Wikimedia Commons By Carol Blair Vaughn Santa’s going to have more help delivering packages this year than just Rudolph’s very shiny nose. The universe is giving us all a gift that we don’t even need to unwrap: a full moon on Christmas Eve. This phenomena is called the Yule Moon, or the Full Cold Moon, and it’s the first time since 1977 that this has happened, 38 years ago. NASA predicts...

A RE/MAX listing in Costa Rica Of all regional housing markets in Costa Rica, Tamarindo Beach is one of the most recent and affluent. Up to the late 20th century, Tamarindo Beach was a sleepy beach town characterized by lackadaisical real estate development. That changed in the early 21st century as tourists and expats discovered the beaches of Guanacaste, which are now known as being part of ...

Located in the Manuel Antonio National Park, The Sloth Institute Costa Rica (TSI)’s vision is to expand scientific knowledge and education about the sloth to enhance their well-being and assure their conservation here and on this planet. Following is a holiday reflection by Sloth Institute staff about their noble work this year. You can read the original here. By Seda Sejud No matter wher...

Jack Donnelly By Jack Donnelly If you don’t want to see a bull bleeding and dying in front of you, don’t worry: in Costa Rica the bulls win! Costa Rican style bullfighting, toros a la tica, is nothing like the gory spectacles that take place in Mexico and Spain. Here the bulls are well cared for and almost never injured. Tico (Costa Rican) friends of mine joke about the bulls’ contracts cal...

Tom Brady on the beach in Costa Rica with his family. Source: Facebook Pressnews.biz (Press Release) Dec 18, 2015 -- San Jose, Costa Rica. Over the past months, Patriots’ QB Tom Brady has been questioned about his feelings for Republican candidate Donald Trump and asked a few times which way he would vote in the coming election. Although, Brady has skillfully said nothing to all the questions ...

With border controls getting tighter in many parts of the world, should perpetual tourists in Costa Rica worry about their legal status? According to Marcela Gurdian, founder of Immigration Experts Costa Rica, some incidents in 2015 should be carefully reviewed and considered by foreigners who have not formalized their legal status in our country. In 2015, the exacerbation of the European re...

Wikimedia Commons The U.S. Embassy in San Jose reminds U.S. citizens that the holiday season in Costa Rica traditionally correlates with an increase in the frequency of property crimes.  Home invasions, robberies, burglaries, and thefts occur with greater regularity during the period between the end of October and the start of the new year.  The holiday season also tends to correlate with an i...

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - December 14, 2015) - Italian roasting coffee company illy and Los Angeles-based GreenLight Media & Marketing took home the Cristal award for best Non-Fiction Film in the Branded Entertainment & Content category for the feature-length documentary A Small Section of the World at the 2015 Cristal Festival, the annual five-day international media and creativity ...

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: Fast Casual BOSTON, Dec. 10, 2015 () -- Così, Inc. (NASDAQ:COSI), the fast-casual restaurant company, today announced that its franchisee, Fast Casual Ltda., has opened its sixth Così® restaurant in Costa Rica at Nuevo City Plaza, located next to the main movie theater in Santa Ana, part of the western suburbs of San Jose. “We are pleased to announce the opening of another new Così re...

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: Landsvest Three investment groups in three countries are working together to come up with capital to develop an ambitious project in Costa Rica, one which will include a tournament-grade golf course designed by the legendary Jack Nicklaus. According to a recent news report filed by Terence Cullen of the Commercial Observer, New York-based investment firm Colliers International is tr...

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: MSP In the eastern suburbs of San Jose, officers from Fuerza Publica (the national police force of Costa Rica) rescued a snowman that had been illegally taken from a second floor balcony. The incident occurred past the midnight hour of Friday, and it unfolded in the residential community of Los Olimpos, located in the Purral district of the Goicochea canton. According to official pr...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Dec. 2, 2015 - PRLog -- In the United States, millennials are finally starting to buy houses as rent prices soar. That means that potential retirees can also sell their homes at a fair price for the first time since the housing market dropped in 2008. However, retirees are still struggling with the fact that they do not have as much saved as they thought they would by this ...

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...

Pixabay Commons Residents of Nicoya, many of them North American expats, have scored a victory in their battle against the Ministry of Justice, which intended to build a new prison in that Guanacaste canton. Earlier this month, Minister of Justice Cecilia Sanchez appeared before the Legislative Assembly of Costa Rica and explained that she was suspending construction of a new prison in the ...

Source: Kalia Living ROCHESTER, N.Y., Dec. 1, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Elite Alliance, the leader in exchange services for prestigious residence clubs and luxury, professionally managed vacation homes, announced Kalia Living as the newest addition to its growing, international portfolio of vacation destinations. Located in the northwestern region of Guanacaste, Costa Rica, Kalia Living's sustainab...

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...

Beach house in Costa Rica One of the most important steps related to real estate acquisitions in Costa Rica is seldom given all the attention it deserves. A property is not a property unless its description, declaration and interests are documented and recorded in the National Registry. Failure to ensure that a property has been duly registered can result in creating a mess that could be diffi...

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...

Pixabay Commons ORLANDO, FL. (PRWEB) November 23, 2015 - PandaLabs, the laboratory of Panda Security, warns its latest quarterly report, that there has been a wave of cyberattacks where the security and information of various governments has been compromised. Additionally, the report lists the malware infection rates around the world, and Costa Rica shows a rate that is higher than the global ...

Press Release by Linda Negron of the TMF Group - The Costa Rican Department of Social Security (CCSS) has proposed an increase in total contribution to the Disability, Old Age and Death Fund (IVM) from 8.5% to 14%. They have also announced that early retirement will be phased out, while some changes are already in effect beginning this month. Many have cautioned that the Costa Rican pension sys...

By Carol Blair Vaughn The United States Congress is about to enact a new law, H.R. 22 along with Senate Bill 1813, which will allow officials to deny new or revoke existing passports held by U.S. citizens who are more than $50,000 in arrears in their Federal Income Tax (IRS). The new law is expected to pass Congress in early December, and take effect on Jan. 1, 2016. This new law should rais...

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: Gerardo Cruz Facebook Gerardo Cruz, a young man who became a folk hero in Costa Rica through his actions in public and on social media, passed away from a cardiac arrest at 6:18 pm on Thursday, November 19th. As reported by The Costa Rica Star in October, Mr. Cruz was a 22-year old man who confronted another man for filming an “upskirt” video in the capital city of Costa Rica. Two d...

San Jose, Nov 19 (EFE; additional reporting by The Costa Rica Star).- The Costa Rican government reported Thursday that foreign ministers from a dozen countries in the region will meet next week in El Salvador to find a solution to the emigration of thousands of Cubans trying to reach the United States, about 2,400 of whom are stranded in Costa Rica. "It was agreed that the convening on Monday,...

US CBP Press Release - Additional Reporting by The Costa Rica Star / LOS ANGELES—U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists assigned to the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) seized 450 prohibited pork meat tamales discovered inside the luggage of a passenger arriving from Mexico, on November 2. The passenger, who was referred to agriculture examination, marked “YES” ...

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...

Flickr Commons Starting January 2016, all credit and debit cards in Costa Rica must be compliant with the smart chip and PIN technology known as EMV, which stands for Electron-MasterCard-Visa, an international initiative to prevent financial fraud at the consumer level. According to a recent report filed by Krissia Chacon Jimenez of business weekly El Financiero, the Central Bank of Costa R...

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...

Press Release by The Costa Rica Star – November 15, 2015 – Quality of life and stability are just two of the factors that make Costa Rica very attractive for those interested in relocation and immigration. There are various options for residency and citizenship in this Central American nation and one law firm stands ready to assist foreigners as they embark on the voyage of residing in Costa Rica'...

Lasink technology COLOMBES, France--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oberthur Technologies (OT), a leading global provider of embedded security software products, services and solutions today announced that its cutting-edge Lasink™ solution has been selected by Costa Rica, through a multi-year contract to provide highly secure national ID cards. With the aim of providing its citizens with enhanced security...

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 ...

Froozer SAN FRANCISCO, November 11, 2015 /3BL Media/ ­– Obesity and diabetes rates in the United States have hit an all-time high. More than two in three American adults are considered overweight today, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research center. Children are no better off, reporting skyrocketing increases in new Type-2 diabetes cases; a condition pr...

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: Apple One of the most popular wearable computing devices in the market will soon be worn on the wrists of iPhone users in Costa Rica who can afford them. The Apple Watch will start selling in Costa Rica later this month, specifically on November 20th, at stores operated by official distributor iCon. The Apple Watch models that will be sold in Costa Rica include the sport versions of...