Newcomers Club of Costa Rica Meeting
Includes coffee, tea, bocas, 9:30 a.m., Swiss Travel, Ciudad Colón, for details contact Teresa Beck, 2249-2673, or Jamie Akin. Info: 2416-1111, newcomerscr@yahoo.com. 

Espacios Audiovisuales film festival
“Nico Icon” ( Germany ), 6 p.m., Contemporary Art and Design Museum.

Valoarte '08
Collective exhibit, opens 6:30 p.m., National Gallery, Children's Museum.

Bob Marley tribute concert
Kingo Lovers, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Jazz jam session
10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Government spending on education, health care and the environment would all increase next year in the proposed 2009 budget that Finance Minister Guillermo Zúñiga handed over to the Legislative Assembly yesterday.

The assembly will now examine and make changes to the budget, which must be voted on before December.

The budget lays out about ¢4.1 trillion ($7.45 billion) in spending, which is an increase of 17.9 percent over this year's budget.

“The growth is a little bit smaller,” Zúñiga said, referring to the current budget, which was 18.6 percent larger than 2007's.

President Oscar Arias announced last week that the 2009 budget would emphasize social spending, dedicating 45 percent of the nation's resources to key areas such as health care, housing, education, pensions and cash transfer programs to poor families and mothers.

Health spending, for example, would rise 37.6 percent. Avancemos (Let's Go Forward), a program that gives monthly cash transfers to poor families in exchange for keeping their kids in school, would get $110 million, a 52 percent increase over 2008.

The Public Education Ministry would see a total budget of ¢1.1 billion ($2 billion), an increase of 37.5 percent over this year, Zúñiga said. According to the Finance Ministry, education spending represents 6.3 percent of Costa Rica's gross domestic product (GDP). The Constitution was changed in 1997 to require government spending on education to equal at least 6 percent of GDP, however President Arias' 2007 budget was the first to comply.

Environment spending is also set to increase under the Arias administration's budget. The Environment, Energy and Telecommunications Ministry (MINAET) would receive $52 million, a 36.6 percent boost over this year's budget. Of that, about $20 million would go to the national parks system and $1 million would go to Arias' broad environmental program Peace with Nature.

As Costa Rican emergency officials dropped the Yellow Alert they had raised last week for Hurricane Gustav, weather analysts here suggested residents carry big umbrellas this week for the side-effects of the next hurricane of the season, Hanna.

Gustav swept the United States' Gulf Coast yesterday after nearly 2 million people evacuated New Orleans and surrounding cities, though the hurricane weakened and fell short of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina three years ago, the Associated Press reported.

The hurricane affected Costa Rica on Thursday, bringing heavy showers, road damage and flooding particularly in the western part of the Central Valley, according to José Joaquín Agüero of the National Meteorology Institute.

Agüero said this week Hanna – farther away and less fierce than Gustav – could make itself known with downpours along Costa Rica's Pacific Coast, Central Valley and Northern Zone.

As of yesterday afternoon, Hanna was stirring 120-kilometer-per-mile winds off the Bahamas' easterly island of Mayaguana, Agüero said.

Residents in the southeastern United States girded themselves as weather analysts said Hanna by Friday could arrive in Savannah, Georgia, or fall anywhere from the Carolinas down to Florida, the daily Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

Preliminary court hearings began yesterday against Miguel Angel Rodríguez, Costa Rican president from 1998 to 2002, in an alleged corruption scandal involving French cell phone company Alcatel and national telecom monopoly the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE).

The hearings could continue for several weeks to determine if the case goes on to a trial for a ggravated corruption and illicit enrichment for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands in handouts from Alcatel.

Alcatel obtained a $149 million government contract in 2001 to provide GSM cell phone services to the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE).

This week's hearings began despite former President Rodríguez's defense lawyers request to throw out the case, citing preferential treatment toward José Antonio Lobo, who became a key witness when he confessed to receiving more than $550,000 in payoffs from Alcatel in 2002.