BOGOTA - The Colombian government, local Bogotá officials and business leaders signed an agreement to train a thousand mechanics in the capital in order to speed up the conversion of public transportation to natural gas, which produces less pollution than gasoline.

The mechanics are receiving six months of training beginning in December, focusing on maintenance, diagnostic and electronic synchronization, and conversion of engines to burn natural gas.

The accord is part of a plan to promote natural gas use in public transport vehicles, encouraged further by the elimination of the value added tax for those who take part in the effort.

There are 8,000 natural gas-powered vehicles in Bogotá. The objective is to convert 40,000 more within four years.

MONTEVIDEO - The Uruguayan capital's government has applied to the Pan-American Health Organization for formal membership in the Healthy Municipalities and Communities Network, which the regional agency has been operating since the 1990s.

The Montevideo government promotes decentralization and social participation and has a focus on preventative efforts to benefit residents' health, Miguel Fernández Galeano, the capital's director of health and social programs, told Tierramérica.

The network is made up of some 150 municipalities, fomenting pro-health actions in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean based on self-imposed commitments.

Montevideo, for example, proposed to extend water and sewage services from its current 80 percent coverage to 95 percent in 2005, said Galeano.

Its incorporation into the network would lead to more exchange and cooperation with local health leaders and support for an effective tool for improving citizens' quality of life, he said.

MEXICO CITY - Mexican scientists are working to turn 'pitaya' and 'xoconoxtle', native Mexican fruits, into products for export -- and catalysts for development for poor communities.

Researchers at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM) aim to establish the best ways for growing, preserving, processing and marketing the fruits produced by peasant farmers in the southern state of Oaxaca.

The university experts must resolve the problem of the fruits' rapid fermentation if the farmers hope to export them.

Local sales of pitaya and xoconoxtle, whose production varies between 700 and 1,000 tons annually, is practically the only source of income for the small farmers of the Union of Ejidos and Communities of Lower Mixteca.

UAM sources say that if the project is successful it could help 300 families escape extreme poverty.

GUATEMALA CITY - Eight people were detained in Guatemala in early December for trafficking in 'pinabete' (Abies gatemalensis), a plant that is on its way to extinction and is used illegally as a Christmas tree.

"In police operations with experts from the National Council of Protected Areas (CONAP) we arrested eight people who were illegally moving thousands of trees in trucks," the council's forestry management director, Fernando Gómez, told Tierramérica.

In 2002, five people were arrested for the same crime, and one was sentenced to five years in prison.

"We have operatives in the west, the southern coast, in Sierra de las Minas (east), and in 20 markets in the capital, because by controlling demand there would be no more depredation of the species," said the official.

The endangered plant species was once found in southern Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, but today is found only in this country, where it represents 0.3 percent of the forests.

SAN JOSE - Around 4,000 leatherback sea turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) are rescued each year in Costa Rica from their nests that are threatened by floods or human movement through the nursery in Las Baulas Marine Park, on the country's northern Pacific coast.

The eggs are protected until the turtles hatch and begin their journey across the beach to the sea.

Costa Rica has the largest leatherback turtle population of the eastern Pacific. However, a decade ago some 2,000 turtles laid eggs in this protected area, but today just 60 to 70 do so.

The decline is due to human activities, such as egg stealing, the use of long-line fishing nets, water contamination and to climate change, says Marco Solano, secretary-general of the Inter-American Convention for the Protection and Conservation of Sea Turtles.

The leatherback can reach a weight of 500 kilos and a length of two meters. It dives to great ocean depths and its shell is soft and flexible like leather.