Zika is spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) Lab tests continue to rule out the presence of the Zika virus in Costa Rica, according to health officials, including a suspected case in a pregnant Canadian woman in Playa Potrero in the northwestern province of Guanacaste. Lab tests conducted on the woman came back negative for the virus, Minister of Health, Dr. Fernando Llorc...

Dirk Beauchamp and his wife, Yemmi Duran are pictured in a photo from several years ago. (FACEBOOK) Details into the killing of a US man, his wife and three of the woman’s children in Matapalo de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste, began to emerge late Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Officials identified the victims as 57-year-old US citizen, Dirk Beauchamp, his 38-year-old Costa Rican wife, Yemmi Duran...

Source: US Embassy United States Ambassador S. Fitzgerald Haney awarded an AFS Scholarship to Jesús Vallejos, a student at the Science High School in Limón, during the opening ceremony of the National System of Science and Technology High Schools class of 2016. This brilliant student will travel to the United States for a year of studies. Author’s Note: The use of the noun and adjective “Am...

Adrian Salmerón Silva (MSP photo) UPDATE (click to read): Details emerge in massacre of US expat and family in Guanacaste Police officials in Costa Rica on Tuesday said they have identified the suspect in a brutal murder of an entire family in the northwestern province of Guanacaste as Adrian Salmerón Silva, saying they believe the man has fled to Nicaragua. Reports also confirm that one...

Source: Flickr Commons Editor’s note: This is a breaking news story and will be updated as more information becomes available. UPDATE 1: (Click to read) Suspect in murder of entire family in Guanacaste identified; US man amongst victims Police on Tuesday morning discovered an entire family of five, including three children, brutally murdered in a home in Matapolo de Santa Cruz in Guanaca...

(Photo courtesy of Four Seasons) Rep. Suray Carrillo (FA) has presented a bill to Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly that would prohibit the use of potable water to irrigate golf courses. “I consider it urgent to amend the which dates from 1953, to update the protection measures of water as a finite and strategic resource vital to humans; our country must learn that we cannot continue using...

San José, Costa Rica (February 15, 2016) – A group of experts from international conservation organizations is announcing a new strategy for combating the decline of sharks and closely related rays, while warning that the rays are even more threatened and less protected than the higher profile sharks. The call for greater inclusion of rays in conservation action plans is part of “Global Priorit...

(Photo courtesy of Casa Presidencial) Chinese loans to Latin American and Caribbean governments and the region's state-owned firms climbed sharply in 2015 despite the slowing Chinese economy, rising to US $29 billion and focused once again on Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador, the Inter-American Dialogue public policy think tank said in its annual report issued this month. From nuclear power pl...

(Photo courtesy of Toyota) The director for distribution systems at the National Power and Light Company (CNFL), Allan Blanco promised Costa Rica lawmakers last week that CNFL could quickly deploy the necessary infrastructure to support a bill before the Legislative Assembly that proposes significant incentives for motorists who choose to purchase electric and hybrid vehicles. Appearing bef...

Edgar Calderon Quesada died on Sunday (Facebook photo) COSTA RICA STAR NEWS BRIEF Edgar Calderon Quesada, a television cameraman for Costa Rica’s Extra TV Channel 42, died on Sunday after being struck by a bull during a live transmission of a Costa Rican-style bullfight at the Sarchi Convention Center. On Facebook, Calderon’s coworkers described the man as a good friend who “died doing w...

Wikimedia Commons Fresh breath is a popular concern among most people in Costa Rica; this much is evident by the retail displays of mint candy and chewing gum that can be seen next to cash registers at supermarkets, pulperias (convenience stores), sodas (cafeterias), restaurants, bookstores, drugstores, and even cell phone repair shops. Normally, an obsession over fresh breath could be deem...

U.S. Department of Justice Press Release - James L. Porter, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today, that Ann Marie Sheppard, 55, of O’Fallon, Illinois, was sentenced on February 10, 2016, in the U.S. District Court in East Saint Louis, Illinois, on the charges that she engaged in a scheme to steal from a health care program and that she committed two r...

Microcephaly is a birth defect which causes babies to be born with unusually small heads and brains. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters) WASHINGTON DC and SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA - The Pan American Health Organization says Latin America will have between 2 million and 3 million Zika cases, warning that the 100,000 cases reported thus far do not reflect the magnitude of the situation because many ...

Police continued to guard the crime scene Thursday night. (Screen capture / Teletica Channel 7) Four suspects remained at large Friday morning after pulling off a brazen robbery of a branch of the Banco de Costa Rica (BCR) in Puriscal Thursday afternoon. According to the Judicial Investigative Organization (OIJ), the robbers gained access to the bank shortly after the branch closed to the p...

(Archive / Stock) Some 60,000 people in Alajuela have been without water since Wednesday afternoon, while another 24,000 in Puriscal also remained without water Thursday, after electrical disturbances caused by powerful winds damaged pumping stations, the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA) reported Thursday afternoon. In Alajuela, officials said it would take until Saturday...

(Stock / ICR-CRS Archive) Costa Rica’s Ministry of Justice and Peace and Microsoft announced an agreement on Thursday by which the California-based software giant will provide free training in web development to select prisoners in Costa Rica’s penal system as part of a pilot project. Under the pilot program, 15 prisoners aged 22 to 53 currently housed in a Heredia prison known as the Centr...

Zika map. Source: CDC The full case of a 55-year old tourist from the United States, who contracted the Zika virus in Costa Rica, has been published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a medical journal established in 1927 by the American College of Physicians. The author of the article is Dr. Lin H. Chen of the Mount Auburn Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. Mount Auburn...

ARCHIVE: A Rawlings employee sews baseballs for use at the 2010 Major League Baseball tournament at a factory in Turrialba, Costa Rica March 3, 2010. REUTERS OMX/Juan Carlos Ulate Costa Rica’s official unemployment rate remained essentially stagnant during the fourth quarter of 2015 at 9.6 percent compared to 9.7 percent a year earlier, according to the latest report by Costa Rica’s National I...

(Archive image for illustrative purposes. OIJ photo) Costa Rica’s Minister of Public Security, Gustavo Mata is warning that significant budget cuts this year will result in a decrease in security and will weaken the efforts of law enforcement to combat crime. In an interview with the daily La Nacion published on Wednesday, Mata said that a reduction of 8 percent in the security ministry’s b...

(Photo courtesy of Toyota) Members of the Legislative Assembly’s Commission on Government and Administration heard arguments in favor of Legislative Bill 19744, known as the Incentive and Promotion of Electric Transport Act, this week. The bill proposes significant incentives for motorists who choose to purchase electric and hybrid vehicles, including a complete exemption from import duty a...

Wikimedia Commons Dover – The Delaware Division of Public Health (DPH) announced today the state’s first Zika case in an adult female. The illness was travel-related and pregnancy is not an issue. Zika is primarily spread by mosquito bite and the individual is not considered infectious. The illness was mild, as expected, and was confirmed by a CDC blood test. To protect privacy, DPH will not b...

Zika is spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) Costa Rica’s Ministry of Health on Tuesday sent a formal request to the World Health Organization (WHO) asking to be removed from the list of nations with active, indigenous transmission of the Zika virus. Minister of Health, Fernando Llorca said that in the view of Costa Rican health officials, there is no evidence that the ...

(Archive / Stock) As the result of the over-exploitation of aquifers throughout the northwestern province of Guanacaste, thousands of people are receiving water that has been salinized to the point it is no longer fit for human consumption, Elizabeth Fallas, one of the officials that oversees community water systems known as ASADAs for the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA), t...

San Jose, Feb 9 (EFE).- The government of Costa Rica on Tuesday warned the thousands of Cuban migrants stranded in this country that they must fill the flights established to Mexico and El Salvador so they can be on their way to the United States, or otherwise the transit visas they have been issued will be revoked. That was the message from President Luis Guillermo Solis and Foreign Minister M...

(Archive image for illustrative purposes. OIJ photo) NEWS BRIEF In a series of coordinated raids Tuesday morning, agents of Costa Rica’s Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ) arrested a gang of five armed robbers who operated in Turrialba and surrounding communities, including a supervisor with the local police force. The arrested police officer was identified by the last names Cantillo Ra...

Dr. Mora Palma, the alleged ringleader of the group, faces more than 140 years in prison if convicted. (ICR/CRS Archive) The Criminal Court of San Jose ruled late last week that a criminal case against four Costa Rican doctors formerly employed by the public Calderon Guardia Hospital who were charged in 2013 in an illicit scheme to traffic in human organs should proceed to trial. Amongst th...

(Archive / Illustrative - Pailas geothermal plant) Costa Rica signed a US $500 million agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to finance renewable energy projects and their respective transmission and distribution systems on Friday. Costa Rica’s Ministry of Finance and the state-owned Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) said in a statement that the deal consists of two...

Zika is spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) Costa Rica’s Minister of Health, Dr. Fernando Llorca and Security Minister Gustavo Mata announced plans for a massive mobilization of some 14,000 workers from the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) to be deployed alongside workers from the Ministry of Health to fumigate and eliminate breeding grounds of the Aedes aegypti mosquito...

(Entrance to the the Baldi Hot Springs Resort Hotel & Spa, located in La Fortuna de San Carlos. ICR Archive) Editor’s note: It should be noted that Alberto Rodriguez Baldi has never been charged with any crime in relation to the leaked intelligence reports, which date back three years, though Costa Rica’s Attorney General did indicate last month that there remains an “open investigation” –...

Thousands of Cuban migrants remain in shelters across Costa Rica. (For illustrative purposes. CIDH/Twitter) A group of some 100 Cuban migrants being housed in a shelter in San Ramon de Alajuela were threatening to begin a hunger strike and take over the city’s central park on Friday, CRHoy.com reports. The migrants are apparently upset at the slow pace and high cost – US $555 each - of sche...

Areli Arevalo Facebook On Saturday afternoon, geologists at the Observatory on Volcanology and Seismology at the National University of Costa Rica (Spanish acronym: OVSICORI) reported a new eruption at the Turrialba Volcano, the most active colossus in our country. The volcanic event took place about ten minutes before 2:00 pm during a warm, yet extremely windy, afternoon. The seismographic...

Upper left: Ringed kingfisher. Bottom left: Strawberry poison-dart frog. Center left: A bunch of bananas and a black-cheeked woodpecker. (Aforementioned photos by Kenshiro Imamura.) Center-right top: Agouti. Center-right bottom: Baird's tapir. Right: Brown-throated tree-toed sloth. Source: JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency News Release - In the biodiversity hot spot of Costa Rica...

File photo San Jose, Feb 5 (EFE).- The Costa Rican government announced Friday that next week direct flights to Mexico will begin for Cuban migrants who have been stranded in the Central American country since last November on their way to the United States. "We are pleased to announce that the governments of Costa Rica and Mexico have agreed to carry out direct flights to make travel easie...

Zika is spread by the Aedes aegyptie mosquito (Wikimedia Commons) MONTEVIDEO (EFE) Costa Rica's Minister of Health, Fernando Llorca and health ministers of 14 Latin American countries agreed in Montevideo, Uruguay Wednesday on a roadmap to fight the Zika virus, linked in Brazil to a dramatic increase of birth defects. After meeting all day in the Uruguayan capital, the ministers approved a ...

As the race to the White House heats up, The Costa Rica Star is welcoming a seasoned political reporter to its staff to keep US expats in the know about this important election year, with a focus on how US elections affect Americans living abroad. Britt Nelson relocated to Costa Rica in 2011 from Florida, where he served as news editor for the Palatka Daily News, a newspaper owned by the New Yo...

Cristina Vargas claims Dr. Vargas Scott severely deformed her buttocks after injecting her with a toxic substance known as PMMA. (ICR / CRS Archive) Several years after charges were initially filed, a Costa Rican doctor is set to face trial in the case of a botched cosmetic procedure that left a former Costa Rican model’s buttocks severely deformed. The Criminal Court of Pavas decided on Ja...

(Archive / Stock) Some 500,000 people living in the San Jose metro area can expect to begin experiencing water rationing of up to 12 hours per day beginning this month, the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AyA) said Tuesday during a press conference. The San Jose suburbs of Escazu, Santa Ana, Salitral and Desamparados are expected to be the most affected. Some 150,000 people i...

Enoc and Dr. Rosemary SylvesterBradley of ChocoPrisma. Photo: Bryan Fabio Herrera By Carol Blair Vaughn This interview was conducted on January 29th, 2016, at Bazookas Restaurant in Perez Zeledon, after a meeting of a club for English speakers (CCRC), at which Enoc Jimenez was the guest speaker.  The Ngobe Indigenous straddle the Costa Rica – Panama border, and trace their lineage back to a...

Microcephaly, a birth defect which causes babies to be born with unusually small heads and brains, is linked to the Zika virus. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday added Costa Rica and Nicaragua to a growing list of places where travelers risk being infected with Zika, a rapidly spreading mosquito-borne virus. The addition of Cos...

(Stock / Archive) COSTA RICA STAR NEWS BRIEF A tourist from the United States drowned Monday afternoon in Playa Villa Leonor, in Osa, Puntarenas on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast, the Costa Rican Red Cross confirmed. Authorities identified the victim as 67-year-old Daniel Joseph Miller. According to witnesses, Miller struck his head on a rock after being hit by a powerful wave. Family ...