International Arts Festival

La Sabana Park: Teatro La Co.Tra.Ka (Argentina), clowns, 10 a.m., and 3 p.m.; Simona Apollaro (C.R.), storytelling, 11 a.m.; Trío Reru, music, 3 p.m.; Mundo de la Fantasía, clowns, 3 p.m.; Flee y su Grupo Afrocaribe, music, 4 p.m.; Trío Reru, music, 4 p.m.; Sienta La Cabeza (Spain), theater, 4 p.m., Costa Rican Art Museum; Fernando Franco (Colombia), storytelling show, 5 p.m.; Mago Max, magic, 5 p.m.; Proyecto Jirondai (C.R.), music, 6 p.m.; Manos Arriba (C.R.), clowns, 6 p.m.; Naguall Trio (C.R.), 7 p.m., Tupac Amarulloa Kwarteto (C.R.), 7:45 p.m., Luis Angel Castro (C.R.), 8:30 p.m., and Rosario Flores (Spain), 9:15 p.m., music.

San José: At 6 p.m., Compagnie Retouramont at Gran Hotel; Ni Uno Menos, Variedades Theater; Teatro de los Andes at National Theater; 10 & 10 Danza (Spain), dance, MST; Conservatorio El Barco (C.R.), dance; Noa Dar; Complot, Teatro 1887; Foreign Landscapes.

Alajuela, Cecilia Todd, music, 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.; Circo de la Pena, 10 a.m.; Agrupa2, 4 p.m.; Circo de la Pena, 4 p.m.; Alberto Campos, music 5 p.m.; Circo de la Pena, 5 p.m., Central Park; Music and Acrobats (China), 7 p.m.; Choque Urbano, theater, dance, music, 9 p.m.. 

Puntarenas, Flamenco Madera Vieja, 6 p.m..

Arts exhibit opening
Crysel Villalobos, Interior design, opens at 7:30 p.m., runs through April 30, Galería Amón, 250 m. north of Morazán Park kiosk, Barrio Amón. Info: 2223-9725.

U.S. expats in Costa Rica didn't score any coveted seats as delegates to the Democratic National Convention, the U.S. party's overseas branch said.

The convention, to be held in Denver, Colorado, in August, will nominate either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to run against Republican John McCain in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

Democrats Abroad held their global convention and caucuses in Vancouver, Canada, last weekend. From the Americas region, the caucuses decided to send two expats from Mexico and two from Canada.

Democrats Abroad Costa Rica Chairman Paul Kloes said it was his first convention and at first, it was sheer chaos.

“It was a learning process,” he said. “The complexity kind of took me by surprise.”

Kloes also said getting prized seats is more expensive than a lot of people can afford.

“I have this Guatemalan friend who said (referring to the next Democrats Abroad meeting in Istanbul, Turkey ) ‘Damn, I guess I'm going to have to rob two banks to go there. I only had to rob one to get here.'” he said, joking.

Results of the first-ever global primary, which included votes from expats here in February, are the following: Obama 65.8%, Clinton 32.5%, John Edwards 0.7%, Dennis Kucinich 0.6%, Uncommitted 0.2%, Joseph Biden 0.1%, Bill Richardson 0.1%.

According to Kloes, Democrats Abroad will send 22 delegates – 14 pledged and eight super – to the national convention. Pledged candidates have to vote for their candidate while superdelegates have discretion.

Obama has nine pledged delegates and Clinton five.

Under arcane party rules, each delegate only has half a vote at the national convention, meaning Obama has 4.5 votes and Clinton has 2.5.

Democrats Abroad is the official overseas branch of the U.S. Democratic Party. With members in 164 countries around the globe, the organization holds eight positions on the Democratic National Committee.

The U.S. general election will take place on Nov. 4.

Exports, which reached a record $1.26 billion in 2007, have become the driving force of Nicaragua's economy, overtaking remittances and foreign aid, according to economist Francisco Mayorga.

In his recently published work “Nicaragua 2010: the Future of the Economy,” Mayorga says that skyrocketing fuel prices, a demand for biofuels and increased agricultural productivity have driven Nicaragua's export growth, which spiked 16.5% last year. And it appears small and medium-sized producers are set to benefit from Nicaragua's export boom.

Mayorga's claim contrasts with another study, “The Exported Nicaraguans” by Douglas Carcache, which asserts that emigrants themselves – by way of their remittances back home – are Nicaragua's greatest, fastest-growing “export.”

Mayorga, chief economic strategist who designed Nicaragua's transition to a market economy in 1990 and now heads the Managua-based Albertus Magnus Institute, says the goods the country is exporting outweigh the worth of money back from emigrating citizens.

Even amid a U.S. recession, he predicts, commodity prices will remain high for several years and help to fuel Nicaragua's export growth, which he expects to exceed $2 billion by 2010.

“The agricultural sector in Nicaragua is picking up very quickly,” Mayorga told The Nica Times in an interview.

Read Friday's The Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times, for more about economist Francisco Mayorga's predictions.

The Costa Rican government closed the first quarter of this year with a budget surplus of $78.75 million, thanks to a 41.2% boost in tax revenues, the Finance Ministry announced yesterday.

“This is good news for the treasury's cooperation with policies to stabilize the country and it indicates that we're spending in an orderly way,” Finance Minister Guillermo Zúñiga told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse.

Government spending reached $1.14 billion from January to March – up 7% from the same period last year.

Sharp increases in tax collection, from income tax to customs revenues, helped achieve the surplus.