RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil's first astronaut, Marcos Pontes, returned to Earth after one week at the International Space Station as a new national hero. And his space journey awakened a new vocation in students at the Sao José dos Campos school, who particpated in two of the eight experiments Pontes conducted during the mission.

Anna Elisa Barcelos, 13, had thought she would study journalism. Now she also feels attracted to astronomy. Diego Ferreira, 14, has no doubts that he wants to be an astronaut like Pontes.

The enthusiasm of the children "surpassed our expectations," Elisa Saeta, coordinator of the school's connection to the space experiments, told Tierramérica.

Four schools planted bean seeds, proving that on Earth the roots grow downwards, while in space they grow in all directions.

They also separated the different chlorophyll pigments, the substance that green plants use to turn light into chemical energy, under conditions of near-zero gravity.

CARACAS - The sardine returned to Venezuelan dinner tables at the beginning of Catholic Holy Week, when fish traditionally replaces meat, following the 21,000-ton catch along the northern coast.

This inexpensive fish was scarce since the beginning of the year "because of overexploitation of stocks in the southern Caribbean since 1990, changes in the winds and in water temperatures, which favored the predators and slowed maturation," Daniel Novoa, former director of the National Insitute of Fisheries, explained to Tierramérica.

In Venezuela, the law limits sardine fishing to artisanal or subsistence fisherfolk. Seventy-five percent of the catch is destined for domestic consumption.

The fisherfolk are calling for a three-fold increase in the fixed sales price of three cents of the dollar per kilogram of fish.

SANTIAGO - Ecological groups have expressed skepticism about the creation of a Ministry of Environment by the new Chilean government of Michelle Bachelet, and doubt it represents a change in environmental policy.

Bachelet sent the project to Parliament on Apr. 6, calling for giving Cabinet rank to the head of the National Environmental Commission, CONAMA. But Marcel Claude, director of Oceana, one of the country's leading environmental groups, said in a Tierramérica interview that it would be "a purely cosmetic measure, which would not resolve any of the urgent environmental matters affecting the country."

According to the activist, creating the new ministry would not prevent the big mining companies from continuing to enjoy tax breaks, nor would it stop the "overexploitation of the sea." And it wouldn't improve public transportation or clean up Santiago's pollution, or change "the shameful behavior of the pulp mill plants," he said.

HAVANA - The Global Environment Facility (GEF) approved a budget of 4.1 billion dollars to continue a huge project to preserve the biodiversity of Cuba's north-central Sabana-Camagüey ecosystem, which stretches across five of the island nation's provinces.

This contribution allows finalization of the third phase of the plan begun in 1993 with the support of the Cuban government and, among other donors, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Gricel Acosta, the agency's expert in environment and energy in Havana, told Tierramérica.

The Sabana-Camagüey ecosystem includes the archipelago of the same name and some 2,500 keys, or islets. It is home to important marine and land biodiversity, threatened by the impacts of conventional tourism, and to lesser extent, excessive fishing and pollution.