Sofía Dorante                    Juan José Bolaños




The orchestra is part of the Instituto Nacional de la Música.

Dmitri Shostakóvitch and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov are on the program. More than 70 young musicians will participate.

Marvin Araya, director of the orchestra, notes that Rimsky-Korsakov's “Scheherazade” is a musical description of "A Thousand and One Nights."

Bolaño, a native Guatemalan, began his studies at age 14 and joined the orchestra here in 2011. Ms. Dorante began with the violin at age 5 in her native Venezuela in Caracas.


Baroque music duo will play
Thursday in Alajuela museum


Baroque music is on the program when the Museo Histórico Cultural Juan Santamaría in Alajuela presents its Teatro al Mediodía en el Museo Thursday at 12:10 a.m.

Performers are Túpac Amarulloa and Katarzyna Bartoszeck, who specialize in the music of the 17th and 18th centuries. They have been playing together for three years and both are teachers at the Universidad Nacional.


Expat network celebrating
the one-millionth member


After six years of successfully connecting expatriates and global minds, InterNations has just hit the 1-million-member mark.  The organization said that this was a significant milestone. The Munich-based start-up was founded in autumn 2007. It now has members of all nationalities in almost 400 cities around the world.

InterNations says it is the largest expat community worldwide. The social network wants to make life abroad easier by offering its members a variety of opportunities for settling in and socializing in their new hometowns in capitals and major cities all over and in Central and South America, it said.

InterNations is present in every country on the Latin American market. The organization said that the five biggest communities in the region, with the highest number of members, are as follows: São Paulo (13,000+), Santiago de Chile (8,000+), Mexico City (circa 8,000), Rio de Janeiro (circa 6,500), and Buenos Aires (6,000).  The newest – and therefore smallest – additions to the InterNations family are the local communities in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Monterrey, Mexico), Viña del Mar, Chile, and Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Regular InterNations events take place in about 350 cities worldwide every month. The overwhelming success of the platform depends on the fact that getting to know other international people is not limited to the computer screen, the organization said.

For example, in Bogotá and Rio de Janeiro, InterNations offers two networking events per month. In Lima, Mexico City, and São Paulo, the local ambassador teams, the committed community members organizing the get-togethers, even schedule three gatherings for their expats every month. So far, the InterNations Community in San José provides one monthly event. The local get-together in the Tico capital average 80 or 90 foreign residents and global-minded locals.

Moreover, InterNations members meet up in smaller groups dedicated to specific interests, such as sports, expat families with children, business networking and leisure.

Some of these activity groups are also part of the InterNations Charity Empowerment Program. The goal is to gradually establish one sustainable social project in as many InterNations communities.

InterNations tries to provide expats all over the world with the information they may require when relocating to a new destination. The online guides give an overview of 65 countries, as well as 70 major cities, around the globe. In Latin America, these destinations include Costa Rica and Panama, among many other places. In local forums and discussion groups, members share their own experience of living abroad. They give useful tips on their new surroundings and pass on essential addresses, like international schools, hospitals, and restaurants, in the local directories.


Drug unit's marijuana patrol
visits area around Bagaces


The Policía de Control de Drogas said Tuesday that its officers had destroyed some 73.259 marijuana plants in Limonal de Bagaces and La Virgen de Bagaces, Guanacaste.

So far this year, officers of the security ministry have destroyed 1.4 million marijuana plants weighing about 1.7 million kilos, the ministry said.


Slumbering space probe
set to wake up in January


The comet-chasing mission Rosetta will wake up in 100 days time from deep-space hibernation to reach the destination it has been cruising towards for a decade.

Comets are the primitive building blocks of the Solar System and the likely source of much of Earth’s water, perhaps even delivering to Earth the ingredients that helped life evolve.

By studying the nature of a comet close up with an orbiter and lander, Rosetta will show more about the role of comets in the evolution of the Solar System.

Rosetta was launched on March 2, 2004, and through a complex series of flybys – three times past Earth and once past Mars – set course to its destination: comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. It also flew by and imaged two asteroids, Steins on  Sept. 5, 2008 and Lutetia on July 10, 2010.

In July 2011 European Space Agency's Rosetta was put into deep-space hibernation for the coldest, most distant leg of the journey as it traveled some 800 million kilometers from the Sun, close to the orbit of Jupiter. The spacecraft was oriented so that its solar wings faced the Sun to receive as much sunlight as possible, and it was placed into a slow spin to maintain stability.

Now, as both the comet and the spacecraft are on the return journey back into the inner Solar System, the Rosetta team is preparing for the spacecraft to wake up Jan. 20.

Once it wakes up, Rosetta will first warm up its navigation instruments and then it must stop spinning to point its main antenna at Earth, to let the ground team know it is still alive.


Decision on appeal in Russia
could jail big Putin opponent


Convicted at a trial he describes as Vladimir Putin's revenge for his political challenge, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny faces five years in prison if his appeal against a theft conviction is rejected today.
 
The court hearing in the remote city of Kirov also poses a conundrum for President Putin.
 
Jailing Navalny would keep Putin's most prominent critic out of elections for years, curtailing any threat from a young rival with presidential ambitions who scored a strong second-place showing in a Moscow mayoral vote last month.
 
But it could also revive street protests by Putin's opponents and human rights activists over what they see as a clampdown on dissent since the 61-year-old president started a six-year third term in 2012.
 
While Putin denies exerting influence over the courts, many Russians suspect that rulings in high-profile cases are dictated by the Kremlin and result from careful political calculation.
 
“The Kremlin has an unpleasant decision to make,” said Dmitry Oreshkin, a political analyst.
 
A ruling upholding the five-year sentence would be seen by many as evidence that tough tactics will continue despite signals meant to suggest a let-up, such as Putin's promise of a prisoner amnesty later this year.
 
A blogger against corruption among Russia's elite, Navalny helped lead the biggest protests of Putin's 13-year rule, which were stoked by allegations of fraud in a December 2011 parliamentary election.
 
The protests have faded, but Navalny has emerged as the main opposition leader, making his trial the most closely watched in Russia since jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's second conviction in 2010.
 
Accused of stealing timber while working as an adviser to the governor of the Kirov region in 2009, Navalny, who denies wrongdoing, was convicted of large-scale theft in July and sentenced to five years in prison.
 
But he was unexpectedly freed from custody the following day to allow him to continue his campaign for Moscow mayor.