By Wendy Anders Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís views local seafood products on display at a 'buy local' CNP event. To strengthen local livestock producers and fisheries, the majority of which are micro, small, and medium-sized businesses, the Costa Rican government has asked all public institutions to purchase Costa Rican-raised products. Minister of Agriculture Luis Felipe A...

Back in May this year a group of students from an extracurricular activity at Kapaum Mount Carmel School in Wichita Kansas met with Costa Rica’s President Luis Guillermo Solis at Kansas State University. The objective of the students was to get an endorsement from President Solis to start a debate program at a selected high school in Costa Rica; naturally, President Solis agreed and invited the...

Press Release/ The first Texas Tech University campus in Latin America began its construction in Costa Rica with an investment that involves close to $15 million USD. The construction of 3,321 square meters’ of the campus will be ready by December 2017, the second phase involves opening doors for the first education programs in the first trimester of 2018. The academic offer will include: ...

By Wendy Anders A surgery in Costa Rica, Wikimedia Commons An interview with Pablo Guzman Stein, director of the private Medical Sciences University (Ucimed), located west of La Sabana Park in San José, Costa Rica, revealed the ways in which specialists in certain medical fields are actively maintaining a shortage in such areas to curtail competition, reported La Nación, Costa Rica’s mainst...

By Wendy Anders Reproduction of a handbill advertising a slave auction in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1769, Wikipedia. Antigua and Barbuda’s ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders, called on Harvard University “to demonstrate its remorse and its debt to unnamed slaves from Antigua and Barbuda” whose lives were abused to establish the Harvard Law School (HLS), reported Caribb...

By Wendy Anders Source: Taco Bell US Ten percent of Taco Bell Costa Rica's workforce is disabled. The fast food restaurant chain leads the country in hiring people with disabilities, reported Costa Rica’s daily La Nación yesterday. Almost half of the more than 67 disabled workers staffing Taco Bell Costa Rica's outfits are deaf, many have some degree of cognitive impairment, and one work...

Costa Rica students will benefit from a scholarship program with the Korea University for postgraduate studies in science, technology, engineering and mathematics as well as master’s degrees and doctorate’s. Korea is one of the global leaders in science, technology and innovation. The signing of this agreement was made between the Minister of Science, Technology and Telecommunications (MIICITT...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rican school children, Wikimedia. Costa Rica’s government initiated a program to subsidize children under the age of 18 to help them stay in, or re-enter, the educational system. A budget increase of CRC375 million (US$688 million) was allocated for this specific initiative aimed at eradicating child labor, and thus reduce poverty, stated the Ministry of Labor and S...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica's Golfo Dulce, Facebook post. In one the most biodiverse regions on the planet, kids in towns around Costa Rica’s southern Pacific Golfo Dulce are being encouraged to learn about and protect their coastal environment, reported the Public Security Ministry. The Costa Rican Coast Guard has stepped up to the plate to provide environmental education as part of a la...

Guatemala City, Oct. 8 — Some 800,000 young people in Guatemala neither work nor study, and therefore represent a "risk" to society and to themselves as their unemployment becomes permanent. Elementary school in Guatemala, Facebook. That was the alarm sounded in an interview by EFE with Veronica Spross, director of Entrepreneurs for Education, one of the 13 organizations that make up the NG...

By Wendy Anders Facebook post denouncing xenophobic attitudes in wake of the Education Ministry's inclusion of Nicaragua's culture in independence day festivities. On September 15, Costa Rica’s Education Ministry issued a memo indicating that schools in San Jose with a high percentage of Nicaraguan students could sing the Nicaraguan national anthem at the close of this month’s celebrations ...

By Wendy Anders Wikimedia Commons Costa Rica’s National Child Care and Development Network (Red de Cuido Infantil) has added an early childhood education component to 11 of its public daycare centers starting this month, reported the Ministry of Education. The program is Costa Rica’s first step towards offering broad public early childhood education. The Ministry of Education has allocat...

By Wendy Anders For the fifth year in a row the Universidad Latina (ULatina) has awarded five youth ages 18-29 for heading up projects that have a positive social impact, stated ULatina in a press statement. The Yo Creo Premio (I Believe Award) awarded five $2,500 grants on Friday to talented young people who have shown a demonstrated and measurable impact in addressing problems facing their...

The Broader View network for volunteering overseas recently announced updates to is Costa Rica sea turtle conservation program, which takes place in the Pacific and Caribbean coasts. Following are details from the press release: Are you interested in volunteering with wild life? If so, why not become a Costa Rica Sea Turtle Volunteer? This opportunity gives you a chance to experience sea tur...

Source: York University Each year, the Fisher Fund Wine Tasting and Auction not only brings together some of York University’s top supporters and wine collectors, but serves as an opportunity to unite this group in support of environmental research that holds importance at a local and global level. The Sunnybrook Vaughan Estate was home to more than 85 guests this year for 14th annual event, r...

Imagine tiny bubbles of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — rising from the ocean floor, escaping into the atmosphere, playing havoc in heating up the planet and contributing to global warming and climate change. Yet certain rocks on the depths of the ocean floor host an interesting microbiological community, where microscopic organisms, or microbes, actually eat escaping methane to acquire energ...

By Wendy Anders Yesterday the Costa Rican daily, La Nación reported that the Ministry of Public Education (MEP) has opened a disciplinary investigation against a 40-year-old female teacher named Rojas at the Technical Professional High School in San Isidro de El General, Pérez Zeledón, in southern Costa Rica, after she married a 15-year-old student of hers on July 4. La Nación confirmed the ...

By Wendy Anders Over the past month, leaders from about 20 unions and civic groups have held a series of meetings to define a common agenda to defend the rights of the country’s public sector employees, announced the Communication and Energy Industry Employees Union (ASDEICE). After their third meeting yesterday at the Ambassador Hotel in San José they announced a protest planned for Thursda...

Illustrative image. (Flickr Commons) A Japanese man, arrested last weekend for allegedly stabbing his 12-year-old son to death, told the police he did it because the child was not studying for his secondary level exams, the police said Tuesday.   The accused, Kengo Satake, 48, a transporter from Nagoya city was taken for interrogation after his arrest, a police spokesperson told loc...

Costa Rica Zentrum Universität Osnabrück, part of the Lower Saxony state of northwestern Germany, recently inaugurated a unique collaboration program with seven universities in Costa Rica. The Costa Rica Zentrum at Universität Osnabrück aims to promote international and intercultural academic and scholarly exchange between Costa Rica and Germany. The Costa Rica Center's research profile and...

Alicia Chong RodrigueZ. Photo: Casey Atkins By Catherine Curro Caruso | MIT News correspondent   When Alicia Chong Rodriguez first toured the MIT campus as a high school student, she was so impressed by everything she saw that she still remembers excitedly phoning her mom back home in Costa Rica, calling collect from a pay phone in the student center. “It’s the first time I was fac...

Pixabay Commons The success of a private school in Costa Rica can be thought of as a recipe in the sense that it requires certain ingredients and careful preparation. Let's take a look at the main ingredients of Pan-American School, a private learning institution located near the upscale sections of Santa Ana and San Antonio de Belén in Costa Rica: History Philosophy Accr...

Source: George Mason University By Kristen Dalton What started as a simple project to gather more instruments for George Mason University students quickly blossomed into a program that provides instruments and arts enrichment programs to underserved elementary and middle school students in Northern Virginia. Eight years ago, George Mason’s own music students needed additional instruments. ...

Rafael Antonio Rodriguez The Boulder Concert Band, a nonprofit, premier adult community band, today announced that Rafael Antonio Rodriguez has been selected as its conductor and musical director. "I am honored and thrilled to have the opportunity to make music with the wonderful musicians of the Boulder Concert Band as their new conductor," commented Rodriguez. "I look forward to many joyo...

By Glenys Young, Texas Tech University Texas Tech University officials announced today the start of an exciting new chapter in the university’s growth: an expanded global presence in the form of its new international campus, Texas Tech University Costa Rica. Upon approval of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges, the new campus in San José, Costa Rica, will...

Pixabay Commons As the next academic year approaches, many parents in Costa Rica are concerned about the educational futures of their children. In choosing the best private school in Costa Rica for your children, there is one golden rule and three mistakes to avoid:   The Golden Rule of Choosing a Private School in Costa Rica   In the minds of parents, there are no perfect schools ...

By Wendy Anders Costa Rica’s Ombudsman’s Office (Defensoría de los Habitantes) exhorted the government yesterday to continue strengthening indigenous education in order to reduce the gap between them and other students. The country’s current over 14,000 students enrolled in indigenous educational programs. Indigenous groups continue to face a gap in the quality and access to education in Cos...

Photo: Sam Trull The death of a female sloth that gained international attention after being featured in documentary films was recently reported in Costa Rica. The documentaries were produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) as well as by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) of the United States. The following press release was issued by the Sloth Institute, located within the...

U.S drillship Joides Resolution The effects of earthquakes are often severe and highly visible. They can destroy homes, induce slope failures and trigger tsunamis. The main cause for earthquakes are the stresses that occur in the Earth's interior, when two tectonic plates pass each other and interlock during this process. But even the worst earthquake starts with a very small first crack in th...

Photo by Arthur Caranta, Flickr Commons By Violeta Molina Gallardo Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have endowed certain machines with human qualities such as intuition and improvisation. Despite such technological progress, experts say future machines may never achieve self-awareness. "We don't really understand how consciousness works, we barely know anything at all a...

By Evelyn S. Gonzalez, Florida International University Amphibians that can tolerate higher temperatures are likely to fare better against disease, habitat loss and climate change, according to researchers. FIU biologist Maureen Donnelly contributed to two studies on the ability of frogs and amphibians to survive challenges brought on by a changing planet — challenges she said could lead to ex...

Sunken coral islands, floating rainforests, giant undersea volcanoes or even spires of rock resembling sunken cities: none of these sites can be inscribed on the World Heritage List because they are found in the High Seas, outside of any national jurisdiction. A report launched today by UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) explores the different ...

By Wendy Anders Kristin Van Busum set off on a Fulbright Fellowship after leaving a think-tank job in Boston to help small-scale coffee growers in Nicaragua enter the global coffee market and improve their quality of life, reported USA Today’s network media the IndyStar yesterday. After the project failed due to the complicated dynamics surrounding local coffee production and marketing, Van ...

Early Monteverde community diner., Source: John Campbell by Jody Jenkins How far would you go for your beliefs? It’s a question more pertinent than ever in today’s globalized world brimming with moral issues easily accessible with the swipe of a fingertip on any smartphone. In a virtual age where tapping a “donate” button equates to activism, how do we decide which causes are really worth ri...

Source: UNLV By Greg Lacour Mario Verduzco knew only a couple of things as he flew to Costa Rica in January for a four-month study-abroad/internship experience: He’d be working at a recycling center, and the owners had a project for him. The project turned out to be one of the most challenging experiences of the Las Vegas native and electrical engineering junior’s life. It wasn’t so much...

The lifeless body of a retired English language educator, who had gone missing for more than two weeks, was recently found in a remote area of Costa Rica. According to a news report filed by rural reporter Eddis Gomez of daily tabloid Diario Extra, the departed teacher has been identified as Santiago Salguera Hernandez, who was 67 years old when he went missing in the village of Chimurria, part...

Isain Mandujano TwitterHundreds of striking teachers, joined by students and parents, blocked access to the main international airport in the southern state of Chiapas for 10 hours on Monday, Mexican authorities told EFE. With state and federal police deployed at Angel Albino Corzo International Airport, protesters led by the Chiapas branch of the militant CNTE teachers union set up blockades ...

Source: FundMyTravel.comAdele and Matt Allen are a young British couple from Brighton, a pretty city of East Sussex, located in the southern region of England. They have two children: Ostara, who turned one year old recently, and Ulysses, who is five years old and still breastfeeds. The Allen family would like to move to Costa Rica. To fund their Brexit, so to speak, they are hoping to collect...

Source: DVIDSBy Staff Sgt. Charles Martinez, New Mexico National Guard CUAJINIQUIL, Costa Rica - Eight hours of team work by the New Mexico National Guard’s 1st Platoon, 919th Military Police Company, was all it took to remove one month’s worth of jungle growth from the grounds of a school building in Cuajiniquil, Costa Rica July 20, 2016. Located in the Guanacaste province in the northwestern...

Source: ECSUIn the wee hours of May 22, 13 Eastern biology students and biology professors Patricia Szczys and Matthew Graham trekked to the rainforest of Costa Rica to experience a 12-day trip they had been preparing for since January. The students had spent the spring semester in groups of three and four students each reading scientific literature and preparing research proposals for studies...