Puntarenas Carnival
Concerts, dances, cultural activities, mascaradas, comparsas, fireworks, through Feb. 22, Puntarenas, www.puntarenas.com/carnavales.

Summer classes
Storytelling, ages 13 and up, through Friday, 9-11:30 a.m., TEOR/éTica gallery, Calle 7, Avenida 9/11, San José, info: 2221-6971, www.teoretica.org.

Amounsulú in concert
World music, part of the Mundoloco concert series, 10 p.m., Jazz Café, San Pedro. Info: 2253-8933, www.jazzcafecostarica.com.

Panama beat the odds and won the Central American Soccer Union championship Sunday, besting Costa Rica in the final match 5-3 on penalty kicks after the teams tied 0-0 in regulation.

Three of the seven teams in the annual tournament – Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador – entered the games last weekend, looking to prep themselves for the next and final round of World Cup qualifiers that begins next week.  

But it was Panama who stole the show. First, they stunned hosts Honduras by beating them 1-0 in their semi-final match, sending them into the final against Costa Rica, the defending tournament champions who had beaten Panama easily 3-0 the week before in group play.  

This time around, though Panama was able to hold Costa Rica scoreless through 90 minutes of regular time play. Once the final whistle blew, the game went directly into penalty kicks, foregoing the usual overtime.  

All five Panamanian players made their shots, but the third Tico shooter missed his, giving Panama the championship.  

The tournament championship is a bittersweet victory for Panama, who were knocked out of World Cup qualifying in early bracket round play by El Salvador late last spring.  

El Salvador, for their part, made an ignominious exit in their semi-final game against Costa Rica on Friday. Two Salvadoran players, including star striker Eliseo Quintanilla, received red cards in the first 25 minutes of play, leaving their team with nine men on the field. Tico striker Andy Furtado slipped in a goal in the 18th minute, his third of the tournament in as many games.  

As the half went on, it only got worse for the cuscatlecos as players went off the field injured, and they quickly used up their allotment of substitutions. By the 60th minute, with a full half hour left to play, the team decided they'd had enough and forfeited the match.  

Although Costa Rica was only up 1-0 when the game was called, the game was scored 3-0, which is the default score for a forfeited game, per FIFA regulations.

Honduras beat El Salvador 1-0 in the third-place consolation game earlier Sunday afternoon.  

La Sele's loss Sunday ends its nine-game winning streak, and the eight-game streak for Head Coach Rodrigo Kenton. Both streaks tied national team records.  

Costa Rica, currently ranked 47th internationally by FIFA, will host Honduras, ranked 40th, on Feb. 11 on the opening day for the region's final World Cup qualifying round.

As Costa Rica takes a beating from the global financial crisis, President Oscar Arias announced measures last week to reduce layoffs and defaults on debt, while expanding programs that give cash, food and healthcare to poor people.

In a presentation Thursday on what he called his "shield plan," Arias said, "The coming months will be difficult. We will have to make sacrifices…But we will pull through."

Some economists are predicting that Costa Rica's GDP will grow a mere 1 percent this year, down from 3.5 percent last year, as a global recession slows tourism, investment, and exports. Unemployment, now at around 5 percent, could increase to 8 percent this year, according to one analyst.  

Arias' presentation, which introduced several new programs while repeating old ones, drew criticism from some business leaders, economists and opposition politicians who said it was not ambitious enough.

"These measures will offer some consolation to the most vulnerable," the financial advising firm Aldesa said in a statement. "But they are probably insufficient to reverse the recession that our country faces."

Arias plans to increase to about $120 from $105 a monthly cash transfer for low-income senior citizens, people with disabilities, widows, sick people and orphans. The president will also expand his signature Avancemos program, which pays families to keep kids in school, to include 150,000 students, up from 132,000 today.

For three months beginning in February, the Mixed Institute for Social Aid (IMAS) will give a weekly package of food to more than 16,000 children who live in the poorest areas of the country.

In addition, Arias has asked the state banks – Bancredito, Banco Nacional and Banco de Costa Rica – and private-public Banco Popular to reduce by 2 percent the interest rate for loans for small and medium-sized businesses, as well as home loans of about $90,000 or less.

Arias is also seeking to reform the Labor Code to allow four-day work weeks and shorter work days. Making labor laws more flexible would slow job loss, he said. The plan will also soften the pain of a layoff by offering state healthcare to fired workers for six months, up from three months today.

Arias also announced a $500 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank to help Costa Rica's Central Bank keep the currency stable as dollars grow scarce. The loan must be approved by lawmakers, who are also now debating loans of $850 million for infrastructure projects, $500 million for the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE), and $72.5 million to develop the Caribbean port city of Limón.

MANAGUA - Nicaraguan Maricela Soza, who was deported last week from the United States, where she had been living with her two children, said she is hopeful U.S. authorities will review her case so that she can be reunited with her family.

Soza, the mother of Cecia, 12, and Ronald, 9, who on Monday began a hunger strike to prevent their mother's deportation, said she did not support the minors' protest measure.

"The hunger strike has now ended and I managed to speak with them (Thursday) and they're fine, thank God, even though we're apart," Maricela said in Managua, where relatives have taken her in.

Her children, one born in the United States after Soza arrived there in 1997 illegally and the other a legal resident, are in the care of an uncle, Fausto Soza, and Nora Sandigo, executive director of American Fraternity, a Miami-based immigrant-rights organization whose headquarters was the place where the children staged the hunger strike.

The case comes as last year's U.S. immigration law reform plans re-enter the spotlight, and Latin Americans residing both within and outside U.S. borders wait to see what a new Democratic administration could mean for the country's immigration policy.

"We're trying to see what can be done, if there's some way to go back (to the U.S. ), by way of the the president (of the U.S., Barack Obama). Maybe he'll approve a law or something like that," Soza told Nicaraguan daily El Nuevo Diario.

Meanwhile, Soza, 32, is awaiting news about her case in the Nicaraguan capital and said she is sure that if it is reopened and reviewed the problem will be resolved and she will be able to return and see her children.

The woman said she spoke Thursday with her husband, Ronald Soza, who is in hiding because he also does not have legal status, adding that he is in close contact with their attorney, Alfonso Oviedo-Reyes, about everything related to the case.

Speaking about her situation in Nicaragua, Maricela said that thus far the government has not offered her assistance nor has she requested any.

She said she has no plans in Nicaragua and that, if she returns to the United States, she will do so legally.

Soza had the chance to present her case before a U.S. immigration judge, but the latter ruled against her and ordered her to be deported, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Miami said.

The Nicaraguan, who was taken into custody by immigration agents on Dec. 19 in Pompano Beach, north of Miami, as she was going home after taking Cecia to catch the school bus, had been held in a South Florida immigration detention center for 42 days.

The Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, for its part, said Thursday that "there is no official reaction" to the case of the deportee.

The Soza children began their hunger strike three days after American Fraternity asked the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an injunction suspending the deportations of undocumented parents until immigration reform is approved by Congress.

Filing the motion was attorney and Fraternidad Americana President Alfonso Oviedo-Reyes, who is representing the children pro bono. He says that the deportation of undocumented parents of the plaintiffs is a violation of the civil rights of the minors.

He said that before 1996, minors with parents in this situation had the right to go to court and have their immigration status resolved if they could fulfill three conditions: having lived in the country for more than seven years, being of good moral character and showing that the children would suffer if their parents were deported.