By Wendy Anders While business owners, legislators, and government offices alike consider a host of measures to alleviate commute times and its stress on workers and families, the vehicles keep pouring in. Car imports for the first five months of the year are up 26 percent over last year’s same time-frame as reported today by CentralAmericaData.com. And car sales in March, as reported in ...

By Wendy Anders Last year’s mid-term July school vacations were dampened by 12 deaths, over 536 traffic accidents, and over 4,500 other accidents in just a 2-week period, stated the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation in a press statement today. This year, Transit Police will have 744 officials conducting intensive preventive operations from Sunday, July 3 - Sunday, July 17. In ad...

Poas Volcano crater in Costa Rica Earth scientists at the National Seismology Network (Spanish initials: RSN) and at the National Observatory on Seismology and Volcanology (Spanish acronym: OVSICORI) are being kept on their toes by the activity of two colossi in Costa Rica. Readers of The Costa Rica Star are likely to be familiar with the hyperactive state of the Turrialba volcano, located ...

By Iahsan at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Concurrent with the birthday anniversary of Imam Hassan (2nd Shia Imam), a girl from Costa Rica converted to Shia Islam at the Razavi Holy Shrine of Iran. The Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad is a complex which contains the mausoleum of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of Twelver Shiites. It is the largest mosque in the world by dimension and ...

American Staffordshire Terriers, or pit bulls, are becoming more popular in Costa Rica, rising from 9th place in 2011 to 4th place in World Animal Protection’s recent survey on dog ownership. Staffords, along with poodles, schnauzers and others, still only represent a small portion of Costa Rica’s estimated 1.3 million dogs, with mutts or “zaguates” making up nearly half. “We were surprised ...

Wikimedia Commons A quintal (46 kilograms) of high-quality Costa Rican coffee was purchased Wednesday by a Japanese company at $5,900 in the Cup of Excellence's online auction, the event organizer reported. The price sets a new record high in this type of auction, according to the Coffee Institute of Costa Rica (Icafe). The Japanese company Wataru bought 11 bags of coffee grown in the Su...

Wikimedia Commons Today, Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi's vaccine division, announced that the National Ministry of Public Health of Costa Rica has approved Sanofi Pasteur's tetravalent dengue vaccine, Dengvaxia®, to protect individuals 9 to 45 years of age living in endemic areas against all four serotypes of dengue. This approval in Costa Rica is the fourth registration of the dengue vaccine in L...

Zoo Ave A brightly colored male toucan that suffered a mutilated beak after being attacked by thuggish youths in Costa Rica is getting a new home in Alajuela. Wildlife rescue experts at Rescate Animal Zoo Ave, located in La Garita, recently announced that Grecia will be housed in a new enclosure where it will have plenty of room to fly around, climb branches, hide, enjoy the sun, feed, prac...

Source: GoFundMe Julie Lee Lambert, a highly esteemed science educator at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), is slowly recovering from a brain aneurysm that kept her hospitalized in Costa Rica for 49 days. As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, Professor Lambert came to our country as an academic tourist to attend a conference. During her visit, she suffered a brain aneurysm that re...

Despite a Presidential Decree issued last week, the exit tax charged at Costa Rica airports for international travelers will remain at $29. The Decree seeks to increase the airport exit tax by $2, which will benefit the National Animal Welfare Service (Spanish acronym: SENASA), a government entity.   According to a news report by Fernando Muñoz of national radio station Monumental 93.5 ...

Wikimedia Commons University of Cambridge Media Release - Have humans underestimated the intelligence of birds? A new study suggests one species of bird - the great-tailed grackle - may be able to learn to adapt its behaviour when faced by new challenges. The research, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal today, is the first to test the cognitive abilities of great-tailed gra...

BALTIMORE, MD (PRWEB) JUNE 13, 2016 - For decades, Costa Rica has been among the world’s premier retirement destinations. It’s a country that is nearly carbon neutral, sustainably producing most of its power without increasing greenhouse gasses. It’s a country with no standing army. It’s a country whose people consistently rank among the Costa Rica is Once Again the Happiest Nation According to N...

Permacube Costa Rica San Isidro, Costa Rica - PermaCube Revolution is possibly the most practical solution to address the world’s food and water needs. Jim Gale, an eco community developer in Costa Rica, and his team have created a truly revolutionary system that assists with self reliance and abundance. The Permacube Revolution is open source so you can build it yourself, just sign up on ...

Costa Rican president, Luis Guillermo Solis tours the Reventazon hydroelectric plant while still under construction in 2014. (Casa Presidencial) By Douglas Marin Siquirres, Costa Rica, Jun 11 (EFE).- Considered the second largest work of infrastructure in the region after the Panama Canal, the Reventazon Hydroelectric Plant on Costa Rica's Caribbean side, is getting its finishing touches be...

Source; Wikimedia Commons San Jose, Costa Rica (June 6, 2016) – New data from George Mason University has revealed that shark meat sold in San Jose and Heredia food markets contain high levels of toxic mercury. The levels are so high that three shark species tested exceed U.S. federal health guidelines. Advocates are advising consumers, and especially women and children, to not buy shark due t...

By Britt Nelson   I was there when Coady was born I was there when Coady died. He was 26 years old. Coady died of a heroin overdose In Jaco Beach, Costa Rica, June 8, 2015.   He had accepted Jesus as his savior. Fifteen days before Coady died I saw him Baptized In the Pacific Ocean waves.   I did not know my son. During his adult years, There was always...

Pixabay Commons USAA Media Release - At 12 years old, USAA member Marielos Vega was caring for her father and brothers on a coffee plantation in her native Costa Rica, doing all the household chores before walking to school every morning. At 14, she dropped out to become a housekeeper, and a few years later, immigrated to the U.S. to work as a child care provider.   “I did not know ...

Trash buildup and waste go uncollected in Playa Ocotal, Guanacaste, Costa Rica By Maria Jose Brenes San Jose, Jun 5 (EFE).- Activist Stuart Coleman, who led the effort to make Hawaii was the first U.S. state to eliminate using plastic bags in grocery stores, is emphasizing the need for greater efforts by civil society and the private sector to help "cure" the environment in Costa Rica and e...

Source: GoFundMe Dr. Julie Lambert, a science educator at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) who suffered a ruptured aneurysm and fell into a coma during an academic visit to Costa Rica, has been approved to fly home aboard a commercial airline as long as she sits in the first class section with a nurse by her side. As previously reported in The Costa Rica Star, Professor Lambert is a passio...

Costa Rican environmentalist Jairo Mora was murdered in 2013. (ARCHIVE / Photo courtesy of WIDECAST) Sea Shepherd Conservation Society supporters Richard Dean Anderson and Holly Marie Combs are lending their names as producers on the company’s crowd-funded documentary feature Why Just One? The documentary follows Sea Shepherd's 2015 sea turtle defense campaign, Operation Jairo, which took p...

Flickr Commons Easy access to online social networks, themes portrayed in modern Latin American soap operas and the open discussion of family finances are causal factors driving young girls to prostitute themselves in Costa Rica. In mid-March, the incident of a 40-year old man reportedly sought to pay a 13-year old girl 150,000 colones (about $300) in exchange for a sexual session was repor...

Officers from the Operational Support Group (Spanish initials: GAO) detained five men suspected of belonging to a criminal group that preyed upon tourists in the Caribbean region of Costa Rica. The gang reportedly used strong-arm robbery tactics on foreign visitors, many of them from North America and Europe, who visited the communities of Cahuita, Manzanillo and Puerto Viejo, all within the Ta...

Flickr Commons DOJ Press Release - SAN DIEGO – Just a few hours after murdering his girlfriend in Panama and chopping up her body with a machete, retired Marine Brian Karl Brimager sent an email to a friend: “Hey bro, whatcha up to? I got stories for days. I’m living on an island off the coast of Panama loving life and living semper free!!!!!!” A few days later, after he’d disposed of Y...

The United States today celebrates Memorial Day, and in Costa Rica the expat community often gathers to observe the men and women who gave their lives while serving in the dear Armed Forces of their country. Author’s Note: The use of the noun and adjective “American” in this Article conforms to the definition in Princeton’s WordNet: (A native or inhabitant of the United States), and the recomme...

Dengue, Chikungunya, and Zika are spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) By Michele McDonald George Mason University researchers are on the front lines of Costa Rica’s defense against the Zika virus. Bordered by Panama and Nicaragua, the Central American country could be a natural laboratory for George Mason researchers, who have partnered with their counterparts at Co...

Source: GoFundMe Important - A lengthy followup and update can be found here - After suffering a ruptured aneurysm during a conference in Costa Rica in April and later being put in a coma after several surgeries, a professor is stranded without the means to return to the United States. Associate professor of Science and Environmental Education Julie Lambert has spent the last six weeks in H...

Scarlet Macaw BALTIMORE, MD (PRWEB) MAY 23, 2016 - When people consider retiring abroad, they most often cite as motivation the lower cost of living, escaping the worst of the North American winter, finding a more adventurous life, access to excellent, affordable healthcare. But many expats report that, once abroad, they discover a benefit they hadn’t considered in advance: a healthier lifestyl...

(Archive image for illustrative purposes. OIJ photo) Nine Costa Rica police officers were arrested in a series of 17 coordinated raids by the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) on Thursday, accused of conducting multiple, violent home invasion robberies throughout the greater San Jose metro area. According to investigators, the officers are suspected in at least 10 violent home invasions, ...

Flickr Commons Rome, May 26 (EFE). - Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis on Thursday called on Italian investors to strengthen bilateral trade ties and touted the Central American country's services and medical technology sectors as areas with great potential. Solis met in Rome with Italian business leaders and later gave a press conference in which he stressed that "trade relations ...

Flickr Commons Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal announced today the arrests of forty-six (46) individuals, the execution of forty-six (46) search warrants in three states (New Jersey, New York, and Florida), as well as the seizure of approximately $2,000,000 in U.S. currency. The arrests, search warrants, and seizures are the result of an investigation into a large-scale, multi...

(OIJ Photo) A former official of the Costa Rican Pacific Ports Institute (INCOP) along with three other men were taken into custody after a police raid on a farm in Mogos de Sierpe in Osa, Puntarenas Tuesday afternoon that led to the discovery of some two tons of cocaine, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MSP). Agents from the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) raided the prope...

Stock/Archive (Pixabay Commons) More than half of Costa Rica’s young and educated workforce wishes to emigrate to another country in search of better opportunities as well as to flee the country’s high cost of living and unemployment, according to the latest opinion poll by CID Gallup. More concerning, according to the poll, is that the largest segment of those wishing to emigrate is compri...

(Courtesy) COSTA RICA STAR BREAKING NEWS The passport belonging to Cody Roman Dial, a 27-year-old Alaska man who went missing in Costa Rica nearly two years ago, was found amongst human remains discovered in the Corcovado National Park on Friday, authorities in Costa Rica announced shortly before noon on Monday. Cody Roman Dial had been missing since July 22, 2014. The discovery of the r...

(Photo courtesy of the MSP) Authorities in Costa Rica have begun destroying a number of clandestine airstrips used by drug traffickers that were identified during overflights by Costa Rica’s Air Surveillance Service (SVA) over the last several months. The SVA said in April that it had managed to locate 33 such airstrips over a 5-month period alone, most of which authorities said are linked ...

(Archive / Delta Airlines) Some 534,000 foreign visitors arrived at Costa Rica’s Daniel Oduber International Airport (LIR) in Liberia during the first four months of this year, an increase of 30.5 percent compared to the same period last year, according to information released by Coriport, the company which manages the airport. The significant increase represents the fastest growth in arriv...

The following alert was recently posted on the flight operations webpage of U.S. budget airline JetBlue: Due to volcanic ash in the San Jose, Costa Rica area, we will waive change/cancel fees and difference in airfare for customers traveling on Friday, May 20, 2016 through Saturday, May 21, 2016 to/from the following airports: -San Jose, Costa Rica (SJO) Affected customers may rebook their ...

Source: Zoo Ave Field officers from the Ministry of the Environment (Spanish initials: MINAE) rescued a pair of baby coyotes that were found separated from their mother and pack in Guacimo, a farming community in the Caribbean region of Limon. The two cubs were transported to the Zoo Ave Wildlife Rescue Center in La Garita, province of Alajuela. According to a news report filed by Alejandro...

Costa Rica’s public health and social security system, known as CCSS, will discuss the possibility of extending survivors’ pensions to same-sex couples in the coming weeks, the daily La Nacion reports. CCSS in May 2014 made a landmark decision to grant gay couples health insurance on the same terms as heterosexual couples, a move that was praised by the United Nations. “This is the next natu...

Source: US SOUTHCOM Lima, May 13 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- Colombia has won a competition involving 20 special operations teams from across the Americas, with Honduras and Peru coming in second and third place, respectively, military officials said. Despite a Constitutional abolishment of her military that dates back to 1949, Costa Rica has been sending tactical p...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) San Salvador, May 10 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- El Salvador's murder rate so far in 2016 exceeds 38 per 100,000 inhabitants, well above the rate in several neighboring Central American countries, such  as Costa Rica, for all of 2015, according to official figures released on Tuesday. According to information provided by police d...