysts say the embrace of Cuba by Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and other nations in the region plays to the hard-line leftist elements within their leaders' respective political parties and coalitions, but in no way signifies a wish to emulate the Cuban Communist model.

At the State Department last week, spokesman Richard Boucher was asked about U.S. relations with Uruguay's new government, as well as other left-of-center governments in the region. "We will have to see how our relationship evolves. Certainly we look forward to working with all countries in the hemisphere on important issues," he said.

Observers say Washington's wait-and-see approach is likely to be mirrored by President Vázquez.

LA PAZ, Bolivia —  President Carlos Mesa has resigned after several days of anti-government protests.

President Mesa submitted his resignation to Bolivia's Congress Monday. He says he is leaving after only 17 months in office because the protests threaten the country's oil and gas industry.

Speaking in Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called on Bolivia's political leaders to 

Mesa, a political independent, became president in October 2003 when a wave of violent protests drove out his predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.

Recent protests have blocked roads in the country and forced the government to deploy the military to maintain control of some oil fields.