English Fair
Nov. 17, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Auditorium of Consejo Nacional de Rectores, Pavas, 1.5 km north of the U.S. Embassy, crmultilingue@casapres.go.cr.

Cultural shows
Nov. 17, 6 p.m., Santa Rita, Nandayure, Guanacaste; Nov. 18, 6 p.m., Salón Comunal, Filadelfia, Guanacaste.

Ska-P in concert
Spanish punk ska, 7 p.m., Ricardo Saprissa Stadium, Tibás, www.todoticketcr.com.

Metallica tickets on sale
Tickets go on sale 10 a.m. for the March 7, 2010, show at Ricardo Saprissa Stadium at www.specialticket.net, call center 2206-7770, and Servimás (Más x Menos Supermarkets), La Barbería (Centro Comercial Vía Lindora) and Bansbach stores. Tickets price range from ¢ 15,000-¢55,000.

Antonio Lehmann, the owner of book retailer Librería Lehmann S.A., was murdered in Verbana Café and Restaurant in Tres Ríos, just east of San José, on Sunday night at 7:30 p.m.

According to eyewitness accounts, three men stormed into the restaurant wearing handkerchiefs over their mouths, dark sunglasses and hats. One was armed with a gun and another with a knife.

The suspects entered to rob the business, according to National Police reports. Lehmann, who was eating dinner with a friend, confronted one of the men and was shot once in the chest. He was 75 years old.

A total of three tables were occupied in the restaurant on Sunday night. One of the suspects robbed a wallet containing ₡ 20,000 (about $35) and a cellular phone from another customer.

The three men escaped in a white car with black stripes. As of 2:30 p.m. Monday, the National Police and the Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) had no clues to the suspects' identities or whereabouts.

Librería Lehmann is one of Costa Rica's largest book retailers with stores in downtown San José, San Pedro, east of San José, Rhormoser, west of San José, and Tibás, north of the capital city. The chain was founded in 1896.

No more than three weeks after the Central American Court of Justice ruled against Costa Rica in a case involving tariffs, Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno issued a scathing response in the editorial pages of the daily La Nación.

Calling the Managua, Nicaragua-headquartered tribunal “pathetic” and a “disgrace,” Stagno said Costa Rica has never and will never recognize the court.

“With its irresponsible behavior, the Central American Court of Justice deserves nothing more than the pity of Costa Rica,” he wrote.

The Central American Court of Justice was created in 1994 as the judicial arm of the Central American Integration System (SICA), which Costa Rican President Oscar Arias now heads.

But Costa Rica never ratified the statute of the court and, therefore, has refused to recognize the judicial body or its recent ruling. The ruling says that higher tariffs on imports, which Costa Rica introduced in 2007, are in violation of the law.

Stagno said the Rules and Orders of Procedures of the court have clear deficiencies, interfere with constitutional powers and grant “despicable” privileges to the judges who serve in the court. While the court highlighted a small case in Costa Rica involving tariffs, it chooses to ignore larger issues in the four countries that recognize it such as electoral fraud and coups, Stagno said, with the “sole purpose of trying to impose its competence and jurisdiction on the oldest democracy in Latin America: Costa Rica.”

Listing a handful of cases he said were “pathetic anecdotes from a court that nobody respects,” Stagno wrote that the countries that subscribe to the court do not abide by its decisions.

“This is the real CCJ: a court that does nothing and represents nothing more than the interests of judges and their messengers,” Stagno wrote. “It's a court that Costa Rica should continue to keep a safe distance from for our own good.”

Jason Torres likes to make history. Four years ago, when he went to the Pan-American Surfing Games in Lima, Peru, the surfer from Costa Rica's central Pacific Jacó beach earned the country's one and only gold medal as a Junior. Last week, in Playa Olivenca de Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil, Torres surfed his way to second place in the Open division at the 9th Pan-American Surfing Games – a competition that gathered all the nations of North, Central and South America. In doing so, he wrote another chapter in the Costa Rican history books, earning a silver medal for himself and boosting the Costa Rica National Surf Team to take home their own silver medal.

With the team's medal, they made their fourth consecutive visit to the podium since 2003, when they took the bronze in Ecuador.

Costa Rica's silver was all the more significant since they were unable to bring a full contingent of competitors to Brazil due to financial constraints. Several athletes pulled double duty in various divisions, such as Carlos Muñoz in Open and Junior, Nataly Bernold in Women's and Junior, Isaac Vega in Open and Bodyboard Male, Anthony Fillingim in Junior and Bodyboard Male, and Lisbeth Vindas in Women's and Bodyboard Female.

“Hopefully, this win will enable all to see that the institution of surfing is doing well in Costa Rica, so that people can support it and see that it gives a lot of merit to the country,” said José Ureña, president of the Costa Rica Surf Federation.

“We arrived incomplete because the price of the airline tickets was so expensive, so I want to thank the surfers we had and (I'm) pleased that they made Costa Rica the second-best surfing nation on the American continent.”