15th International Guitar Festival
Cuban guitarists Jorge Luis Zamora and José Angel Navarro, 8 p.m., National Theater.

European Film Festival
Spanish documentary “El Otro Lado...Un Acercamiento a Lavapiés,” Arte Cine Lindora, Santa Ana, at 3, 5, 8 p.m. and Variedades Cinema, Calle 5, between Avenidas Central and 1, at 4, 6, 8 p.m.

Dan Robinson in concert
Electro-jazz hip-hop, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, http://jazzcafecostarica.com

Christian Sapsizian, a French citizen and former executive of telecom Alcatel, was sentenced yesterday in the United States to 30 months in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

The U.S. District Court of Florida in Miami also ordered Sapsizian to forfeit $261,000, to serve three years of supervised release and to pay a $200 special assessment, according to a DOP press release.

The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), the state-owned telecom authority, awarded Alcatel an almost $150 million mobile phone contract in August 2001. Sapsizian then an assistant to Alcatel's Latin America vice president, appears to have had a behind-the-back hand in sealing the deal.

Sapsizian confessed to engaging in a $2.5 million bribery scheme started in 2000 to win ICE's phone contract. He pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and agreed to cooperate with law enforcement officials from the United States and abroad in the ongoing investigation.

He admitted to conspiring from February 2000 to September 2004 with Edgar Valverde Acosta, a Costa Rican citizen who was Alcatel's senior Costa Rica representative, and others to bribe officials here.

A Costa Rica court ruled Friday in favor of Nicole Kater, who faces charges in the United States of international parental abduction, the second time in two months this Central American country has struck down a U.S. request for extradition on the basis of kidnapping.

Police arrested 28-year-old Kater near Sabalito de Tierra Morena, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, in April, almost three years after she had fled with her daughter to Costa Rica in 2005 during a custody dispute with the child's father in Humboldt, California, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

Humboldt County Superior Court awarded custody to the girl's father John Gehl, and in December 2005 the United States issued a federal warrant for her arrest.

The Costa Rican National Institute for Women (INAMU), however, claims that Kater had Gehl's authorization to travel here, and settled in Cóbado, Puntarenas, to start a new life.

Held in San José's Buen Pastor prison since her arrest in April, Kater filed for refugee status here in July, claiming to be a victim of domestic violence. That came shortly after the arrest of another U.S. woman in a similar case, Chere Lyn Tomayko, who also sought protection in Costa Rica from what she described was a violent situation with her child's father back in the United States.

Immigration authorities are still processing Kater's request, news agency EFE reported.

Kater must wait for a high court of appeals ruling till she can go free, INAMU said.

The third annual Arte Viva festival planned for this weekend in Puerto Viejo, on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, was canceled unexpectedly yesterday after local authorities revoked the festival's permits, according to the event's organizer, Claudio Ambroso.

He said a person from outside Puerto Viejo filed a request for an injunction against the Talamanca municipality with the Constitutional Court (Sala IV) for an unknown reason and for now the local government must forfeit their power to grant permits for large gatherings.

The municipality would not comment on the matter.

“Carrying on with the activities would be ugly and not legal and not possible,” Ambroso said. “We are pretty sad about this.”

The festival is organized by Escuela de Artes del Caribe Sur (South Caribbean School of Arts), a nonprofit that provides arts education to local school children, and was scheduled to begin this Friday. Ambroso said the festival is their major fundraiser and if they are not able to eventually hold the event, they will be hard pressed to provide services to their community this year.

“Unfortunately right now we are not in the position of saying when (the festival) is going to be,” Ambroso said.

The organizers had estimated that about 1,000 people would flock to Puerto Viejo this weekend to raise a total of $3,000 for the organization. He added that hundreds of the children who were eager to perform at the festival will be disappointed, and that they would also miss out on the educational components of the weekend.

Arte Viva is a celebration of food, music, and visual arts. Ambroso said updates are available at the festival's Web site,
www.arteviva-puertoviejo.com/index.asp.