Both the Fuerza Pública and the Policía Municipal de San José will be out in force Saturday night for the annual Festival de la Luz, the traditional Christmas parade.

The Fuerza Pública said it will have 900 officers covering the area from La Sabana along Paseo Colón through Avenida 2 to the Plaza de la Democracia, the parade route.

The festival of lights parade is not usually one for serious crime, but many of the spectators will be youngsters, so police usually try to deter lawbreakers beforehand.

This year is no different, said Comisario Wálter Navarro, director general of the police force. "We try to avoid completely any intrusion on the public order and maintain a stable and tranquil environment for the persons who enjoy the festival," he aid.

In addition to the usual foot patrols, police will have the Unidad de Intervención Policial, the tactical squad, and the police K-9 unit. In addition the air units will be flying. Advanced students from the Academia Nacional de Policía also will be working.

The parade kicks off at 7 p.m. But many parents with youngsters find they can see the major floats better Saturday afternoon when they are parked along Parque la Sabana. The parade will move east from there into the downtown.

Campaign stepped up
against hitting children

The nation’s ombudsman is stepping up a campaign against corporal punishment of youngsters.

In a press conference Wednesday the ombudsman’s office, properly called the Defensor de los Habitantes, said student-on-student violence took place nearly 84,000 times a year and that aggression between teachers and students takes place about 4,300 times.

Such figures confirm the idea that a lot of violence exists involving children and adolescents, said the office. A release cited 23,000 cases of physical, psychological or sexual abuse, according to figures provided by the Patronato Nacional de la Infancia.

The office of the Defensor has proposed legislation to outlaw corporal punishment of children, including that by parents.

The office said that aggression against children causes irreversible effects, including loss of self esteem, interference with studies and a breakdown in communication between parents and children. Such effects engender more violence and create feelings of loneliness, sadness and abandonment and can cause additional physical damage, it said.

The office also said that parents suffer, too, from anxiety and guilt and the need to justify this type of punishment.

Costa Rican Christmas
planned by symphonies

The symphony orchestra, the juvenile orchestra and the symphony chorus will get together tonight and Friday for a special Costa Rican Christmas concert in the Teatro Popular Melico Salazar opposite Parque Central on Avenida 2.

The music begins at 8 p.m. both nights. Thursday’s performance is a benefit for the Hospicio de Huérfanos de San José. Admission is 2,000 colons ($4.40) but there are discounts for senior citizens and students.

The Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional is under the baton of Alejandro Gutiérrez.

The program includes Costa Rican Christmas carols by Brunilda de Portilla, a Guanacaste composer. The carols treat coffee production, nature, the Caribbean and children in the country.

Also on the program is "Cantos de Guanacaste"  by Carlos Guzmán and traditional Christmas favorites such as "Silent Night," a Handel composition and "Oh. Come, All Ye Faithful" in Latin.

Cuban travel agency gets
blacklisted by U.S. Treasury

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Treasury Department has identified the travel agency Tour & Marketing International Ltd. as a national of Cuba, thus restricting its business dealings with U.S. citizens.

The Treasury Department issued a press release Wednesday announcing the initiative as "another step against Fidel Castro's repressive regime." 

Juan Carlos Zarate, the Treasury Department's secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, described the Cuban online travel agency as "a generator of resources that the Cuban regime uses to oppress its people." The travel agency also "facilitates the evasion of U.S. sanction policy" by offering its services to U.S. citizens "regardless of whether they have a Treasury-issued license to travel to the sanctioned country," according to the Treasury Department.

Under the terms of the new Treasury Department action, "persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction may not engage in any transactions with Tour & Marketing International Ltd. unless authorized by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control," the department said. "In addition, all property of Tour & Marketing International Ltd. that is in the possession of persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction is blocked." 

More than two-thirds of the world’s coral reefs are on the verge of collapse or have already been destroyed, but a few countries are working to limit further damage. That is the conclusion of a new report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network released this week.

"We know what the problems are," says Clive Wilkinson, the lead author of the report. "We know how to fix them. We just have to do it."

Coral reefs are vital to life on earth. Hundreds of millions of people depend on these vast underwater ecosystems for food and jobs.  Reefs protect coastlines from erosion, and are home to one quarter of all known marine species. The new report, compiled by 240 scientists from 96 countries, measures an 11 percent decline in coral reefs since the last survey two years ago.

The problems are said to be everywhere — from the Persian Gulf, where 65 percent of the reefs have been destroyed — to oceans in South and Southeast Asia, which have lost nearly half their reef cover.  Damage in the Caribbean is even worse. "A recent analysis," notes Wilkinson, "said that there has been an 80 percent drop in coral reef cover in many Caribbean reefs from bleaching disease, hurricanes, chronic overfishing, etc."

In 1998, a once-every-1,000-year El Niño-related weather event destroyed 16 percent of all reefs worldwide. The warmer ocean temperatures caused corals to eject vital plant tissues and die, a process called bleaching. The Monitoring Network report says bleaching could occur more frequently in the future, due to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases in the atmosphere.

Wilkinson said shorter-term stresses include disease, 

The report says governments, international agencies, environmental groups and lending institutions must work together to protect coral reefs.  Already, France and Sweden have made major commitments. 

The United States is also backing protection efforts. "In our coral reef conservation program, we have awarded nearly $10 million in grants to support coral reef science and management in the United States and internationally," said Conrad C. Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We have been working on an accelerated process in the last year or two to create a national marine sanctuary, which encompasses all of the northwest Hawaiian Islands, which would preserve the largest extra-tropical reef system in the world."

Protection is a key to reef survival. Wilkinson says Australia has taken the lead by greatly expanding protected areas around the Great Barrier Reef. "They have upped from 5 percent protection to 33 percent," he says, "and that has set the benchmark for the rest of the world. That was because they saw a series of declines in turtles, fishing was increasing, the sediment runoff was increasing. So they basically drew the line in the sand and said, 'we need more protection.'"

The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network supports protected no-take areas, which have been shown to actually increase fishing yields. Other recommendations in the report include reducing pollution and barring dynamite fishing. Wilkinson calls the study a guide for decision makers to help reverse current trends. He says reefs can recover, but only with a greater hands-on commitment by governments worldwide.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The World Bank has approved a series of loans aimed at economic development and poverty reduction in Latin American.

In a series of statements issued Tuesday here, the bank announced loan programs to Argentina, Peru and Brazil.

The bank approved a $200 million loan to Argentina designed to improve infrastructure in the Province of 

Another $200 million loan was approved for Peru to improve social programs for the poor and enhance the nation's economic competitiveness.

A $4.8 million loan was awarded to Brazil's northern Amapa State. The loan will subsidize a program designed to reduce rural and urban poverty through environmentally sustainable Amazon River projects.