Uyu yui pajura! Happy Annexation Day!

Tango Night
6 p.m., Aya Sofya Restaurant, Av. Ctrl., Ca. 21.

Guanacaste Annexation Day
Including special acts in schools of the country, cultural and sports shows in different cantons of Guanacaste, especially in Liberia, Nicoya and Santa Cruz.

I Cahuita Cultural and Environmental Fair
Music, food and more, through Sunday, Cahuita, Limón.

Guanacaste Annexation Festival
Folkloric dancing, rodeo, concerts, food, rides, through Sunday, fairground, Barrio Capulín, Liberia, Guanacaste. Info: 2666-3219.

Cuando la Vida es un Martirio, el Suicidio es un Deber
Drama, 7 p.m., Teatro Jholy, Heredia, 8895-0147.

Free Concert by the New York University Jazz Quintet
7 p.m., Fine Arts School, U.C.R. Campus, San Pedro.

Mundoloco Especial
Including Middle East music by Cardamomo, with belly dance, flamenco and samba, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro. Info: 2253-8933.

Four-Wheeler Championship
9 a.m., Las Lagunas Track, Pérez Zeledón, 2542-1414.

Pipasa Long Distance
11.3 km race, 9 a.m., La Rivera de Belén, Heredia, registration at Pipasa stores.

Play for Children
“Estaba la Pájara Pinta,” 11 a.m., Eugene O'Neill Theater, C.R.-North American Cultural Center, Barrio Dent.

The eight athletes that will compete for Costa Rica in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which will be held Aug. 8-24, were sworn in at a ceremony at the offices of the Olympic committee yesterday.

“There is a lot of emotion,” said 50-meter freestyle swimmer Marianela Quesada. “It is incredible. It is an athlete's greatest dream.”

The athletes are swimmers Quesada and Mario Montoya, runners Gabriela Traña, Nery Brenes and Allan Segura, mountain biker Federico Ramirez, road cyclist Henry Raabe and martial artist Kristopher Moitland.

“I am proud to represent Costa Rica,” Moitland said. “Every athlete wants the honor of representing their country.”

Montoya is participating in the 200-meter freestyle. Traña will be running the marathon, Brenes the 400-meter dash and Segura the 20-kilometer racewalk.

Moitland, the veteran of the team after competing in Athens in 2004, will be fighting in the heavyweight (more than 80 kilograms) category for taekwondo.

“I have a different mentality than last time,” said Moitland, who didn't make it past the quarterfinals in 2004. “This time, I know what it takes to compete in the Olympics. You have to have a different strategy for each match.”

Even though the others are Olympic rookies, they aren't strangers to national competitions.

“I've been competing on the national team for seven years,” Quesada said. “But this is my first time reaching this level. It is different.”

President Oscar Arias was expected to be present for the ceremony.

Some of the athletes looked jittery at the event. But Moitland held court, barrel-chested with shoulders relaxed, he walked around cracking jokes with various members of the media.

The ceilings of the conference room were lined with Chinese lanterns, and a ceremonial dragon dangled over the podium where the athletes sat.

Now that the pomp is over, the athletes enter their final days of focused training for the event they've spent their lives trying to reach.

“Saturday I go to Japan to finish my training,” Quesada said. “Then I go to China on Aug. 6.”

But the travel itself cannot be ignored. The athletes are excited to experience Beijing.

“I was in Beijing last year for the international championships,” Moitland said. “I didn't get to see that much. I look forward to seeing the Forbidden City again as well as the new Olympic Stadium. The Chinese have the reputation of throwing a good ceremony.”

NICARAGUA - A special investigative police commission is looking into violent protests at the offices of a microfinance firm in northern Nicaragua that left five police injured and one civilian blinded in one eye with a rubber bullet.

The protests turned violent after President Daniel Ortega told indebted protesters to march on bank offices earlier this month in a speech in the northern farming town of Jalapa.

Police Chief Aminta Granera told reporters Tuesday that when four police arrived to secure the entrance of the microfinance firm Fundenuse in Ocotal, Nuevo Segovia, so that workers could enter and exit safely, the officers were confronted by protesters wielding machetes, shovels, and Molotov cocktails.

“We have every constitutional right to protest, to make our demands, but those protests can never violate the rights of others,” Granera said.

Fundenuse is one of several microfinance firms that have closed their doors for more than a week since protesters took to their offices, and in some cases threatening employees, according to a statement from the Nicaraguan Association of Microfinanciers (ASOMIF).

Police and microcredit agencies say a group of farmers called the Movement of Producers of the North led the protests that turned violent this week, even though the group had made recent agreements with the microcredit agencies to settle disagreements over their debts.

“We express our surprise and worry for declarations made by the president of the republic on July 12 in Jalapa, calling for a renegotiation with microfinanciers, even though we've already agreed to a debt restructuring agreement with the members of the movement, with (Sandinista) legislators as witnesses,” ASOMIF said in a statement.

The statement said the microfinanciers lament that Ortega “hadn't been informed” of the agreement. ASOMIF added that its credits support some 350,000 families, and that without their small credits supporting small producers, “social instability and unemployment would be greater still.” Movement members told local press they are demanding restructured debt with lower interest rates.

Ortega has yet to comment on the violent protests.

Images of dense jungle, spectacular Pacific Ocean sunsets and scarlet macaws filled a Crowne Plaza Corobicí Hotel ballroom on Wednesday afternoon when Osa Chamber of Tourism (CATUOSA) brought its annual EXPO-OSA tourism fair to town.

The 75-member tourist board, established in 1992, promotes tourism to Costa Rica's Southern Zone, from Dominical to the Panama border, an area that includes some of the country's best beaches and remotest and greenest tourist regions.

A steady stream of visitors browsed the 37 exhibition booths, which included hotels and nature lodges, tour companies, airlines, transportation companies and environmental organizations. The Costa Rican Tourism Board (ICT) was on hand to promote its sustainable tourism program, and the National Chamber of Tourism (CANATUR) was also exhibiting.

Among the 15 hotels with booths, two newcomers making their debut at the annual Expo underscored the two different directions that tourism in the Southern Zone is taking. The Pura Vista Corcovado Eco Camp, 10 platform tents set in the jungle near the village of Drake Bay, offers the kind of roughing-it nature adventure the Osa Peninsula is famous for.

On the other side of the Golfo Dulce, the upscale Hotel Casa Roland Marina Resort recently opened its doors in Golfito, banking on a new wave of potential tourists attracted by the promise of an ambitious new marina.

The Municipality of Osa showed its support for the local tourism industry with a large booth at the expo and a new brochure promoting the beaches of the canton of Osa with the slogan: “Cada una de nuestras playas encierra algo especial (each of our beaches encompasses something special).”

As a measure of how the Southern Zone is rapidly becoming less remote, there were two car rental companies with booths at the expo, Thrifty and Solid Car Rental, which now has offices in Golfito, Puerto Jiménez and Dominical. Only a few years ago, it was impossible to find a rental car company in the Southern Zone south of San Isidro de El General.

Another exhibitor also promises to make the Southern Zone more accessible to people who prefer to let someone else do the driving. ShuttleOsa, in business for less than a year, is now running a comfortable, private shuttle service between San José and Puerto Jiménez, with stops along the way in Dominical, Uvita, Palmar Norte and Sierpe.