Happy Thanksgiving!
Check last Friday's print or pdf edition of The Tico Times for the Thanksgiving Supplement published in our current Nov. 21 issue for information on where to eat and things to do.

National dance anniversary showcase
Gala Dance Show including modern, jazz, hip-hop, belly dance, Afro-Caribbean, Flamenco and ballet, 8 p.m., Melico Salazar Theater.

‘El Desahucio'
Comedy show performed by the Spanish Group Zanguango, 2 p.m., Plaza de la Cultura, San José.

‘Tango Complice'
Tango show, tonight and tomorrow, 8 p.m., Teatro 1887. Info: 8336-1616, 8827-4518.

‘Póker de voces' concert
Former judges and teachers from the TV contest Cantando por un sueño, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Three U.S. Southern Command helicopters landed yesterday at Costa Rica's Juan Santamaría International Airport, northwest of San José, airport officials said, after Costa Rica declared a state of emergency because of large-scale flooding in the Caribbean province of Limón.

It was the second day in a row the Miami, Florida base sent choppers to assist in an ongoing relief effort to bring food and other supplies to thousands of flood victims on both sides of the Costa Rica-Panama border by the Caribbean.

In Costa Rica, some 1,200 homes have been damaged by floods during a week of unrelenting rains, killing at least one person and forcing 5,681 others out of their homes and into 78 shelters, the National Emergency Commission (CNE) reported.

Francisco Antonio Pacheco, Costa Rica's acting president while President Oscar Arias is in Asia, yesterday signed an emergency decree for Limón that freed up about $3.6 million for the relief effort.

Pending approval by the Legislative Assembly, a $65 million loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development is expected to eventually be available to enhance Costa Rica's ability to respond to natural disasters, Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias said during a televised press conference yesterday.

The loan would be paid back in 15 years with 2.76 percent interest.

Costa Rica's Red Cross is also requesting donations from the public into three different bank accounts – Banco Nacional (account number 100100-7, colones only), Banco de Costa Rica (176003-3, colones only, or 204-6 for dollars).

Before yesterday's three U.S. helicopters landed, two had already arrived Tuesday at Limón Airport to bring help across the border to western Panama, where at least seven people have died from flooding and landslides, and thousands more have also been evacuated, according to the EFE news agency.

Southern Command also diverted the USS Samuel B. Roberts from anti-drug trafficking deployment to provide aid and disaster relief in Panama, according to a bulletin on the base's Web site.

The head of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias' environmental program Peace With Nature has asked the president to declare a moratorium on open-pit mining following protests over a gold mine near the northern border.

This comes eight months after Arias repealed a ban on open-pit metal mining decreed by former President Abel Pacheco in 2002.

“Based on the recognized precautionary principle of our legislation, we urge (the president) to declare a moratorium on metallic open-pit mining until the mining code is reviewed and updated,” said Pedro León, head of Peace With Nature, in a statement released yesterday.

León said his office had put together a document entitled, “Environmental Safeguard Policy for Mining in Cost Rica,” provided to the president in May, that said few experiences with metallic mining in the tropics have been positive. “It is widely recognized that we have an obsolete mining code,” León said.

León declined to comment directly on the case of Las Crucitas – a Canadian-owned open-pit gold mine located a few kilometers from the Río San Juan, the natural border separating Costa Rica from Nicaragua – because of a series of legal challenges currently being reviewed by the Supreme Court.

President Arias was out of the country this week and unavailable for comment on his advisor's recommendation.

GRANADA, Nicaragua – President Daniel Ortega said yesterday that Nicaragua feels “a little bit freer” following the United States' decision Monday to suspend $64 million in aid through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) due to Washington, D.C.'s “deep concerns” over the state of democracy in Nicaragua.

Speaking yesterday at the III Special Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) in Caracas, Venezuela, Ortega said the United States' decision to suspend its conditional aid for Nicaragua only makes the country feel freer, according to a live video feed on Nicaraguan state television.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez seconded Ortega's opinion, adding that in suspending MCC aid to Nicaragua the United States is just “taking the chains off.”

Ortega's position stands in stark opposition to comments from private sector leader César Zamora, president of Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce, who said that a cutoff in MCC aid would be like a “nuclear bomb” on Nicaraguan economy.

Chávez, meanwhile, said that ALBA will continue to denounce the international plans to destabilize the revolutionary governments in Latin America and warned that member nations have “soldiers to defend it.”

Chávez and Ortega also warned U.S. President-elect Barack Obama that his opponents “will kill him” if he tries to promote the change that he has promised in the United States.

“He is a prisoner of the empire,” Ortega said.

“I hope they don't kill him,” Chávez added.

For more on the U.S. aid freeze see www.ticotimes.net/dailyarchive/2008_11/1126081.htm.