RIO DE JANEIRO - Around 100 people die each year in Brazil from lightning strikes, which also cause economic losses of 200 million dollars annually, reports the National Institute for Space Research.

Brazilian territory receives an estimated 70 million electrically charged blows from the atmosphere each year, twice as many as recorded in the United States, whose territory is 10 percent larger. Lightning tends to be more common in tropical countries.

Institute experts say the lightning strikes cause most monetary damage when they hit electrical transmission and telephone lines. They are designing an early warning system to help prevent deaths and harm to infrastructure.

SAN JOSE - Central American environmental groups this month launched a campaign against the negotiations to set of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) under the motto: "Central America is not for sale!"

The promoters of the effort, environmental groups associated with the international network Friends of the Earth, are organizing a series of actions to take place in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras.

According to the activists, FTAA -- which is to extend from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego -- represents a multifaceted threat, but particularly to Central American food security, because "it promotes an agricultural system run by the big transnationals."

CARACAS - Scientists in Zulia state, in western Venezuela, are studying the effects on human health of vanadium, a mutagenic metal present in petroleum and in fossil fuel residues.

"Vanadium is capable of causing changes in the genetic material of plants, animals and humans," maintains Víctor Granadillo, of Zulia University. Petroleum has been drilled in the state for the last 90 years.

Granadillo's lab has recorded genetic mutations attributable to vanadium in fish, birds and reptiles. Exposure to the metal can cause changes in blood vessels, arterial pressure and the transport of calcium throughout the human body.

The air in Maracaibo, capital of Zulia, contains 40 to 170 parts of vanadium per billion, while in remote rural areas, the level is just one ppb vanadium.

HAVANA - Cuban and Canadian experts will film the largest known stalagmite on the planet, located 179 m under ground in the Martín Infierno Cave, in central Cuba.

Until know, only speleologists -- cave experts -- who ventured to that depth could see the stalagmite, a calceous rock standing 67.2 m high, formed on the floor of the cave by a constant drip of calcium carbonate from above.

The stalagmite, discovered in 1970 and declared a national monument, is considered "the eighth natural wonder of the world". Prior to its discovery, the largest known stalagmite was that of the Astelex cave in Hungary, 25 m tall.

GUATEMALA CITY - The food situation in Guatemala is of grave concern because the average diet is 2,159 calories, falling short of the average 2,802 calories of most Latin American countries, warns MINUGUA, the United Nations mission to this country.

Official figures state that 48.8 percent of schoolchildren in first grade suffer chronic undernourishment.

"Hunger is trapping them in a vicious circle of vulnerability, from hunger to poverty to hunger," says MINUGUA. This deprives them of the opportunity to develop, and deprives them of a fundamental human right: adequate nutrition, according to the UN agency.

Food insecurity -- the inability to meet basic nutrition needs -- has worsened in Guatemala since early 2001 due to plummeting international coffee prices and the lack of rains, which wiped out local food crops.

SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras - The Taiwanese government and the Central American Economic Integration Bank (BCIE) signed an agreement in Honduras aimed at attracting investments in this Central American nation.

The agreement will set up a regional program of credit guarantees so that small and medium-sized companies from Taiwan will invest and develop projects here and in the other countries of the isthmus.

To execute the initiative, Taiwan's International Cooperation and Development Fund approved a sum of 100 million dollars aimed at strengthening ties between the private sectors of Central America and the Asian country.