Senegal beat
Sege performs as part of Mundo Loco series at Jazz Café, San Pedro, 10 p.m., http://jazzcafecostarica.com; ¢3,000.

Jazz jam
10 p.m., Jazz Café Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com; ¢2,500.

Son del Pueblo in concert
Salsa, 9 p.m., El Observatorio, opposite Cine Magali, barrio la California, tel.: 2223-0725.

Book launch: 'Diario de Bonka'
Writer Carlos Catania's latest, 7 p.m., at Spanish Cultural Center .  

'SaludARTE' festival
La Comedia Theater and Salud sin Fronteras (Health Without Borders) present the festival SaludARTE, opening tonight 8 p.m. with a performance of work by composer Bernardo Quesada, featuring Haury Cerdas, at La Comedia Theater, next to Más x Menos in Cuesta de Moras, tel.: 2233-2170; ¢5,000.

Outta here: Hernán Medford, at a game against El Salvador last October, is as of Friday the ex-coach of Costa Rica's national soccer team after seeing the Ticos through a historic winless streak.

Roberto Escobar ¦EFE

The Costa Rican Soccer Federation fired head coach Hernán Medford along with his coaching staff Friday. There was no love lost when the long-anticipated decision was confirmed. “At last I'm free,” Medford told the daily La Nación.

Although Costa Rica recently qualified for the next round in the Confederation of North and Central American and Caribbean Football (CONCACAF) tournament, during Medford's 20-month tenure the team garnered a lackluster 7-5-12 record and only broke a 12-game winless streak on June 21 in its win over Grenada.

Rodrigo Kenton will return to coach the Tico squad, he told a local radio station Sunday. While the decision has yet to be confirmed by the CRSF, Kenton resigned as the Guatemala under-20 head coach the same day.

Kenton previously coached Costa Rica to two of its three World Cup appearances in 1990 and 2002.

The team received its group assignments and match schedule last week in the CONCACAF group qualifying stages for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Costa Rica will battle in Group C, starting in August, against El Salvador, Haiti and Surinam.

While the Ticos are tipped to come out on top of the group, inconsistent play of late could be the team's downfall in their games against opponents who are not expected to give any breaks. In particular, El Salvador is riding high, having just knocked out fifth-ranked Panama.

As recently as 2002, Costa Rica won CONCACAF. In that tournament, Medford scored the 86th minute go-ahead goal in an unprecedented 2-1 win over Mexico in the D.F.

Costa Rica will host El Salvador Aug. 20 at Ricardo Saprissa Stadium in San José, and then Surinam on Sept. 6. Teams will play six games, one home and one away game against each of their opponents. Group play will continue through November.

In these two-leg match series, teams notch wins based on the aggregate goal total of both games, and not the individual results of the two matches. In this way, many view first- and second-leg games as one 180-minute game.

Winners and runners-up from the three groups will play in a six-team round robin to determine the three teams that will eventually go to World Cup finals in South Africa.

Eleven Costa Rican police officers suspected of collaborating with drug traffickers will spend three months in preventive detention while investigations continue, the a judge ruled Friday.

A court in Heredia, north of San José, accepted prosecutors' motion to jail the officers.

Authorities say they suspect the 11 cops of peddling drugs, protecting traffickers and re-selling confiscated drugs.

Six months of investigations determined that the officers under scrutiny would often suspend their patrols in certain areas of Heredia so drug dealers could ply their trade.

Investigators also found that several of the officers would seize drugs from one trafficker and then sell the contraband to another dealer and that the suspect cops received payoffs from drug rings.

The head of the national police, Erick Lacayo, stated he would not tolerate corruption and told Costa Ricans he was working to keep the force honest, urging citizens to report instances of misconduct by police.

Some 93 Costa Ricans returned home late last week after undergoing free eye surgery in Venezuela, a gift from President Hugo Chávez's government.

The Venezuelan Embassy in Costa Rica is now expanding the program, “Operation Miracle,” which has treated some 800 Ticos and thousands of other Latin Americans since October 2005.

About 88 percent of Costa Ricans are insured under the state's socialized health-care system, the Caja, but long waits for appointments drive some Ticos to seek other options.

“The lines are very long, and there aren't enough ophthalmologists” at the Caja, said Fernando Sandí, who works for the Caja as a nurse but still opted for surgery in Venezuela.

Under Operation Miracle, Venezuelan doctors travel to Costa Rica to examine Ticos with eye trouble. Patients with cataracts or pterygium, a benign growth on the eye, qualify for treatment.

The Venezuelan government pays for the airfare, the surgery, housing and food during the patients' 10-day stay in Venezuela. Ticos need only pay the $26 tax that Costa Rican airport authorities charge for leaving the country.

In past months, Venezuelan doctors have performed exams only at the ambassador's house in San José and at Alunasa, a Venezuelan-owned aluminum processing plant in the Pacific slope town of Esparza.

But in June, doctors visited other parts of the country, including rural areas and some indigenous communities.

“The embassy's new policy is to go to all of Costa Rica – not make people come here” to San José, said Eduardo Medina, who works on Operation Miracle at the embassy. “We are going to cover all of Costa Rica, from north to south and east to west.”

The new outreach efforts have attracted more Ticos to the program. Two Venezuelan state planes are set to transport 186 Tico patients to Venezuela in July – more than twice the usual monthly number.