10th Black Culture Festival
Concerts, cultural activities and food in Limón and Siquirres.

Cheese fair
Food, concerts, horse rides, through Sun., Santa Cruz de Turrialba.

Special Olympics National Finals
Gymnastics, soccer, 9 a.m.-noon, National University Sports Center, Lagunilla, Heredia; cycling, triathlon, 9 a.m.-noon, downtown Heredia; swimming, weightlifting, 9 a.m.-noon, Palacio de los Deportes, Heredia.

Surfing legends tournament
Through Sun., outside Hotel Terrazas del Pacífico, Hermosa Beach, Puntarenas.

10th Flowers of the African Diaspora Festival
Music, readings workshops and dance shows, through Sun., Alajuela, Cahuita, Limón, Libería and Tilarán, Guanacaste.

Dance show
Grupo Coraza of Panama, 11:30 a.m., University of Costa Rica, Paraíso, Cartago; 7 p.m., Turrialba Municipal Theater, Turrialba.

‘Miracle in Rwanda'
Monologue about a Rwandan woman who spent seven months locked in a bathroom with six other women Turing the1994 genocide, performed in English by Leslie Sword, 6 p.m., Dionisio Theater, Café Britt, 500 m north, 400 m west of Auto Mercado, Heredia, 2263-4162.

San José guitar festival
7 p.m., Arnoldo Herrera González Theater, Castella Conservatory, Sabana Norte.

Four-wheeler race
9 a.m., Jacó, Puntarenas.

Democrats Abroad film screening
“Why We Fight,” documentary film about the U.S. military-industrial complex, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at 2005 Sundance Film Festival, 9:30 a.m., Aurola Holiday Inn, third floor, 2282-5265. 

Belly dancing and music
Amar El Arab, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Swing en 4 in concert
Jazz, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Pisin and Yandel in concert
Reggaetón, 1 p.m., La Guácima, Alajuela.

María Pretiz in concert
Trova, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

Some 1,000 Costa Rican athletes are set to prove their disability is no obstacle as they compete for a spot in the first-ever Central American and Caribbean Special Olympic Games Costa Rica 2008.

Narrowing down the roster after 16 competitions around the country, judges today will observe the athletes at National University's Sports Center, the Palacio de los Deportes and the downtown streets of Heredia, north of the capital, to pick the top 220 who will form a national team.

Starting at 9 a.m., the national finals will include weightlifting, running, five-a-side soccer, cycling, swimming, gymnastics and a triathlon.

Team Costa Rica will go on to face competitors from throughout Central America and the Caribbean, as well as guest countries Mexico and China, in games at several San José facilities from Nov. 24 to 30, according to Special Olympics Costa Rica's communications and marketing director Mónica López.

The November games are the first in the region, adding to the broader Latin America tournament, last held in El Salvador in 2006, López said.

The Special Olympics are dedicated to the country's president, Oscar Arias, who “has shown enormous support for the games and had great chemistry with the athletes,” López said.

Police on Tuesday arrested a man in the southwest San José suburb of Escazú who is wanted on charges including fraud and theft in Miami, Florida, according to the International Police (Interpol).

Law authorities linked Cuban-U.S. citizen Pedro Julio Rodríguez, 33, and 13 others to scams, including an $11.5 mortgage fraud scheme, an Interpol press release said.

The release said Rodríguez moved between homes, including a residence in Real Santamaría, Heredia, north of San José, and worked at a car dealer in Escazú.

Costa Rican President Oscar Arias is traveling to Europe next week to lobby for his nation's interests in a free-trade agreement between Central America and the European Union (EU).

Arias also plans to seek greater development aid for Costa Rica and drum up support for initiatives that his nation will push as president of the United Nations Security Council in November.

On his 12-day visit to Brussels, England and Spain, Arias will meet with EU and European Parliament officials, as well as Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and King Juan Carlos.

A key fight for Arias revolves around tariffs on banana exports. During a World Trade Organization meeting earlier this month, the EU backtracked on an agreement to reduce tariffs on Central American bananas from 176 euros per ton in 2009 to 114 euros per ton in 2016.

“Obviously, we are very interested in returning to this agreement,” said Mishelle Mitchell, who heads Arias' press office.

To that end, Arias will meet with Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, and Peter Mandelson, the EU trade representative in Brussels.

Rules on bananas would form part of an accord between the EU and Central America on trade, political cooperation, and development aid. A fifth round of negotiations will take place in Guatemala in October.

During his trip to Europe, Arias will also seek support for Costa Rica's initiatives in the United Nations. These include the Costa Rican consensus, Arias' idea that donor countries and institutions should reward nations that decrease arms spending and increase social spending.

The president will also lobby for the Arms Trade Treaty, which would bar governments from selling weapons to known human rights violators.

Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno and Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz will accompany Arias during the Sept. 1-2 trip, and Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias will join them midway, Mitchell said.

The trip is one of Arias' longest abroad, rivaled only by a two-week trip to Europe in June 2006 to promote Costa Rican trade and investment and a nine-day trip to China in October 2007 to celebrate newly established diplomatic relations.

Last year, Arias rarely left the country because he was focusing on his campaign for the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA), approved by referendum in October.

“El Camino” (The Road), a film by Costa Rican writer, director and producer Ishtar Yasin, has won the award for Best Latin American Film at the SANFIC festival in Santiago, Chile, adding another trophy to Yasin's now cluttered mantelpiece.

The film, centered on two Nicaraguan children's experience with their parent's immigration, won awards at festivals in Guadalajara, Mexico, Berlin, Germany and Fribourg, Switzerland, and was Costa Rica's first showing at France's coveted Cannes International Film Festival.

“El Camino” faced fierce competition from Brazilian film “O banheiro do papa” (The Pope's Toilet), a favorite at San Sebastian, Spain, and in its home Sao Paolo, as well as nominees from Argentina, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay.

Yasin's work was picked “for being a film that narrates the vast subject of Central American immigration, locating it very sensitively in few characters that convey their specific problems and longings without falling into broad-sweeping discourse,” the jury said, according to a news bulletin by the director.

The jury also said it prized the “story's literary quality and the children's talented performance.”

-Tico Times