Open art classes
For general public, registration deadline today, UCR Arts School . Info: artplast@cariari.ucr.ac.cr.

European Film Festival
“El Camino ” (C.R.), 3, 5 and 8 p.m., Arte Cine Lindora. “Exils” (France), 4, 6 and 8 p.m., Variedades.

‘My Left Breast'
A Canadian film about breast cancer, 8 p.m., Eugene O'Neill Theater, Costa Rican-North American Cultural Center , Barrio Dent. Info: 2207-7554.

Juanes in concert
Colombian king of Latin pop, with Costa Rica's Escats opening at 8 p.m., Alejandro Morera Soto Stadium, Alajuela, tickets at Bansbach stores, Quick Photo, Servimás outlets. Info: 2206-7770, www.specialticket.net.

The Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) and Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) have announced an agreement to introduce BlackBerry handheld wireless service in Costa Rica.

The devices, developed and marketed by the Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, are famous for their many capabilities. BlackBerry users can use their handhelds to send and receive e-mail, surf the Web, text message and fax, in addition to making mobile phone calls.

The apparatus works in conjunction with various cellular companies, soon to include ICE. Service begins this month. An exact date has not been set, Ana Cristina Rojas, who serves as press agent for RIM in Costa Rica, told The Tico Times.

BlackBerry devices also work offline as a personal data assistant (PDA) and camera.

Many of its tasks are accomplished via a small built-in keyboard operated with only the thumb. The device's users call the process “thumbing.”

Two models will be available in Costa Rica.

The BlackBerry Curve 8320 is the lightest of the BlackBerry line with full QWERTY-size keyboard. The narrower BlackBerry Pearl 8120 combines number and letter keys.

Both models detect and access wireless Internet connections.

ICE will offer two levels of service.

The Empresarial package is geared to large corporations. Activation of service runs approximately $730, a price that includes the BlackBerry device. For those who already own an apparatus, that initial fee drops to $23. Monthly fees are $23.

Uso Personal service is designed for individuals and small- or medium-sized businesses. Activation plus device runs $685. Initial fees for those who already own an apparatus is $23. Monthly fees are $18.

For information, call 800-252-2523 (Personal) or 800-367-7372 (Empresarial). For general information on BlackBerry service not specific to Costa Rica, log onto www.rim.com or www.blackberry.com.

The dropping value of the colón versus the U.S. dollar, mixed with rising prices, has driven consumer confidence down in recent months, according to a quarterly study by GfK The Marketing Group, a German multinational research firm.

Costa Rica's consumer confidence for July, August and September fell by 19 points to settle at 65 points out of 200.

According to the weekly financial paper El Financiero, consumer confidence as measured by the GfK has fallen steadily for close to a year, since reaching 109 points last November. Anything above 100 is considered a positive outlook.

Economic numbers have been steadily painting a bleaker picture for Tico consumers. In one week in July alone, the colón dropped by 6.5 percent against the dollar.

The Central Bank's international reserves have dropped over 20 percent over the course of the summer – from $4.9 billion in April to under $3.9 billion in late September – as it tries to keep the colón within a designated range and buys up its own currency on the currency exchange markets.

According to the Central Bank's Monthly Index of Economic Activity, the Costa Rican economy's growth rate slipped to its lowest clip since 2002, growing just 2.5 percent year-over-year in July.

Inflation for the year ending in August reached 15.4 percent, the highest seen in a decade.

The Costa Rican Chamber of Commerce, which announced the study, is optimistic the outlook will improve.

In a statement released earlier this week, the chamber noted that 60 percent of employment in Costa Rica is concentrated in the sectors that are growing the most: services, construction, transportation and commerce.

Business tends to increase by about 17 percent at the end of the year, chamber president Oscar Cabada said. That rise is pushed in part by an increase in commerce around the holidays and the arrival of the tourism high season, he added.

The chamber tempered its prediction for this year, saying it expected an 11 percent increase in economic activity in the final quarter.

“The situation would be positive, considering that the commerce sector is the largest employer in the country, with a fifth of the work force,” the chamber statement said.

After Transparency International ranked Nicaragua as the fifth most corrupt country in Latin America, Nicaragua's Comptroller General Luis Angel Montenegro announced that not one public official has been punished for corruption during the first 18 months of President Daniel Ortega's term.

Montenegro said the lack of sanctions against public officials for corruption reflects an improvement in the way Sandinista government employees conduct themselves compared with past governments. In the first year of ex-President Arnoldo Aleman's government, the comptroller sanctioned more than 150 public officials, Montenegro pointed out.

“This is a government without corruption,” he told state-run TV channel Multinoticias.

Transparency International's 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index, released Sept. 23, paints a different picture. The survey, which indicates the degree of public sector corruption as perceived by business people and country analysts on a scale of 0 (highly corrupt) to 10 (highly clean), gave Nicaragua a score of 2.5 – the worst corruption ranking in Central America. Nicaragua placed 134 out of 180 countries, tied with Pakistan and Ukraine. In Latin America, only Haiti, Venezuela, Ecuador and Paraguay outranked Nicaragua for perceived corruption.

The Ortega administration has been under fire from opposition at home and observers abroad for opaque management of some $520 million in Venezuelan aid.