Panama, the home of the greatest closer of all time. Yankee’s Mariano Rivera, and the first country in the region to play baseball, is the subject of a ground breaking sports documentary by a New York filmmaker. US filmmaker Eric Soussan lamented that Panama, which pioneered baseball now lags behind other Latin- American countries in its exports of players to the major leagues. When he obta...

Orlando Castillo, the head of Nicaraguan telecoms regulator Telcor, has confirmed that a total of seven companies have paid the USD3,000 registration fee to participate in the government’s upcoming tender for two new mobile licences. Although Castillo was not willing to disclose the identities of the parties interested, he did confirm local press speculation implicating Beijing-based research ...

In some countries political campaigns give out bumper stickers and yard signs. In others, they offer free lunches and supermarket debit cards. In Honduras, one of Latin America’s poorest countries and also its most dangerous, candidates dole out another type of political swag: coffins for the destitute. Charities organized by politicians scour poor neighborhoods in search of families of mur...

In the suburbs of El Salvador, in neighborhoods stained by Mara Salvatrucha or Barrio 18 graffiti, there are hundreds of abandoned, decaying houses. These houses tell the drama of the families who silently lived through their own history of violence: those displaced by gangs. There are houses that talk. They scream things, recount bits and pieces of larger stories. One house has four rooms,...

In a blog post by Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein, two announcements were made that were direct results of passenger feedback. First up was the request by Royal Caribbean fans for more Panama Canal cruises. Goldstein announced that Vision of the Seas was slated to originally offer Caribbean cruises will instead sail a set of Panama Canal cruises in the fall and spring. The new Panama ca...

Russia’s Interior Ministry has signed an agreement with Nicaragua on supplying the "Tiger" armored vehicles to that country. “These vehicles will be used in operations on fighting the organized crime in our country”, Nicaragua's Minister of Interior Ana Isabel Morales Mazún said at a meeting in Moscow on Thursday. She said the "Tigers" would be used by the units of the Nicaraguan special...

Ever joked to a friend you'd skip town if the election didn't go your way? JetBlue launched a clever marketing campaign on Wednesday that aims to put frustrated voters in their place — on a plane right out of the country. Aptly dubbed Election Protection, the discount carrier's offering free roundtrip tickets to any of its 21 nonstop, international destinations including Aruba, Bahamas,...

Akamai Technologies, Inc., the leading cloud platform for helping enterprises provide secure, high-performing user experiences on any device, anywhere, today announced the opening of its Costa Rica services and support center. The new center is slated to create over 50 jobs through the end of 2014. Akamai's success across the globe has triggered significant demand for its cloud infrastructure ...

The latest production offered by Little Theatre Group of Costa Rica will open on Friday October 12th 2012 at 7:30pm. Looking for the Pony by Andrea Lepcio was first presented in a "Rolling World Premiere" Off-Broadway at Vital Theatre Company in New York City in 2009. Since then it has been performed across the United States always receiving excellent reviews. Described by reviewer Martin D...

Nearly two decades after Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar died in a hail of bullets, his eldest son is conquering new markets in Mexico - with a fashion line in his father's image. Sebastian Marroquin's designer T-shirts, plastered with photos of Escobar, are hot sellers in Mexican states that are on the front lines of the country's deadly drug war. The shirts are emblazoned with ...

Archaeologists discover the tomb of one of the greatest queens of Classic Maya civilization piecing together for the first time Maya archaeological and historical records. The tomb of Lady K’abel, a seventh-century Maya Holy Snake Lord, was discovered in the royal Maya city of El Peru’-Waka’ in northeastern Pet’en, Guatemala. The team of archaeologists at El Perú-Waka found a carved alab...

Cocaine trafficking and associated violence are still the chief criminal issues affecting Central America, according to a new UNODC threat assessment. But because of the increasingly inhospitable drug environment in Mexico, thanks to a crackdown that began in 2006, traffickers have shifted their focus to new routes along the Guatemala/Honduras border, the assessment said. Displacement to the C...

When Stephanie Solverson pedaled her bike into Riverton on Thursday, Sept. 27, she was already two weeks into a months-long trip from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, back to her home on Little Corn Island, Nicaragua. The 23-year-old Calgary native has pledged to ride her bike roughly 4,300 miles to raise money for a community learning center being built on Little Corn Island by the nonprofit orga...

Costa Rica is poised to become the first Latin American country to ban hunting as a sport, after Congress on Tuesday provisionally approved reforms to its Wildlife Conservation Law. Lawmakers voting on the ban voted 41 in favor and five against, and a second vote expected in the coming week is widely seen ratifying changes to the law, which aims to protect animals in one of the world's most...

With an investment of $5 million in a new plant, the manufacturer and bottler of Big Cola soft drinks, plans to increase its market share. Ajecen del Sur, founded on Peruvian capital, has managed to get its main brand Big Cola, third in the ranks of sales of soft drinks in the Costa Rican market, behind the traditional Coca-Cola and Pepsi. According to statements by Enrique Moya, CEO o...

PersonalizedSpanish.com now offers the option to study from your home or office with on line dynamic lessons via Skype. This option is perfect if you cannot, or do not have time to travel to Costa Rica in order to attend an immersion program, or if you are one of our former students and want to continue improving your Spanish skills. Classes are one on one with a program personalized to...

A groundbreaking documentary about an Ecuadorian Indigenous People’s successful international legal battle against their country for allowing foreign oil exploration on their land without their consent has won an award at National Geographic’s prestigious All Roads Film Project. Amnesty International and the Kichwa de Sarayaku Indigenous community filmed and co-produced Children of the Jag...

Steadily high prices for gold are having a dramatic impact on parts of Latin America, bringing a flood of foreign investment and stirring a gold bug among wildcat miners in the jungles. Some of Latin America’s poorest nations – Bolivia, Honduras and Nicaragua – have seen their balance sheets strengthened by gold production, while major producers Peru and Mexico reap billions in foreign expo...

Due to the popularity and success of its Costa Rica program, Sunwing is pleased to announce the launch of new flights to San Jose (SJO), in addition to its current flights to Liberia (LIR). Flights from Toronto will depart weekly on Fridays from December 21, 2012 to April 12, 2013. Sunwing will also be offering vacation packages, which include an excellent selection of hotels in some of Cos...

The IASC Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWSweb) is an inter-agency partnership project aimed at establishing a common platform for humanitarian early warnings and forecasts for natural hazards. The main objective of HEWSweb is to bring together and make accessible in a simple manner the most credible early warning information available at the global level from multiple specialized instit...

The Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the k’iche’s of Guatemala and Classic Maya literature, has been translated into Yucatec Maya by a team led by the linguist Fidencio Briceño Chel. This bilingual version is printed in Yucatec Maya and Spanish, includes the art of the artist José Pool “Maxka”. This edition was a joint work between the Secretary of Culture and Arts of the State of Yucatan (SECAY)...

Moscow says it is ready to supply equipment and weapons to Nicaragua as the global fight against the scourge of drug production and smuggling continues. Cooperation with the Central American country “comes down to the question of weapons, uniforms and police equipment,"Viktor Ivanov, head of the Federal Drug Control Service, told reporters following negotiations with Nicaraguan police chief...

The populations of Latin America and the Caribbean are aging faster than those of developed countries and a fourth of the region’s population will be over 60 by 2005, according to a report published Monday by the United Nations Population Fund. The number of over-60s is estimated to triple from 63.1 million now, or 10 percent of the total population, to 187 million in a span of 38 years. ...

Graduates of Cuba’s Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, or ELAM, are “gravely deficient” in their preparation to practise medicine, the head of Costa Rica’s most celebrated medical school told journalists last month. Of the 138 graduates who failed the medical licensing exams in Costa Rica, 59 were graduates of ELAM, said Ricardo Boza Cordero, director of the medical programme at the Unive...

Mail Drop Costa Rica has offered its services, including a mailing address abroad, for 5 years and has serviced over 1200 businesses The five year anniversary for Mail Drop Costa Rica, a Top Office Company, is occurring in October of 2012. The company was founded in 2007, and is the first in Latin America to offer dedicate phone or fax number in a full service package. As part of the celebratio...

As the clock winds down to Dec. 21, experts on the Mayan calendar have been racing to convince people that the Mayas didn’t predict an apocalypse for the end of this year. Some experts are now saying the Mayas may indeed have made prophecies, just not about the end of the world. Archaeologists, anthropologists and other experts met Friday in the southern Mexico city of Merida to discuss ...

According to numbers released by Honduras’ Public Ministry, only 21 percent of cases passed to police were investigated between 2010 and 2011, with police arguing that they lack the resources to investigate everything. The Honduran Public Ministry, which includes the Office of the Attorney General, registered 66,341 reported crimes in 2010, and passed along about 56,000 of those to Honduras...

Image above is sonar of the under water city near Cuba This article was published on National Geographic in 2002, though many people have never heard of this story. We have decided to republish it as it serves to be a very interesting topic. Ancient stories of massive floods pass from generation to generation and in many places in the world are integral to a people's spoken history. The...

The death of nearly 300 people from medicine provided by Panama’s Social Security Fund (CSS) reverberated around the world, but no one has taken the blame. Now the Committee of Relatives for the Right to Health and Life (Cofadesavi) is calling for the head of the current CSS director. "The president and the board of the Social Security Fund should take action on the matter and call for t...

The forest of towering, dead mangrove trees stretches along the beach as far as the eye can see. As the crashing waves rise and fall, short stumps emerge and vanish beneath the Pacific Ocean. Climate change has come early to the Bajo Lempa region of western El Salvador. A tiny rise in the sea level has, according to local people, seen about 1,000 ft of the mangroves on which they depend van...

Seven Colombian Navy experts are training 30 Costa Rica Guard Coast officials on strategies and techniques to improve their narco-trafficking operations, authorities said. Some of the subjects being taught during the 18-day course that started on Sept. 18 are the inspection of motorboats, defensive techniques, maritime intelligence and exploration and tactical maneuvers during seizures. ...

"The gift that keeps on giving" is one of those catchphrases which seems to have been around forever, but which actually dates back to 1924 when it was used to sell the new-fangled gramophone. It lends itself to a wide variety of situations and even became the title of a pop song first made public on Christmas Day five years ago. You can add one more meaning - far from benign and which describ...

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved $56.2 million in financing to Nicaragua for a program to improve health care, benefitting some 2.3 million people living in vulnerable areas. The funds will finance the construction and rehabilitation of 80 health care centers as well as the integration of the health system’s clinical and management areas in seven targeted local systems (SILAI...

In Guatemala, the policy of enclaves and extraction of natural resources fomented by the current development model and by the transnational corporations has a tremendous impact on the life of the communities, particularly on indigenous peoples and women. With the aim of sharing experiences and analysis among women who lead organizing in defense of rights to land, territory and natural resou...

This past September 15th, on the costarican Independence day, Zoom Sport Costa Rica was born. A sports photography agency opened its doors to offer their services to the costarican population, especially to those in charge of organizing professional or recreational sporting events. Zoom Sport Costa Rica, is made up of two young entrepreneurs from Cartago, Marcelo Ortiz and Gustavo Gutierrez...

  The Tico Times had a long standing tradition here in Costa Rica. At one point they were regarded as a pillar of English language media for many decades. However, The Tico Times is not the oldest English language newspaper in Costa Rica, that honour goes to "The News" founded in 1897. We know how The Tico Times likes to claim they are the oldest, but that is simply not true. With the end ...

The popular RFD-TV show ‘Best of America by Horseback’ is coming to Costa Rica! Leaves and Lizards Arenal Volcano Cabin Retreat is hosting this “Costa Rica Jungle Pura Vida 8 Day/7 Night Trek” March 16 - 23, 2013.
 ‘Best of America by Horseback’ TV show, hosted by Tom Seay, features a different riding location each week. ‘Best of America By Horseback’ is an educational and informative se...

Immigration authorities in Costa Rica will soon launch an electronic migration maps that will show areas where foreigners live in the country. According to the migration assistant, Freddy Montero, the mapping program gives a clear perspective of the movements of foreigners in the country, its location and even needs. According to the maps, Pavas, a community west of San Jose, remains t...

Global payment services processor The Western Union Company has expanded the availability of its cross-border mobile money transfer service in El Salvador, Central and South America. The payment service can be available in the region by subscribing to a mobile money service provided by Tigo, a subsidiary of the telecommunication group Millicom International Cellular. Western Union and Ti...

The proposed project seeks to enhance the climate resilience of investments in Nicaragua's rural water supply sector. The project is closely aligned with relevant national policies, strategies, plans and legislation. In particular, the project would support the implementation of the National Environment and Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan for 2010-15. The SCCF grant ($6 million, ex...