Last chance for Chagall!
Marc Chagall's rendition of epic "The Odyssey," Rafael Calderón Guardia Museum, Barrio Escalante, San José.

Mundo Loco concert
Music from Brazil, Cuba, Costa Rica, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Sylvester Stallone is bringing his next action project, "The Expendables," to Costa Rica, according to  The Hollywood Reporter.

Stallone will join Chinese martial artist Jet Li and U.K. actor Jason Statham in the film about mercenaries sent to a Latin American country to topple its dictator.

The "Rocky" star, who wrote the screenplay and will direct it beginning in February in Costa Rica and Louisiana, is hoping to add Oscar winner Forrest Whitaker to the cast, the movie trade publication reported Saturday.

Nicaragua went to the polls yesterday to vote in municipal elections that have drawn skepticism at home and abroad amid allegations of non-transparency and fraud.

Some 3.8 million people were expected to turn in 146 of Nicaragua's 153 municipalities in a vote opposition leaders said is a referendum on the government of President Daniel Ortega.

For his part, Ortega accused the press of trying to "discredit" the country's electoral process, according to newswire EFE.

One of the most hotly contested races was that for Managua mayor between pro-Ortega Sandinista Alexis Argüello, a former boxing champion, and Liberal opposition politician Eduardo Montealegre.

Declaring that the government alone is unable to steer Costa Rica through a coming economic slowdown, President Oscar Arias called on private sector firms to continue to expand their operations and workforce.

"Hard times will continue for a few more months," he said at the inauguration of the medical device company Hologic's second plant late last week. "The government can take the most vulnerable people in its ship until we arrive at port. But it falls on (the private sector) to take care of the rest."

Located in Alajuela, north of San José, the Hologic plant represents a $17.5 million investment and will create about 150 jobs next year.

Arias also promised in 2009 to increase monthly cash transfers to poor families, including his signature Avancemos program, which pays parents for keeping their kids in school.

The administration also announced that it will funnel $50 million each to the state-owned Banco de Costa Rica and Banco Nacional to stimulate lending and try to avoid further dips in employment.

The economy is expected to grow 3.3 percent in 2008, down from 7.4 percent in 2007. Unemployment increased to 4.9 percent in July from 4.6 percent 12 months earlier. 

Nicaragua awoke to a tense uncertainty today following the hotly contested municipal elections yesterday for which both sides are claiming victory.

Following the Supreme Electoral Council's first vote tallies last night and early this morning, the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front was positioned to win more than 80 percent of the 153 municipalities – including the capital city of Managua – in a landslide fashion.

News of the early vote count prompted hundreds of Sandinista sympathizers to take to the streets to celebrate victory, even in some municipalities that were still reporting less than 1 percent of the vote counted. The premature celebrations led to violent clashes in some municipalities, where loyalists of the opposition Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC) insisted the Sandinistas were trying to steal the election.

In Managua, Sandinista candidate Alexis Argüello and PLC candidate Eduardo Montealegre both declared victory and addressed large groups of sympathizers in different parts of the capital around 1 a.m. Though the early vote count by the CSE shows Argüello with a 52-45 percent lead over Montealegre, the Liberal candidate insists his party's exit polling shows he won with more than 50 percent of the vote.

“We won,” Montealegre announced shortly before midnight, calling on his supporters to take to the streets in celebration. Montealegre insisted he and his party will defend their “victory.”

The CSE is scheduled to give its third – and perhaps definitive – vote tally this morning at 11 a.m.

Election watchdog group Ethics and Transparency called yesterday's elections the least transparent in a decade, and the opposition daily El Nuevo Diario called it “one of the most embarrassing” elections in the country's history.