Delay aging
Talk by Miriam Urquilla and Roberto Cabañas, 3-5 p.m., Casa Ames, Los Yoses, info: 2224-3678, 2224-7113.

Tales not for kids
Adult storytelling event “Cuentos no tan Navideños” (Not So Christmasy Tales), 8 p.m. and on Sunday at 5 p.m., Casa Arco Iris, 50 meters west of Calderón Guardia Hospital exit.

‘Sueña que Sueñas' dance show
Tonight and tomorrow, 8 p.m., Teatro de la Danza, CENAC, info: 2290-2271.

Luis Nubiola in concert
Latin jazz, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro, info: 2253-8933, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Malpaís in concert
Tico trova, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, Escazú, info: 2288-4740, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

High-level officials from Costa Rica, the United States and other hemispheric countries yesterday restated their commitment to free trade and agreed to help poor people take advantage of such treaties.

At a conference in Panama, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and representatives from Canada and 11 Latin American countries agreed to promote lending and training programs for farmers and small business owners in the hemisphere, according to the newswire ACAN-EFE.

Rice also met privately with Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno, Foreign Trade Minister Marco Vinicio Ruiz and Presidency Minister Rodrigo Arias to discuss Costa Rica's entry into the Central American Free-Trade Agreement (CAFTA), according to a Casa Presidencial press release. Costa Rica plans to join the pact within the next three weeks.

“By coming together to renew and build on our commitment to trade and investment liberalization, we send a powerful signal that we are not going to repeat the mistakes of the Great Depression when nations deepened that crisis by turning inward and adopting protectionist policies,” Rice said at the conference.

On Tuesday, the World Bank predicted that world trade would fall next year for the first time since 1982. The volume of world trade, which grew 9.8 percent in 2006 and 6.2 percent this year, will contract by 2.1 percent in 2009, the report said.

The forum was the second installment of U.S. President George Bush's Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas initiative, which held a first conference on free trade in late September in New York City.

Zero-tolerance: A Sandinista supporter, wearing a Sandinista “Citizen Power” hat and holding a rock, tears a Nicaraguan flag out of the hands of a human-rights activist during yesterday's march to commemorate International Human Rights Day

Tim Rogers | Nica Times

MANAGUA, Nicaragua – In a country where irony is king, rights activists who tried to march peacefully yesterday in commemoration of International Human Rights Day were nearly deprived of their rights to free expression and security as a mob of Sandinista supporters attacked marchers with mortars, rocks and sticks.

The Sandinista mob – convoked by the government's Human Rights Ombudsman Omar Cabezas and transported to the event in buses provided by the governing party – wasted no time in clashing with human-rights activists, who were assembling at the downtown Güegüense traffic roundabout to leave on their scheduled march.

The Sandinistas, some masked and most wearing government propaganda messages, tore the demonstrators' signs – some of which were protesting electoral fraud in the Nov. 9 municipal elections – while others shoved and kicked the marchers. The determined rights activists started to march south toward the United Nations buildings. The Sandinistas followed them for several hundred meters, throwing sticks and rocks at them as they left.

Police, who were again ordered by President Daniel Ortega last week to not “repress the people,” made several inefficient efforts to calm the Sandinista mob until officers eventually separated the two groups long enough for the rights activists to march off.

Since August, the ruling Sandinista Front has adopted a zero-tolerance policy toward any form of social or civic protest or demonstration – an crackdown that critics claim is clear indication of the government's move toward dictatorship.

Read this Friday's Nica Times online at www.nicatimes.net for more on this story.

GRANADA, Nicaragua – With the clock ticking down the final hours before the board of directors of the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) makes its final decision tomorrow regarding the future of U.S. development aid for Nicaragua, César Zamora, president of the Nicaraguan-American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), was in Washington, D.C., yesterday meeting with government officials to lobby on behalf of his beleaguered country.

“It is now more than ever that we need the help of our friends in our struggle to preserve democracy,” Zamora said after meeting with the top congressional advisors to Rep. Elliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Sub Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs. “Those who have benefited from the Millennium Challenge Corp. are mostly small producers who have generated thousands of new jobs, so it's not fair to make them the victims of this decision.”

Citing “deep concern” over Nicaragua's democratic process, the MCC announced Nov. 24 that it had frozen the remaining $64 million in unpledged aid in its $175 million compact for Nicaragua. Though President Daniel Ortega has tried to dismiss the aid freeze as a decision that only makes Nicaragua “feel a bit freer,” that sentiment is not shared by many other people in Nicaragua, whose economy depends greatly on foreign aid.

Zamora, in his visit to Washington yesterday, met with heads of the Association of Latin American Business Chambers as well as various advisers to well-placed members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The Nicaraguan business leader also visited the MCC offices in Washington, where he met with the top aide to MCC head John Danilovich and argued why Nicaragua should not be cut out of the program.

Zamora also sent a letter lobbying on Nicaragua's behalf to the MCC, the House of Representatives, President George W. Bush and President-elect Barack Obama.

“We have come here to defend the thousands of (Nicaraguans) who have benefited from the MCC,” Zamora said. “Nicaraguans have to find an immediate solution to our political problems so we can start trying to attract investment, generate jobs and combat poverty.”

Zamora, in an interview with The Nica Times last month, likened the MCC's decision to suspend aid to a “nuclear bomb” on the Nicaraguan economy.