Talamanca, Limón. By Wendy Anders Yesterday morning, Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security Gustavo Mata Vega together with Costa Rican police officials welcomed a humanitarian mission at the Limón International Airport on the country’s Atlantic coast. Helicopters from the US Southern Command based in Panama arrived with a 16-person medical team comprised of doctors, nurses, dentists, ...

Fatal motorcycle accident in Costa Rica, from the Facebook "Accidentes en carretera" group. By Wendy Anders “We can not accept that our families are dying on our streets,” exhorted Elian Villegas, Costa Rica’s National Insurance Institute (INS) president, in a public video statement issued Friday. By the end of this year, his agency estimates that 379 people will have died due to road-re...

By Wendy Anders Youth in Costa Rica, photo for illustrative purposes. The most recent data for adolescent mental health in Costa Rica paint a troublesome picture. An April 2014 study of 3,372 students from 32 public and private high schools in the greater San José metropolitan area shows that one in ten reported having been a victim of violence, and 13 percent had had suicidal thoughts. ...

By Wendy Anders Jehovah's Witnesses distributing literature in Costa Rica, Facebook. This weekend’s 3-day gathering of over 7,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses from the San José metropolitan area was held in La Guácima, Alajuela. According to Wikipedia: “Jehovah's Witnesses is a millenarian restorationist Christian denomination with nontrinitarian beliefs distinct from mainstream Christianity. Th...

By Wendy Anders Source: Flickr CC Halloween got a bit ghastlier for the lesbian, gay, and trans community in Costa Rica last week when some members reported receiving threats via WhatsApp of planned attacks on gay bars and clubs. Thursday high government officials met to discuss the threat, and to plan extra security measures in coordination with bar owners, reported ElMundo.cr, a Costa ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s Telecommunications Superintendency (Sutel) last week announced they would extend by 5 working days the public consultation period on proposed changes to the country's telecommunication markets. The extension was in response to pressure from the country’s Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría de los Habitantes). However, the country’s ombudswoman, Montserrat Solano Carbo...

By Wendy Anders Researchers at Stanford, through intense observations, mapping and analysis, generated a method of estimating biodiversity based on tree cover. The results can be used by policymakers to help protect biodiversity and endangered species. Stanford researchers discovered that in agricultural areas of Costa Rica, increased tree cover corresponds with increases in biodiversity. Th...

By Wendy Anders After the new animal welfare law approved by the Costa Rican legislature in July was given a thumbs down by the Costa Rican Constitutional Court (Sala IV), legislators regrouped to revise the law’s text. The changes, which mainly included lowering the fines and prison terms in the original version, were accepted unanimously by the committee in charge of drafting the bill. ...

By Wendy Anders Source: Cool Mountain, photo for illustrative purposes. A proposal to levy a temporary 2 percent tax on non-alcoholic beverages has been introduced by Christian Socialist Legislator Rafael Ortiz Fábrega. The funds from the tax would finance the purchase of expensive drugs by the Costa Rican Social Security’s (CCSS) public health-care system. The proposed initiative would ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s Ombudswoman, Montserrat Solano Carboni, expressed her concerns regarding proposed changes in pesticide regulations saying they were a setback for human health and the environment, her office reported yesterday in a press statement. The Ministry of Agriculture came under fire for proposing the use of reference chemicals when registering pesticides. So, instead of ...

By Wendy Anders After many days of small but constant emissions of ash and gases, Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano, located southeast of the capital city, had a secular eruption early this morning. The event was captured on a home video at 5:25 a.m. by Jesús Edu Jimal from his home in Turrialba. Some beautiful photos of the eruption, which could be seen from many locales due to the clear we...

By Wendy Anders U.S. soldiers exiting Iraq; a large portion were affected by post-traumatic stress disorder. File photo. A senior analyst at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in Providence, Rhode Island last week expressed outrage at the slew of bombings being carried out by the U.S. throughout the Middle East in the wake of recent attacks on Yemen. ...

By Wendy Anders A successful fundraising campaign by the Costa Rica Forever Association, a local non-profit conservation agency that supports the country’s conservation areas and national park system, netted $230,000, allowing the group to purchase a much-needed patrol boat, and create a fund for the boat’s maintenance, said Zdenka Piskulich, the group’s executive director, in a press statement...

By Wendy Anders OAS and TSE reps sign accord before elections The Costa Rican Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE, in Spanish) ordered the national treasury to return some US$3.4 million (about CRC1.85 billion) to the general government fund, as announced by the agency in a press statement. The monies correspond to funds disbursed for the country’s 2010 presidential and municipal electoral p...

By Wendy Anders ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Costa Rica’s Public Security Ministry in their amped up effort to control crime in the Atlantic port city of Limón has arrested 152 people over the past three weeks, they stated in a press release. In an analysis of this d...

By Wendy Anders Source: Red Cross of Costa Rica Roughly 1,500 immigrants stranded at Costa Rica’s northern border on their journey northward are being provided with shelter, water, electricity, showers, portable toilets, a cooking area, and play places for children, according to the Communications Minister Mauricio Herrera. The Costa Rican Food Bank has recently pulled 8 tons from their ...

By Wendy Anders La Carpio, an impoverished neighborhood in the San Jose metro area. (CRS Archive) The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in mid-October shared with the Costa Rican Ombudsman’s Office observations on health, safety, social issues, poverty, employment, and rights of vulnerable populations; and urged the government to undertake actions in these are...

By Wendy Anders 2016 Wider Caribbean Region Rule of Law Index rankings, World Justice Project. The Washington, D.C.-based World Justice Project (WJP) just published its ranking of countries throughout the world on a Rule of Law Index that measures how people view justice in their everyday life. Of the 22 countries in the Central America and wider Caribbean region included in this year’s ...

By Wendy Anders Quepos Plateau - Source: UC Santa Cruz A man from the United States who was apparently vacationing in the Quepos/Manuel Antonio area in Costa Rica’s Central Pacific region was rushed to the hospital in delicate condition this afternoon after the taxi he was traveling in spun out of control after ramming into a tractor, reported El Diario Extra, Costa Rica’s Spanish daily tab...

By Wendy Anders 1 in 5 Canadians enjoy sex on the beach in Costa Rica, file photo. To create a realistic film for young people promoting condom use for safer sex, Coventry University in England is recruiting couples who are willing to be filmed having sex in ‘natural settings', reported England’s The Daily Mail last week. The university is offering £400 in compensation to three young cou...

By Wendy Anders A surgery in Costa Rica, Wikimedia Commons An interview with Pablo Guzman Stein, director of the private Medical Sciences University (Ucimed), located west of La Sabana Park in San José, Costa Rica, revealed the ways in which specialists in certain medical fields are actively maintaining a shortage in such areas to curtail competition, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s mainst...

Updated on Monday, October 24. By Wendy Anders Inside the clandestine abortion clinic raided by Costa Rican police Saturday. Saturday morning Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) police arrested a 38-year-old Costa Rican woman by the last name of Morales for allegedly participating in an illegal abortion clinic in Desamparados, a densely populated southern San José district, in Costa Rica...

By Wendy Anders New cars arrive in Costa Rica, under the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. (CAFTA). If you were looking to purchase a spanking new 2018 car early next year, it looks like you will have to wait until September due to new regulations established by the Costa Rican Internal Revenue Service, as reported in El Diario Extra, Costa Rica’s daily tabloid. Fernando Rodriguez, vice...

By Wendy Anders Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769, Wikipedia. Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, called on Harvard University “to demonstrate its remorse and its debt to unnamed slaves from Antigua and Barbuda” whose lives were abused to establish the Harvard Law School (HLS), reported Caribb...

By Wendy Anders Rescue of bus crash victims in Cinchona, Thursday, Oct. 20, courtesy of CRHoy.com. A group of retired university professors from the country’s National University (UNA) were en route to Guatuso in northern Costa Rica when their bus plunged off a cliff in Cinchona, north of Heredia, yesterday, reported local police. The bus was transporting 13 men and 18 women on a trip to...

By Wendy Anders The Cessna that crashed into the sea off the coast of Tambor, Puntarenas on Wednesday, Oct. 19 around 6:00 p.m. due to bad weather. Photo courtesy of Teletica. England’s Daily Mail reported today that yesterday’s plane crash near Tambor Beach involved four crew members of the British reality TV show “Made in Chelsea.” The crew was on their way to prepare things in advance...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly. The “Vamos” party, which in English means “Let’s Go,” has just joined Costa Rica’s political fray in an attempt to “fight for equal rights for discriminated groups in Costa Rica,” reported the Costa Rican news site ElMundoCr.com. This latest political party is made up of long-standing Costa Rican human rights activists who want to fight ...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. This evening at about 6:00, a private Cessna plane crashed into the sea near Tambor Beach on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula in the province of Puntarenas, Costa Rica, reported Costa Rica’s Teletica Channel 7 TV. Coast Guard rescue boats and planes were employed to rescue the five people aboard the TI AUJ Cesna 230 at about 6:25 p...

By Wendy Anders Taxi drivers are making good on their promises to stage a protest tomorrow, Thursday, October 20, in downtown San José. Taxi unions stated that at 9:00 a.m. they would begin “marching” east up Paseo Colon from the La Sabana Park’s eastern edge, reported the Costa Rican mainstream daily La Nación. The drivers are planning to stop at the Department of Revenue on 2nd Avenue a...

By Wendy Anders Café con Cuerpo's waitresses, Facebook. Costa Rican models Marcela Negrini and Diana Ibarra just launched a café in downtown San José called “Café con Cuerpo,” (literally, coffee with body), reported CRHoy.com yesterday. A sort of part-Hooters, part-Hustlers Club, the company guarantees guests will be served by the sexiest waitresses in the country, according to their Fac...

By Wendy Anders Two pieces of good news for women were announced yesterday. Women can now call in to speak with professional counsellors at a phone line set up by the Costa Rican National Women’s Institute (Inamu), reported Costa Rica’s daily tabloid, El Diario Extra. Though further details were not available, the local phone line, 2527-1911, appears to be staffed during weekday office ho...

By Wendy Anders Barceló Hotel at Tambor Beach was flooded extensively on Monday. Photo, CRHoy.com. The rainy season is at its heaviest, as is typical in Costa Rica and much of Central America in October. Flooding is common, and caution must be taken especially when traveling in low lying areas and near rivers at this time of year. In August, three U.S. tourists drowned in a flash flood i...

OCTOBER 17, 2016: The Austrailian immigration department devised a proposal for Australia to take refugees from Central America as part of a U.S.-led program. Honduras peasant lawyer killing, file photo. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made the announcement during a speech to President Barack Obama's invitation-only, high-level summit on refugees and migration in New York in September durin...

By Wendy Anders Changes proposed by the Costa Rican telecom regulatory agency (Sutel) in Internet pricing that would eliminate postpaid Internet plans and charge per download fees is under criticism by the Costa Rican Professional Journalists Association (Colegio de Periodistas or Colper). “The move would be a step back in access to information,” said the association recently to Informa-Tico...

By Wendy Anders https://youtu.be/SSa9uddMMek Early Christmas shopping anyone? Meet Itiel Casas, the Costa Rican perfumer who set up a workshop last year in his house in Zapote, a district east of downtown San José. After deciding he’d had enough of the omnipresent synthetic fragrances that waft through the city streets, Casas studied traditional 16th and 17th century French perfumery t...

By Wendy Anders A hammock that was improvised to cart an indigenous woman in the Limón province by foot to be treated for appendicitis. She died from complications. While tourists fly from around the world to San José, Costa Rica for top notch medical and dental services, entire towns in remote parts of the country still lack even the roads to reach the nearest under-staffed public health p...

By Wendy Anders Hustler's Larry Flynt, a paraplegic since the age of 35, from Facebook. Pornographer Larry Flynt announced he would pay up to $1 million for video or audio recordings of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump engaged in illegal behavior or acting in a sexually demeaning manner toward women, reported the Los Angeles Times yesterday “I have always celebrated women. Women in ...

By Wendy Anders Source: Taco Bell US Ten percent of Taco Bell Costa Rica's workforce is disabled. The fast food restaurant chain leads the country in hiring people with disabilities, reported Costa Rica’s daily La Nación yesterday. Almost half of the more than 67 disabled workers staffing Taco Bell Costa Rica's outfits are deaf, many have some degree of cognitive impairment, and one work...

By Wendy Anders Crocodile Man Tour at the Tarcoles River near Jaco, Costa Rica A surfer is taking legal action to attempt to change the way the Costa Rican government manages the country’s fierce crocodiles which during certain times of the year enter estuaries and coastal waters from swollen river mouths, reported GrindTV, the adventure and outdoor lifestyle station, Saturday. Last week...

By Wendy Anders Source: United Travelers using a flexible search feature on the United Airlines site came up with a slew of low round-trip fares from different U.S. cities. The low fares were found for dates between Wednesday, October 26 and Tuesday, November 1, 2016. A 10-day advance purchase is required for the tickets, said Airfarewatchdog.com. Some of the low fares found to and fr...