Sasha Campbell sings
Soul, R&B, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Live swing music
La Big Band, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú.

Asiatic Film Festival
“El Baño,” at 6 p.m., Calle de la Amargura, San Pedro, old Banco Anglo, next to bar Terra U.

‘Un Pecado Poco Original '
Comedy, tonight through Sun., 8 p.m., La Máscara Theater, Ca. 13, Av. 2/4, tel: 2222-4574.

Colombian troops rescued former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages, including three U.S. military contractors, captured by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said yesterday.

Betancourt, after six years in captivity, appeared in army fatigue on television late in the afternoon, and thanked the military for pulling off an “absolutely impeccable” and “extraordinary” operation.

“This is a miracle,” she said. “ Thank you, Colombia. Thank you, France.”

Military spies tricked the FARC into handing over their most prized captives to disguised military helicopters without a single shot fired, reported U.K. daily The Guardian, citing the Colombian military.

“They tied our hands and feet,” Betancourt said. She expressed amazement to learn the pilots had subdued the rebel commanders. “We are with the army. You are free,” Betancourt recalled the pilots telling the hostages.

Santos told a press conference in Bogota that the hostages were freed from a FARC encampment in the southern province of Guaviare.

He said the group includes Betancourt – the most prominent of the FARC prisoners – and U.S. military contractors Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and Marc Gonsalves, who were captured in 2003 when their light aircraft went down in rebel-controlled territory.

Planning for the “unprecedented” rescue operation began more than a year ago, Santos said.

He said nobody was hurt in the operation and that hostages were in relatively good health, according to the BBC.

Prior news reports said that Betancourt was believed to be in poor health.

FARC, a left-wing rebel group that has battled a succession of Colombia governments since 1964, had been trying to trade the 15 captives reported freed yesterday along with 25 other “exchangeables” for hundreds of jailed guerrillas.

The rebels' most valuable bargaining chip was Betancourt, a dual Colombian-French citizen the FARC captured in February 2002 whose plight became a cause célèbre in Europe and around the world.

Betancourt's son, Lorenzo Delloye, called yesterday “the most beautiful news of my life,” the Associated Press reported.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias joined the international applause, sending a letter to President Alvaro Uribe expressing his people's joy upon hearing the news. “Her rescue constitutes … not only a concrete achievement in the fight against terrorism in Colombia, but also a symbolic step toward a future that is more and more possible and nearer, a future of peace for Colombians,” the letter said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice congraluted Colombia. “We are delighted with the safe recovery of these Americans after more than five years of captivity,” she said in a statement.

Rice pressed FARC “to release immediately all remaining hostages.”

Earlier this year, the guerrillas unilaterally released six hostages to leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who has been trying to broker a prisoner swap between FARC and the Uribe government.

Chávez recently called on FARC to release all the captives “in exchange for nothing.” He also urged the group to abandon the armed struggle.

FARC has suffered several serious blows in recent months. Founder and leader Manuel “Sureshot” Marulanda died of a heart attack in late March, just weeks after No. 2 commander Raúl Reyes was killed in a Colombian government raid on a camp in neighboring Ecuador.

JACO – Sportfishermen along the central Pacific coast are up in arms after some were harassed on the high seas by commercial fishing outfits.

Fishermen have reported at least three incidents in the past several weeks in which commercial tuna boats employed low-flying helicopters, explosives, an AK-47 assault rifle and other aggressive tactics to intimidate sportfishing boats that had tourists on board.

An estimated 50 fishermen met this week with Guillermo Ramírez, an attorney for the Costa Rican Fisheries Institute (INCOPESCA), to discuss the incident.

Costa Rica is one step closer to entering a free-trade agreement with the United States after lawmakers passed a measure yesterday to crack down on intellectual property violations.

The bill, which would punish copyright, trademark and patent law violations with fines or jail sentences, will become law after it is approved in a second debate and signed by the president.

Of the 13 bills that would put Costa Rica in compliance with the Central American Free-Trade Agreement (CAFTA), four remain to be passed in a second and final debate. Lawmakers must approve them by Oct. 1, Costa Rica's deadline for entering the treaty.

On Tuesday night, lawmakers passed a measure to open the state's insurance monopoly, also a requirement under CAFTA. Other national and foreign companies will now be able to join the National Insurance Institute (INS) in offering insurance here.

The intellectual property bill has traveled a rocky road. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV) ruled in April that penalties in the bill were too harsh, and it took lawmakers nearly three months to decide on a new text.