Costa Rica Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Worship Carlos Roverssi is on a visit to Vietnam from July 1-7 on the occasion of attending the Vietnam-Latin America Forum on Investment and Trade. On July 4, Roverssi and his Vietnamese counterpart, Nguyen Phuong Nga held the first political consultation between the two foreign ministries. At the event, Nga affirmed that Vietnam wanted to b...

An article in Nacion.com reports that in Costa Rica, from 2006 to 2012, the monthly prices for preschool, primary and secondary private schools has doubled, and then goes on to outline the various reasons on the subject put forward by different personalities consulted, from the Education Minister Leonardo Garnier to Genis Michael Murray, president of the Association of Private Schools. The funn...

Santo Domingo, Jul 5 - The eighteenth meeting of the Central American and Dominican Republic Health Sector will bring together ministers and representatives from 10 countries today, said Bautista Rojas, the head of Health services. The ministers and their representatives from Belize, Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua will attend, along with Cuba and Haiti as spe...

Few things are as elemental to travel as guidebooks. Whether for a weekend in Washington or three months of exploring Australia, Fodor's, Frommer's, Lonely Planet and Moon tell us what to see and where to eat. But they're also an albatross. Consider that trip to Australia: Do you really need to drag 1,100 pages with every step? All that weight and bulk become a nuisance, especially when your wo...

Mattress licensing group Comfort Solutions, with headquarters in Willowbrook, Ill., has signed a licensing agreement with Grupo Diveco in Guatemala City, Guatemala. The Central American manufacturer is producing beds under the Comfort Solutions and King Koil brands. Grupo Diveco is a major manufacturer supplying sleep shops, furniture stores and department stores, as well as the hospitality sec...

Pretoma, a Costa Rican nonprofit organization, has been tracking Carey turtles via satellite in Guanacaste since 2010. Since then, more than 15 turtles have been marked and followed with this technology. As a result, researchers have identified the main food source of these turtles to be sea sponges and determined that many turtles live on the rocky reefs for long periods of time. Pretoma’s, ...

DENVER, Jul 04, 2012 - Frontier Airlines turns 18 on July 5 and is celebrating by offering 18% off domestic fares. The birthday fare sale -- which starts July 3 and continues through July 5 -- features 18% savings on travel through mid-November to all of the airline's destinations. The 18% discount applies to regular and sale fares for travel July 24 through Nov. 14, 2012. Tickets must be purch...

MIAMI, July 4, 2012 - After months of competition, eight of the most talented bartenders from Latin America & the Caribbean will be travelling to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to represent their countries in the DIAGEO RESERVE WORLD CLASS Global Final from July 8-13. An international competition run across 50 countries, WORLD CLASS aims to educate and inspire bartenders to create exceptional cocktails an...

GUATEMALA CITY - Edwin Cubillo and Christopher Molina scored less than a minute apart late in the second half to earn Costa Rica a 4-4 draw with Mexico on Monday as the CONCACAF Futsal Championship got underway. Host Guatemala scored four unanswered goals in the second half to begin defense of its title with a 7-3 victory over Canada, Cuba defeated fellow Caribbean side St. Kitts and Nevis 10-...

A spanking may hurt a child’s bottom now, and his or her mind later on. Childhood spanking and other forms of harsh physical punishment can increase the chances of developing mental health disorders in adulthood, according to a newly released pediatrics study conducted at the University of Manitoba. “It contributes to the growing body of literature that indicates there are harmful consequenc...

SAN JOSE: Arsenal's Costa Rican international striker Joel Campbell will spend next season on loan at Spanish club Betis, according to press reports here on Monday. "It is a great opportunity for my development, I will be playing in the best league in the world and am determined to play and show what I am made of," Campbell told the daily La Nacion. Campbell, 20, moved to Arsenal from local ...

After reviewing the financial report of the Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad (ICE), which reveals very high debt levels, the government of Costa Rica has recommended that the authorities of the energy body look for allies, partners or other investors, for financing their projects, among which is the high volume, large hydroelectric construction project El Diquís in the southern region. A...

The family of a 22-year-old aspiring journalist from Colorado Springs was in Mexico City on Monday, seeking answers about his death. Armando Montano was found dead early Saturday in a Mexico City elevator shaft. Mexican authorities are investigating how Montano's life ended in an apartment building near where he was living in the Condesa neighbourhood. He was there working as a summer news ...

Panama has fully joined the Central American Integration System, in a move the country hopes will improve its trade with the region. SICA is Central America’s regional economic, cultural and political organization. While Panama had been a member of SICA, it had not previously participated in SICA’s integration subsystem. “We are financially part of Central America, and this will make the exc...

Many of the highlights of the Princeton men's lacrosse team's trip to Costa Rica from June 7-14 can be seen in a two-part video below. Among the clips are the World Cup qualifier between Costa Rica and El Salvador, the practice and game with the Costa Rican national team, ziplining, surfing, the clinics with local kids in Samara and the painting and refurbishing of the community centre. The ...

Gold miner Ascot Mining said proceeds from production at its Chassoul mine in Costa Rica continue to be reinvested to improve operational reliability there. The mill is now working satisfactorily and has been running without interruption, the firm told investors, as it unveiled results for the six months to March 31. Continued increases in the processing of newly mined ore and improvements i...

They saved a lot of money, they received high-quality healthcare care and they enjoyed vacationing in the beach resorts and national parks of Costa Rica. These were the win-win experiences relayed by three medical travelers during a panel discussion at the recent Well-Being and Medical Travel Conference at the Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. While each of the individuals traveled for ...

This article may have caught you way off guard, but you would not believe how much of an underground Harley Davidson and Motorcycle culture their is in Costa Rica until you head over to the Motor Psychos Bar and Grill in Santa Ana. When you pull into the parking lot, you notice that everyone is kind of doing their own thing. There is a calm chaos in the air, the servers don't respond to cat cal...

A Wellington football coach has been stood down indefinitely amid allegations that he sexually assaulted a player in his team. Alejandro Gonzalez Mendez, 36, a painter from Costa Rica, was approached by police on Wednesday as he finished a coaching session with members of the Wainuiomata Association Football Club senior women's team at the club's football ground. They later charged him with ...

For eastern Pacific populations of leatherback turtles, the 21st century could be the last. New research suggests that climate change could exacerbate existing threats and nearly wipe out the population. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study in the journal Natu...

For sea-weary California Maritime Academy cadets Friday morning was all about coming home. Cadet Kevin Hawkins was thrilled to not only to be on the Vallejo campus but to see six people from home waving at him as the Golden Bear training ship slid into port. Hawkins was among 288 students (also called cadets) and 57 officers and staff aboard the Golden Bear training ship who arrived safely a...

The Rock al Parque (Rock in the Park) festival in Bogota, the biggest free music fest in Latin America, turns 18 on Saturday in the Colombian capital and for three days will feature 17 international bands and dozens of local ones. Santiago Trujillo, director of the Idartes art institute, told Efe that the first day "will be dedicated to classics of rock, heavy metal and hardcore, the second day...

RECENTLY Latin American leaders have begun to rebel against rigid drug prohibition and the decades-long “war” on drugs. So when Uruguay’s government this month released a document suggesting it would legalise and take control of the sale of cannabis in the country, this seemingly bold step attracted much media attention. Not so fast: the proposal amounts to one line in a 20-page report on the gove...

Coffee farmers in the world's top producer, Brazil, have been shielded to some extent from the sharp fall in arabica prices by rising yields, traders said on Thursday. Lower prices are compensated by much higher yields, said Carlos Brando, director at P&A Marketing International, the speciality coffee and coffee machine exporter. P&A data shows that average Brazilian coffee yields have nearly ...

SPECIFICALLY, a study by the CREST Center for Responsible Travel released in 2011 reports that 62% of travelers claim traveling responsible is “important” to them, and over 80% state they want their hotel to be socially and environmentally responsible. But 73% of those polled did nothing to verify their hotel’s environmental practices, and 81% didn’t try to verify their hotel’s social practices...

Copa Airlines has added Liberia, in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica, to its list of destinations with the launch of a new flight from Panama. The new Tocumen (Panama) – Liberia (Costa Rica) route operates on Sundays and Thursdays, departing Panama at 09:52 and arriving in Liberia at 10:23. The return flight departs Liberia at 11:25 and arrives in Panama at 13:58 on both days. For ...

The Ad Astra Rocket Laboratory located in Earth University at La Flor, has a new guest. They are hosting a full sized model of the VF-200 engine, the same Franklin Chang and his team are building to fly to the International Space Station in 2015. The prototype hangs just above the site that links to a model of the Aurora platform, a structure designed and built in Costa Rica to connect the m...

The United States Under-17 men's national team is nearing the end of its time at the Copa Saprissa Internacional in Costa Rica, but there is still an opportunity to go out on a winning note. Playing five 70-minute games in five days, the U.S. U-17s recorded wins over clubs Linafa (3-0) and Chorillo FC (6-1), a triumph over host Costa Rica (3-2) and a draw against Honduras (1-1). The U-17s finis...

Oscar Jaenada, co-star of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" and "The Losers," will star opposite Marcia Gay Harden in indie drama "The Librarian." Jaenada will play the wounded lothario who leads Harden's equally wounded librarian on an eco tour of Costa Rica. Variety first reported Harden's attachment last week. The film will be directed by Juan Feldman from a script by Joel Sil...

To keep up with projected demand, farming output will need to double in the next few decades. This inconvenient fact is bad news for the environment as a whole, and biodiversity in particular. Large-scale, high-intensity agricultural production, scientists say, dramatically reduces variation between bird communities of different areas. But Stanford scientists say there may be a way to increase ...

Banco BAC San José S.A., Costa Rica’s largest private bank, will get a loan of as much as $40 million from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to expand mortgage financing and lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The IDB loan will provide Banco BAC with longer term financing that will allow the bank to offer mortgages to middle and lower middle-income families. It will al...

Foreign Minister Enrique Castillo this week told lawmakers of the Legislative Assembly's Public Expense Committee that to "demonize" the border road dubbed with the number 1856 is to play into Nicaraguan hands. He characterized the troublesome road as a defense measure against the aggressive aims of the government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega whose troops briefly occupied Calero Island...

(Geneva) – For the first time, 28 countries, including Mexico, Norway, Costa Rica, France, and Germany, condemned ongoing violations in Bahrain through a joint collective declaration pronounced by Switzerland during a UN Human Rights Council debate. But the United States, the United Kingdom (UK), and seven other European Union (EU) states remained silent. The cross-regional statement called for...

Children around the world are too frequently denied clean air, water and land because of decisions made in the past over which they had no control. To that end, UNICEF's Children's Rights and Business Principles state that companies must respect and support children's rights in relation to the environment and land use. One increasing trend in product sourcing, the support of fair trade certificati...

Dr Ellen Meredith Stubenhaus, previously of Lake Worth, Florida, and later an expatriate living in Costa Rica, was sentenced to 60 months in prison today by United States District Judge M. Casey Rodgers in Tallahassee, Fla ., the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced. Stubenhaus, who was extradited from Costa Rica to the United States in September 2011, had previously ple...

Cigarette smoking in Costa Rica is a long-honored custom, so observers are watching to see if the Tobacco Control Law will prove, as it has in other countries, that it is easier to persuade people to buy something than to avoid using it. This week, the Ministry of Health reduced to three months the 12-month deadline covering prohibiting the sale of packs of cigarettes of less than 20. The idea ...

CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) - Thirteen master and doctoral students from Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi will soon be heading to Costa Rica on the ultimate summer trip. It's not all fun and games, though. The counseling students will actually be taking part in a study abroad program. They will coordinate a wellness program at a health clinic down there, providing recommendations of servic...

The European Union and six Central American countries -- Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama --on Friday signed a comprehensive Association Agreement which also includes an ambitious trade component. The signing ceremony took place on the occasion of the Meeting of Presidents of SICA (Central American Integration System) in Honduras. The EU was represented by ...

AUSTELL — An Austell man has won a lengthy and emotional battle to gain custody of his two daughters, who were taken to Costa Rica by his estranged wife. Christopher Camacho doesn’t know how soon he will get to see 10-year-old Isabella and 6-year-old Elena, but he can now rest a little easier knowing that a trial judge in San José, Costa Rica, ruled in his favor this week. “I’m happy,” Camac...

When: Saturday, August 04, 2012 Where: Hotel Villa del Sueño, Playa Hermosa, Costa Rica Music: Los Piratas del Lago (The Pirates of the Lake) from 7PM - 10PM Cost: $10 per person; includes one free drink (beer, wine, well cocktail or soft drink) For tickets call Chip at 8702-8367 or Faith at 2672-4008 As you may know, the Playa Hermosa Association's Environmental Blue Flag Committ...