Pixabay Commons The Second Meeting of Signatories (MOS2) to the Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks will be held in the capital city of Costa Rica in mid-February. As previously reported by The Costa Rica Star, our country became signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) with regard to shark conse...

Source: NASA00 Washington, Jan 19 (EFE).- NASA published photographs of the first flower grown on board the International Space Station as part of a 2-year experiment to raise plants in space. Although astronauts had grown lettuce and other vegetables in their space garden, this is the first time that flowers - zinnias, in particular, which are edible - have bloomed outside Earth's gravity....

Wikimedia Commons By Juan Carlos Gomi Bogota, Jan 11 (EFE).- The Spanish galleon San Jose did not sink off Colombia under attack by English ships, as contemporaneous accounts say, and perhaps it did not go down in the Caribbean with its load of treasure due to a powerful explosion, as English commodore Charles Wager reported, nautical researcher Daniel de Narvaez MacAllister told EFE. Th...

Source: RythmX DAYTON, OH - In January, world-class instructor Tom Gasparrini of Rhythm X, Bellbrook High School, and the Bluecoats heads to Costa Rica for a whistle-stop tour of the country teaching marching percussion at six local bands and schools. The last stop of the tour will be in Guanacaste with the Marching Band of the Colegio de Bagaces. This whirlwind event will bring the total n...

Wikimedia Commons By Julia Talarn Rabascall Santiago, Dec 23 (EFE).- The quest to pry into the secrets of some of the most radiation-resistant organisms on Earth led Chilean scientist Jenny Blamey to the Union Glacier, just 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the South Pole. These microorganisms, classified as extremophiles, can survive in environments with constant sub-freezing temperatures...

Source: Erica Hagan Memorial Fund Santiago, Dec 23 (EFE).- A court in the southern Chilean city of Temuco on Wednesday acquitted due to lack of evidence the only suspect in the murder of U.S. psychologist Erica Hagan, who was killed in early September 2014, court sources reported. Domingo Cofre Ferrada, 45, a security guard at the Bautista College in Temuco, where the 22-year-old victim liv...

"Yutu" by Chinese National Space Administration/China Central Television Madrid, Dec 23 (EFE).- China's Yutu robot, which landed on the moon in 2013 as part of the unmanned Chang'e-3 mission, has found a different type of basaltic rock on the Earth's satellite, a study published in the journal Nature Communications said. Chang'e-3, the first probe to reach the lunar surface since the Apollo...

Fiserv Costa Rica BROOKFIELD, Wis. & BARREAL DE HEREDIA, Costa Rica--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Fiserv, Inc. (NASDAQ: FISV), a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, today announced that a web-based application created during the Fiserv 2nd Annual Programathon will further the education of 50,190 schoolchildren in Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua. Bringing together ...

A nine-year-old schoolgirl is to front a global educational campaign to save one of the world’s rarest frogs. Lucy Marland joined forces with The University of Manchester after coming face to face with a Lemur Leaf Frog, kept at Manchester Museum and one of only a few hundred left anywhere in the world. The campaign, called Learning with Lucy, aims to educate primary age school children in t...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, DC, December 16, 2015 --(PR.com)-- The White House, U.S. Department of State, Partners of the Americas, and NAFSA: Association of International Educators announced eight new 100,000 Strong in the Americas Innovation Fund grants sponsored by Campus Puerto Rico to support university partnerships and new study abroad programs at an event with Vice President Joe Biden...

Photo by Arthur Caranta, Flickr Commons Washington, Dec 11 (EFE).- A group of scientists has developed a software program that imitates the way humans learn new concepts, an "important step" in the field of artificial intelligence, a study published in the Science journal said. What the scientists are trying to do, according to Joshua Tenenbaum, one of the researchers and a professor at the...

Wikimedia Commons By Carol Blair Vaughn Last week, President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos announced via Twitter that Colombia had found the Spanish galleon San Jose, which he called “the most valuable treasure that has been found in the history of humanity.” Legend holds that the San Jose was sunk on June 8, 1708, in the Caribbean Sea near Cartagena, Colombia, with a treasure on board ...

Source: SK Telecom SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) announced that it signed a Collaboration Agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to jointly launch a pilot project in Costa Rica to enhance children’s learning capacity in mathematics. The agreement signing ceremony took place at IDB headquarters located in Washington D.C. The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB or IDB or BID) is t...

Wikimedia Commons Cartagena, Colombia, Dec 5 (EFE).- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed Saturday that the legendary galleon San Jose, a Spanish ship that was sunk in 1708 near Cartagena of the Indies with a cargo of gold and silver coins, was found at dawn last Nov. 27. "I feel very pleased, as head of state, to inform Colombians that undoubtedly, without a doubt of any kind, ...

"Eva Longoria at Imagine Cup 2011 11" by ImagineCup - Imagine Cup 2011. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons By Antoni Belchi Miami, Dec 4 (EFE).- U.S. actress of Mexican descent Eva Longoria admits she has sometimes felt rejected by the Latino community because she didn't speak Spanish "perfectly," so she had to improve her command of the language so she wouldn't feel "undervalue...

(PRWEB) December 01, 2015 - What started out as a few pointers and a list of vocabulary words for a few Spanish students, has evolved into a turbo-charged web site, packed with resources for Spanish teachers and students. Conversa, a Costa Rica-based Spanish immersion school, and developer of SpanishBackpack.com, has just announced that it plans to offer the service free of charge. This is grea...

New Shepard. Source: Blue Origin San Francisco, Nov 24 (EFE).- Blue Origin, the space transport company owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced Tuesday that its suborbital rocket that lifted off on Monday successfully landed back on the launch pad in Texas, a key step in its drive to build reusable rockets. "Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard space vehicle flew a flawless mission - so...

Oxford Dictionary By Carol Blair Vaughn Oxford Dictionary has announced its Word of The Year for 2015 – and SURPRISE!! – It’s not a word at all! This year’s word is the emoji “Face with Tears of Joy”, which was found to be used by more folks than any other emoji worldwide.  It turns out that Costa Rica has sent the most emoji art in the world in 2015, in our digital communication, accord...

Wikimedia Commons Lima, Nov 12 (EFE).- University researchers in Peru have invented a device aimed at leveraging plants' potential as a clean and renewable energy source to provide electricity to an impoverished Amazon community. The "plant lamp," as the invention is known, is a project by researchers at Lima's University of Engineering and Technology that generates two hours of light per d...

(PRWEB UK) 6 November 2015 - The successful candidate will work, alongside another travelling tutor, with three children, aged 12 to 17, with a variety of academic interests and requirements ranging from music to chemistry, to maintain their home curriculum over this period and prepare them for exams in their various key stages, including GCSE and A2. Adam Caller, founder of Tutors Internationa...

Wikimedia Commons Washington, Nov 5 (EFE).- The atmosphere of Mars could have disappeared billions of years ago as a result of the solar wind, which hits the planet with great strength, a situation that would explain how it lost the water that once covered its northern hemisphere, NASA reported Thursday. New information gathered by NASA's MAVEN probe, which is orbiting the Red Planet, indic...

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...

Garcia Marquez. Source: Flickr Commons Austin, Texas, Oct 29 (EFE).- When a young Salman Rushdie was introduced to the English edition of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in 1975, shortly after having his first novel - "Grimus" - published, it marked the beginning of a love affair with the work of Colombian Nobel literature laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author he never met in person. T...

Source: myBulova.com New York, Oct 24 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- The watch used by the commander of the Apollo 15 space mission was sold at a highly competitive auction for $1,625,000, U.S. media reported. Commander Dave Scott used a Bulova Chronograph during that 1971 lunar landing, the ninth manned mission of the United States' Apollo program and fourth to land o...

g-star.com Pharrell Williams, the Grammy-winning artist behind that infectious tune “Happy”, is challenging all of us to join him in a campaign to stop throwing plastic products – especially bottles – into the ocean. Marine debris is killing our oceans, and we can join with Pharrell’s “RAW for the Ocean” project to bring that crime against Mother Nature to a halt. Plastic pollution in the o...

Wikimedia Commons By Valentina Bastias Atias Santiago, Oct 10 (EFE).- Argentina's Geronimo Villanueva, one of the scientists behind a recently released study confirming the existence of water on Mars, is enthusiastic about the possibility of discovering life on the red planet. "In recent years, the study of (Mars) has been revived thanks to the discovery of liquid water in large quantiti...

MANUEL ANTONIO, COSTA RICA (PRWEB) OCTOBER 06, 2015 - The Sloth Institute together with Kids Saving the Rainforest announces the Elementary School Sloth Challenge, inspired by Ms. Megan Yang, 1st grade teacher at West Point Elementary in Surprise, Arizona. Ms. Yang believes in teaching students at a young age about conservation. “I am using the “adoption” of a sloth as a way to educate students a...

Wikimedia Commons NEW YORK, PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Glasswing International Founder Celina de Sola announced the organization's 'Commitment to Action' during the 2015 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting.  Central America is currently facing immense challenges, among them, the highest levels of violence in the world, along with unaccompanied minors emigrating to escape desperate co...

Wikimedia Commons Mexico City, Oct 2 (EFE).- Microsoft Corporation CEO Satya Nadella said here during a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto that the technology giant would invest around $1 billion to promote digital education and inclusion in the Latin American country. During Thursday's meeting at the Los Pinos presidential residence, Nadella said the investment would be carr...

TORONTO, Sept. 29, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- National Geographic and award-winning Canadian tour operator G Adventures have joined forces to launch National Geographic Journeys with G Adventures, a new line of experiential trips to destinations all over the globe. With similar core values, an aligned sense of social responsibility, and a shared belief in the positive impact that travel can have on the ...

What effect does environmental degradation have on local communities? How do you produce enough food to sustain humanity? Why do so many racial and ethnic minorities and the poor live in places that are detrimental to their health? How can people live in harmony with the environment while having access to modern conveniences? According to Dr. Patricia Campion, Saint Leo University asso...

Pixabay Commons Heartbreak, love unrequited and a deep feeling of lost hope are being cited as the reasons that drove an English teacher to take his own life in Costa Rica. According to a news report filed by Gerin Portilla of daily tabloid Diario Extra, Cristobal Oviedo Ocontrillo decided to jump from the Saprissa Bridge in Tibas, a northern suburb of San Jose, after telling his elderly mothe...

Source: CSMT Press Advantage News Release - September 16. 2015 -- The Costa Rica School of Massage Therapy in Samara, Nicoya, has announced that they will have an award winning instructor joining them on their faculty for part of their fall session. Ruth Werner will be joining the school this fall to assist in educating students of the 2015 Mariposa class. "We're excited to have Ruth join our ...

Jairo Zelaya - Pixabay Commons Washington, Sep 15 (EFE).- The proportion of Hispanics in the United States who were born in other countries has dropped progressively over the past few years from 40 percent to 35 percent, according to a report released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. The report by the Washington-based center shows that 64.1 percent of Hispanics in the United States have ...

Source: Wikimedia Commons The traditions surrounding the celebration of Independence Day in Costa Rica have become powerful symbols of the longstanding peace, democracy and civil freedom that Ticos proudly enjoy. It is important to note, however, that these traditions actually originated in other countries, and that other patriotic values are celebrated more so than independence on September 1...

Bedroom painted with Glidden colors By Carolina Ruiz During childhood, it is necessary to create fun and safe environments; in adolescence, bedrooms should be places that allow them to feel part of society while still being unique. Colors play an important role in this matter. For most of us in Costa Rica, our bedroom is a sacred place: not only for being a private room, but also because...

Source: Facebook Costa Rica is a favorite "study abroad" destination for higher education students from the United States, particularly those interested in the scientific, Spanish language, social work, medical, and political science fields. Although Costa Rica is considered a safe nation for U.S. students, tragic incidents and accidents have taken place. An unfortunate 2012 drowning of a New ...

The tragic events of September 11th, 2001 shook the entire world. The terrorist attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda left a deep mark on the psyches of many people, including a few from Costa Rica. Author's Note: Portions of this article were originally published by The Costa Rica Star on September 11, 2013. They are being reprinted in memoriam.   Fourteen years after the calamity, most people in Cos...

U.S. National Park Service News Release – Birds have begun their migration south! But before they began their flights to more tropical locations, Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP) and its partners the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory (RMBO) and its sister parks in Costa Rica collaborated to conduct a summer solstice bird count, held on June 20, 2015. Much like the winter solstice bird count, comm...

Source: Access Access is an international human rights organization premised on the belief that political participation and the realization of human rights in the 21st century is increasingly dependent on access to the Internet and other forms of technology. Access has offices in various cities around the world, including the lovable San Jose, Costa Rica. From Costa Rica, the Access Digital...