10th Flowers of the African Diaspora Festival
Film festival inauguration, 6 p.m., Cine Variedades, Calle 5, between Avenida Central and Avenida 1. Info: 2222-6108.

Moscow Circus
Mon.-Fri., 7:30 p.m.; Sat. and holidays, 5 and 7 p.m.; Sun., 2:30, 5 and 7 p.m., Zapote, next to bullring, contact 8353-0201.

Calypso Experience in concert
10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Expresso in concert
Costa Rican pop, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Fabrice Delloye, the ex-husband of former hostage Ingrid Betancourt, will soon be named as France's new ambassador to Costa Rica, according to wire reports.

Delloye was married to French-Colombian politician Betancourt from 1981 to 1990 and has two children with her, Melanie and Lorenzo. He lobbied vigorously for Betancourt's release from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), who held her hostage from 2002 to July of this year.

A career diplomat, Delloye has served as economic adviser for the French embassy in the Republic of Seychelles, a group of islands in the Indian Ocean, and as France's cultural representative to Peru.

One of Delloye's tasks will be to help find new educational options for families at the French-Costa Rican School in Tres Ríos, east of San José. France recently decided to withdraw funding from the school, leading to its possible closure at the end of 2009.

Delloye would replace Jean-Paul Monchau, who left Costa Rica last month after a three-year term.

Revolutionary Nicaraguan priest Ernesto Cardenal charged Thursday that President Daniel Ortega handed down a sentence to a judge that convicts him of defamation in a “political sentence without any legal basis.”

“It's simply revenge for Ortega,” said Cardenal, an 83-year-old Sandinista priest whose poetry earned him a recent Nobel nomination.

In a press conference at the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center in Managua, Cardenal alleged that Ortega is using his sway in the Sandinista-dominated judicial branch to prosecute Cardenal, a priest and poet who strayed from the Sandinista party ranks in the 1990s after serving as Ortega's culture minister in the 1980s

Ortega has not commented on the case. But Sandinista judge David Rojas, who ruled against Cardenal, has denied to local press that the sentence was at all political.

After being dismissed years ago, defamation charges filed against Cardenal in an ongoing land dispute were suddenly taken up again – just a week after the white-haired priest/poet's comments in Paraguay, accusing Ortega of trying to reestablish a dictator dynasty akin to that of the Somoza family.

“In this system now in Nicaragua, anything's possible. I'm ready to go to jail,” said the beret-donning priest.

Faced with mounting pressure from the press and opposition leaders, President Oscar Arias has revealed details on the sale of state bonds to China.

China is buying $150 million in bonds in 2008 and another $150 million in 2009, Arias announced Friday after keeping the information secret for months. Costa Rica has to pay back the money within 12 years at an interest rate lower than 4 percent. Arias refused to specify the rate, saying it could be between zero and 3 percent.

Since Costa Rica forged diplomatic ties with China in June 2007, the Arias administration has come under fire for being tightlipped about cooperation with the Eastern giant.

Leaders of the opposition Citizen Action Party (PAC) sent a letter to Arias first in January and again last month requesting details on the bond purchase. In February, the daily La Nación challenged Arias' secrecy before the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court (Sala IV), which has yet to rule on the case.

“Nothing is more public, under the Constitution, than public debt to other countries,” PAC leader and former presidential candidate Ottón Solís wrote in a letter to Arias last month. “It would be unfortunate if diplomatic ties with China started out on the wrong foot in terms of ethics and transparency.”

Arias said Chinese authorities at first did not want him to spill details because China gave Costa Rica a much lower interest rate than it gives to other countries.

The president said he asked China to purchase bonds rather than lend money in order circumvent the Legislative Assembly, which must approve conventional loans.