By Wendy Anders On New Year’s Eve day, a pilot for Canada’s Sunwing airlines was arrested after being discovered drunk on the plane he was to have flown from Calgary, in western Canada, to the Mexican city of Cancun, reported AFP. The pilot, a 37-year-old man, fainted before taking off, and was taken off the plane and stopped by Calgary police at around 7:00 a.m., continued AFP. The airli...

Bangkok Desk, Dec. 29 — Fifteen people have been detained in Australia in connection with the seizure of 1.1 tons of cocaine in an international operation against a drug smuggling ring, police officials said Thursday. A total of 500 kilograms were seized on Dec. 25 in the southern Australian state of New South Wales, and over 600 kilograms bound for Australia were intercepted in March in Tahiti, ...

Caracas, Dec 28 (EFE).- Venezuela will end 2016 with a homicide rate of 91.8 for every 100,000 people, second only to El Salvador, the independent human rights group, Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV), said Wednesday. The projected total number of violent deaths is 28,479, compared with 27,875 in 2015, OVV director Roberto Briceño Leon said. Though the year-on-year increase is relatively...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s judicial investigative police (OIJ) detained two Peruvian men who are suspected of  robbing tourists and foreigners. The arrests were made after investigations, surveillance and follow-up into the men’s apparent participation in at least 10 cases of robberies mainly of foreigners. The loss associated with their robberies is estimated at 5 million colones, said...

Editor’s note: The views expressed by guest columnists are not necessarily those of The Costa Rica Star, its advertisers, or its staff.  By Britt Nelson In the United States of America it’s about time police departments nationwide changed their rules of engagement when dealing with an increasingly dangerous and armed public.  Police officers are shot responding to domestic violence ...

Donald Salmon Melendez, Ernesto Centeno, Jose Bryan Quesada Cubillo and Hector Martin Cash Lopez were found guilty of murdering sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora back in May 2013; they were sentenced to prison back in March 2016 and this sentence was finally confirmed this Friday, December 23. The decision was taken by the Sentence Appeals Court of San Jose. The four men received 35 year...

The face of human trafficking is changing with more children and men falling prey and more victims trapped in forced labor than a decade ago, the United Nations reported on Wednesday. International trafficking that exploits vulnerable refugees and migrants is reaching "appalling dimensions" and more trafficking is occurring within countries, said Yury Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. Off...

MIAMI, USA -- A New York City resident pleaded guilty on Monday, December 12 in connection with a sophisticated Caribbean cell-phone fraud scheme that involved compromising cell-phone customers’ accounts and “cloning” their phones to make fraudulent international calls. The United States Department of Justice. Farintong Calderon, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire ...

Updated with more details on December 21, 206 By Wendy Anders FILE/ARCHIVE image for illustrative purposes only. (MSP) Yesterday police rescued two women and one man from Ecuador in Quepos near Manuel Antonio National Park on Costa Rica’s central Pacific coast. They three  appear to be victims of human trafficking. The three Ecuadorians, who were being driven in a Chevrolet car near L...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes, a police drug capture in Costa Rica. Costa Rican police dismantled 115 narco structures between January 1 and Dec. 14 this year, reported the Ministry of Public Safety, 37 of which were international and 78 local. Police also upped their cocaine captures from 14.5 tons last year to over 18 tons this year, along with sizeable quantities of ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican authorities seized US$480,000 as part of an international effort to local and repatriate assets of the now-disbanded Colombian rebel group, FARC. The Costa Rican Supreme Court of Justice last week turned over the assets of the guerrilla group to the Colombian Attorney General's Office, reported Bogotá, Colombia’s daily El Espectador newspaper. This was the firs...

By Wendy Anders An ATM skimming device being installed in the card slot, photo from Facebook for illustrative purposes. Over the past four months, bank officials in Costa Rica have discovered at least 20 skimming devices used to steal data from ATM users' cards. Rodney Jiménez, spokesman for the Costa Rican Banking Association (ABC, in Spanish), said the figure is worrying, as it shows t...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes, a police catch in Costa Rica. After police trade union representatives protested last week’s dismissal of 115 police officers linked to serious crimes, Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis Rivera reiterated his support of the decision, and stated that illegal acts and corruption in the exercise of public function are not allowed. The...

By Wendy Anders Cahuita, Limón, Costa Rica. Yesterday, police captured a 21-year old Costa Rican man at his home in Hone Creek, Limón in connection with the murder of a hotel owner in late October this year, reported the Judicial Investigative Police (OIJ). A 50-year-old French woman by the last name of Claire was found lying dead and bound on the ground at her boutique hotel south of Pu...

Montevideo, Dec. 7 — Uruguay has made a dramatic turnaround in addressing the serious problem of child sexual exploitation, reported expert Luis Purtscher. More than a dozen institutions and groups came together to draft Conapees national action plan against child sexual exploitation in Uruguay, photo Facebook. The country did an about face from basically denying the situation several years...

San Salvador, Dec. 5 — Some 10,800 people have disappeared in El Salvador since 2010 due to violence attributed to gangs. This is 8,000 more than those officially registered as disappeared during the country’s civil war that lasted between 1980 and 1992. None of these have been reported by police as "found." Mara Salvatrucha Gang, El Salvador, file photo. The year in which the greatest numb...

By Wendy Anders Evidence collected in last week's arrests of homicide and house theft suspects in Puntarenas, source OIJ. Last Wednesday saw a shoot out in Puntarenas as police closed in on suspects in recent thefts who are also linked to the gruesome murder of a Dutch couple around Christmastime last year, said the  judicial investigative police (OIJ) press office. The Dutch news servic...

Madrid, Dec. 1 — Spanish authorities arrested 34 people, including seven tennis players, for allegedly fixing tennis matches to obtain favorable gambling outcomes, police said last Thursday. Maria Jimenez, spokeswoman for the Civil Guard — Spain's national, militarized police force — said in a press conference that the detained players were all male and occupied spots between 30-360 in Spain's ...

Washington, Nov. 28 — Eleven people were hurt Monday on the campus of Ohio State University when a man deliberately drove his car into a crowd and then jumped out and attacked pedestrians with a butcher knife until he was fatally shot by a police officer. Ohio State University campus after the attack, source Facebook. OSU public safety director Monica Moll identified the attacker as Abdul R...

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Nov. 28 — The Ohio State University Department of Public Safety this morning said an active shooter was on campus and urged people to shelter in place and await police instruction. Law enforcement told the Columbus Dispatch police shot and killed one suspect on the campus. There are reports there may be a second attacker. Wikimedia Commons Firefighters said at least nine ...

The Washington, D.C.-based Global Commission on Drug Policy recently released its 2016 annual report, "Advancing Drug Policy Reform: A new approach to drug decriminalization", which details the destructive and harmful consequences of punitive drug policies and the need to reconsider reviewing current decriminalization models. The never-ending, and ineffectual 'war on drugs.' The report show...

By Wendy Anders A view of the ravages from a weekend fire in Leon XIII, Tibás, as posted on Facebook. At around midnight on Saturday, screams rang out in the Leon XII shanty town in San José’s densely populated district of Tibás as flames from an apparent arson act spread quickly through the makeshift abodes, reported police sources and local media. Despite a rapid emergency response, th...

"Ending violence against women is about guaranteeing the basic rights of women and liberating us all from the ties of prejudice, misogyny and inequality. The path is clear, and the ILO will continue its work until the entire world of work is free from violence," says ILO Director-General Guy Ryder. Romanian women in Bucharest show support for Polish women protesting against a proposed near-tot...

By Wendy Anders The 400 ms of illegal fishing nets seized in the Gulf of Nicoya this week by Coast Guard patrols, photo Public Security Ministry. Officials from the National Coast Guard Service seized illegal trawling nets that unidentified fishermen were using in the Gulf of Nicoya, said the Costa Rican Public Security Ministry in a press statement yesterday. The trawling nets were loca...

By Wendy Anders A Costa Rican traffic police officer. A group of 15 Costa Rican traffic police took matters into their own hands and have outfitted themselves with helmet-mounted videocameras. For most of them, this blew 1/2 their month’s paycheck. It was worth it though, said officials who spoke with La Nación, Costa Rica’s main Spanish daily paper. The videos of their patrols can help ...

Foreign man shot dead in his Mazda by unidentified motorcyclists while driving near La Sabana park at noon today, photo AMPrensa.com. By Wendy Anders — Story in progress — A man who is believed to be of Ukranian descent named Spridonov and about 60 years old was declared dead today at about 12:30 p.m. near the on-ramp to Route 27, south of the La Sabana Stadium, reported AMPrensa.com, a ...

The Costa Rican police dismantled a gang of drug traffickers with links in Mexico and Guatemala, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security (MSP) said yesterday. ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) "At the moment there have been 14 detained, after making 24 raids, and it ...

(EFE).- Reporters crowd behind yellow ribbons to record with their devices the brazen way that organized crime and street gangs spill blood on the streets of Central America's Northern Triangle, but the indifference of the government and of the media leave these journalists in the line of fire as well. The region made up of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras is considered one of the deadliest ...

San Juan, Nov. 2 — U.S. authorities in Puerto Rico announced Wednesday the largest onshore seizure of illegal drugs in the history of the island: 1,786 kilos (3,933 lbs.) of cocaine. An at-sea capture of over 1 tons of cocaine near Puerto Rico in May 2014, Facebook. "We have made large seizures at sea, but never on land," Ricardo Mayoral, acting special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration a...

By Wendy Anders Photo for illustrative purposes. U.S. police in New Jersey deported a Costa Rican man who fled the country in 2003 presumably to escape after allegedly raping his daughter, reported El Diario Extra, a Costa Rican newspaper. According to local Costa Rica news, Jose Alberto Orozco Ramirez, 48, was accused of raping his under age daughter who then became pregnant. New Jer...

By Wendy Anders OIJ police, photo for illustrative purposes. Yesterday morning, Costa Rican police carried out 13 simultaneous raids throughout the country after a 9-month investigation on a gang dedicated to stealing the content of containers arriving and leaving the country's ports. Among those arrested in connection with the group’s criminal activities are two police officials from Ma...

By Wendy Anders Over $180,000 in cash a Honduran man tried to smuggle into Costa Rica in a jalapeño-filled truck. This weekend at Costa Rica’s northern Peñas Blancas border with Nicaragua, anti-drug police seized some serious cash hidden in a jalapeño-filled truck arriving from Honduras, reported the Public Security Ministry press office. All told, a Honduran man had US$182,680 in bills ...

By Wendy Anders ARCHIVE/FILE: Some 1,700 tons of cocaine is expected to pass through Costa Rican territory in 2016. (Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Public Security) Costa Rica’s Public Security Ministry in their amped up effort to control crime in the Atlantic port city of Limón has arrested 152 people over the past three weeks, they stated in a press release. In an analysis of this d...

By Wendy Anders 2016 Wider Caribbean Region Rule of Law Index rankings, World Justice Project. The Washington, D.C.-based World Justice Project (WJP) just published its ranking of countries throughout the world on a Rule of Law Index that measures how people view justice in their everyday life. Of the 22 countries in the Central America and wider Caribbean region included in this year’s ...

Updated on Monday, October 24. By Wendy Anders Inside the clandestine abortion clinic raided by Costa Rican police Saturday. Saturday morning Judicial Investigation Agency (OIJ) police arrested a 38-year-old Costa Rican woman by the last name of Morales for allegedly participating in an illegal abortion clinic in Desamparados, a densely populated southern San José district, in Costa Rica...

A seizure of over 9 million contraband cigarettes is made in Petén, Guatemala in March, photo courtesy of Belize's Corozal Daily, Facebook. Guatemala City, Oct. 20 — An Asian man has been arrested along with two Guatemalans in the capital of the Central American country after being accused of coordinating the entry of a container filled with cigarettes smuggled from China, judicial sources sai...

Guatemala City, Oct 19 — A group of Guatemalan women on Wednesday joined a global initiative against gender-based violence, taking part in a sit-in here to demand respect for their rights and an end to femicides. Reyna Sofia Lantan, the artist who participated in the protest in Guatemala City, from Facebook. Feminist Silvia Trujillo, who took part with around 30 other women in the brief sit...

Brussels, Oct. 19 - The European Police Office announced Wednesday the results of an international operation that hit hard against organized crime in the European Union. Photo for illustrative purposes. In a report released on its website, Europol said agents participating in operation Ciconia Alba seized 2.62 tons of cocaine, identified 529 victims of human trafficking, and arrested 314 ...

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica, Oct. 19 — A recent study paints a panoramic picture of a surging global trade in illicit cigarettes that is funding groups from Hezbollah and Hamas to the Central American Los Zetas cartel. Contraband cigarettes in Singapore, Facebook, photo for illustrative purposes. The study, "From Ant Smuggling to an Elephant in the Market,” was conducted by CID Gallup for the Cost...

LONDON, Oct. 18 — Today marks the 7th anniversary of Michael Dixon’s disappearance in the seaside holiday town of Tamarindo, Costa Rica, on the country’s northern Pacific coast. Michael Dixon's parents pictured at press conference in London. (PRNewsFoto/David Dixon) His family is still seeking answers on what happened to their loved one, a British journalist. Evidence indicates he was th...