Dance show
By French dance group Mulleras, 8 p.m., National Auditorium, Children's Museum.

Play “El Gobierno de Sancho Panza”
Performed by the Los Hipócritas Group, May 28, 6 p.m., Salón Multiuso, U.C.R. Guanacaste campus. Info: avjimene@cariari.ucr.ac.cr.

Escats in concert
Jazzy pop, Jazz Café, San Pedro, 10 p.m., http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Bernal Villegas in concert
Rock in Spanish, Jazz Café in Escazú, 10 p.m., http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Putting an end to a 22-year stint, Jorge Nery stepped down as the National Olympic Committee (CON) president amid a strong disapproval rating from local sports federations and past allegations of fraud and document forgery.

Nery made his announcement at a gathering of the general assembly organized by the Pan-American Sports Organization on Monday night.

The attorney left his longstanding post to avoid possible sanctions against the Costa Rican Olympic team and to spend more time with his family, according to CON spokeswoman Josebeth Azofeifa.

When a country is sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee, its athletes may not parade with their flag at the opening ceremonies.

Six athletes, so far, will represent Costa Rica in the summer Olympics in Beijing, China, Aug. 8-24.

After Nery's withdrawal, CON members chose Roberto Verdesia, former president of the track and field federation, by a 31-9 vote as interim president until September.

His only opponent was William Corrales, head of the volleyball federation.

Normally, the new president assumes power within 60 days. But an agreement was reached in which Nery would hand his baton to Verdesia within 20 days – on June 13, Azofeifa said.

The past year has been difficult for Nery.

Juan Carlos Bonilla, head of the institute's press and public relations department, said the government was disappointed with CON, especially after the latest Pan-American Games in which Costa Rica failed to send a single athlete.

Last October, the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) began investigating Nery for fraud and document forgery.

Azofeifa said all charges have been dropped against Nery, after the government ruled in favor of CON.

In March, representatives from 26 of the sports federations that make up CON's assembly voted to sack the committee.

A later meeting on April 30 to elect the executive board ended in disaster as well when dissidents refused to let Nery proceed with agenda items.

The Monday night meeting was held to finish business left behind last month.

Residents in Costa Rica's Southern Zone were shaken yesterday to find their buildings' walls cracked after Monday's quake that rumbled up to 5.2 on the Richter scale – then they shook again with yet another quake, this time measuring 4.8, the fifth to hit the area in two days.

But the Costa Rican quakes, which also shook across the Panamanian border, have left cracks in 23 homes and a road, according to a bulletin from the National Emergency Commission (CNE). Three schools and a hospital were also partly damaged and forced to evacuate during Monday's tremor.

CNE workers are stationed in the Corredores canton to help clean up the wreckage, including a cave-in on the road between the towns of Santa Rosa and Caracol, as well as cracks in school walls in Santa Lucía, Caracol and Pueblo de Dios.

Ciudad Neilly Hospital experienced several cracked walls and columns, but administrators have since reported the damage is minor and employees are back to work as normal.

Experts at the University of Costa Rica have explained a likely cause of the quake is a chain of active faults at the Coco and Nazca tectonic plates, the CNE bulletin said.

The 4.8 quake yesterday occurred at 3:20 p.m., according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica (OVSICORI), and struck 5 kilometers underground with its epicenter 30 km south of the community of Laurel, in the Puntarenas province, near Panama, the news agency EFE reported.

Tremors also occurred yesterday in El Salvador, reaching 5.4 on the Richter, and southern Guatemala, hitting 5.9, according to separate press reports in those countries. No injuries or property damage was reported there by late yesterday.

The Nicaraguan subsidiary of Canada-based Polaris Geothermal Inc. has announced that it hired Brazilian construction giant Queiroz Galvão for a project to more than triple the output from a geothermal complex northwest of Managua, newswire ACAN EFE reports.

Polaris Energy Nicaragua S.A. (PENSA) said Monday it has signed a contract to increase capacity of the San Jacinto-Tizate project from 10 megawatts to 34 megawatts. (One megawatt is enough electricity to power 1,000 average homes in the United States.)

PENSA has exclusive rights since December 1999 to exploit energy coming from the heat of the Earth in the San Jacinto-Tizate field.

Part of the expansion works are already under way with the construction of four wells, two for production and two for reinjection, PENSA said.

The investment planned for this phase of expansion, to be completed in 2009, is $96 million and will create 600 new jobs, the company said.

The contract was signed by PENSA's president, Tom Ogryzlo, and Queiroz Galvão's marketing director, Mauricio Mariani, although the date of the agreement was not specified.

Currently, 75 percent of the electricity that Nicaragua consumes, some 510 megawatts daily, is generated from petroleum fuels that experience constant price increases.

PRENSA's announcement came after last week's find by another Canadian firm in Nicaragua, Norwood Resources Ltd. Norwood said it has stumbled upon “significant hydrocarbons” in its third exploratory well in Nicaragua, sending its stock soaring, The Canadian Press reported.