Eduardo Fernandez

Yes, it's a good instrument for elaborate etudes, quaint waltzes and flamenco, but a guitar can also be intimate and spellbinding. Tuesday at the Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, Uruguayan guitarist Eduardo Fernandez opted for intimacy in a solo recital of five works plus an encore.

Venezuelans cannot bring back the oil-rich years of the 1970s when Carlos Andres Perez was president, but their nostalgia for past prosperity may help bring back Perez. Only an unexpected upset in elections Sunday could keep Perez, 66, from becoming the first Venezuelan in three decades of democracy to win a second presidential term. Numerous opinion polls have shown him leading Eduardo Fernandez, his closest rival, by 14 to 22 percentage points.

Venezuelans cannot bring back the oil-rich years of the 1970s when Carlos Andres Perez was president, but their nostalgia for past prosperity may help bring back Perez. Only an unexpected upset in elections Sunday could keep Perez, 66, from becoming the first Venezuelan in three decades of democracy to win a second presidential term. Numerous opinion polls have shown him leading Eduardo Fernandez, his closest rival, by 14 to 22 percentage points.

Yes, it's a good instrument for elaborate etudes, quaint waltzes and flamenco, but a guitar can also be intimate and spellbinding. Tuesday at the Ambassador Auditorium, Pasadena, Uruguayan guitarist Eduardo Fernandez opted for intimacy in a solo recital of five works plus an encore.

PONCE: "CONCIERTO DEL SUR." VILLA-LOBOS: GUITAR CONCERTO. LAMARQUE-PONS: "CONCERTINO DE INVIERNO." Eduardo Fernandez, guitar, Enrique Garcia Asensio conducting the English Chamber Orchestra. London 421 108-2 (compact disc). Fernandez's playing of the Ponce and Villa-Lobos concertos is clean, slightly cool and interpretively unremarkable. The brief, piquant, percussion-rich 1976 Concertino by Jaures Lamarque-Pons is an attractive and sophisticated addition to the repertory, however, and suavely delivered by Fernandez and Co.

A federal grand jury indicted a La Crescenta man Thursday for allegedly selling juvenile leopard sharks, authorities said. Eduardo Fernandez Carvajal, 57, was named in a 19-count indictment accusing him of conspiracy and 18 counts of wildlife trafficking, said Thom Mrozek of the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. Selling leopard sharks in California is illegal unless the animal is more than 3 feet long. The indictment alleges that Carvajal collected the sharks from coastal Southland waters and sold them to customers nationwide.

Four Colombian men were arrested after Spanish police made an unusual holiday haul--a 12-figure Nativity scene filled with 6.6 pounds of pressed cocaine worth $2 million. Police said Saturday that agents had discovered the drug inside the infant Jesus, the Virgin Mary and other Nativity figures. Agents followed a Colombian man suspected of being a major contact in drug-smuggling operations to Madrid's Barajas Airport on Thursday, police said.

Three Cuban exiles were charged in New York with the execution of a Cuban U.N. official, plotting and threatening to kill foreign diplomats and carrying out a series of bombings. U.S. Atty. Rudolph W. Giuliani said Pedro Remon, 40, Andres Garcia, 45, and Eduardo Losado-Fernandez, 48, were charged in a federal indictment with shooting to death Felix Garcia-Rodriguez in New York on Sept. 11, 1980. The anti-Castro group Omega 7 claimed responsibility for the slaying.

Rebel soldiers tried to overthrow the troubled, elected government of President Carlos Andres Perez early today, cutting off roads to the capital and trying to seize the country's second-largest city. Heavy machine-gun fire and mortar fire was heard around Perez's residence and the Presidential Palace when the attempt began shortly after midnight, but there were no immediate reports of casualties. Soldiers were shooting at passing vehicles and pedestrians.

The maturation of the guitar from a salon instrument into a fully equipped and self-confident concert vehicle is apparent in Eduardo Fernandez's career and programs. The Uruguayan has never been one for the musical lint that still clogs many guitar recitals, relying instead on big pieces by modern masters. That was true again Tuesday, when Fernandez returned to El Camino College where he made his local debut 12 years ago. He brought a compact agenda, conceptually as well as technically tough.