On offer in Juan Santamaria International Airport are spaces for a gift shop, an ice cream parlor and coffee shop, a fast food outlet, and spaces for ATMs. Aeris Holding Costa Rica, the company managing the Juan Santamaria Airport, has opened a contest for 3 commercial spaces: a gift shop, with flowers, cards and other items, an ice cream parlor and coffee shop, selling juices and the like, and...

Negotiations are being conducted with the National Network of Spanish Railways for a passenger train to join the urban centers of Cartago and Alajuela. A statement from the Presidency reads: Vice president Liberman seeks options for passenger train between Alajuela and Cartago. Madrid, October 22, 2012: The Vice President, Luis Liberman, participated this morning in a series of meetings w...

By Leah Schnurr NEW YORK | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:14pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday, supported by a slight pickup in manufacturing and a surge in new home sales, while Boeing gained after raising its full-year forecast. The muted morning action suggested the market was attempting to find its footing after a 3.3 pe...

WASHINGTON | Wed Oct 24, 2012 10:50am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New single-family home sales surged in September to their highest level in nearly 2-1/2 years, further evidence the housing market recovery is gaining steam. The Commerce Department said on Wednesday sales increased 5.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted 389,000-unit annual rate - the highest...

This article graciously provided to The Costa Rica Star by EmbassyMag.ca, written by Ally Foster. Observers raise concerns over academic freedom, but company says this shouldn’t be used to hurt the reputation of businesses Calgary-based extractive company Infinito Gold Ltd. has been involved in a legal storm in Costa Rica, launching lawsuits against two university professors in a move it has...

Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:58am EDT (Reuters) - Warren Buffett sees clear signs that the global economy is slowing, although the U.S. economy is "inching ahead" as other regions decline, the Berkshire Hathaway chief executive officer said on Wednesday. Yet despite the weakness, Buffett said he was "salivating" to make another major acquisition, adding that two deals of a...

By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Nigel Davies GENK, Belgium/MADRID | Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:27am EDT GENK, Belgium/MADRID (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co will close a Belgian factory employing 4,300 workers by the end of 2014, shifting production to Spain as the U.S. automaker tries to save money and stem European losses. Europe's car market has slumped because ...

Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:32am EDT (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) posted stronger-than-expected results for the third quarter on Wednesday and raised its forecast for the full year, as its defense business improved and commercial aircraft deliveries surged. The company said it earned $1.0 billion, or $1.35 a share, compared with $1.1 billion, $1.46 a share, a year ago. Re...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:35am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures advanced on Wednesday, pointing to a bounce from declines a day earlier when the Dow suffered its biggest drop in four months, after data from China and Boeing earnings eased concerns about sluggish global growth. The China HSBC Flash Manufacturin...

PARIS | Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:31am EDT PARIS (Reuters) - Former Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) trader Jerome Kerviel was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in France's biggest rogue-trading scandal on Wednesday and ordered to repay the bank 4.9 billion euros ($6.35 billion). Kerviel, 35, will not go to jail immediately, however, and his lawyer said...

Wed Oct 24, 2012 7:46am EDT (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), the largest U.S. weapons maker, on Wednesday posted an 11 percent increase in third-quarter earnings, beating expectations by a wide margin, and raised its full-year forecast. Lockheed warned that revenues would ease slightly in 2013, pulled lower by a mid-single-digit decline in sales at its i...

By Basil Katz NEW YORK | Wed Oct 24, 2012 12:18am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - The sentencing on Wednesday of fallen Wall Street titan Rajat Gupta for insider trading could come down to whether a judge agrees that his lifetime of charity counts against sending him to prison. The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc board member was convicted in June of lea...

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK | Tue Oct 23, 2012 5:30pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Tuesday, driving the Dow industrials to the biggest drop since June 21, as weak results from index members DuPont and United Technologies showed profit growth is slowing. This earnings season has so far produced a string of disappointments from com...

The president of a Costa Rican company that sold reinsurance bonds to life settlement companies was sentenced today in Richmond, Virginia, to 60 years in prison for carrying out a half-billion-dollar fraud scheme that affected more than 3,500 victims throughout the United States and abroad, announced U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Neil H. MacBride and Assistant Attorney General...

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian NEW YORK | Tue Oct 23, 2012 2:17pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Tuesday, putting the Dow industrials on track for the biggest drop since June 21, after a series of weak quarterly results from bellwether companies. Multinationals including DuPont (DD.N) and United Technologies (UTX.N) fell short of Wall Stree...

In the past The Costa Rica Star has published on women appealing the Court of Human Rights to overturn in-vitro fertilization laws in Costa Rica. Data from World Bank (WB), claims that female employment in Costa Rica increased 15 percent from 2000 to 2010. A representative of the World Bank, said that the report entitled “The effect of the economic power of women in Latin America and the Car...

The state fuel company Recope will begin importing natural gas within 6 months, to sell it to industrial clients. According to Jorge Rojas, general manager of Recope, research is still being conducted over how many tons of gas will be brought into the country and at what prices it will be marketed locally. The product will serve as an alternative for large scale energy consumers, who have se...

Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:49am EDT (Reuters) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has told close friends he probably will not stand for a third term at the central bank even if President Barack Obama wins the November 6 election, the New York Times reported. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has already said he would not re-nominate Bernanke if he wins the ...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:38am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell on Tuesday on concerns the slow global economy will continue to dent corporate revenues, with a trio of Dow components appearing to confirm investor worries. United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) reported a 3.3 percent decline in third-quarter ear...

Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:55am EDT (Reuters) - Diversified U.S. manufacturer 3M Co (MMM.N) on Tuesday reported a 6.7 percent rise in third-quarter profit but cut its profit forecast for the full year as acquisition costs and a strengthening dollar hurt margins. The maker of products ranging from Post-It notes to films used in consumer electronics said net income was $1....

By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 7:03am EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. oil and gas rush is cutting into jobless numbers, supporting a total of 1.7 million jobs this year, a number that will swell to almost 3 million by 2020, a leading consultant said in a study released on Tuesday. The report by forecaster IHS Global Insight ...

An Akron-based satellite telecommunications company has won its lengthy fight to do business in Costa Rica. VSAT Systems has been trying to get a license from the Costa Rican government for more than three years to offer satellite services in the Central American country. Company attorneys received a call “out of the blue” recently from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative saying the ...

By Chikako Mogi TOKYO | Mon Oct 22, 2012 10:10pm EDT TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares edged higher on Tuesday but sentiment was cautious, after global shares faltered overnight on weak corporate results and outlook, and with Asia's corporate reporting season underway. South Korea's POSCO backed by Warren Buffett will on Tuesday kick off the earning...

WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 7:09pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Securities regulators on Monday adopted rules designed to bolster risk management practices for clearing agencies. The new rules, which are required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, mark the latest effort by the Securities and Exchan...

By Alwyn Scott EVERETT, Washington | Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:52pm EDT EVERETT, Washington (Reuters) - As director of 777 manufacturing at Boeing Co (BA.N), Jason Clark is busy overseeing more than 3,000 factory workers who build seven of the $300 million airliners every month. He's about to get a lot busier.On Tuesday, that production rate rises to 8....

By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih SAN FRANCISCO | Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:38pm EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc's new CEO Marissa Mayer sketched out her plan for revamping the mobile and search advertising business, outlining publicly for the first time her vision for getting the ailing Web company back on its feet. Mayer, once a rising star a...

WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:35pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Congressman Barney Frank defended the nation's largest bank on Monday, saying in a statement that the government was wrong to go after JPMorgan Chase & Co for the alleged misdeeds of Bear Stearns. Frank, the co-author of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, said federal a...

WASHINGTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:32pm EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Commodities regulators ordered Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC to pay $200,000 to resolve allegations that the brokerage failed to diligently supervise employees that handle customer accounts. A customer of the firm, recently re-named Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, improperly traded futur...

By Dan Levine and Jessica Wohl Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:20pm EDT (Reuters) - A new lawsuit accused Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) and two staffing agencies of requiring temporary employees to show up early for work, stay late, and work through lunch at the world's largest retailer. The proposed class action, filed on Monday in a Chicago federal court, alleged Wal-...

By Tom Miles GENEVA | Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:15pm EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - The world's biggest economies, especially the European Union and Japan are using protectionist policies that fly below the World Trade Organization's radar, according to a forthcoming study by two experts. The study, by Vinod Aggarwal, professor of political science at Berkeley,...

HOUSTON | Mon Oct 22, 2012 6:06pm EDT HOUSTON (Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp (CHK.N) plans to pay off more than half of a pricey $4 billion bridge loan after receiving $2.8 billion in cash from the sale of some of its oil and gas properties in the Permian Basin. The loan, made in May, was a lifeline at the time for the U.S. energy company that was st...

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK | Mon Oct 22, 2012 5:43pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow industrials and the S&P 500 ended flat on Monday after a late-day bounce, as worries about slower global growth hitting corporate sales were offset by earnings that beat expectations. Technology shares led the day's gains and pushed the Nasdaq up 0.4 ...

The intention would be to overcome the paralysis of $320 million from the Development Banking System of Costa Rica by giving over its management to the Central Bank. The fund consists of 17% current accounts from commercial banks in Costa Rica, known as the "bank toll" amounting to $320 million which is supposed to be used to grant loans to micro-entrepreneurs, within the Development Banking ...

BRUSSELS | Mon Oct 22, 2012 12:22pm EDT BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The euro zone's fiscal deficit fell sharply last year as governments slashed expenses and raised taxes to regain market confidence in their public finances, but public debt still climbed, data from the European Union's statistics office showed on Monday. Eurostat said the aggregate budget defic...

Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:17am EDT (Reuters) - Nissan Motor Co is recalling 13,919 of its top-selling Altima sedans in the United States because bolts that may not have been tightened properly during production could fall off, increasing the risk of a crash, according to U.S. safety regulators. The Altima sedans are from the from ...

By Ernest Scheyder Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:20am EDT (Reuters) - Caterpillar Inc, the world's largest maker of tractors and excavators, said on Monday the global economy is slowing faster than it had expected and slashed its 2012 forecast for the second time this year. The company's retail dealers are selling off inventories, rather than buying new machines, fo...

By Andrew Callus and Katya Golubkova LONDON/MOSCOW | Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:00am EDT LONDON/MOSCOW (Reuters) - State-controlled Russian oil company Rosneft has struck a two-part deal worth about $55 billion to buy privately-owned TNK-BP and make British oil company BP a near-20 percent Rosneft shareholder with two seats on the board. The first part o...

By Chuck Mikolajczak NEW YORK | Mon Oct 22, 2012 7:27am EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures advanced on Monday, indicating the S&P 500 may bounce from its worst decline since late June ahead of earnings from companies including Caterpillar and Freeport-McMoRan. * The benchmark S&P index fell 2.2 percent on Friday, its bigges...

LONDON | Sun Oct 21, 2012 9:25pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Lloyds Banking Group (LLOY.L) is examining whether to ditch the concept of annual bonuses for senior staff and extend the timeframe of longer-term incentives to up to 10 years, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The idea is being put to investors as Lloyds seeks to avoid the conflict seen betwe...

LONDON | Sun Oct 21, 2012 8:15pm EDT LONDON (Reuters) - Japanese carmaker Nissan (7201.T) plans to offer a lower-priced version of its Leaf electric car, which has been selling well below the company's predictions, the Financial Times reported on Monday. Nissan sold fewer than 12,000 Leafs in the first half of this fiscal year, up 11 percent on last year...