European Film Festival
“Les mauvais garçons” ( France ), at 3, 5 and 8 p.m., Arte Cine Lindora (2205-4130); at 4, 6 and 8 p.m., Variedades (2222-6108).

Bernal Villegas, Pato Barrazo in concert
Costa Rican rock, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San José, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Escats in concert
Jazzy pop, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, http://jazzcafecostarica.com.

Costa Rica has three more months to pass legislation required to enter the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA).

The United States, the Dominican Republic and Central American signatory-states have agreed to extend Costa Rica's Oct. 1 deadline for entering the pact.

Casa Presidencial announced the news yesterday afternoon, after Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined his trading partners in signing the extension.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, now in Costa Rica with representatives from 10 U.S. businesses, met with President Oscar Arias yesterday.

“I come to reiterate the Bush administration's complete support for Costa Rica's entry into CAFTA,” he said at a press conference. “It's hard to imagine CAFTA without Costa Rica.”

Lawmakers are now working to pass the last of 13 bills required for Costa Rica to enter the treaty. But even this legislation may not meet standards set by the United States Trade Representative (USTR), Gutierrez suggested.

“I'm going to return to Washington with this priority: I want to sit down to talk with the USTR,” he said. “I want to understand if there is a problem or if there is simply a misunderstanding.”

Costa Rica signed CAFTA in May 2004 and ratified the pact in a national referendum last October. But, faced with opposition in the Legislative Assembly, President Arias has twice had to ask trading partners for more time to pass implementing legislation.

Asked how the financial crisis in the U.S. would affect Costa Rica, Gutierrez said, “What could happen …in the short or medium term is a shortage of capital, in which case … investors will have to be much more selective in deciding where to invest.”

GRANADA, Nicaragua – A new designation by the U.S. government indentifying a woman recently granted asylum in Nicaragua as a “key member” of a terrorist organization and international drug kingpin has raised new concerns that Nicaragua is developing an image as a haven for terrorists.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) yesterday designated eight international representatives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), considered a “narco-terrorist organization” by the U.S. Among the identified FARC members is Nubia Calderón de Trujillo, aka “Esperanza,” who was recently granted asylum in Nicaragua by President Daniel Ortega.

“Today's designation exposes eight ‘International Commission members' of the FARC,” said Adam J. Szubin, director of OFAC, in an official government release. “Through their service to the FARC as international representatives and negotiators, these persons provide material support to a narco-terrorist organization.”

Calderón, a survivor of the Colombian military bomb attack on a FARC jungle camp in Ecuador on March 1, is identified by the U.S. government as the rebel group's representative for Ecuador. She has reportedly been recovering in Nicaragua for more than a month along with three other survivors from the bombing raid on the FARC camp, which killed 21 guerrillas, including FARC's No. 2 leader, Raúl Reyes.

Ortega has granted all four survivors asylum in Nicaragua for “humanitarian reasons” and has reportedly put them up in homes paid for with government funds.

Independent lawmaker Jamileth Bonilla, president of the National Assembly's Commission on Foreign Affairs, told The Nica Times yesterday that Ortega's relationship with FARC is putting Nicaragua in a “delicate situation” both politically and economically by creating the image of a terrorist haven and scaring away investors.

FARC has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government since 1997 and was identified as a “significant foreign narcotics trafficker” in 2003 by U.S. President George W. Bush. 

Yesterday's action by the U.S. government freezes any assets the designated entities and individuals may have under U.S. jurisdiction and prohibits U.S. persons from conducting financial or commercial transactions involving those assets.

A hundred Costa Ricans fled their drenched homes for refuge in dry shelters after heavy rains earlier this week and amid forecasts for more precipitation as the peak rainy season heads into its second month, the National Emergency Commission (CNE) said yesterday.

Preliminary damage reports show some 50 homes, four roads and several bridges (no official count was available) affected by the rain, many of them in the provinces of San José and Cartago.

Route 2 sustained a landslide at Kilometer 232, while other roads in Pérez Zeledón and Cipreses de Montes de Oca were also damaged.

CNE called its four shelters – all of which are housed in churches – part of a “preventive measure,” issuing a “green” alert, the lowest level of the cautionary weather warnings, for towns and villages throughout much of Costa Rica's central Pacific, Central Valley and northwestern regions.

The alert covers a host of communities pummeled in recent storms, such as Bagaces, Santa Cruz, Nicoya and Tilarán in the north-central Chorotega region, Aguirre and Parrita in the Central Pacific, and the Southern Zone region of Pérez Zeledón. The list also includes the city of San José and nearby communities in Escazú, Santa Ana, Curridabat, Moravia and Montes de Oca.