Ecuadorean film: ‘Qué tan lejos'
Part of Latin American Film Festival, 4 and 6 p.m., Cine Vairedades, Calle 5 between Avenida Central and 1, info: 2222-6108.

Talk on ‘Palestine: The Current Situation'
With Father José Mulligan, coordinator of International Jesuit Volunteers and activist who has worked on Palestinian issues with the Michigan Peace Team, 5:30 p.m., Friends Peace Center, Calle 15, between Avenidas 6 and 8, one block north of The Tico Times.

Chamber Opera of Costa Rica in concert
Performing arias from Bizet's Carmen , Puccini's La Bohème and more, 8 p.m., National Theater.

Sonsax in concert
9 p.m., Vino y Tintos Restaurant, Paseo de las Flores Mall, Heredia.

Costa Rican women's groups yesterday stepped up the pressure on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to end what a growing number of humanitarian and human rights workers worldwide are calling “political persecution” of feminists.

About 25 representatives of a coalition of local and national women's groups, including the Costa Rican Women's Alliance, gathered yesterday morning outside the Nicaraguan Embassy on San José's Avenida Central to decry the government's targeting of rights groups. They carried signs that said “Ortega dictator” and “Ortega abuser,” and compared the Sandinista leader to his erstwhile nemesis, dictator Anastasio Somoza.

Inside the embassy, activists delivered a letter addressed to Ortega and Chief Prosecutor Centeno Gómez, accusing them of conducting “a campaign of persecution and slander” that targets feminists and women's organizations.

After unofficial allegations against feminists of money laundering and other crimes, police raided the Autonomous Women's Movement's (MAM) offices last week.

MAM joins a list of other non-governmental organizations, including OXFAM, on the government's radar screen.

The investigations and raids have fueled an outcry throughout Latin America and garnered complaints from France's Socialist Party earlier this week.

“It's gotten to the point that anyone who protests Ortega is (treated by the state as) his enemy,” Ana Hernández, a protestor from the Costa Rican Women's Alliance, said. “His actions contradict what he said when he was campaigning for president. Now he's behaving more like Somoza.”

See Friday's Nica Times, an eight-page publication of The Tico Times, for more on this story.

Costa Rica's principal business association announced Monday that it is willing to begin negotiations for increase in minimum salaries at 6 percent.

The nation's minimum wages – which vary depending on the industry – are adjusted twice a year through a negotiation between labor leaders, private business and the government.

The raise would apply to the first half of 2009.

Last week, labor leaders called for salary increases of between 12 and 16 percent for public and private sector workers in order to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

Inflation has surged 15.77 percent during the past 12 months, the highest year-over-year increase since 1998, according to the National Statistics and Census Institute.

The Union of Private Sector Chambers and Associations (UCCAEP), which represents 42 private business chambers, said in a statement it “recognizes that inflation for the second semester of 2008 will be above 6 percent.”

However, UCCAEP said that for more than six months it has been warning that a lack of credit availability, both in credit lines and business loans, is “squeezing” the private sector, while the Legislative Assembly's failure to pass the Central American Free-Trade Agreement with the United States (CAFTA) is generating “uncertainty” among businesses.

UCCAEP called for the eventual minimum salary increase to take into consideration “the country's social and economic reality.” It also noted that 98 percent of businesses in Costa Rica are medium-, small- and micro-sized, and salary increases hit their finances the hardest.

PANAMA CITY – The number of this nation's poor declined between 2001 and 2007 thanks to economic growth, but so has the average Panamanian's purchasing power, a regional economic group has reported.

The number of people unable to fulfill their bare necessities dropped from 19.2 percent of the population in 2001 to 11.7 in 2007, according to the report released Monday by the Latin American Economic Commission (CEPAL).

Some 385,000 Panamanians live in extreme poverty, the report said, while 941,000 live in poverty. The latter group saw a decline from 36.7 percent to 28.6 percent of the population.

Being poor in Panama means earning less than $95 a month in the city and $64.40 in the countryside, while extreme poverty happens when one's income is below $47.50 a month in the city and $36.80 in the country, according to CEPAL.

“Panama is on a path toward meeting the first objective of the Millennium Goals, which is reduce extreme poverty by half by 2015,” Torrijos said after receiving the study Monday.

Luis Beccaria, director of CEPAL's division of statistics and economic projections, remarked on Panama's progress.

“It isn't always that an advance in the economy of a country represents a reflection of social factors, but, in the case of Panama, this growth has been proportional to the decrease in poverty,” Beccaria said.

However, he underscored the need to confront the challenge of salaries. “Purchasing power has not evolved proportionally to the country's economic development,” he said.

And wages have actually dropped.

The average salary decreased 13 percent, from $548 a month in 2001 to $477 last year.