Preferred weapon of guerrillas and drug cartels. San Jose, Dec 12 (EFE).- Costa Rica is seeing off 2015 as the most violent year in its history with at least 528 homicides to date, one more than the previous record established in 2010, according to figures released by the country's OIJ law enforcement agency. OIJ data indicate that 527 homicides were recorded in 2010, but since then the cou...

Humane Society International Media Release - The National Animal Health Department (SENASA) responded to nearly 3,924 complaints about animal welfare issues, including animal hoarding, puppy mills and dogfighting in Costa Rica’s metropolitan region in 2015, according to a report released today by the department. Humane Society International/Latin America, through its partnership with SENASA, has b...

Source: MSP Pew Charitable Trusts Media Release - Already recognized for its conservation policies, Costa Rica has become a champion in the fight against illegal fishing by ratifying the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA), the international treaty to stop illegally caught fish from entering the market. Under the agreement, countries will deny landing and other port services to vessels involv...

As officials in Costa Rica work on a “Plan C” to allow stranded Cuban migrants to reach their desired destination in the United States, desperation is being felt across the various shelters in the northern region of the country. Nearly 5,000 stranded Cubans are currently sheltered in Costa Rica; their situation has been exacerbated by the actions of the government of Nicaragua against them. Whe...

WASHINGTON, DC – Illicit financial flows from developing and emerging economies surged to  US$1.1 trillion in 2013, according to a study released Wednesday by Global Financial Integrity (GFI), a Washington, DC-based research and advisory organization. Authored by GFI Chief Economist Dev Kar and GFI Junior Economist Joseph Spanjers, the report pegs cumulative illicit outflows from developing econom...

Source: Facebook This past weekend, a drug interdiction operation carried out by security forces in Nicaragua ended up with a shootout, a suicide, and several arrests, which include the detention of a lingerie model from Costa Rica. According to a news report filed by entertainment reporter Ariel Chaves Gonzalez of daily tabloid Diario Extra, the lingerie model has been identified as Adriana C...

Paris (PRWEB) December 07, 2015 - At the COP 21 this week, the government of Australia announced the creation of the International Partnership for Blue Carbon. It will bring together governments non-profit organizations, intergovernmental agencies, and scientists to increase understanding of, and accelerate action on the important role of coastal blue carbon ecosystems in climate change action. Fo...

PARIS (December 5, 2015)—Today, countries, states, and financial and civil society institutions have announced new restoration pledges for Latin American and Caribbean through Initiative 20x20, a country-led effort to bring degraded and deforested land into restoration by 2020. The new commitments bring the total area to be restored to 27.7 million hectares (or about 95,700 square miles, an area r...

Source: Flickr Captain Paul Watson, founder of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) non-profit marine conservation organization, filed a full petition  with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IAHRC) in Washington, D.C., accusing Costa Rica of using the judicial system to violate his rights and derail his conservation efforts. If successful, this petition could ...

Source: Flickr Commons The discovery of human remains on an urban riverbank and on a remote beach in the Pacific coast have alarmed residents of two communities in Costa Rica. As reported by Alexander Mendez, Allan Chacon and Jorge Sancho for daily tabloid Diario Extra, the body of a male was found on an urban section of the Virilla River and a human torso was unearthed by high tide on a Nicoy...

Facebook Agents from the Office of Judicial investigations (Spanish initials: OIJ) arrested various individuals reportedly involved in a marijuana smuggling run from the Caribbean region to the capital city of Costa Rica. Among the arrested was Veronica Ariza Anchia, a curvy model who is well-known in the popular lingerie show circuit in Costa Rica. According to a news report filed by Danie...

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs At the Paris Climate Conference (COP21), Costa Rica has taken on a leadership role, which has not gone unnoticed by attendees and the international press. The presence of delegates from Costa Rica is lead by Chancellor Manuel Gonzalez, who is also the Minister of Foreign Affair, and by Chief United Nations Climate Affairs Negotiator Christiana Figueres. L...

Fans of tattoos and body art in Costa Rica will be able to get inked for a good cause this holiday season. According to a news report filed by Paula Ruiz of national news daily La Prensa Libre, two tattoo artists wish to help homeless pets by offering discounted body art before Christmas. Cuban tattoo artists Judiel Noel and Frank Enamorado will set up shop at La Rosa Negra (The Black Rose), a ...

Rio de Janeiro, Nov 28 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- The Zika virus, which has spread across a large part of Latin America, is the cause of abnormally small heads in newborn babies, a condition known as microcephaly, Brazil's Health Ministry confirmed Saturday. In Costa Rica, officials from the Ministry of Public Health are closely following the situation across Central A...

Black Friday and Cyber Monday may represent the last opportunity of the year for frugal travelers to get significant discounts on their trips to Costa Rica. As the green (rainy) season comes to an end, the high season for tourism begins in Costa Rica, and all the discounts of the past few months seem to evaporate as the year-end holidays approach. The two major travel expenses, airfare and hote...

Although there are no clear statistics on how many turkeys will be served at dinner tables in Costa Rica later today, the Thanksgiving holiday is increasingly celebrated by more families in this country. To this end, it is not unusual to learn about supermarkets such as AutoMercado and PriceSmart running out of turkeys just before Thanksgiving. Who is buying up all those birds? Author’s Note: T...

SERT training. Source: OIJ During a raid on a private residence last week, officers from the Special Response Team (Spanish initials: SERT) of the Judicial Investigation Office (Spanish initials: OIJ) executed an arrest warrant that took them by surprise as they were greeted by a hail of armor-piercing gunfire. According to a report filed by Carlos Arguedas of national newspaper La Nacion, ...

For more than a decade, Sharkproject International has been presenting the only environmental awards in the world specifically focused on sharks. Alongside a positive award, the SharkGUARDIAN, there is also a negative award, the SharkENEMY of the year. The Sharkproject team nominates potential recipients and the winners are chosen by an international jury. An interesting nomination this year...

Jones Snowboards working in the Costa Rica rainforest Transworld Business News Release - Truckee, CA (Nov 19, 2015) – Jones Snowboards is proud to announce a partnership with the non-profit rainforest reforestation project Association Community Carbon Trees (ACCT). ACCT has spent the last twelve years fighting against climate change by reforesting clear cut swaths of Costa Rican rainforest wit...

Source: MSP San Jose, Nov 19 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- Costa Rican police on Thursday arrested a Syrian woman who entered the country earlier this week on a stolen Greek passport, a case similar to the one that occurred this week in Honduras, where five Syrian men using Greek passports were taken into custody. The arrest was carried out by the Public Force (Fuerza...

Texas A&M University Media Release - Earlier this year, Texas A&M graduate student Christine Figgener traveled to Costa Rica to study ridley sea turtles for her doctoral dissertation. While examining one male turtle, she and her companions found a long plastic straw lodged in the turtle’s nostril. Her video of the team extracting the straw has received more than 5.5 million views on YouTub...

Shalom. Recently, the Hebrew faithful in Costa Rica invited influential clerics from other religions for an ecumenical remembrance of a terrible act of religious intolerance that shall never be repeated. With the recent atrocities perpetrated by ISIS against the good people of France as background, the Judaic and Christian communities of Costa Rica commemorated Kristallnacht (night of the broken g...

University of Oxford Press Release - Both Costa Rica and El Salvador launched a national Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) on the same day, October 29th. Oxford Poverty & Human Development Initiative (OPHI) co-founder John Hammock and Outreach Technical Director Adriana Conconi participated in these launches, John Hammock in Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, and Adriana Conconi in San Salv...

Sex Shop in France. Wikimedia Commons Herbal Viagra is one of the most popular products sold in sex shops across Costa Rica these days. Male customers who take these products, which are sold over-the-counter to any adult, report that herbal Viagra is very effective insofar as resulting in long-lasting erections and pleasant feelings of excitement and euphoria. According to a recent report f...

Rachel Brathen at the Envision Festival. Source: Instagram Envision Festival Press Release – The Envision Festival in Costa Rica announces a world-class music, yoga, and speaker lineup for their sixth annual gathering, taking place on the majestic shores of Uvita, Costa Rica from February 25th to 28th, 2016. With the goal of creating a festival that represents the harmonious blending of many d...

Andrea Calderon, former host and presenter of a youth-oriented television show, is at the center of a sordid investigation as to why several photos she thought were taken in an intimate setting are now going viral on various social networks. The latest updates on this scandal was revealed on Facebook and through an interview with a local entertainment reporter. Miss Calderon posted a cryptic up...

Source: Fuerza Publica A foreign woman was taken into custody on Wednesday by law enforcement officers assigned to the inauguration of City Mall, the largest indoor shopping center in Central America, located near the Juan Santamaria International Airport (SJO) in the province of Alajuela. According to a press release issued by Fuerza Publica, the national police force of Costa Rica, the wo...

On this day, the good people of the United States celebrate Veterans Day, and in Costa Rica the U.S. expat community often gets together to celebrate those who served in the Armed Forces of their nation, and some of these veterans are from Costa Rica.   Author’s Note: The use of the noun and adjective “American” in this article conforms to the definition in Princeton’s WordNet: (A native ...

Pixabay Commons A male administrative assistant who works for the Ministry of Public Education (Spanish initials: MEP) is currently under investigation for an incredibly long list of sexually harassing statements he allegedly made to female co-workers over three years. According to investigative journalist Angie Guerrero of online news daily CRHoy.com, details of the investigation was first...

Source: RSN Officials from the National Committee on Emergencies (Spanish initials: CNE) are concerned about an increase in the number of tourists who are still trying to summit the crater of the Turrialba volcano, currently the most active in Costa Rica. In early November, the CNE announced that a number of measures will be taken to prevent this dangerous trend, particularly since in recen...

Wikimedia Commons Many dental tourists who plan medical vacations in Costa Rica ask if they should start taking antibiotics prior to their arrival. This question is mostly asked by patients from the United States and Canada, where dental health practitioners have been known to recommend antibiotics to a few categories of patients. The only rule of thumb in this regard is that antibiotics sh...

United States Department of Justice Press Release - Anchorage, Alaska - U.S. Attorney Karen L. Loeffler announced that Dr. Michael Brandner, 67, of Anchorage, Alaska, was convicted today of four counts of wire fraud and three counts of tax evasion by a federal jury sitting in Anchorage, Alaska. According to the indictment and evidence introduced at trial, shortly after his wife filed for divorce i...

Mark Lyons missing in Costa Rica UPDATE: Race officials posted a Facebook announcement before 5:30 pm on November 6th, stating: Mark is alive and well! Thank God! No further details were provided. Mountain rescue squads have been deployed to the Turrubares and Bijagual districts of the northwestern sectors of the San Jose province to look for Mark Lyons, a United States mountain bike (MTB) ...

ZURICH, November 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The EF English Proficiency Index 2015 Shows the State of Worldwide English Proficiency EF Education First released today the 5th annual edition of its EF English Proficiency Index (EF EPI), the world's largest ranking of countries by English skills. The report identifies global and regional English language learning trends and analyzes the relationship b...

Source: Immigration Experts A foreigner residing in Costa Rica can enjoy insurance coverage extended by a spouse without regard as to the immigration status of the insured. Such was the resolution issued by the Constitutional Chamber of Costa Rica, more commonly known as Sala IV, earlier this year. The Law Office of Immigration Experts Costa Rica has closely followed this case, which was re...

US Ambassador Haney. Source: Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica Without security, there can be no development in Costa Rica. Such was the emphasis posited by United States Ambassador S. Fitzgerald Haney as he appeared before the Permanent Commission on Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Legislative Assembly on the last Friday of October. Ambassador Haney mentioned that there is a priority at ...

Source: Flickr Commons A 17-year old male was calmly taken into custody after he allegedly murdered his stepfather to put an end to a pattern of spousal abuse in Costa Rica. According to a news report filed by Alejandro Monge of national newspaper La Prensa Libre, the 42-year old victim was identified by the last names Ugalde Cruz. The incident occurred in La Fortuna, located in the San Car...

Source: Twitter Justin Smith is a United States high school student from Maryland who dreams of coming to Costa Rica for two reasons: He wants to do volunteer work at a local orphanage and also at various wildlife rescue and research centers. Justin is a reader of The Costa Rica Star. He is enrolled at Salisbury Christian School, where students are given opportunities outside of the classro...

Many tourists who travel to Costa Rica in search of dental procedures may also suffer from hypertension, a fairly common condition characterized by blood pressure readings that exceed healthy levels. Although hypertension can be managed in most cases, severe cases may present a problem with regard to dental treatment.   The dental health professionals at the New Smile Dental Group, a pr...

By Carol Blair Vaughn Who’s Happy in Costa Rica? Forbes Magazine asked on November 13, 2014, “Want to Be Happy?  Move to Costa Rica.” Their conclusions were based on the results of a UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center Qualtrics Survey of 40,000 students from around the world in which Costa Rica emerged as – Numero Uno on the Happiness Index. So why do 50-60% of Americans who move to...