By Wendy Anders Woman injured in train accident yesterday late afternoon near San José's La Sabana park is transferred in critical condition to the hospital. (Jorge Navarro for La Nación) This year’s 85 accidents involving vehicles and trains leave no doubt that basic safety infrastructure along the urban railway that bisects San José, Costa Rica’s congested city center is urgently needed. ...

By Wendy Anders At 3:00 a.m. yesterday in northern Costa Rica, judicial investigative agency (OIJ) police captured a man suspected of infringing Costa Rica’s wildlife protection laws. The 55-year-old was carrying 50 baby iguanas and an adult iguana in a sack on a bus. Police had been monitoring the man’s activities for a few days prior to the arrest, and they called in  some support from ...

By Wendy Anders Cocaine trafficking, Costa Rica Costa Rica’s drug control police completed the bust of a drug ring based out of southern Costa Rica with nine arrests yesterday in different parts of the country, reported the Public Security Ministry. Three other members of the group were previously arrested, two in 2015 and one last month. Research conducted by the drug police reveals ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican school children, Wikimedia. Costa Rica’s government initiated a program to subsidize children under the age of 18 to help them stay in, or re-enter, the educational system. A budget increase of CRC375 million (US$688 million) was allocated for this specific initiative aimed at eradicating child labor, and thus reduce poverty, stated the Ministry of Labor and S...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica's Golfo Dulce, Facebook post. In one the most biodiverse regions on the planet, kids in towns around Costa Rica’s southern Pacific Golfo Dulce are being encouraged to learn about and protect their coastal environment, reported the Public Security Ministry. The Costa Rican Coast Guard has stepped up to the plate to provide environmental education as part of a la...

By Wendy Anders Taxing sugary drinks can lower their consumption and reduce obesity, type 2 diabetes, and tooth decay, says a new World Health Organization (WHO) report released yesterday. Fiscal policies that lead to at least a 20 percent increase in the retail price of sugary drinks would result in proportional reductions in consumption of such products, according to the report titled “Fis...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica Colones currency A reform of the Costa Rican rental laws proposed in 2013 went into effect earlier this year, bringing relief to the country’s estimated 1/4 of a million renters who previously were charged up to 15 percent annual rent increases, reported ElMundo.Cr today. So, if your lease is up for renewal this month and your landlord plans to raise your rent,...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s telecommunications regulator, the Superintendency of Telecommunications (Sutel), has proposed new practices to increase competition among phone and Internet providers. The proposal, which is open for a 10-day public consultation period, includes a greater opening of international telephone services, internet plans, international roaming, and telecommunications tr...

By Wendy Anders Colegio de Medicos location in Sabana Sur, San José. Members of the Costa Rican Professional Medical Association (Colegio de Médicos) are providing free medical consultations in eight specialties today, Monday the 10th, and tomorrow, Tuesday the 11th of October. The consultations will be held at the Costa Rican Medical Association headquarters in Sabana Sur adjacent to th...

By Wendy Anders Amy Schumer, U.S. comedian, in a recent Facebook post asks, "How did I know he should be the next president? He bought me a futon and grabbed my pussy." Female comedian superstar Amy Schumer knocked electronic dance music DJ, Armin van Buuren, off the list to become the most dangerous celebrity to search for online, according to Intel Security. Comedian and actress Amy Sc...

By Wendy Anders Facebook post of Turrialba Volcano by Wayne Harrison on Oct. 4, 2016. At 5:00 yesterday evening the National University’s Volcanology and Seismology Research Institute (Ovsicori-UNA) reported that ash had been emanating constantly from Costa Rica's Turrialba Volcano for the previous 24 hours. A brief break in the cloud cover yesterday around 4:00 p.m. showed a column risi...

By Wendy Anders Yamileth Astorga, AyA head. In a recent interview with the regional newspaper, La Voz de Guanacaste, the head of Costa Rica’s Water and Sewerage Department (AyA), Yamileth Astorga, discussed the ongoing water crisis in Guanacaste. Astorga insists that Guanacaste’s water problems are due to a lack of infrastructure and not a lack of water. Guanacaste’s acquifers have “g...

By Wendy Anders A Long Line for Free Health Care at the Calderon Guardia Hospital One of San José, Costa Rica’s main public hospitals, the Hospital México, announced it has succeeded in reducing wait times for heart surgery by 652 percent. The wait time has been reduced from 745 days to 99 days, said Dr. Juan Antonio Ugalde, deputy director of the medical center, due to a special project...

By Wendy Anders Technology to clean the ocean of trash being developed by The Ocean Cleanup. The Ocean Cleanup concluded its first-ever reconnaissance flight over ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ this week, the group reported on their website. Founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat when he was 17, The Ocean Cleanup is a Dutch Foundation developing advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of p...

By Wendy Anders At least a dozen flights both entering and leaving Costa Rica around noon today were cancelled due to  Hurricane Matthew, reported Aeris, the managers of the Juan Santamaría International Airport (SJO) in Alajuela, Costa Rica. Several outbound flights on Jet Blue, American Airlines, and Spirit Air heading towards Miami, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale, Florida were cancelled arou...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican leaders ready for a trade mission next week to enhance trade relations with South Korea. Last year 71 Costa Rican companies exported 62 different products to South Korea, including radio and television parts, green coffee, medical prostheses, bananas, and pineapples, said the Foreign Ministry yesterday. Costa Rican officials will seek to expand market opportuni...

By Wendy Anders Andrea Rojas, Johnny Rockets Manager - Costa Rica. Johnny Rockets celebrates its third anniversary in Costa Rica and continues with its expansion plans, the company announced last week. The classic American food franchise has four restaurants in Costa Rica, all located in the province of San José. The restaurants are open every day from 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. "We are...

By Wendy Anders Water tanker truck in Costa Rica. More than 16,000 residents of Atenas, a small town west of San José, will continue without water indefinitely due to damage to a potable water pipeline that supplies the area, reported local media this week. The Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA) reported that work is underway to replace the pipe, which was affected after...

By Wendy Anders Source: Flickr Commons Last month, the Costa Rican Agency on Personal Data Protection (Prodhab) passed a resolution reaffirming the Costa Rican Treasury Department's right to access individual’s personal data, including name, home address, phone number, email, telecommunications plans, among other information. Mauricio Garro, director of Prodhab, on the agency's Facebook ...

By Wendy Anders This manicurist was an innocent victim in Sunday's shooting. Eloisa Pinnock had just turned 33 and has left behind 4 children: Yosielka (17), Joshuany (16), Yoleeh (13) and Yoidiveth (7). Photo from La Nación. A lazy afternoon at the Sunset Beach Bar in Cieneguita, Limón turned into a deadly scene just after 4 p.m. Sunday. According to police reports, two hooded men appro...

By Wendy Anders Source: Southwest Airlines This morning Southwest Airlines announced a sale for select flights to the Caribbean and Central American region. The sale is for tickets purchased from Tuesday, October 4 to Thursday, October, 6 (11:59 p.m.). Rates apply for international non-stop travel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from November 30 through December 13, 2016, and January 10 th...

By Wendy Anders Photo courtesy of MarViva. Silky sharks, thresher sharks and giant devil rays were voted to be included in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) yesterday during the 17th convention conference in South Africa. Appendix II includes species that are not necessarily threatened with extinction, but whose int...

By Wendy Anders With more than 40 per cent of its workforce engaged in informal labor, Costa Rica’s Labor Ministry was pleased to reach an agreement under the auspices of the International Labor Organization (ILO) with employers, workers, and other governmental representatives on bringing these workers into the country’s formal labor force. The Labor Ministry, the Social Security Agency (CCS...

By Wendy Anders Santa Ana, Costa Rica wind farm, CNFL. The 17 wind power generators along the Tacuacorí mountain in Salitral, Santa Ana have been in operation for almost four years, said Costa Rica’s National Light and Power Company (CNFL) in a press statement. Since the start of their operations on December 13,  2012, the wind power project has generated more than 132,369 Megawatt hours...

By Wendy Anders An appeal to the Costa Rican Supreme Court on an article of the Family Code regarding men’s role as prime breadwinners for their families was struck down recently, reported El Diario Extra, Costa Rica’s main Spanish tabloid paper. The appeal claimed Article 35 of the country’s Family Code violates the country’s constitution and also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights b...

By Wendy Anders Exports of goods from Costa Rica during the first eight months of 2016 grew by 2 per cent compared with the same period last year, reported Honduras’ daily Diario La Tribuna Costa Rica’s Foreign Trade Promotion Agency (PROCOMER) indicate that exports through August totaled US$6.634 million, 2 per cent more than the US$6.505.5 million accumulated over the same period in 2015. ...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. A 65-year-old German woman had her home in Quebrada Azul, Tilarán broken into by four masked, armed men on Tuesday evening, said Michael Soto, press spokesperson for the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ). The woman, Cristina Caglass, a legal resident of Costa Rica, was alone in her house at the time. The house is situated on a farm on a ...

By Wendy Anders Image of the Turrialba Volcano at night posted to the Ovsicori-UNA Facebook site by a reader this week. When Costa Ricans are tired of washing their cars, you know it's bad! After days of ash from the Turrialba Volcano settling over most of San José, Costa Rica's greater metropolitan area, one Facebook user said he was fed up, and was giving up trying to keep his car clea...

By Wendy Anders A container ship that arrived from Colombia last weekend and docked at the Limón, Costa Rica port of Moín was found to have 250 kilos of cocaine stashed in a chest strapped to the outside of the vessel, reported the Public Security Ministry early this week. Divers with the anti-drug police unit had to search around the exterior of the ship to determine the location of the hid...

By Wendy Anders Facebook post denouncing xenophobic attitudes in wake of the Education Ministry's inclusion of Nicaragua's culture in independence day festivities. On September 15, Costa Rica’s Education Ministry issued a memo indicating that schools in San Jose with a high percentage of Nicaraguan students could sing the Nicaraguan national anthem at the close of this month’s celebrations ...

By Wendy Anders The recent rainy conditions that are typical at this time of year in Costa Rica are propitious for crocodiles to enter into the sea from swollen river mouths, reported Teletica, Costa Rica’s Channel 7 TV. Rainy conditions encourage the animals to mate, said Adrian Arce, ranger at the Central Pacific Conservation Area, to Teletica. During mating, larger male crocodiles disp...

By Wendy Anders An American identified as John Joseph Lonegan was killed Wednesday in Jacó after a quarrel with a man after he refused to buy drugs from the latter, reported El Diario Extra, a Costa Rican tabloid paper, this afternoon. El Extra spoke with the Judicial Investigative Agency (OIJ) who said the facts were reported at 5 a.m. at a disco on Jacó’s Avenida Pastor. “The foreigner ...

By Wendy Anders Robbers in downtown San José shot by police at rush hour yesterday. Photo by Melissa Fernández for La Nación. Yesterday at rush hour in downtown San José, police were alerted to a robbery of a small jewellery store on 6th Avenue between 6th and 8th Street, related Walter Espinoza, head of the Judiciary Investigative Agency (OIJ), in a press conference today. Upon arriving...

By Wendy Anders Nicaraguan school children evacuated after 5.5 quake. This morning at 10:48 local time, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck Nicaragua in La Paz, a small town in the province of León, north of Managua. Electricity was out in La Paz Centro, and schools in the surrounding region, including Managua were evacuated and closed after the quake, reported Nicaragua's El Nuevo Diario....

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s young, male, and informal workers are the most vulnerable to occupational injury, as reflected in the findings of the Labor Ministry’s 2015 occupational health research presented Monday. Nearly half of the over 115,000 workplace injuries that occurred last year were in the 20 - 35 age group, and 80 percent were in men, reported the Labor Ministry’s occupational h...

By Wendy Anders Since June, private in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments have been available in Costa Rica thanks to a ruling by the International Human Rights Court ordering Costa Rica to make the health service available. The country’s public Women’s Hospital in San José has been chosen as the site for publicly insured women to receive IVF treatments, reported Teletica, Costa Rica’s Cha...

By Wendy Anders Car used by gang to rob tourists. Public Security Ministry Costa Rica’s police force is actively working to stop crimes; and thefts and crimes targeting tourists are a top priority, said the Public Security Ministry in a press statement. Members of a criminal group comprised of several nationalities and with a history of breaking into foreign tourists’ cars in Costa Rica ...

By Wendy Anders A gun seized by Costa Rican police this year. Police seize an average of five firearms each day in Costa Rica, most of these in San José, the country’s capital, stated the Public Security Ministry in a press statement yesterday. From January to September this year police removed 1,340 illegal weapons from the country’s streets, reported the Ministry’s Statistics and Analy...

By Wendy Anders Officers from Costa Rica’s regional anti-drug program (PRAD, in Spanish) chased a vehicle Sunday night from La Sabana park just west of downtown San José to Alto Palomas in Pozos, Santa Ana, a suburb about 12 kms west of San José, reported the Public Security Ministry yesterday. They detained a gray Mitsubishi Outlander which was driven by a 46-year old Costa Rican man named ...

By Wendy Anders Alejo Leiva Lachner (Facebook) At around midnight on Saturday police captured another suspect linked to Playas del Coco mob killing of an Escazú college student who was vacationing in the Guanacaste beach town during Holy Week in late March of this year. The suspect is a 33-year-old man named Ortiz, also known as "The Beast.” There was a warrant out for his arrest for col...